My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:
Is a debate about the Israel-Palestine conflict too hot for The Australian to handle?
In his recent controversial book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, former US president Jimmy Carter describes the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as worse than apartheid South Africa.
I was commissioned in December by The Australian’s opinion editor, Tom Switzer, to write an article about the book and the associated controversy (he had published three Israel/Palestine-related articles of mine in 2006.) The piece was due to run in the days after Christmas when the paper was to be overseen by fill-in editor Nick Cater (replacing holidaying editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell.)
I was soon informed that Cater refused to print the article, although he gave no reason to Switzer’s summer replacement, Sian Powell. When Switzer returned from holidays he told me he hoped to prevail over Cater’s intransigence and publish my article. I’ve now been informed that the paper will not do so. The latest Cater excuse is that my recent Sydney Morning Herald essay on blogging criticised the mainstream media (though not The Australian) and therefore I clearly didn’t respect the Murdoch organ. Really.
Switzer is appalled at the level of censorship displayed in this case (and cannot recall another incident where similar moves have occurred). He had even commissioned an opposing piece by Muslim dissident Irshad Manji to counter my article.
My article simply explained the controversy surrounding Carter’s book, the hysterical response by the Zionist lobby in the US (the latest example is here) and that whenever Israel faces its greatest criticism the usual suspects in the media try and shut down debate.
Carter’s observations are remarkably similar to comments by any number of mainstream Israelis. For anybody who has spent time in the West Bank, as I have, Carter’s analysis is both obvious and long overdue. The Australian media has virtually ignored the firestorm created around the book (except for a shallow article in last weekend’s Australian).
If The Australian is serious about “keeping the nation informed”, this latest example of suppression reeks of desperation, intellectual laziness and arrogance. Its readers deserve better.
And still your detractors pretend that you are only imagining things when you claim you are being censored. Unbelievable.
“and therefore I clearly didn’t respect the Murdoch organ”
Do you think Wendy Deng respects the Murdoch organ?
So many jokes, so little time.
Well, he isn’t being censored, as The Australian is under no obligation to publish anything. If I demand that Antony publish an opinion piece I write on his blog and he refuses, does that qualify as censorship? No. It’s his blog. Let him do what he likes with it.
Antony’s piece on blogging was rubbish, by the way. One of the accusations he levelled against the msm was partisanship; his article was hardly a unbiased, sober account of the blogosphere, however.
Still, The Australian shouldn’t have commissioned the article if the weren’t going to publish it.
Oh, so if they commissioned the article and didn’t print it, that isn’t censorship??? The Australian is just joining in with all the other Australian media and censoring - or self-censoring those issues which they find too controversial to consider.
So they do the work of the government, of the zionist lobby, of all the other right wing reactionaries with which this country is currently overloaded.
Just listen to Downer today on David Hicks - see what I mean???
Oh, and by the way, apartheid in South Africa was a starting point for Israel in the occupied territories - they have just learned how to refine it to an even crueller degree, which amounts to ethnic cleansing, which is just another word for genocide.
Aaron,
You’re just a shill for Israel. Could you make it any more obvious?
Ant’s piece on the blogosphere was nothing controversial. It was self evident and it is obvious that is not what the editor was pissed about.
Carter’s book is a best seller thanks to weasel like Dershowitz. You should buy a copy. You will learn a lot from it.
BTW, Here is a video fo the presentation Carter gave to Brandeis University.
Does this sound like a hate filled anti-Semite to you?
http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/204/59/
Looks like censorship to me. Let’s see if the Oz publishes a different-source commentary on the Carter book controversy (expect a lazy rip-off from one of News Ltd’s other rags). I agree with Antony’s characterisation of the Oz piece on the Brandeis Uni event as ’shallow’.
I have read a lot of criticism of the use of ‘Apartheid’ word in Carter’s book title - but I don’t recall one critic actually analysing the factual basis for Carter’s choice of words.
Antony: If the Oz wont publish your piece, can we see it somewhere else?
Watch this space, my Carter piece will appear in the next week or so.
Aaron Lane says Antony “isn’t being censored, as The Australian is under no obligation to publish anything.” He argues that Murdoch can publish or not publish whatever he likes, coz it’s his paper. But then he dismisses Antony’s accusations of msm partisanship! Go figure…!
You can’t have it both ways, Aaron. Either Murdoch is running a respectable national newspaper according to traditional journalist ethics (which includes hands-off management and editorial independence), or he is running a self-serving propaganda tool for his Big Business golfing partners and their political cronies.
Most thinking people have given up on FAUX News and Murdoch’s tabloid press as predominantly entertainment-based pseudo-journalism. The Australian still purports to be something more than that, but it’s reputation is sinking quickly.