Antinuclear

The AIJAC propaganda machine

May 27, 2024: The AIM Network, By Evan Jones

The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) is a constant presence in Australia’s mainstream media. Its predominant role is to defend the state of Israel come hell or high water.

Whenever someone appears in the media criticising Israel and/or supporting the Palestinian cause, AIJAC personnel pop up to set the reader straight. AIJAC complains about media bias regarding Israel/Palestine but it is perennially in the reader’s face. The AIJAC’s concept of balance involves no criticism of Israel nor pro-Palestinian coverage whatsoever.

AIJAC was formed in 1997 from a merger of the Australian Institute of Jewish Affairs and Australia-Israel Publications (edited by a certain Michael Danby). The emphasis of the two bodies appears to have been, respectively, on the Australian Jewish community and on Israel. The merged body’s emphasis appears to reside overwhelmingly in the unqualified defence of Israel – save for its active interest in opposing the attempted dilution of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act (c/f Mathew Dunckley, Australian Financial Review, 9 November 2013).

The only area where AIJAC personnel have not rallied stridently to any Israeli action, no matter how heinous, is the Netanyahu Coalition government’s 2023 attempt to rein in the autonomy of Israel’s Supreme Court. Here, the public reaction turns to muffled incoherence.

AIJAC has been pathologically preoccupied with Iran and its nuclear program (e.g. Rubenstein, Australian Financial Review, 20 May 2005; AFR, 26 August 2008). Granted, Iran is an odious regime, but if Israel didn’t have a nuclear arsenal (which it acquired surreptitiously) would Iran be bothered to acquire its own? AIJAC supported US President Trump’s May 2018 abandonment of the 2015 JCPOA deal, claiming that Iran was secretly not adhering to the terms. All the major players claim the contrary.

AIJAC must be well resourced, because it rails against omnipresent ‘misinformation’ on and ‘malevolence’ towards Israel and, by its reckoning, such is to be found under every rock.

Some instances?

• AIJAC (and its predecessor) hates the ABC. The lobby was especially furious when the unbowed Macquarie University’s Middle East expert Robert Springborg gave his expert opinions there. Australia-Israel Publications gave then Prime Minister Bob Hawke (ardent Israel-lover) a dossier on Springborg who used it to attack ABC management for its coverage of the Gulf War (Tom Burton, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 February 1991).
• Mordechai Vanunu, a nuclear technician, disclosed details (out of conviction) of Israel’s nuclear program to the media in 1986. Soon kidnapped by Mossad, he has been deprived of his liberty ever since, inside and outside prison. AIJAC considers Vanunu to be a traitor, deserving of his life-long punishment (Letter, David Faktor, The Australian, 28 April 1998).
• The International Court of Justice and the UN General Assembly decreed that the Israeli wall, built on Occupied Palestinian land, was illegal. AIJAC claim that the fence (sic) is a great idea because it has reduced the incidences of terrorism (Colin Rubenstein, Age, 15 July 2004). Rubenstein cares not to inquire into the violent Israeli origins of the violent Second Intifada
• Sometime Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer reminded AFR readers (Letter, AFR, 14 July 2006) of the knowing bombing and strafing by Israeli aircraft of the US intelligence ship USS Liberty, June 1967. Ted Lapkin (Letter, 17 July 2006) claimed that a Navy inquiry (‘conclusive and easily accessed’) concluded that the attack ‘was an unfortunate case of wartime friendly fire’, and that Fischer had resurrected ‘this long discredited calumny’. Survivors of the attack know that the truth is otherwise. Two letters from Greg O’Connor (AFR, 19 & 24 July 2006) provide authoritative sources providing evidence for a wilful massacre.
  A ‘coalition of prominent Australian Jews … will challenge what it sees as extreme pro-Israeli bias among Jews in Australia’ in creating a new group, Independent Australian Jewish Voices (Ben Cubby, SMH, 6 March 2007). AIJAC’s Colin Rubenstein said the group was ‘dangerous and unrepresentative’. ‘They’re simply using their Jewish ethnic background’, he said. AIJAC’s Australian Jewish News reported the then visiting British Zionist author Melanie Phillips as labelling them ‘Jews for Genocide’.
• 
  ‘Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence described Israel as both Jewish and democratic while insisting all minorities have full and equal rights. … Contrary to false claims that Israel is considering instituting some sort of overt legal discrimination against Arab Israelis, this would be absolutely forbidden by Israeli constitutional law (as embodied by Israel’s Declaration of Independence, Basic Laws, and court precedents).’ (Ted Lapkin, SMH, 28 October 2010) Lapkin’s claims regarding the institutionalisation of non-discrimination in ‘Israeli constitutional law’ (Israel has no written Constitution) is ludicrous. Israel was created explicitly as an apartheid state (c/f Uri Davis, Apartheid Israel, 2003) and it remains so.
  The distinguished retired South African (Jewish) judge Richard Goldstone was appointed to head the UN Fact Finding Mission on the [2008-09] Gaza Conflict. The Report was damning of the IDF and Hamas both, but especially of the Israeli force’s wanton killing of civilians. Goldstone faced extraordinary criticism and threats from Israel and its friends, with Goldstone sadly issuing a mea culpa for his previous honesty.

Rubenstein remained unrepentant of Goldstone’s confession under mental torture and threats of excommunication. Claimed Rubenstein: ‘Probably no document in the recent history of the Arab-Israeli conflict has done more damage to the reputation of Israel, nor contributed more to the international campaign to boycott and delegitimise it, than the Goldstone report. … Unfortunately, Goldstone’s change of heart cannot undo the massive, irreparable damage he and his co-commissioners have inflicted through their report. This damage is not only to Israel’s reputation but also to Middle East peace prospects, and to the very notion of a responsible and universal system of international law.’ (Rubenstein, The Australian, 12 April 2011)

AIJAC opposes the UN recognition of Palestinian statehood (e.g. Rubenstein, Age, 22 August 2011, Leibler, Age, 17 November 2011, Gartrell, SMH, 22 February 2017, James Massola & Matthew Knott, Age, 9 August 2023). Such recognition (citing Rubenstein) can only ‘reward bad behaviour and reinforce Palestinian intransigence’ (2017) and ‘will make it extremely difficult for Australia to present itself as a credible and effective advocate for a two-state peace … [as such it] is detrimental to Australia’s national interests’ (2023). Of which, more below.‘

Yet Lyons vilifies us as holding extremely hard-line positions on Israel.’ (Rubenstein, Australian, 12 March 2014) John Lyons is of course correct. Lyons, then Australian journalist, fronted a ABC Four Corners program, ‘Stone Cold Justice’, 10 February 2014, on Israel’s abusive treatment of Palestinian children. Fellow Murdoch columnist, the Israelophile Greg Sheridan (Australian, 1 March 2014), joined the attack against Lyons…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

• 
  Melissa Parke was a federal Labor MP during 2007-16. Parke was primed to contest a Liberal-held seat in 2019 and she made a speech bitterly criticising Israel. Among other things Parke noted that (self-evident) Israel’s ‘influence in our political system and foreign policy is substantial’. AIJAC’s Colin Rubenstein claimed that Parke’s comments ‘are among the most extreme examples of anti-Israel rhetoric ever voiced in Australia’, being ‘outrageous, inflammatory’, and that they were representative of ‘the worst Israel haters’. Rubenstein further claimed that Parke’s speech was ‘nothing more than a laundry list of slanders, including discredited conspiracy theories and downright falsification’, accusing the Labor Party in her endorsement of ‘turn[ing] a blind eye towards fanatics and conspiracy theorists in their ranks’ (Paige Taylor, The Australian, 13 April 2019; James Campbell, Melbourne Herald-Sun, 13 April 2019).

Parke sued Rubenstein. In April 2021, the parties settled, Rubenstein formally apologising and withdrawing his remarks. Parke is a human rights lawyer with boots on the ground experience in numerous conflict zones, including Gaza; she speaks from close experience………………………………………………………………………………….

A bucketload of politicians and journalists/editors are jetted to Israel on a regular basis. Rubenstein claims that the AIJAC-funded trips are necessary ‘to help [Australians] understand the complexity of the Middle East’ (Phillip Hudson, SMH, 28 March 2009). Ah yes, and what a profitable investment. A conga line of journalists and others, post visit, write up their understanding of Israel in lily-white terms. The ‘complexity’ has disappeared, and with it the unwholesome character of Israel as an apartheid state. Witness: Michael Stutchbury (AFR, 20 November 2013); David King (Australian, 23 November 2013); Aaron Patrick (AFR, 27 November 2015); Sharri Markson (Australian, 2 February 2016); Geoff Chambers (Australian, 9 March 2024); Gideon Haigh – of all people! (AFR, 26 April 2024).

AIJAC’s decades-long pronouncements highlight that its personnel dwell in a parallel universe. It is a record of high-class charlatanry. How can AIJAC personnel, all well-educated, construct a fabulous version of a subject on which they devote their waking hours? The media has been generally happy to oblige AIJAC’s threadbare homilies.

Ironically, AIJAC complains about the Nine papers (Age, Sydney Morning Herald) not publishing one of its letters. It was sent in response to a column by Marc Purcell, CEO Australian Council for International Development (Age/SMH, 18 April 2024). Purcell claims that: ‘The evidence that the Israeli government is deliberately starving civilians in Gaza is unequivocal’. Evidence of media bias against Israel defenders? Rather, the denying of Israel’s Gazan starvation strategy (a longstanding affair) may have been too much for the normally acquiescent letters editors to bear.

No doubt, undaunted, AIJAC will continue to flood Australia’s ‘quality’ press with its defence of the indefensible.

This article was originally published on Pearls and Irritations and has been republished with permission.  https://theaimn.com/the-aijac-propaganda-machine/—

May 27, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | religion and ethics