Sophie, Israel & A Lyons Share of Spleen

Bet that makes her happy!

The ABC's overtly leftist and unashamedly biased-against-Israel Middle East correspondent Sophie McNeill has found a champion in the form of The Australian newspaper's Israel-bashing John Lyons. 

To quote the Guardian Down Under , in "his Middle East memoir Balcony Over Jerusalem" Lyons claims  

'he was subjected to consistent pressure from the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) while based in Jerusalem for the Australian for six years, as were the ABC’s Sophie McNeill and the veteran ABC correspondent Peter Cave....

In 2015, AIJAC sent a file on McNeill to Jewish members of the ABC board, including the then chairman James Spigelman, and this file claimed among other things that she was unsuitable because she had said “one of the saddest things I’ve seen in my whole life is spending time filming in a children’s cancer ward in Gaza”.

The then ABC managing director Mark Scott ordered a detailed response from corporate affairs, which he took to the board.

“I will not cower to the AIJAC,” Scott said, according to Lyons.

Scott was also forced to defend McNeill from attacks at Senate estimates after the dossier was sent to key parliamentarians.

“Before this reporter set foot in the Middle East, there was a campaign against her personally taking up that role,” he said in response to a question from senator Eric Abetz.

“I am saying that she is a highly recognised and acclaimed reporter … she deserved that appointment and she needs to be judged on her work.”

In a letter to the board, Scott wrote: “The article [by AIJAC] demonstrates to Sophie McNeill and 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" .....'

Taking aim at Australia's steady pro-Israel foreign policy ("illogical and unhealthy") and at AIJAC and its director Dr Colin Rubenstein, Lyons asserts

“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. In my opinion, no editors, journalist or others should take those trips: they grotesquely distort the reality and are dangerous in the sense that they allow people with a very small amount of knowledge to pollute Australian public opinion.”

(What his opinion is of trips sponsored by APAN, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, is not reported.)

Inter alia, Dr Rubenstein has told the Guardian:

“We did put together a public document explaining why we thought Sophie McNeill … was an inappropriate choice for Middle East correspondent for the taxpayer funded ABC, with its statutory obligations of impartiality.

Everything we do – critiquing media stories; contacting editors, politicians and journalists and explaining our point of view to them; writing our our letters and op/eds; making complaints – are absolutely normal elements of deliberation and debate in a democratic society.

I would call on those who oppose our views, including Mr Lyons, to engage with different views in a democratic, tolerant and constructive spirit, rather than demand, as he appears to be doing, that those who disagree with him be silenced or suppressed.”

He's  absolutely right, of course.

The ABC is Australia's equivalent to the BBC: a national broadcaster upon which objective reporting is incombent in return for public funding, in the ABC's case not out of a licence fee but out of taxes.  But, again like the BBC, it is in the grip of the arrogant repulsive Left, and it promotes its leftwing agenda at will, thumbing its nose at critics and packing the panel and the audience to "flagship" programs such as Q&A (its version of the BBC's Question Time) with a surfeit of leftists.  In fact, if anything, its current affairs output and what it chooses to report and comment on is more brazenly leftist than the BBC's.

Sophie McNeill came to journalism and the ABC from a background of political activism and a determination to continue to pursue that activism.  This is how, six years ago,  she described her view of a journalist's role:

"If you just try to frame stories from the point of view of the people who are really suffering in a situation, be it in Lebanon, if you re hanging out in a Palestinian refugee camp, [or] in Gaza you re hanging out, you know, at the children’s cancer ward. One of the saddest things I’ve seen in my whole life is spending some time filming in a children’s cancer ward in Gaza. I just think if you just – if you look at a situation and you just – yeah, I guess just try to spend time with the people who are – who really don t have any power and it is hard, you know, for them to have a voice. Then that’s, yeah, that’s the kind of journalism I want to do.... Everyone knew what was happening in Gaza ... you saw all the horrific videos ... a lot of people died ... there are no excuses any more..."

 See here

Two years ago AIJAC's Ahron Shapiro observed:

"Any reporting by an ABC employee, including McNeill, is required to follow the following standards:

4.1 Gather and present news and information with due impartiality.

 4.2 Present a diversity of perspectives so that, over time, no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.

And also

 4.4 Do not misrepresent any perspective.

4.5 Do not unduly favour one perspective over another."

In a substantial article, he traced and analysed historic broadcasts by Ms McNeill that reveal her pattern of blatant partisanship in reportage concerning the Middle East.

He also drew attention to her pro-Palestinian activism.

For example:

'[I]n 2013, McNeill, along with prolific pro-Palestinian photographer Richard Wainwright were the only journalists presented to speak at the Human Rights in Palestine Conference at the ANU [Australian National University] ...

[W] hile living in Beirut in 2007, McNeill filed a story with the notorious anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada.

 Here, the content of the story she filed, which was about Lebanese mistreatment of Palestinians, was in itself not problematic. What is a problem, however, and what should have given ABC pause when choosing McNeill for her current job, is why McNeill chose to work with a website whose raison d’être is to increase popular support for the elimination of Israel and routinely publishes material justifying Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Finally, in 2009 ... and again in 2013, McNeill initiated online campaigns to raise money for her “dear friend” and Gaza fixer, Raed Al Athamneh. Raising money to help someone you work with through a crisis is not necessarily inappropriate. But for a journalist to adopt the Palestinian narrative in their pitch for donations most certainly is.

 For example, she wrote “most of Gaza’s residents are refugees who used to live inside Israel’s borders, but were forced out when the country was created in 1948″.

This revisionist historical narrative that Israel forced out all the refugees – language used by her mentor Pilger – represents an endorsement of the Palestinian narrative that Israel is entirely responsible for the refugee problem, ignores the fact that the vast majority of Palestinians fled and were not forced out and ignores the war that was launched against Israel by the Arab nations and Palestinians who rejected partition.

In this essay, she also made an allegation that Israel “collectively punished” the Palestinians of Gaza, describing the blockade of Gaza as a means of punishing the Strip’s residents who support Hamas. [Emphasis added]

She initiated a fundraising campaign for Raed again in 2013, according to her friend and Australian Gazan Patrick Abboud and an appeal she posted on ABC Triple J Hack’s Facebook page.'

He observed:

'Her reporting does not show a clear record of separating her media career from her activism..

 And there is little doubt that her activism continues and influences her reporting in terms of how she frames stories, particularly about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. ...

What makes this matter even more serious is the fact that the Jerusalem bureau is undergoing changes. While until now there were two ABC Middle East reporters (most recently Hayden Cooper and Matt Brown) as well as some support crew, the ABC says that it is making Jerusalem a Video Journalist bureau later this year. That move, it would appear, would give McNeill substantially more autonomy than previous Middle East correspondents have had.  

The onus now lies on O’Neill [sic] to demonstrate that ABC management was not irresponsible in making the appointment – given her self-described dedication to frame stories from the point of view of the people who are “really suffering” (in her lexicon, the Palestinians) – and whether she can possibly fulfil the statutory obligation of an ABC correspondent to present news with due impartiality and to be fair to all perspectives.'

 Is it any wonder, given her continuing partisanship, that advocates of fair and objective reporting were, and continue to be, dismayed by her appointment to the ABC?

"Perniciously & Dishonestly": The anti-Israel bang of The Drum

Antony Loewenstein is a freelance Australian journalist who has made a name for himself, and a living, spewing propaganda against Israel.

Astonishingly, his book My Israel Question was published by no less a publishing house than the prestigious Melbourne University Press (MUP), headed by Louise Adler (who I believe is or has been a member of his Independent Australian Jewish Voices and is a frequent panellist on the leftwing ABC's answer to the leftwing BBC's Question Time, Q&A.)

"Astonishingly", because the book is a piece of political polemic, a diatribe, not a serious academic work, and in the world of academic publishing Down Under MUP is a leader indeed.

Even hard leftist anti-Zionist Jews condemned Mr Loewenstein's use of this image (featuring then prime minister Julia Gillard, a friend of Israel) on his website a few years ago.

Yesterday, Mr Loewenstein was a panellist on the ABC's The Drum, anchored by Ellen Fanning, which had a segment on "how Israel is reported on".

There was no attempt to balance the panel, and, worse, there was no attempt to explain to viewers that Loewenstein (a longtime favourite of the ABC) has form as a polemicist against Israel.
 

John Lyons of The Australian told viewers that "foreign correspondents in Israel censor themselves," and Loewenstein got stuck in to the "Israel lobby" which "perniciously and dishonestly" carries on its task. "Israel lobby bullying" soon became the theme of the segment, with Fanning making a half-hearted attempt to enquire about the "Palestinian lobby" before settling back and allowing the anti-Israel bias to continue.

How pernicious and dishonest of the ABC to include Mr Loewenstein on the panel with no counterbalance and no mention of his background as an anti-Israel polemicist.

The program can be viewed here, the segment in question starting around 18:55 

It should be protested.

With Funds from Screen Australia, an anti-Israel Narrative

Australia's publicly-funded national broadcaster, the ABC, Australia's answer to the BBC, is like Al Beeb itself, obligated to be objective in its presentation of news and current events.  Again like the BBC, it is dominated by leftists and a leftist mindset prevails in the dissemination and discussion of news items, with virtual impunity.  Where the BBC has openly biased-against-Israel correspondents like Jeremy Bowen and Jon Donnison the ABC has the egregiously brazen journalist-activist Sophie McNeill.

One of the latest examples of the ABC's bias can be seen in a very recent News 24 interview with the American-educated Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri, who's in Australia in connection with the Palestine Film Festival.  What's troubling about the interview is the partisan ambience of the news presenters (one in particular) in conducting the interview with Ms Masri, to the delight of anti-Israel groups like this one:

But it's not the ABC's anti-Israel bias with which this present post is primarily concerned, but rather a fresh source of on-screen activity.

It's greatly to be hoped that the leaders of relevant Australian Jewish communal organisations are watching closely the development of an initiative that, if it goes ahead as planned, seems set to demonise Israel on screens in this country and elsewhere.

The initiative in question is a doco (that's Aussie speak for documentary) to be called From Under the Rubble, written and directed by Anne Tsoulis, who, like cinematographer Fadi Hossam Hanona, is co-producer.

Blurbs tell us that the doco

"is a powerful story that puts a human face to war and gives voice to the civilian perspective.

The overwhelming majority of collateral damage in conflict zones are dead and wounded women and children who far outnumber the casualties incurred on the combatants.

We live in a time when women and children have limited protection under international law. Zeinat Samouni and her seven children live with the shocking memory of what happened to their family during Operation Cast Lead that saw the father and four year old brother, along with forty-eight other Samouni family members killed and many more injured.

The psychological damage and trauma does not end. It continues on with each ensuing conflict. Zeinat's six year old daughter, Ansam, and her siblings have now lived through three wars. When the bombings begin, Zeinat blocks the windows and tells her children it is only a storm and what they hear is thunder and lightning.

From Under the Rubble is Zeinat and her childrens' personal experience of what happened in the week that the IDF came to their farming region to set up their base during Operation Cast Lead from January 2nd - 7th 2009. Their story will be told through the use of archival footage, footage shot in present Gaza and an animation that the Samouni children created as party of their trauma recovery therapy. The documentary will juxtapose the innocent perspective of children with the harsh realities of war. Through their personal story we as filmmakers want to give an insight of the plight of women and children, not just in Gaza, but in conflict zones throughout the world. This story belongs to them all."

 The film's editor, Ken Sallow, has stated that the intention "is not to make a political diatribe, but a humanist film about survival".

The producer, John Moore, has averred:

"I am delighted to have recently come on board to work with Anne and Fadi on seeing this important documentary come to fruition.  From Under The Rubble takes a very personal POV [point of view], looking at the conflict through the experiences of one Palestinian family. It is a big responsibility telling such an emotive story in the context of such a highly contested conflict.  There is however a lot of material to inform our work as the war has been critiqued by an independent UN team in the Goldstone Report and several books have been written about it including by Australian philosopher Raymond Gaita.  I hope we can do justice to both sides of the conflict"

A UN team?  The Goldstone Report?  Don't they realise that the UN is deeply, probably irredeemably, hostile to Israel?  Don't they know that the Goldstone Report is flawed and largely discredited, repudiatd by Richard Goldstone himself?  Er, they probably do.  (If Mr Moore is sincere in hoping to do justice to both sides of the conflict he will surely insist on these facts being made clear in the documentary.)

I've seen the trailer, and there's nothing in it that suggests that the documentary will be anything other than a showcase for the anti-Israel narrative.

It features the Israel-vilifying Dr Mads Gilbert.

It features  children's drawings from Gaza, expertly animated.  (The pictures in question remind me of those that British activist Rod Cox has exhibited to appreciative anti-Israel audiences up and down the UK; I've seen those, and they bear a degree of sophistication, if you take my meaning.)

It features a quote on Cast Lead by Amnesty International.

There are in existence  drawings by Israeli children traumatised by Hamas rockets.  There's no indication that they will be shown.

 There's no indication that reference will be made to Israeli victims of Hamas terror.

There's also no indication that mention will be made of Hamas's evil policy of situating its weapons and fighters in civilian areas.

A further hint that the documentary is likely to be a prime piece of anti-Israel propaganda is the fact that it's being spruiked on social media by delighted anti-Israel activists in Australia.

Among its funders are Screen Australia and the South Australian Film Corporation.

Screen Australia is the federal government's principal funding agency for this country's screen production industry and, since it's an official body and has generously contributed towards the making of this documentary (which apparently costs $A250,000 to make), it is surely incumbent upon pro-Israel organisations and politicians in Australia to insist on a fair representation of Israel's case.  At the very least, the Israeli ambassador to Australia should be given the chance to appear.

Anne Tsoulis has written:

'....For me, part of the process of making this documentary is also to work with filmmakers in Gaza to help them build up their skills and to assist them to have a voice on an international platform.

I went to Gaza and was overcome by the warmth and resilience of its people.  Zeinat Samouni is a lioness, and the mother of all mothers.  What she and her children have had to endure defies the imagination.   Every day is a struggle for her to feed her children.  Evey day is a struggle for her to deal with their emotional trauma, let alone her own that she has suffered.  Being a widowed single mother makes it even more difficult for her with the stigma attached.  Her last words to me when I left Gaza were, "Anne, don't forget us."  The words are etched into my brain and makes me determined to make this documentary.  Her children stole my heart - they are my children now too.'

And Fadi Hossam Hanona has observed that the documentary

"must show the world what is happening here ... Every day here is a struggle for us."

If so, Hamas can be largely blamed for that.

As we read in the producer's comments quoted above, the documentary "takes a very personal POV".

But as he also states "I hope we can do justice to both sides of the conflict". 

That should be honoured in the observance, not in the breach.

Aussie Leftist Media Bias Against Israel: Michael Danby talks to Andrew Bolt (video) (updated)

In this interview, the splendid Aussie columnist Andrew Bolt and the staunchly pro-Israel Labor MP Michael Danby discuss leftist bias in Australia against Israel, beginning with the warped views of Melissa Parke, Labor MP for Fremantle, and proceeding to the disgraceful bias of the ABC (Australia's answer to the BBC).

Hat tip: Ian

Incidentally, here's what Mr Danby has recently written about the Iranian threat:

'Russian Deputy Chief of Staff General Nikolay Bogdanovsky was in Israel last week pursuing Israeli/Russian plans to avoid military confrontation particularly in the air over Syria.  To his credit, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had flown to Moscow with four Israeli air chiefs, as soon as the extent of the Russian military intervention in Syria was realised. You won’t read of this fundamental power shift from blockheaded, anti-Israel fanatics like Robert Fisk, or the Pollard–McNeill axis of their brand of Australian reporting. But the Russians have installed total air defence with sophisticated SA-22s covering much of Syria’s airspace. As Daesh (IS) doesn’t even have a crop duster, this makes even more farcical US President Obama and our Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s initial enthusiasm for Russian President Putin as there to join the fight against Daesh. Jerusalem is wise to make arrangements with Moscow as best it can in a world with a US administration so feckless and strategically confused.

[Australian Foreign Minister] Julie Bishop’s announcements of support for Syria’s dictator Assad, who has murdered 200,000 of his own people, as the only alternative to Daesh taking over Syria is untrue and unethical. But the massive Russian intervention, on the side of Iran and Hezbollah, cements in place Iran’s Shiite crescent from Lebanon, through Syria and Iraq, to Iran. Worse, the Iranian-controlled Iraqi government, where Australia has 300 of its finest soldiers trying to retrain its cowardly army, has announced its gratitude by openly joining a pact with Iran, Syria and Lebanon under Russian auspices

That is why I have moved a resolution in Parliament, for Australian soldiers to be withdrawn from the Taji military camp where we are at least implicitly cooperating with the Iranians (if we were serious about destroying Daesh, our guys would in Erbil training and arming the 25,000 Kurdish fighters who could occupy Raqqa, the centre of IS evil, in two weeks. From a direct national security point of view, of course, this would be much more useful, in preventing attacks like the ones in Parramatta, or Dandenong, by deranged Jihadist teenagers, who are getting their orders from Raqqa from Daesh, rapists and murderers like Al-Cambodi (Neil Prakash).)

But back to the main strategic shift, the Russian invasion of Syria and what is portends; it is another victory for Iran, after duping and cajoling the Americans and Europeans into the nuclear deal, which, in the medium-term, will refinance, re-arm, and renew Iran’s bid for the atom bomb.

At the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon war, an Israeli naval ship was hit by a Russian missile shore-to-sea missile, supplied to the Iranian stooges Hezbollah. In all of the years since 2006, the Israeli air force has been free to intercept, bomb and destroy further shipments from Iran to Hezbollah of the even more sophisticated 300km-range Yakhont missiles.

Julie Bishop should be reminded that these Iranian mercenaries Hezbollah are still classified as a terrorist organisation by the Australian Parliament. Our foreign minister thinks the nuclear deal with Iran is good, that Assad should be kept in office, and that Russia is fighting Daesh. Putin’s massive intervention, particularly his control of the Syrian skies, mean that, unlike every time in the past nine years, Israel will have to beg Putin to be allowed to destroy covert shipments of these deadly missiles to Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s long-range missiles target Israel’s people, her ports, her navy, and its gas installations.

Another negative outcome of Russia’s involvement in Syria is the reprieve it will give Hezbollah fighters. They have been stretched thin and thousands have been killed or injured. However, with close Russian air support, volunteer Russian troops, plus the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that have arrived as part of the Russian–Iranian ground offensive against non-Daesh rebels in the north and south. How strange it is for our foreign minister to say “If we use [the Iran nuclear deal] as an example of Russia’s preparedness to be part of a solution rather than part of the problem, then we can have some optimism that Russia’s involvement [in Syria] is positive.

Russia’s armed guarantee of the Hezbollah-Assad-Iraq-Iran alliance also brings Iranian power to the borders of Israel on the Golan. Well done, President Obama – your weakness in Ukraine and now Syria endangers the peaceful lives of people everywhere. Iran is a much more serious and existential threat to Israel than the hoodlums, crucifiers and rapists of Daesh.

At least I’ve been able to stop the Australian Opposition from giving its support to this existential power-shift. Selling a few more tonnes of Australian beef is not worth our soft-peddling on Iran and Syria.  Selling a few more tons of Australian beef is not worth our soft-peddling on Iran and Syria.  In a world turned upside down, the outcome of the nuclear deal with Iran gets worse and worse.'

 Update:
Two relevant articles on J-Wire today.
Regarding Danby, Julia Bishop, and Iran
Regarding Melissa Parke

ABC, BBC, Both Biased On Asylum

I've been catching up with the most recent posts on one of the websites I most admire, the rhetorically-titled Is the BBC Biased?, and note the number of times the authors have had reason to draw our attention to the outrageous leftist propaganda that the BBC, despite its obligations to be objective, in reporting, is pushing regarding the current migration crisis facing Europe.

See this, for example, and this, and this

No wonder this video (featuring exasperated Britons, fearful and furious at what now seems like a Third World invasion of their Continent and existential threat to its way of life) berating the egregious BBC radio host Stephen Nolan, has gone viral; all Nolan could do in response was to insult them, thus underlining what one of them calls the "guilt trip" foisted on the public by such types as he:

Typifying the biased agenda foisted onto the public by the British national broadcaster are the reports by funereal-toned Fergal Keane that feature on the BBC's website, in which contempt for European civilisation and the Europeans who wish to preserve it is not far from the surface.  It's the same leftist mindset that regards everything the British Empire ever achieved as inherently evil.

A mindset that believes that the "victims" of "imperialism" are entitled to grab whatever they can:

This week, in a typically sharp and robust piece, Australian conservative columnist Andrew Bolt complained that the ABC's Paul Barry has twisted and traduced what Bolt wrote here:

"I argued that the tragic picture of drowned toddler Aylan Kurdi did not show what most of the media claimed - a refugee fleeing death in Syria. 

The picture was more complicated, I said. The boy’s family had actually lived in Turkey in safety for three years, and a key part of the father’s decision to go to Europe was to have his teeth fixed. 

Paul Barry of [the ABC's] Media Watch is angry with this dissent, and last night tried to dismiss it in ways I think are deeply misleading"

But it's not only Paul Barry who has taken pot shots at Bolt.  It would appear that the woman dubbed "La Trioli" has made a (subtle) dig at Bolt too.

Although ABC reporters and presenters are obligated, like their BBC counterparts, to be objective, this obligation is honoured more in the breach than in the observance.  Virginia Trioli, the very handsomely paid co-host of ABC News Breakfast and ABC News 24, has a weekly column in a publication called The Weekly Review, which is delivered free to mailboxes.

I don't know whether Ms Trioli's column is similarly gratis but I do know that she's free with her views, as befits a column titled "Mouthing Off".  In the current issue of the giveaway paper she  "seeks understanding" for "asylum seekers" (yes, for the ABC all of the seething mass of Third World humanity desperate to enter the West are, it seems, genuine "asylum seekers") by those who dismiss them as "economoc migrants".

The half-Italian Ms Trioli writes, inter alia:

"The story - and the distortions of that story - of the father of little Aylan Kurdi is instructive.... 

The journey of the contemporary asylum seeker is challenging to us because it does not take a straight line from, say, napalmed village in Vietnam to refugee boats to the Australian shore.  This route travels through countries of equally little hope - economically, socially - in search of a future.  It's similar to the journey my grandfather made before the outbreak of World War II.  First to America, then to Australia and then calling for his little family and first son to take a boat and join him...." 

As for the oft-made analogy between the plight of European Jewry in the 1930s and the situation of today's migratory Muslims, blogger Edgar Davidson has a graphic comment:

 (See more here)

A thought-provoking piece here

Update: Compare and contrast:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34272248

Meanwhile: