A Balcony Over Jerusalem

by John Lyons

  Bishop and Brandis issued a statement that read: ‘The description of areas which are subject to negotiations in the course of the peace process by reference to historical events is unhelpful. The description of East Jerusalem as “Occupied East Jerusalem” is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate nor useful.’

  The move, however, had an unintended consequence for Australia’s farmers: the Arab world threatened to stop their imports of sheep meat, beef and wheat, amounting to billions of dollars. Bishop met 18 diplomats from the region and told them that she was using the word ‘occupied’ with a small ‘o’ rather than a big ‘O’. While some were bemused by this, when she said that there was no change in the government’s position on the legal status of the Palestinian Territories, it headed off a trade crisis.

  Three weeks later, SBS went even further, instructing its staff not even to use the word ‘disputed’. A ‘Dear all’ memo to staff dated 19 June 2014 said: ‘Palestinians refer to occupied territories and Israelis to disputed territories. Over time, this language has been adopted in discussions at the highest level to indicate a particular political perspective on the ownership of this territory. It is incumbent on SBS to be impartial, so to ensure fairness in our reporting we will use geographical terms.’ Somehow, SBS was convinced that the term ‘occupied territories’ was one proffered by the Palestinians. In fact, it’s the term used in international law and, regarding the West Bank, by virtually every country in the world.

  An attachment to the email went into further detail: ‘When discussing territory whose status remains the subject of negotiation, care must be taken to ensure that the language used is neutral and cannot be interpreted as being favourable to one side over another. The best way to achieve this is to describe the geographic location of the settlements – for example, Israeli settlements on the West Bank or Israeli settlements on the outskirts of Jerusalem or similar. We should avoid describing settlements as on Palestinian land or on disputed land, or occupied territories.’ While those behind the change of policy at SBS might not even have realised it, what they had done was align SBS with the far right of Israeli politics. AIJAC and the rest of the Israeli lobby must have been delighted.

  Journalists who write about Israel – even if they do not live there – can enjoy a very pleasant life on one condition: that they never mention the occupation. You can have all-expensespaid trips to Israel. You can stay at the best hotels and eat at the best restaurants. You can be invited to speak at conferences in Australia, Israel or London. Your spouse will have their airfare paid also. You will be made to feel important. Your editors will be told what a good journalist you are. But to get all of this you must never mention the occupation nor make any serious criticism of Israel. Many journalists comply.

  But others do not. The legendary Australian correspondent Peter Cave reported from almost everywhere over a 40-year career at the ABC. Yet after reporting some criticisms of Israel, Cave was attacked, as he told me, by ‘a sort of secret society fighting on Israel’s behalf against the evil biased media and the ABC in particular’. The group prepared dossiers on him and other ABC reporters and sent them to like-minded journalists and members of Parliament. They took their case against Cave’s ‘bias’ to the Australian Broadcasting Authority. It took two years, but Cave was cleared of bias.

  Cave decided to infiltrate the group. Under an assumed name, he joined them ‘to keep an eye on them’ and began receiving complaints about himself. To build credibility with the group, Cave began defaming himself – ‘I’d send them notes such as “You know Cave’s got form as a neo-Nazi” or “Cave’s a well-known anti-Semite”. I busily defamed myself and they clearly loved it by their reactions.’

  It worked. Cave’s aim was to find out what complaints were being planned against him. He began to receive emails along the lines of: ‘We’re planning to make complaints against Peter Cave next week.’ The group discussed who should complain and about which stories – they even sent Peter Cave the wording that he should use in his formal complaint about himself. He was therefore able to warn his managers of imminent complaints. Eventually, the group wanted him to come to a meeting in Sydney. This presented a problem, of course, for the recognisable Cave. ‘I’m very sorry, but I’m disabled and can’t leave my house,’ he told them. ‘I think they cottoned on to me,’ Cave told me.

  I came to realise that hardline Jewish groups in Australia commonly targeted journalists. One such campaign led to an extraordinary process inside the ABC.

  The ABC’s Sophie McNeill was targeted from the moment her appointment was announced in February 2015. AIJAC published a dossier which amounted to a comprehensive attack on her. It was authored by Ahron Shapiro and posted onto AIJAC’s website. Headlined ‘Should the ABC have given advocacy journalist Sophie McNeill the keys to its Jerusalem bureau?’, it went on: ‘There are serious questions that must be raised about whether Sophie McNeill, who has recently been appointed the ABC’s exclusive Jerusalem-based Middle East correspondent, can comply with the obligations contained in ABC’s Code of Practice.’

  The dossier said that McNeill had appeared on a panel where she was ‘speaking alongside’ two people who had supported Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The case against McNeill included that she once said in an interview: ‘One of the saddest things I’ve seen in my whole life is spending time filming in a children’s cancer ward in Gaza.’ On this charge, I could also be indicted – one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen was a baby dying in a children’s hospital in Gaza because the hospital could not get through the Israeli checkpoint the medicines required to keep him alive.

  The sourcing of much of AIJAC’s material was questionable. It said: ‘According to the account of a Palestinian student who summarised from a personal video she made of the event …’ AIJAC said McNeill’s ‘apparent role at the event was to inspire student activities through her first-hand accounts from Gaza, and she appeared eager to play the part’. Apparent role? It continued, ‘according to the Tweet of one attendee, she spurred the audience on’. The Tweet of one attendee? McNeill’s appearance at the conference, AIJAC said, ‘was tantamount to joining a protest movement’. Tantamount to? The standard of allegation made in AIJAC’s attacks on journalists often did not come anywhere near the standard of sourcing of material that they demanded from the journalists they were attacking.

  The dossier also targeted McNeill for a story she had done looking at Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. ‘McNeill promotes the narrative that Israeli Jewry as a society is radicalising in terms of its Jewish character through the demographic growth of the ultra-Orthodox.’ The ‘implied message’, AIJAC said, was that ‘Israel is not really the pluralistic Western society it purports to be but is shifting towards religious radicalism’. Implied message? Of all the absurdities in the dossier, to me this was the most bizarre. Israel’s own media is full of stories about the rising number – and power – of the ultra-Orthodox. Given their high birth rates – many have seven or eight children – they are increasing as a proportion of the community.

  After publishing the dossier, AIJAC wrote to the board of the ABC, referencing it. The letter set off an extraordinary – perhaps unprecedented – chain of events. The chairman of the board, Jim Spigelman, asked the managing director, Mark Scott, for a response. Scott then instructed the corporation’s editorial policies department to prepare a response. Senior managers in the news and current affairs department were also enlisted. Scott believed that the ABC’s selection process was thorough, and was unhappy that a lobby group had the power to require the ABC to have to defend an appointment. ‘I will not cower to AIJAC,’ he told his managers.

  The ABC’s managers answered each claim, taking more than three weeks. The process included putting to McNeill each AIJAC accusation against her. The AIJAC attack also said that McNeill had credited British journalist John Pilger as being an influence on her – when she was 15. To her ABC man
agers, McNeill pleaded guilty to this charge but said his influence was in alerting her to the situation in East Timor when she was 15. In fact, McNeill was critical of Pilger – she said that she believed Pilger’s politics had ‘blinded him’ to the situation in Syria.

  Mark Scott was particularly angered by the parts of the dossier which attacked McNeill for who she may have spoken alongside on panels. ‘Here is a professional journalist like Sophie McNeill subject to a whole lot of attacks which in my view were trying to taint her by association,’ Scott told his managers.

  Scott wrote for the ABC board a 12-page response to AIJAC’s letter. In it he said that while AIJAC did not call for McNeill’s appointment to be reviewed or reversed, despite raising a series of critical questions and concerns about her ‘past activities’ – ‘they were letting us know they would be watching’. Scott told the board that he had engaged in dialogue as a media executive for almost two decades. ‘In that time, I have seen similar dossiers to the one created on Sophie McNeill on other journalists and around coverage of issues. The AIJAC website contains detailed, negative coverage of many leading Australian journalists who have reported on the Middle East, including Paul McGeough, John Lyons, Ed O’Loughlin and Ruth Pollard, as well as reporters from the BBC and The Guardian.’

  Scott added: ‘The article demonstrates to Sophie McNeill and to the ABC that her every word will be watched closely by AIJAC and she starts on the ground with this key interest group sceptical. We are all aware she will be under even closer scrutiny now. As they seek to influence our coverage, this is a pre-emptive “shot across the bows”. It should be noted, of course, that fair, impartial, accurate and balanced coverage from McNeill will not guarantee her immunity from ongoing criticism.’ Scott told the board: ‘The pre-emptive attack on McNeill is similar to the approach employed by lobby groups internationally. The US reporter, Jodi Rudoren, was targeted when she was appointed Jerusalem bureau chief for theNew York Times in 2012 and accused of being biased against Israel and unsuitable for the post … The New York Times refused to bow to the pressure and Rudoren remained in the position.’

  On 30 March 2015, Scott presented the response to Spigelman. The defence, and AIJAC’s attack, went to the April meeting of the board. The board supported Scott. The whole process had taken enormous resources inside the ABC. In my view, no other lobby group in Australia would be able to command that level of response. This is real power. And as a journalist I believe that such efforts can have the effect of making a journalist or organisation self-censor. This would not prove to be the case with McNeill. However, in my opinion such a process certainly puts pressure on a reporter, raising the possibility of what is known in journalism as ‘the pre-emptive buckle’.

  During my time in Israel I would come to believe that Australia’s uncritical support of Israel is both illogical and unhealthy. In 2012 I talked to Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh about this. Moreh had just released The Gatekeepers, a documentary film in which he interviewed all the living former chiefs of Shin Bet. Moreh had a message for overseas Jewish communities: ‘I think that the Jews in the diaspora have a guilty conscience because the Israelis are here, they are fighting for the survival of the country, and we [the diaspora] have to support that no matter what.’

  In Israel there’s a growing backlash against the hardline position of Australia’s Jewish community. Leading Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar, who has family in Sydney and has become familiar with Australia’s Jewish leadership, told me:

  I’m willing to be on record and tell the AIJAC people and the Australian Government that they are playing with my future, that they don’t give a shit about my children, it’s about their arses. It is annoying, because it has nothing to do with the real, strategic, existential interests of Israel. Australia should understand that in the US, Israel is a domestic political issue. Australia has to look at its relationship with Israel independently, because the US is not innocently looking at it. I tell my Australian friends and family that you live in Australia and even if you tell your government not to interfere, to take a step back and say nothing, this plays into the hands of the Likud, because this is exactly what Netanyahu wants you to do. He wants business as usual. There is a clear distinction between supporting Israel and supporting the Israeli Government and Israeli policy. If Australia voted in favour of a Palestinian State along 1967 lines it would be very difficult for the Israeli Government to smear them and say they are anti-Semites, because you have a very clean record.

  Gideon Levy echoed the warning: ‘As long as Israelis do not pay for the occupation and as long as they are not punished for the occupation they will not go for any change. It was true about South Africa and it’s true about here. Start to push Israel, economically and politically; that’s the only way to deal with Israel. Israel does not know any other language.’

  Levy said that, as difficult as it is for him to call for an economic boycott of his home country, this is a better alternative than the current course, which will lead to ‘terrible bloodshed’. He added: ‘All this policy of carrots will never work with Israel.’

  I asked Levy his response to claims from Australia’s Jewish community that people like him are ‘de-legitimising Israel’.

  ‘One hour of photos from Gaza de-legitimises Israel much more than all my articles together,’ he replied.

  The fact that – with rare exceptions – Australians have not heard a genuine debate about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict means that the Australian–Jewish community has missed a window when it could have warned Israel that it was going down a dangerous path. A small and hardline group in the Australian Jewish community that does not reflect the views of the broader community has been allowed to limit a debate that could have helped Israel avoid the coming crisis.

  For more than 20 years, Australians have read and heard pro-Israel positions from journalists, editors, politicians, trade union leaders, academics and students who have returned from the all-expenses-paid Israel-lobby trips. As someone who has both taken one of these trips when I was the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and then many years later lived in Israel for six years, I am in a position to compare what one is exposed to on these trips and the truth. In my opinion no editors, journalists or others should take these trips: they grotesquely distort the reality and are dangerous in the sense that that they allow people with a very small amount of knowledge to pollute Australian public opinion. Those on the trips return to Australia thinking they have some sort of grasp of the place, but they have spent more time in Tel Aviv’s most expensive restaurants and cafes and in settlements than looking at the real crisis behind trying to continue an occupation against another people. The effect of these trips is to shore up opinion behind the hardline pro-settlement elements of Israeli politics. They allow Israel to avoid the public backlash that objective reporting of their settlement activity would bring.

  CHAPTER 16

  Eight Dead Omars

  June 2014

  IT WAS SOMETHING MENTIONED IN PASSING ON BAGHDAD RADIO. The Iraqis I was sitting with drinking tea in a café thought there was nothing particularly interesting about it – eight men with the name Omar had been found dead around Baghdad that morning. My Iraqi companions said when things got bad around the city – worse than normal – several Omars were usually found dead.

  This is the type of story that stands out to a visitor. It’s one of the reasons foreign correspondents are valuable as they can see things with fresh eyes. I told my Iraqi fixer I wanted this to be my next story – why were so many men with the name Omar being killed, often shot in the head or mutilated?

  What I discovered in my research helped me to understand the madness of the Sunni–Shia war inside Islam. It also showed me the reality of today’s Iraq.

  Baghdad, this ancient, biblical city, is at the same time enchanting and horrible. My office sent me there in late 2014 because Islamic State was within 50 kilometres of the city. It was one of those requests that only journalists and ai
d workers get: the most bloodthirsty terrorist group of our time might be about to take over; could you get there as soon as possible?

  Baghdad ‘International’ Airport has very little international about it. The plane made a steep descent which, I was told, was due to the security threat. Because the authorities could not guarantee that Islamic State or others would not try to shoot down incoming jets, they needed to descend sharply in a corkscrew formation. This meant that the plane descended over a small area which had been secured. To me this said everything. Despite the United States having spent US$1.06 trillion in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 – according to the US Congressional Research Service – neither the airport nor the road from the airport could be secured.

  Walking out of the airport, the driver who was meant to pick me up was not there. Given the number of car bombs that had exploded at Baghdad airport, the authorities had come up with a solution – no cars near the airport. That meant you had to walk a significant distance to get a bus, which took you to the outer perimeter of the airport. Soldiers and tanks were positioned every few hundred metres along the road, until you reached a section for taxis. I had no idea who to trust, and knocked back a couple of drivers. Finally, I found someone I could trust – an unemployed journalist. I instantly bonded with this man who had become a taxi driver when his employer retrenched him.

  The reality of today’s Iraq – which covers much of what used to be Mesopotamia – is illustrated by the use of the ‘magic wand’ as a security measure. Throughout Baghdad one is stopped at security checkpoints. This is due to the number of car bombings. To check for explosives, soldiers walk around each car with a black machine – if it detects explosives it will vibrate. Supposedly. The problem is that everyone, including the soldiers using it, knows this is a fraud. The British man who sold these to Iraq was imprisoned for fraud – he had bought parts from China and made the wands in his back shed. But even though everyone knows that, people go along with the sham. What it means is that there is no protection at all against someone going through a checkpoint with a boot full of explosives.