Grappling with ‘the Jewish question’ – and ‘that Palestine letter’

Beyond the Liberals' exploitation of Jewish anxieties, the letter that Zoe Daniel signed remains a source of grievance. JULIE SZEGO unpacks its deceptive subtext

AT THE RISK of sounding basic, let’s start with an overview of the election landscape and where “the Jewish question” — a shorthand I feel comfortable using here— fits in. We have two metropolitan seats with sizeable Jewish minorities where Liberal incumbents are under challenge from “teal” independents: Wentworth in Sydney, and Goldstein in Melbourne.

Then we have the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, under challenge from an independent in Kooyong, where I had assumed Jews were also a sizeable minority but have since learned that out-and-proud Jews comprise less than one per cent of the electorate. Go figure. From this fact I might boldly extrapolate the good voters of Kooyong have been electing Frydenberg for reasons unrelated to his Jewishness.

It’s not just about Jews

For all the progressives in a lather of excitement about the independents and their undoubtedly impressive CVs, a gentle reality check is in order. The very presence of the green-tinged independents in these seats speaks to an unavoidable truth: no matter how frustrated some Liberal voters might be with the Morrison Government, they would rather stick their heads in a mincer than do the logical thing and back the alternative government.

Sure, they might be prepared to vote Labor at state elections — Hawthorn, part of Kooyong, fell to Labor at the last state poll and Brighton, in Goldstein, was 865 votes short of the same fate — but federal government, being constitutionally empowered to extract taxes, define the limits of union power and fight wars, is considered a more serious matter.

So to maintain the illusion they’re not really voting for Labor, these voters need reassurance that the independent candidates are centrist small “l” liberals. Any whiff of left’ism — an admittedly broad field that starts at Anthony Albanese, or thereabouts, and ends at Jeremy Corbyn — and these only partly-liberated Liberals rightly freak out. And apart from climate, women and integrity, we know very little about where the independents stand on other issues that they are likely to encounter should they get elected.

Now that’s a lengthy preamble to suggest that, with Israel being a totemic issue for both left and right, some will be inclined to construe the independents’ stance on Israel as a proxy for their stance on other debates, from the US alliance to identity politics.

Thus, the Liberals, via The Australian, seek to tar the independents as anti-Israel or at least highly suspect. It’s a shorthand way of unmasking the radical in corporate clothing.

But it is about Jews

The fact, however, remains: Jews are a significant minority in Goldstein and Wentworth. Their votes count. And most Australian Jews are vigilant against what they perceive as threats to Israel’s interests. This mindset is hardly pathological, even if the deliberations of Jewish communities about what’s best for Israel don’t always align with what Israelis think is best for Israel.

Other ethnic and diaspora communities, many in key western Sydney electorates, are similarly swayed by overseas causes at the ballot box.

Broadly, Liberals know they can outbid rivals on support for Israel. What they struggle to grasp is the risk inherent in over-playing one’s hand with the cheap card trick, if you’ll pardon the double-barrelled cliche. The most egregious official example here is Scott Morrison’s Donald Trump-inspired announcement in the lead-up to the 2018 Wentworth by-election that the Government was thinking about moving the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Liberals still lost Wentworth.

As for the unofficial muckraking, a certain former president of the Victorian Liberal party has insinuated the teal independents, and their financier, Climate 200’s Simon Holmes a Court, constitute an antisemitic conspiracy — a statement that strikes me as pretty conspiratorial. If you’re hungry for more commentary in this vein— or are curious about how low this mob will stoop— tune in to Sky News and knock yourself out.

For alleged antisemitic conspiracists, Allegra Spender in Wentworth and Zoe Daniel in Goldstein have been conspicuously emphatic in seeking to reassure Jews they support Israel. After Spender came under scrutiny for the pro-BDS views of a prominent supporter, hardline Jewish community figures did a painstaking audit and declared her 100 per cent kosher.

So let’s talk about that Palestine letter

But there remains disquiet about Daniel and her signing an “open letter” on Palestine during last year’s Gaza conflict. Daniel has since criticised the framing of the letter but argues that removing her signature now would be “insincere or a cheat’s way out”.

Still, she was uninvited from an event on May 7 at a Melbourne synagogue; her incumbent rival Tim Wilson was then also banned from attending. Mount Scopus College principal Rabbi James Kennard has weighed into the fray, describing the former ABC journalist’s stance as “dissembling and deliberately ambiguous”.

Entitled Do Better on Palestine, the open letter asserts “a growing dissatisfaction, both in this country and elsewhere, with the media’s treatment of Palestine”. The signatories are in the hundreds — I gave up counting at about 400 — and include some of Australia’s finest journalists, of which Daniel, a former foreign correspondent of talent and courage, is one. Mentors, colleagues and close friends of mine are among the names.

The letter calls on editors and publishers to “make space for Palestinian perspectives, prioritising the voices of those most affected by the violence,” and to avoid “the ‘both siderism’ that equates the victims of a military occupation with its instigators”. I find this demand somewhat mystifying.

“Prioritising the voices of those most affected by the violence” is simply good journalism; reporters gravitate to where the human stakes are highest in any story. There is no doubt the Palestinians in Gaza suffered disproportionately during last year’s war, and from memory much of the media reporting about the conflict rightly focused on their plight.

But what of the petitioners’ warning against “both siderism” reporting? What might this mean in practice? I think the letter’s introduction, which purports to summarise the events that led to its drafting, is most revealing here. We can presume this introduction is an example of the kind of reporting the journalists who drafted the letter wanted to institutionalise.

“As Israeli vigilante mobs attack Palestinians,” the writers explain, “the Netanyahu government has unleashed a new, brutal war against the besieged population of Gaza.”

The narrative is utterly incoherent, omitting cause-and-effect. Whatever might be said about the “brutal war” against Gaza, the Netanyahu government unleashed it after Hamas launched rockets at Israeli cities and towns. Yet the Netanyahu government’s enemy in this war, Hamas, is expunged from the record.

Far from rejecting “both siderism” reporting, the writers deny the other side exists at all. The reader is left with the impression the Netanyahu government joined the frenzy of racist attacks against Palestinians for the hell of it.

The text falls at the first reporting hurdle, namely ticking off the “5w’s”: who, what, where, when, and why. It breaches the first commandment of the journalists’ Code of Ethics: disclose all “essential” facts and do not suppress “relevant” ones.

Journalists are people, too, and witnessing the suffering of innocents on a large scale is as disempowering for them as it is for everyone else. But this alone seems an inadequate explanation for how   some of the nation’s top journalists came to sign a document that fails the most basic test of journalistic integrity? 

I think it’s because the introduction also refers to the International Federation of Journalists’ claim that Israel had “deliberately” targeted the media by destroying the Al-Jawhara tower in Gaza, home base for 13 media institutions and NGOs. (The Israeli government said Hamas had military assets in the tower, and the Israel Defence Forces [IDF] gave journalists in the building prior warning of the attack.)

The spectacle of journalists under fire invariably sparks outrage and the outpouring of fraternal solidarity. I’m guessing some journalists signed the petition to protest what they saw as the IDF’s cavalier attitude to journalists’ safety, and otherwise didn’t read the fine print.

Or maybe I’m settling on this theory because the alternative - that these journalists are already so driven by animus they’re not “seeing” Hamas’ violence against Israeli civilians - is too uncomfortable to contemplate.

Daniel herself says her signing of the letter was “narrowly framed” to express concern for the safety and welfare of journalists in Gaza.” It is an explanation, not an excuse, and ought to be accepted as such.

Whether she chooses to remove her signature now— as some in the community demand— is of less concern to me than the bigger question of whether journalists, and politicians, can be relied upon to keep a cool head at times when there’s more heat than light.

This is a major challenge of our polarised, overwrought era; one that goes well beyond the Middle East debate and a dreary election campaign.

Photo: Zoe Daniel at her campaign launch (Diego Fedele/AAP)