“Israel doesn’t exist to placate the feelings of its detractors and defamers. It exists to protect Jewish life and uphold Jewish dignity in a world too intent on destroying both.”
That’s how Bret Stephens concluded his July 8 column in The New York Times.
It’s worth quoting to social media’s useful fools who daily repeat the historical inversions of deeply anti-Semitic propagandists, often driven by Iran, Qatar, China and Russia.
Sad to say, even older journalists of the left quote the same prattle. They should understand how a civilised country such as Germany, home of some of history’s greatest classical music composers and philosophers, managed to allow a group of anti-Semitic young thugs, the Brownshirts, to morph into the Nazi SS determined to exterminate Jews.
It’s as if even educated adults have forgotten that six million Jews died in the Holocaust or that this was just the worst of hundreds of pogroms against Jews in Europe and the Middle East in the past 500 years.
It’s as if many in Australia don’t know Israel is the world’s only Jewish nation but 56 countries are Muslim UN members. Nor do they seem to know Muslims are the world’s fastest-growing demographic with almost two billion followers. Jews number only 14 million worldwide.
Israel, with seven million Jews in a nation of nine million, is a vibrant democracy that lets its Arab, Druze and Bedouin citizens vote and elect members of any ethnicity or religion. Hamas won a single election in Gaza, then killed its Palestinian Authority rivals and banned further elections.
Like Islamist groups across the Middle East – Sunni and Shia – Hamas is formally committed to the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel.
In Melbourne and Sydney we see regular demonstrations of hate for Israel that look much like the rallies of 1930s Germany or of Islamists in Cairo, Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus in modern times.
Synagogues have been attacked in Sydney and Melbourne, Jewish neighbourhoods and childcare centres vandalised and cars fire-bombed in the same areas.
East Melbourne Synagogue, opened in 1857, was firebombed on Friday, July 4. The same night protesters raided a Jewish city restaurant, Miznon, assaulting patrons and staff and chanting “death, death to the IDF”. Later three cars were bombed and a wall attacked with graffiti at Lovitt Technologies.
Protesters defend the attacks at the restaurant and Lovitt by citing each establishment’s links to Israel.
They are blaming Jewish people who live 15,000km from Gaza for deaths there.
Such deaths, an immense tragedy, will continue because Hamas refuses to release the Israeli hostages it still holds.
That no protester here speaks for those hostages or for the dead, maimed and raped on October 7, 2023, speaks volumes about Jew hatred in Australia. In Israel, protesters advocate for innocent Gazans and for innocent Hamas hostages.
But here more than 300 members of the journalists’ trade union in late 2023 signed a petition saying the atrocities of October 7 could only be understood “in context’’. It was a coward’s way of turning a blind eye to the actual genocidal intent of Hamas.
Such thinking gives journalists reporting anti-Semitic incidents in Australia an excuse not to ask the obvious: how is what you are doing here helping Gazans?
At least Norman Hermant, interviewing one of the organisers of the raid on Miznon on the ABC’s 7.30 on Monday, asked Gaye Demanuele how attacking diners in Melbourne would help people in Gaza.
Demanuele justified the attack by arguing one of the part-owners of the restaurant, Shahar Segal, was also involved in the Gaza Humanitarian Fund distributing aid in Gaza.
Hermant asked: “Does it help your cause to be scaring diners on a Friday night in Melbourne?”
Demanuele answered: “Imagine lying in a hospital bed in a tent as a displaced person or trying to keep your starving children safe in a tent.”
Actually, most Jews can imagine exactly that. But blaming Australians having dinner on the other side of the world is juvenile.
Nor should Demanuele’s condemnation of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund have been taken at face value.
The Israeli Defence Forces have produced video evidence – published last month by The Jerusalem Post – showing people killed after collecting Gaza Humanitarian Fund aid were set upon by Hamas operatives as they left the distribution centres.
It was the theft of UN aid by Hamas and its onselling for profit to ordinary Gazans that forced Israel and the US to stop supporting UN aid distribution. Israel does not trust the UN, given the involvement of some UN staff in the October 7 attacks and the revelation of a Hamas command centre under the UN HQ in Gaza.
Readers interested in understanding how journalists think about Israel should listen to last week’s discussion by Antoinette Lattouf and Jan Fran on their new weekly We Used To Be Journos podcast. Both have Lebanese heritage.
Presumably neither would be happy if an Australian Lebanese restaurant was attacked by people blaming Australians of Lebanese heritage for 20 years of Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel launched from inside Lebanon.
Lattouf and Fran specifically look at coverage by The Age on Monday, July 7 of the previous Friday’s attacks and the following Sunday’s regular pro-Palestinian march in Melbourne. They focus initially on Age stories published on Instagram, assuring listeners most young news consumers don’t get their news from mainstream media websites.
They don’t say this is the central problem with Australian anti-Semitism, but it is. Nor do they discuss the social media algorithms that magnify anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic misinformation on platforms such as X and TikTok.
Neither did they mention a piece from Quillette founding editor Claire Lehmann published in this masthead on July 5 showing how the Soviet Union began a campaign to build anti-Israel sentiment globally as far back as 1967.
They do demand more “context” from The Age, especially discussing the newspaper’s editorial that day. The paper condemned Sunday’s street march for lack of consideration of the victims of the Friday night attacks. While never excusing the synagogue fire, the podcasters argue the Miznon and Lovitt attacks were justified by the respective Israel connections of each.
Their plea for “context” does not extend to context about whether Israel is indeed deliberately targeting aid recipients at Gaza Humanitarian Fund distribution points. Nor context about Hamas fighters deliberately hiding in tunnels under hospitals and schools.
Nor during discussion of The Age’s story on Israeli Prime Minister “and war criminal” Benjamin Netanyahu’s criticism of the Melbourne attacks do they give legal “context”: charges of genocide against him are contested by many countries that remain in contact with Netanyahu.
As if to highlight anti-Semitism envoy Jillian Segal’s comments about the role of media in spreading anti-Semitism, fill-in ABC Radio National breakfast show host Steve Cannane on Friday wasted half his 12-minute interview with her taking issue with the definition of anti-Semitism used in her report to the government the previous day.
Like many journalists on social media, Cannane focused on the Jewish Council of Australia’s criticism of Segal’s report. In political terms, it’s like the ABC always inviting Malcolm Turnbull or John Hewson to discuss the Liberal Party: fringe views from embittered critics.
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