Crikey, the left has outdone itself with the Lattouf affair
Swing a bag in a hip eatery in Melbourne and you’ll hit at least 10 people who think Israel is the most monstrous nation on earth. But forget everything else about Antoinette Lattouf – it’s this that was unforgivable.
For me, the most disturbing thing about the Antoinette Lattouf affair is not that she accused Israel of “annihilating” the Palestinian people. Such hot-headed hate for Israel is par for the course in the bourgeois left circles Lattouf no doubt moves in.
Swing a bag in a hip eatery in Melbourne and you’ll hit at least 10 people who think Israel is the most monstrous nation on earth.
And it’s not the fact she thinks Israel’s war on Hamas is the handiwork of “bloodthirsty, extremist men”. Again, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single member of the privileged “progressive” set who doesn’t subscribe to this poisonous view of Israel as a uniquely bloodlusting state.
Attend any anti-Israel demo and you’ll see legions of the university-educated waving placards decorated with blobs of red paint to symbolise Israel’s insatiable urge to slaughter.
That their manicured handwringing echoes older, darker myths about Jews being hellbent on spilling Christian blood doesn’t appear to bother them one iota.
It’s not the fact she accuses Israel of carrying out the worst act of “violence against children” in “modern times”. Such historical illiteracy is rife among the self-righteous haters of Israel.
These people seem blissfully unaware of Rwanda, the Congo, Darfur, even Syria and Iraq – all theatres of war in which vastly greater numbers perished than are currently dying in Gaza.
Well, we can’t let anything as trifling as historical truth interfere with their self-indulgent posturing against the Jewish state, can we?
It’s not even the fact she seemed to believe the ABC’s strict policy on staff impartiality didn’t apply to her.
Let’s just say that us older, Gen X folk won’t exactly be knocked off our feet to discover that a media millennial like Lattouf seemed to think she could do anything she wanted with zero consequences.
The woke set who are spluttering into their macchiatos over the ABC’s decision to ditch Lattouf are not doing so because they believe in freedom of expression. These people wouldn’t know freedom of expression if it grabbed them by their keffiyeh-adorned necks.
No, it’s a juvenile disbelief that the rules might apply to them that underpins their rage against the “oppression” of Lattouf.
Mark my words, the minute this affair blows over, these phoney freedom fighters will go back to ruthlessly cancelling every gender-critical woman and conservative commentator who rattles their fragile sensibilities.
So far, so predictable. A right-on millennial who’s worked in the diversity industry and the bourgeois press thinks Israel is very bad? It’s hardly shocking. Israelophobia is virtually mandatory in certain dinner-party scenes.
No, the most unsettling thing Lattouf did, in my view, was pen that Crikey piece questioning whether anti-Israel protesters really did chant “gas the Jews” at the Sydney Opera House on October 9.
I will admit that even a seasoned observer of left-wing delirium like me found that chilling, unconscionable even, and virtually unprecedented in the modern media era. It really is something we should reflect on.
Lattouf’s piece was co-authored with Cam Wilson, Crikey’s associate editor. It’s an examination of whether the vile cry of “gas the Jews” really did ring out two days after Hamas’s pogrom against the Jews of southern Israel.
Their conclusion? No one can “verify” that it happened. It’s possible, they say, that the mob said “f..k the Jews”, not “gas the Jews”.
It’s important to question this incident, they said, because it went so “viral” and became “totemic” of a global wave of anti-Semitism.
First things first. Yes, many of us were horrified by the cry of “gas the Jews” – which I can still clearly hear in those clips – but it didn’t become a “totem” of the racism that burst forth like an abscess in our societies after October 7.
We saw this anti-Semitism day in, day out, everywhere. Here in London there have been 50 acts of anti-Jewish racism a day since October 7. So no, Crikey, we did not require a symbol, a possibly fabricated act of hate, to point to and agonise over. The racism was quite real enough.
More to the point, I have never, not once in my life, seen progressives do what Crikey did in that piece – that is, try to disprove an act of racism.
This was unusual, right? Possibly unique? The self-styled anti-racist left, out of nowhere, said: “We can’t be sure this racist incident happened.”
We live in an era when leftists see racism everywhere. Criticise Islam and you’re an Islamophobe. Ask someone, “Where are you from?” and you’ve committed a racial microaggression. Wonder out loud if we need to “stop the boats” and you’re basically Hitler.
The left doesn’t downplay racism – it exaggerates it. Crikey is a good example. It railed against the “racism” of those who voted no to the voice to parliament. It frequently frets over the media’s “anti-Muslim commentary”.
And yet when a heaving mob of extremists cried “gas the Jews”, its instinct was to investigate. To cast doubt. To ask probing questions.
Why? Here’s my view. It’s because the left treats anti-Jewish racism less seriously than other forms of racism.
It’s because none of the left’s woke rules apply to Jews. Witness how the progressive cry “Believe women” was likewise quietly ditched following Hamas’s brutalisation of women and girls in Israel. Don’t believe “those” women.
It’s because Jews seem always to be excluded from the moral universe of showy left-wing concern.
After that Crikey piece appeared, I saw armies of the vile online saying: “See, I told you all those claims of anti-Semitism were overblown.”
I have no doubt that was not Lattouf and Wilson’s intention. But it’s what happened.
And forget everything else about the Lattouf affair – it’s this that was unforgivable.
