Robert Fisk’s latest column for the UK Independent, The Erosion of Free Speech, tackles the pressures on individuals and groups that campaign for a just resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict and dare challenge Zionist dogma. He generously supports my work and alerts the world to my forthcoming book and attempts by certain individuals to stifle freedom of speech:
So let’s confront this tomfoolery. Down in Australia, my old mate Antony Loewenstein, a journalist and academic*, is having an equally vile time. He has completed a critical book on the Israel/Palestine conflict for Melbourne University Publishing and Jewish communities in Australia are trying to have it censored out of existence before it appears in August. Last year, Federal Labour MP Michael Danby, who like Loewenstein is Jewish, wrote a letter to the Australian Jewish News demanding that Loewenstein’s publishers should “drop this whole disgusting project”. The book, he said, would be “an attack on the mainstream Australian Jewish community”.
Now the powerful New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies has weighed in against Loewenstein and efforts are under way to deprive him of his place on the board of Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle East and North African Studies.
It is heartening that Fisk has offered his solidarity with my position and challenged Zionist apologists that their intimidation will not work.
*I am not an academic, though I do carry academic qualifications.