Latest / The Front / How The Australian reported the anti-Semitism crisis

Transcript

How The Australian reported the anti-Semitism crisis · The Front

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm christanaming it.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: It's Thursday November twenty seven, twenty twenty five. The Albanezy
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Labor government failed to act on repeated warnings about the
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: need for a twenty four to seven triple zero watchdock.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: The government's own Communication Department said it was necessary to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: protect the Australian public from system outages, but neither Communications
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Minister Anika Wells nor her predecessor Michelle Roland acted on
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the advice. The government legislated a triple zero Custodian last
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: month after three Optus customers died because they were unable
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: to contact emergency services during a network outage. But The
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Australian is exclusively revealing today the new Custodian doesn't have
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: twenty four to seven capabilities. That story's live right now
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: at the Australian dot Com dot a U. In two years,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Australia has been grappling with a rise in anti Semitism
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: brought about by the October seven terrorist attacks on Israel
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: by Hummas militants, and The Australian has been right there, reporting,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: analyzing and reflecting on what it means for the Middle
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: East and for US All Today Commentary editor Nicholas Jensen
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: on the seismic shift in Australian society and the landmark
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: journalism that captured it. October nine, twenty twenty three. The
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: sales of the Sydney Opera House are lit in blue
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: and white, the colors of the Israeli flag. But within
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: hours that iconic building and the night sky around it
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: would glow red, the color of flames and flares. What
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: began as an act of solidarity with Israel and Jews
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: still reeling from the deadly October seven terrorist attack by Hamas,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: devolved into an ugly and unsanctioned pro Palestine demonstration. Flares
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: were thrown, anti Semitic slurs, chanted and an Israeli flag
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: set on fire during that illegal pro Palestinian rally last
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: night at the Opera House.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: They were fired up for.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Frenzied what was meant to be a peaceful pro Palestine
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: demonstration anything but. Over the past two years, up to
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and including the historic peace deal struck just weeks ago,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: The Australian has been reporting on the conflict in the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Middle East, analyzing geopolitical developments and sharing the human stories
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: at the center of the storm. And this week The
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Australian has published a collection of our landmark journalism in
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: a book. It's called a Different Country, and it was
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: launched on Wednesday at a very special gathering at the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Sydney Opera House.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: So I suppose the event we've had at that very
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: symbolic place is a kind of reclaiming that space to
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: some extent. The imagery of that day, late afternoon and
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: into the evening was very powerful, wasn't it.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Jensen is The Australian's commentary editor. He spoke with
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: The Australian's editorial director and the regular host of The Front,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Claire Harvey.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: The new Southwolds government decided to light up the sales
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: of the Opera House in the national coals of Israel
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: blue and white. Lighting up the sales is something that
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: seems to happen a lot these days.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Is one cause is getting the sales lit up.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: But this decision to cast blue and white onto the
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: Opera House was really a flame that drew a whole
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: lot of moths who were not very pleasant. Protesters who
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: came to the Opera House used this as a moment
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: to demonstrate their feelings about Israel, accusing Israel of all
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: sorts of crimes, including genocide. But this is before Israel
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: had actually responded to the attack of October seven, Right, that's.
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: Right, and I mean actually in a weird way.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: This is why I think this book is so important
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: because it sets out the chronology so well, because it
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: has gone on now for so long.
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean that evening. I remember clearly.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: That I think it was New South Wales police were
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: saying best not for Jews basically go into their own city,
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: which is a kind of was appalling at the time.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: It's just as appalling in retrospect.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: So the Australians published this book, which is a collection
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: of our journalism over the past two years, some really
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: beautiful and powerful pieces, many of which were commissioned by
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: You tell me about the first of the pieces that
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: we're going to discuss today, by Henry Ergas, published not
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: long after October seven, twenty twenty three.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So Henry, who is Jewish by the way, he
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: wrote about a week after October seven. So what had
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: happened at the fore quart of the Opera House had
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: already taken place. What had happened in parts of western
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Sydney in terms of celebrating October seven had already taken place,
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: and he wrote this incredibly powerful piece about how what
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: had happened was a civilizational moment and how back home
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: the celebrations of something so awful, the slaughter of Jews.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: You know, he spoke about how it had echoes of
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: the Holocaust. He spoke about how during the Nazi period
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: useful idiots were used as well to denigrate and persecute Jews.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: But really it was an impassioned piece about how Israel
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: will survive and will survive its detractors and its haters
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: around the world. And I think, you know, we've published many,
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: many great things, some of which probably didn't make this book.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: But I think what's really marked out many of these
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: pieces is they are very personal and they show great
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: kind of moral clarity, courage, and it's something very close
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: to them.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: A lot of our writers who work with us at
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: The Australian, either on staff or as contractors, go about
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: their journalism or their commentary or their analysis in their
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: particular subject matter as experts, but don't really divulge necessarily
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: much about themselves. This was a moment when several people
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: kind of revealed to an audience who it might not
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: have occurred to before that they were Jewish or that
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: they were Israeli. Yeah, that's an interesting choice for journalists,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: given that we're all trained not to make ourselves the story.
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: Commentary blurs the lines a little bit. You must have
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: had some interesting conversations with writers about how much they
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: wanted to reveal about themselves.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean even some of our Jewish colleagues on staff.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: It was very interesting talking to them about how life
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: had changed for them radically after October seven and what
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: it was they were prepared to say. Some people didn't
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: want to write out of fear of retribution. In fact,
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: and this was a first for me as commentary editor,
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: but we were having to publish pieces that had assumed
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: names to protect people who were writing outside of journalism.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: We had a couple of people write for us that
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: were Jewish that worked in hospitals, in the medical profession
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: and so on.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: I remember having a conversation with one of our Jewish
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: members of staff and saying to them that I was
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: concerned about them revealing that they were Jewish and revealing
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: that they'd spent a lot of time in Israel because
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: it felt very hot at that particular moment. Of course,
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: it's felt very hot for Jewish people ever since October seven,
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: twenty twenty three, and it was about really a whole
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: new generation of Jewish Australians feeling the sting of anti
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: Semitism that they might not have encountered before.
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: There were certainly a lot of people that were writing
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: for us who were Jewish. I never had thought, perhaps
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: up until then, to identify themselves so openly as Jewish.
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: Deborah Conway is a good example of that, isn't isn't she?
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: What happened to Deborah?
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: So?
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: Deborah Conway is a singer songwriter, and she had expressed
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: support openly for Israel post October seven, and many of
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: the arts organizations, festivals and so on that she would
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: normally perform at. She was basically canceled from too controversial.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: But I think, going to your point before clear, I
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: think she's actually a very good example of someone who
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't presume to know about Deborah Conway's Jewishness, but
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: actually the events of October seven, and particularly the response
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: and the anti Semitism we saw since has been a
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: process of finding or recovering parts of someone's identity or
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: who they are, which is a pretty powerful thing.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: Is that one of your jobs as the editor of
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: the Opinion Pages and editor Weekend Section Inquirer alongside Jenny Campbell,
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: is helping people turn journalism into opinion or analysis or commentary,
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: which is very different. It means getting much more involved,
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: having a point. It's like the difference between writing a
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: university essay where you need to have a point and
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: a school essay where you can just compare in a
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: couple of ideas and demonstrate that you've read the book.
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: One of the interesting things about the post October seven
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: world is that it feels like, partly fueled by social media,
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: everyone has to have an opinion on this ancient conflict
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: in the Middle East. When I think a valid opinion
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: to have is this is awful. I feel terrible for everybody.
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: It's incredibly complicated. I hope people stop dying.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Why do you.
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: Think here in Australia, so far away from that conflict,
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: it was almost impossible for that neutral kind of stance
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: to be expressed.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: I think about some of the pieces Paul Kelly has written,
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: and I think it was very clear, perhaps even a
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: couple of weeks out from what happened in Israel, that
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: this issue was going to have such enormous institutional reach
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: that it would be impossible for people.
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: To ignore it.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: Now, that's not to say by and large the public
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: in Australia knew intimately what was going on in Gaza,
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: perhaps even cared.
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: But because.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: The protests, demonstrations, the naked acts of anti Semitism at
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: universities say, it meant that people that were in charge
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: of institutions needed to respond. Things were happening fast, and
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: because of that, I think it just became an issue
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: that kind of could not be ignored and it became
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: I think a kind of institutional rupture.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: I think it's the third in a series of issues
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: that I think because of social media, there was an
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: artificial urgency to have an opinion, and then there was
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: an orthodoxy, particularly in the academic and university sector to
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: have the right kind of opinion. Black lives matter first,
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: then trans rights or the juxtaposition of trans rights and
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: women's rights, and then the Israel Garza conflict.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: I wonder what the kind of social media content.
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: Creators who have just stepped into this, I think quite
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: cynically as a content area are going to do next.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: It's going to have to be something else.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: I think the social media point is interesting, and I
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: know there's many great pieces in here that pick up
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: on this, which is that for many people who are
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: of university age, we would think that being anti Zionists
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: or being anti Semitics, say, is just part of the
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: kind of progressive package, and it might also belong next
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: to radical climate action and so.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: On, decolonizing the curriculum exactly.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, we know all the we know all these
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: kind of themes that are core to that package. But equally,
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: I think that's tricky territory because anti Semitism is something
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: that's very specific and has a long history. So I
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: think it's difficult because on the one hand, it's very unique,
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: and I think when we saw a lot of it
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: play out on our streets and at university campuses or
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: even in workplaces, that somehow it's still picking up on
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: old strands of a very ancient idea. So even if
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: it is part of some weird, woke package or whatever,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: it actually is still unique, different and dangerous.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Coming up more of Claire Harvey's conversation with commentary editor
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Nick Jensen.
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about this,
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: and I think one of the things that this has
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: revealed for me is that there's a latent antisemitism under
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: the surface from the progressive end of politics, or people
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: who think that they're progressives right over to the far
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: right and people who think that they're they want to
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: be fashions. Were you shocked by the fact that anti
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: Semitism was running underneath us.
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: As Yeah, I was shocked.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: I'm not Jewish, so perhaps I wouldn't be alive to
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: it in the same way as a Jewish person would,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: of course. But you know, Australia has a proud history
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: of proud Jewish history, and Jeffrey Blaine's Magnificent Essay, which
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: is in this book sets it out very well. Jews
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: have been here since the founding of Australia, since seven
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: eighty eight. They've made enormous contributions in political life, in
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: philanthropy and business, in medicine universities. So much so to
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: see this kind of recrudescence of something that I felt
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: never really belonged here was a shock.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: I mean I have lots of Jewish friends, sort of
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: by accident. I've always had friends who were Jewish who
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: are in and out of my life. From school, and
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: I vividly remember being a schoolgirl sitting on the bus
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: in Canberra with my friend who had Israeli heritage, and
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: two boys in the seat behind us. One of them
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: said to the other, can I borrow a dollar? This
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: is the eighties, win a dollar would actually boy quite.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: A lot of lollies.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: And the other one said no, and he said, oh,
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: you're such a Jew. And my friend turned around and
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: gave him an absolute tongue lashing. And that was my
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: first experience of vicarious anti Semitism. I felt it through
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: her deep emotional reaction, and I was so shocked that
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: it was a thing to call someone Jewish for being stingy.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: So I've always been aware that it existed.
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: I think what has saddened me, and this is a
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: bit the same about the trans and women's rights issue. Really,
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: I think there's a latent misogyny in our society and
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: lack of understanding about what feminism is all about and
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: what women's spaces are for. And I think it's the
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: same thing Judaism in anti Semitism. It runs underneath and
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: it doesn't take much to pierce the surface and for
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: it to come out.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: It would be interesting to see what if we transplanted
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: events back ten twenty years, what they would be like.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: I think one thing that would be different is that
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: we would have institutions that exercise authority in a way
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: that they don't do anymore. I think that's been a
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: massive part of all of this, which is parts of
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: an institution will rebel, they'll take up an activist cause
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: they'll feel strongly about it. Now toy extent, there's nothing
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: wrong with that, But each institution, say, universities governed by
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: their own codified principles, and it's up to the boss
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: to exercise those and that just has not happened.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: They were terrified of their own student body, weren't they. Yeah,
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: the encampments is a great example of that.
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: The Encompent's a great example.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: And I mean we published a piece by Mark Scott,
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: who's a vice chancellor of Sydney University.
• 16:28
  Speaker 5: Now I don't want to verbal him, but I remember.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: That piece very clearly, which was essentially presenting a very
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: high bar for free speech that's to say these encampments
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: should go ahead. These students exercising their free speech. Now,
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: obviously that was complicated a bit when students would going
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: into lecture halls and say, you need to listen to me,
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: you need to listen to my views on what's happening
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: in Gaza. I mean, that's a clear infringement of a
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: student's right to be taught without interruption and so on.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: But what I found really interesting about the argument he
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: said out there was that by his own standard, he
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: is essentially saying it would have been fine if, say,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: a far right group encamped out the front of Sydney
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: University and said awful things about indigenous students or awful
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: things about LGBTQI students. Do we really think that the
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: university would have accepted that.
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: No, No, of course not.
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: And the opportunity for pro Israel or pro Jewish students
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: to stage a matching demonstration was limited by the fact that,
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: as Jewish people, I think have long felt in Western society,
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: they wanted to not make themselves a target. They wanted
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: to recede. A few very courageous people did take that action.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: I felt for them it was scary.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, there were some very brave people that put
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: themselves Adam and Limb, didn't they.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: So one of the things about this book is that
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: in journalism and newspapers, we sit on a vast inventory
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: content that we've published over sixty years of this Masthead alone,
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: and we don't often do anything with that inventory do
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: We don't dredge it up.
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: This incredible archive.
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: We do, but it's down in the basement and of
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: sunch of dusty binders, and we can go and have
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: a look at it. And it's a little bit more
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: available now thanks to the digitization of journalism. But it's
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: beautiful to have this kind of analogue version of it, isn't.
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: It It is? It's been beautifully produced by our colleagues.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm here plugging it, but I have to say,
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: apart from the commissioning stages and knowing some of these
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: pieces relatively well, it's been wonderfully produced by our colleagues.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: What I like about it, Claire, I don't know what
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: you think, but it sets out of chronology. A lot
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: of things have happened, so this sets it out. So
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: it's a testament of record, but it's also a testament
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: of well Australia.
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: I suppose.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Jensen is The Australian's commentary editor. He was speaking
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: with Claire Harvey Diferent Country features commentary by Henry Ergas,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Barry Weiss, Greg Craven and others. And it's available now.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Plus you can read Australia's best commentary right now at
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au