Carlton Cornered: "The lies & bigotry of the Israel lobby"

Bolstered by the incitement against Israel emanating from sections of the Australian press (including the leftist-dominated ABC, Oz's answer to the BBC and similarly prone to flout the objectivity incumbent upon it) Far Left ratbags marched yesterday in the Sydney suburb of Newtown, invading the local Max Brenner outlet, while in Melbourne the customary Israel-haters defied driving rain and hail to screech their usual denunciations of and chants against that little country.

And in Perth (where the Jewish day school was last week daubed with this charming message; photo credit: Australian Jewish News from The Maccabean), a child rabble-rouser wowed the usual suspects ...

Also fuelling the flames of hate is, of course, the Fairfax Press, which includes the Canberra Times, long one of the most anti-Israel papers in Australia.  Here's a spiteful little contribution to the cause by the paper's cartoonist Dave Pope, depicting Aussie Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Ban Ki-Moon.  It puts Israel's legitimate  targeting of Hamas terrorists on a par with the criminal downing of a passenger airliner by trigger-happy anarchistic rebels.


Earlier yesterday (Saturday; it's already Sunday here on the east coast of Oz), Mike Carlton, author of last week's noisome column in the Sydney Morning Herald that, combined with Glen Le Lievre's accompanying appallingly antisemitic cartoon, caused so much justified condemnation, tweeted the thrust of his latest column (which, incidentally, is accompanied by a rather curious image by Le Lievre) :

My column: the tapeworm, the Opal card, Tony invades Russia. And the lies and bigotry of the Israel lobby. 

 The column begins:

"As I predicted, the abusive emails and tweets have been thundering in all week, hundreds of them. The Israel lobby – or as I prefer it, the Likud Lobby – rose in fury at last week's column about Israel's war crimes against civilians in Gaza."

Does Carlton really think that everyone outraged by what he wrote last week, and what Le Lievre drew, are invariably Likudniks? It hardly needs to be said that people across the political spectrum recognised the pair's bias and bigotry when they saw it, and called it what it was. The ECAJ (Australian Jewry's federal roof body) which as we have seen protested to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, and has foreshadowed legal action, comprises a wide variety of communal institutions representing individuals of diverse political allegiances. Indeed, as Professor Kerryn Phelps (a well-known Aussie medical researcher who's far from being a figure of the Right, and is, I believe I'm correct in saying, an adherent of Progressive Judaism) has tweeted to Carlton:

Referring to all people who want peace for Israel as "Likudniks" is an example of that insidious prejudice

The column goes on to claim:

"a lot of this filth came from 30-somethings, keyboard warriors whose smartly coiffed heads beamed out from Facebook pages and LinkedIn profiles. They showed a slender talent for undergraduate insult, although no evident enthusiasm for actually donning an Israeli army uniform and risking their comfortably upholstered lives to take part in the terrible conflict that has seen so many needless deaths ..." 

Thirty-somethings, eh? In my experience that's an age group conspicuously underrepresented in organised Jewish communal life, probably because they are busy establishing themselves in their careers and in raising young families. So if they are pounding those keyboards in numbers in support of Israel, good on 'em. But "a slender talent for undergraduate insult"? That, from a man who frequently resorts to gutter language to answer his social media critics! Something about pots and kettles spring to mind.

As for those "smartly coiffed heads" and those "comfortably upholstered lives", that wouldn't be shorthand for "showy" and "rich", would it?

 The column further asserts:

"To point out the bleedin' obvious yet again, it is not anti-Semitic to criticise Netanyahu or Israel ...."

Ah, but that depends on what's said and how.  Criticising aspects of Israeli policy might not be antisemitic, but asserting that Israel has no right to exist, as many far Leftists, in common with their Islamist cohorts do, is. (On Facebook this past week by leftist anti-Israel elements at Sydney University were cock-a-hooping at a despicable op-ed of 2003 denying Israel's right to exist carried by The Guardian, to which a link was posted by one of their number.)

Carlton's column of last week was deeply offensive because, as the Australian Jewish News observed of Carlton's column:

'....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'.

And as the paper observed of Le Lievre's cartoon:

'And then, to illustrate the point, a cartoon featuring a big-nosed, bespectacled Jew, the kind that would have featured in Der Sturmer, wearing a kippah and with a Star of David scrawled on the back of his armchair – just in case it wasn’t quite clear he was Jewish – pressing a remote control that detonates an explosion in Gaza....

Across Europe, synagogues have been attacked, Jewish-owned shops have been vandalised and pro-Palestinian rallies have echoed to chants of “Gas the Jews”. And how does our own media respond? First, by fuelling the fire of anti-Israel sentiment through unbalanced and misleading reporting, and second, by fanning the flames of anti-Semitism – flames whose heat we are already lamentably feeling on these shores.'

 Also deeply offensive are comparisons of Israel's actions in Gaza to the actions of the Nazis during the Second World War, which is why the recent assertions of that pugilistic buffoon of British politics, former deputy prime minister John (now Lord) Prescott, have been so roundly condemned by Anglo-Jewry.

To quote Melbourne educator Rabbi James Kennard regarding another case of that kind:

"It is a very sad indictment on our times that it needs to be explained again, but the point is this; the Holocaust was on the scale of millions; a systematic industrial process of annihilation was created to serve it, and it was motivated by an clear and open attempt at genocide. Therefore any comparison with the tragic Palestinian situation, so indescribably far removed from those characteristics, implies either a nonsensical inflation of their grievances or an evil denial of the horrors and the extent of the Holocaust."

Carlton's latest column goes on:

"Some more civil Jews did try reason. They showered me with documents, videos, photographs. Their arguments were mostly bog standard Hasbara, the Hebrew word for information, although better thought of as Orwellian Newspeak. This stuff is carefully crafted and widely disseminated so everyone is on message.

Two lines were repeated over and again: ''We gave them Gaza ; they gave us rockets. Israel takes every care to avoid unnecessary casualties, but Hamas is using children and civilians as human shields.'' ....'

"Carefully crafted and widely disseminated so everyone is on message"

Bit conspiratorial, huh? Carefully crafted by the Elders of Zion and disseminated by Mossad, perhaps?

''We gave them Gaza ; they gave us rockets. Israel takes every care to avoid unnecessary casualties..." is an admirably succinct summary of the situation since 2005.


And as for the human shield allegations, they are, of course, sadly accurate, as numerous videos issued, with translations into English, by Memri.org attest.

Can Carlton be unaware, also, of the genocidal death cult that Hamas represents, as seen, for instance, in this declaration:

Hamas leader Muhammad Deif [al-Daif]: "Today you [Israelis] are fighting divine soldiers, who love death for Allah like you love life, and who compete among themselves for Martyrdom like you flee from death."

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: "We love death like our enemies love life! We love Martyrdom, the way in which [Hamas] leaders died."

[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), July 30, 2014]

Muhammad Deif – commander of Hamas' military wing, the Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, responsible of the death of hundreds of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings and other terror attacks. Deif is severely disabled as a result of assassination attempts.

To quote Mudar Zahran, the Palestinian leader from Jordan, writing on Facebook last week:

Why are Gazans not speaking against Hamas? A Gazan journalist answered me:"If you criticize Hamas it would declare you a traitor and lynch you..."

 Gazans are not raising against Hamas for a simple reasons [sic], being torn to pieces by an Israeli missile is less painful than Hamas' lynching...

 And finally, in Carlton's current column:

"Happily, the vitriol was far outweighed by hundreds of supportive emails. Fair-minded Australians are disturbed by the murder of children and the widespread carnage.  Quite a few were from Muslims, but not one was anti-Semitic. I was grateful for them, and even more for brave and often poignant letters from Jews aghast at the horrors of Gaza."

Fair-minded Australians are disturbed by the murder of children and the widespread carnage everyehere, and that goes for the Israeli children murdered by terrorists as well the Christian children murdered by Islamists, and the Muslim children murdered in the internecine carnage that scars the Middle East

Fairminded Australians do not harp on Israel's offences, real and supposed, to the exclusion of  offences occurring elsewhere on the globe.

"Not one was anti-Semitic"?  It depends on how he defines that ...

As for those "brave" Jews mentioned by Carlton, why "brave"?  Unlike dissenters in the Islamic world, they're hardly likely to find themselves in danger.

In today's putrid climate, the Jews who openly identify as Zionists, as supporters of the state of Israel, are the brave ones.

Jews like these membersof the Melbourne community, who last month demonstrated their solidarity with Israel at a 2000-stronggathering in a suburban park:

A demonstration that communal leaders decided should not be advertised on social media because of the likelihood of trouble from the usual suspects.

That's the sad reality of being a "Zionist" (even in Australia) today.

Postscript: Sydney Jewry rally for Israel: hat tip Shirlee (whom I think I spotted in the crowd on this video, and who I have a hunch will shortly be blogging over on the Jews Down Under site about recent rallies )

Update: a belated apology for Le Lievre's cartoon from the Sydney Morning Herald  here

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

Antisemitism in Australia's left-liberal Fairfax press: Mike Carlton and Glen Le Lievre cross the line

By veteran Aussie journalist Mike Carlton in today's [Melbourne] Age and Sydney Morning Herald, newpapers in the left-liberal Fairfax stable, accompanied by an unmistakably antisemitic cartoon by Glen Le Lievre for good measure:

"....Yes, Hamas is also trying to kill Israeli civilians, with a barrage of rockets and guerilla border attacks. It, too, is guilty of terror and grave war crimes. But Israeli citizens and their homes and towns have been effectively shielded by the nation's Iron Dome defence system, and so far only three of its civilians have died in this latest conflict. The Israeli response has been out of all proportion, a monstrous distortion of the much-vaunted right of self defence.

It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory...."

Carlton's is a false analogy.  He should remember that in the Second World War the United States dropped more bombs on Germany (millions oftons) than Germany dropped on the United States (zero).

Does Carlton think that this was a disproportionate use of American power?

He should also reflect that Hamas denies Israel's right to exist, and is indeed sworn in its covenant to the genocide not only of Jews in Israel but in the Diaspora as well.  It is impossible to negotiate with extremists like that.