Hitting The Fairfax Press Where It Hurts: For the love of Israel, Australians should support this boycott!

That's a spiteful tweet from journo (as we say in Oz) Mike Carlton, who penned the despicable article that appeared last weekend  in two newspapers in the left-liberal Fairfax stable,  the (Melbourne) Age (long dubbed "The Spencer Street Soviet") and the Sydney Morning Herald accompanied by an odious antisemitic cartoon by Glen Le Lievre.

Judging by their reactions on Twitter, neither man seems remorseful at the amount of anguish to the Jewish community their handiwork has caused, with Le Lievre maintaining in separate tweets:

Drawing's a comment about these folks turning human suffering into a spectator sport. -As if they're in their living rooms taking in a show.

As for the size of his sodding, goddamn nose, that's how I tend to draw genial old men in recliners watching TV.

 Carlton in particular appears to revel in his notoriety, and in the furore his article has sparked.

For instance, on the day of publication he tweeted to Le Lievre regarding the cartoon:

Scorching, as ever. Brace yourself for the accusations that you're a Nazi, anti-Semite, Jew-hater, Holocaust denier etc.

Subsequently he tweeted of those to whom his article has cause deep offence and who have told him so:

I think the abuse will die down when these little Likudnik trolls head off to join the IDF and take up the fight, as they must be keen to do

And, more recently still, he's tweeted:

Planning Saturday's column on the responses to last week. So if you'd like to call me a piece of Nazi slime, best make it quick.

To Austen Tayshus (And only Mike. He is a failed Radio Host and failed Comedian. Nobody really cares about him. One sure strategy to get noticed. Antisemitism):

 I've smelt the burnt corpse of a child killed in war. When you have, Austen Tayshus, you ridiculous turd, get back to me.

As reported here the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) wrote as follows to Sydney Morning Herald editor Darren Goodsir:

'No matter how much we may disagree with Mike Carlton’s article entitled “Israel mocks laws of war and norms of civilization”, which appeared in the July 26, 2014 edition of the Weekend Herald, the publication of the clearly antisemitic  Le Lievre cartoon, which accompanied the article, was completely unacceptable.

The cartoon unambiguously portrays an ugly stereotype of a Jew.  He is identified with hook nose, kippah (religious head covering) and Magen David (Star of David), sitting in an arm chair and using a remote control device to blow up houses and people, presumably in Gaza in the context of the current fighting. The cartoon thus portrays Jews as a group as collectively guilty of acting outside the norms of civilization and the laws of war, intentionally causing civilian deaths in Gaza.

In our view this is racial vilification not only in the sense of offending, insulting, humiliating and intimidating Jews as a group but also in the sense of inciting third parties to hatred of Jews

Holocaust survivors in our community have compared the cartoon to those which they saw regularly appear in the 1930′s and 1940′s in the Nazi newspapers, 'Der Stürmer' and 'Völkischer Beobachter'.  Whether or not one accepts that analogy, the cartoon is, on any measure, crudely antisemitic

We are extremely disappointed at this significant and gratuitous lapse in the Herald’s editorial standards. Its publication demands an unreserved apology.'

 To which Goodsir's response, echoing in places Le Lievre's "excuses" on social media, was:

Dissatisfied, the ECAJ wrote back:

'We acknowledge receipt of your reply dated 28 July 2014. In our view it fails to address the substance of our complaint.

The figure in the cartoon is not simply identified as an elderly man, as you emphasise in your letter, or even as an elderly Israeli.  He is unambiguously identified as a Jew.  The symbols are unmistakeable.  He is depicted with a hook nose (which is a traditional antisemitic stereotype), and is further ‘branded’ with a kippah (religious head covering, which is not an Israeli national symbol) and Magen David (Star of David, which appears on the Israeli flag but is shown in the cartoon in its generic Jewish form).  Indeed the combination of these three symbols is almost certainly intended to ensure that the reader identifies the figure not simply as an elderly man, or even as an Israeli, but as a Jew.

As is often the case with racial stereotypes about Jews, the identification of the figure as a Jew in the cartoon is a device for conveying a message about Jews generally. The message is a deeply derogatory one.  It is no answer for you to rely on Mr Le Lievre’s direct modelling based on a number of photographs of men seated in armchairs “observing the shelling of Gaza from the hills of Sderot”.  The figure in the cartoon is not merely a passive observer of the fighting, as is the case in the photos to which you refer.  He is shown activating a remote control device which is blowing up people and buildings.

Whether the cartoonist intended it or not, or is even conscious of it, the cartoon thus attributes to Jews generally a collective blood guilt for the deaths and suffering in Gaza.   This is the calumny of Jewish people which your letter simply fails to address.

We therefore cannot accept your explanation, nor your failure to publish our letter, or to publicly apologise for what has clearly been a descent into racism in your newspaper.

In the circumstances, we feel we have no alternative but to seek redress by legal means.  You will be hearing from us or one of our constituent organisations in this regard shortly.' [Emphasis added]

Under the banner front-page headline "Media Disgrace" subtitled "Shame on those Australian journalists who are fanning the flames of hatred against Jews and Israel", the current issue of the Australian Jewish News (AJN; it hit the newsstands today), castigates the unconscionable anti-Israel bias observed in Channel Nine's 60 Minutes report by Allison Langdon last Sunday and Carlton's article in the Fairfax press.

Both Langdon and Carlton, the AJN notes,

'showed how out of focus and blurred our media's coverage of Operation Protective Edge can become.

To highlight their case, the pundits posit what is widely portrayed as the IDF's disproportionate response to the meagre rockets fired by Hamas.  Ironically, in so doing they ignore the media's disproportionate focus on Israel – remember the almost 2000 Syrians killed in just 10 days – and their on disproportionate allocation of blame on Israel....

For its part, 60 Minutes was textbook, Israel-baiting by numbers ....

As for Carlton's column, that was altogether more insidious.  Not only were we treated to baseless accusations of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" on Israel's part, but then there was a subtle shift. These were crimes being committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead at the centre of their race memory".

This column was no longer about a country. This was about a people and a race – a people and a race who should know better because of what they themselves went through.  In short, you Jews are the same as the Nazis, worse perhaps because you choose to ignore the lessons of your own history.

How long can a columnist in a mainstream newspaper sink?

How low can a mainstream newspaper sink? ....

In these troubled times, it behoves our media to act both responsibly and with integrity. not to stir the pot.

If you haven't done so already, consider cancelling your Fairfax subscriptions today.' [Emphasis added]

Such a boycott of the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald would hit those Fairfax newpapers where it hurts.  From February 2013 to February this year both experienced a decline of 17 per cent in circulation figures.  These slumps in readership have been widely attributed to the left-wing bias of the newspapers concerned, and were far greater than the declines experienced by Rupert Murdoch's two leading morning papers, the Melbourne Herald-Sun and the Sydney Daily Telegraph, which experienced falling circulation figures of 12 per cent during the same period.

The two latter papers are, of course, home to the columnist regarded as the most influential in Australia, the admirable Andrew Bolt, about whom, incidentally, the execrable Mike Carlton tweeted disparagingly a couple of days ago:

 "I hear that Blot [sic] gave me a mention today...."

That was a reference to this article by Bolt, who has written other pro-Israel pieces between that day and this, his latest, of today's date, being a typically hard-hitting article:

'A putrid Jew-hatred has returned to the West, fed by mass immigration and stoked by the Left. 

 Do not mistake this anti-Semitism for mere anger at Israel over the war in Gaza. That war is just the calculated pretext for a month of menace that has terrified many Jews — as well as those of us who prize civilisation over barbaric tribalism. 

France now has more than six million Muslims and two weeks ago Arab protesters — some chanting “death to Jews” — attacked synagogues, torched cars and burned Jewish shops in Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris dubbed “Little Jerusalem”. 

Germany now has four million Muslims.  Arab and Turkish protesters were this month filmed shouting “Gas the Jews” and other Jew-hating slogans and a Berlin imam, Sheik Abu Bilal Ismail, was filmed at his mosque preaching: “Oh Allah, destroy the Zionist Jews ... Count them and kill them to the very last one. Don’t spare a single one of them.” Two Jews wearing yarmulkes were attacked in Berlin....'

Read Bolt's entire article here