Israel: silencing dissent everywhere

In June of last year I received a distressed call from a friend. A man she barely knew had sent her several vicious text messages completely out of the blue. My friend only knew the man in a professional capacity, having hosted a few online meetings of a group he’d been part of. Apart from her limited online interactions with him, she had never met him in person.

The man, a pro-Israeli, had for reasons best known to himself and his cohort, taken to trawling through my friend’s social media and had discovered a post relating to the starvation of Palestinian children that had raised his ire – but not for the reasons most ethical people would suspect. No, his issue with the post he’d pounced upon was that my friend was spreading ‘misinformation’ from alleged Palestinian propagandists that made him feel ‘unsafe’. Yes, while snooping through the pages of a middle-aged woman he barely knew, and confronted with the image of a starving child, this wealthy privileged white male suddenly felt ‘unsafe’.

Exactly how this 30-something man, who lived 500 kms away from my friend, felt “unsafe” in his living room in online meetings with a lone woman he’d never met is anyone’s guess, but such is the warped reality and the organised victimhood of the pro-Israel lobby.

A few months prior to this, in March 2024, the State Library of Victoria abruptly ended the contracts of three writers due to appear in a series of workshops. The three writers had not done anything illegal or immoral or blatantly aggressive. Some of them had, however, shared their opinions on the people of Palestine and had even had the audacity as writers and artists to make their opinions publicly known through their art.

This was too much for the management of the State Library who, without consultation with the artists, (a common theme) told the writers they were suddenly persona non grata. Complaints (plural) by persons unknown – one cannot imagine who – had been made to the library that the appearance of these wicked writers who wrote things would make for an “unsafe environment”. Unsafe.

In November of 2023, 6 weeks after the atrocious Hamas attacks of October 7^th, three actors in a play in Sydney appeared at the curtain call wearing scarves traditionally known as keffiyeh. Scarves.

Although the theatre only held approximately 800 people, within 24 hours of the unforgivable sin of wearing scarves in a theatre, the Israeli lobby machine had swung into action across Australia. The Australian newspaper was luckily immediately on the case of the outrageous scarf wearing, and before long, a 1500 signature petition (with alleged signatories not independently verified) was presented to the Sydney Theatre Company with, of course, the Australian newspaper being the only media to know of the petition’s existence beforehand.

In a performance worthy of its own stage, one STC board member resigned over the scarf wearing, typing through clutched pearls: “Can we look at who has the power right now? It’s not bewildered Jewish theatregoers, intimidated and triggered in the place they love, support and usually feel safe.” Hmm, unsafe. 

By month’s end, the STC had been forced to produce not one, but three grovelling apologies. The STC’s chief fundraiser Judi Hausmann claimed she felt “unsafe” (there’s that word again) and yes, even “devastated” due to three actors wearing scarves inside a theatre, pro-Israeli fundraisers withdrew their sponsorship and all hell rained down upon the theatre company because, well… three actors wore scarves inside a theatre.

Fast forward to August of 2024 where we find another artist doing something horrific inside a theatre. Saying words. Three full sentences in fact. British Australian pianist Jayson Gillham said before his scheduled recital: “Over the last 10 months, Israel has killed more than 100 Palestinian journalists. A number were targeted assassinations of prominent journalists who were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing press jackets. The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world.”

Once more, the sophisticated pro-Israeli machine charged with ensuring artists inside Australian theatres and libraries did not allow Palestinian people a scintilla of sympathy, rallied with their victimhood flags at the ready. The next day, the Australian newspaper (such a coincidence) reported on the forbidden theatre words and within days, Mr Gillham’s next performances were cancelled by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in a panicked, thought-free frenzy of cowardly management that has become all too familiar in Australia’s arts and culture scene.

Australians over the past few years have had to witness their own country’s artistic and cultural institutions continually hijacked to their detriment by a foreign entity. This hijacking raises a very serious question that Australia’s politicians are yet to address: are some Jewish Australians and non-Jewish Australians loyal to Israel to the overall detriment of Australian life? I suspect we know the answer.

Over the past two years, we have seen:

• The surveillance and continual harassment of Lebanese Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf for sharing news stories on her social media about the killing of Palestinians. It is an established fact emerging from her recent federal court case, that Lawyers for Israel had already contacted the ABC – before Ms Lattouf had even appeared on air – claiming Ms Latouff’s yet-to-be-heard program miraculously made them feel ‘unsafe’ (not at all a propaganda co-ordinated word of course). Ms Lattouf’s swift sacking appears to have been partly due to panic that a story about her would be appearing in the Australian the next day – another wonderful coincidence.
   
• The cancellation of Lebanese Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi’s work at the Venice Biennale by Creative Australia, who panicked partly due to the fact a reporter from the Australian (good heavens) had shared information with a Liberal party senator who then regurgitated the partially incorrect information in the senate. Where this pro-Israeli information being fed to the Australian newspaper comes from is anyone’s guess of course. This decision was then followed by the ridiculous about-face several months later of reinstating Sabsabi to produce his Venice Biennale work as planned, which begs the question – if nothing had changed about Sabsabi over the preceding six months, why the about-face?

• The cancellation of a Queensland state writing prize awarded to Indigenous writer Ren Wyld, who posted words on their social media page that seems to have upset somebody in the pro-Israeli lobby somehow, somewhere, and, possibly, as we can all guess by now, made them feel ‘unsafe’. And you won’t be disappointed to learn the Australian newspaper was again, first on the case of this story. Remarkable really.

It’s clear by now that Israel and its adherents constantly imagine themselves as small and powerless and somehow under continual attack from the world around them. Like the well-connected man secretly surveilling my friend’s social media pages for things to make him feel ‘unsafe’, it is a cult-like mentality of collective and self-fulfilling paranoia. And like any cult mentality,  it suits the leaders, the state of Israel, to keep its believers that way – forever ‘unsafe’ in the world.

The reality is of course that the Israeli propaganda machine is a highly organised movement that has been well under way since the middle of last century. As we have seen in Australia, it is slick, it’s coordinated and it’s designed to do two things – silence any dissent and terrify any other person or organisation from doing the same. The proof sits boldly on top of Australia’s forever damaged, censored and cowed arts and cultural institutions.

The pro-Israel machine is not about balance, it’s not about objectivity. That would rely on all voices being heard and all sides being given equal sympathies and equal access to power. The pro-Israel lobby isn’t designed to balance debate nor to enrich it – it is designed to silence it.