No one feels safe in Zionist Australia

A well respected sports journalist has been sacked from his position at SEN for retweeting factual posts about Israel’s assault in Gaza. In a land where sport is a religion, Peter Lalor is regarded as one of the best cricket commentators in the country, standing on his own as one of the old guard, highly respected among his peers. He has called cricket from all over the world, yet he was told this week by SEN chief executive Craig Hutchison that the sound of his voice was making Jews “feel unsafe”, and he was fired effective immediately.

During the first Test between Sri Lanka and Australia in Galle on February 1, Lalor had retweeted a few posts, including a tweet from one of the worlds most preeminent human rights lawyers Kenneth Roth – who is himself Jewish – sharing an Israeli-based newspaper article calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide. By the third day of the Test, Lalor had received two phone calls from SEN management regarding his tweets, and the next day, the credentialed caller was terminated on the spot after a meeting with Hutchinson.

Lalor told The Age, “The following day Hutchinson told me that because the ‘sound of my voice made people feel unsafe’ and that people are ‘triggered by my voice’, I could not cover the cricket for them any more”. 

The words sound familiar in this incendiary political environment. The county once again got to witness an Australian losing their job for holding reasonable personal views on what in the general human consensus is a genocide. 

The very same day as Lalor’s sacking rocked the already crumbling media crucible, former ABC employee Antoinette Lattouf was in a David vs Goliath battle in the courts against her former employer for an unfair dismissal case, also for retweeting reasonable personal views.

One of the retweets that led to Peter Lalor’s sacking from SEN (Source: Twitter)

The disapproval was plentiful in the wake of Peter Lalor’s sacking. Veteran sports writer Neil Cordy called it a “low point in Australian sports journalism”. Journalist Scott Mitchell emphasised the McCarthyist elements to SEN’s actions: “This is just one example of how the rules of the public square and who gets to be in it are being re-written”. Australian based Indian cricket journalist Bharat Sundaresan said he wanted to “stand with & shower Lalor with love” and spoke fondly of how “unshaken he is about his beliefs”. Veteran investigative journalist Stephen Long called it a “symptom of corporate cancel culture – urged on by the political right”. 

Across the country and around the world, cricketing icons and fans expressed their disbelief and outrage. Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja chief amongst them: “Standing up for the people of Gaza is not anti-Semitic nor does it have anything to do with my Jewish brothers and sisters in Australia but everything to do with the Israeli government and their deplorable actions. It has everything to do with justice and human rights.” 

Essentially, every mainstream journalist in Australia has now been told they cannot express any personal views on the Israel-Palestine situation, or even report truths on the plight of the people in the most devastated human cauldron on the planet. The case of Lalor retweeting Israeli articles shared by Jewish human rights activists, and the similar case of Antionette Lattouf, are examples of the disproportionate reach and power of Zionist interests and the state of Israel. 

It’s not just those in the media that have seen their careers scuttled by their pro-Zionist employers. Throughout this uniquely devastating genocide in Gaza, people in academia, the arts, health and government have had their employment threatened, received a caution, or had their positions terminated for expressing privately held views on the massacre. Whether it’s the over-saturation of all things Israeli or anti-Semitic via the compromised media, the verbatim songsheets that our political class use to howl decrees in the name of Zionism, or the reality that ‘foreign actors’ are behind many of these anti-Semitic attacks running rings around our law enforcement, many in the community now feel that their country is under attack.

Not enough is being said about the employment, reputation, and financial safety of Australian citizens who hold views counter to narratives hammered into polite society by powerful Zionists promoting an inhumane agenda on behalf of a belligerent foreign nation. For the crime of expressing compassion over a genocide, employers now terminate their employees. 

Within the wreckage of this socially volatile problem, mentions of antisemitism ring out all day on the front pages of newspapers and national broadcaster bulletins. Politicians jump up like whack-a-moles to read a script about persecution of the Jewish community, but say little about the ongoing persecution of academics, journalists, doctors, musicians, many of whom are Jewish, for holding any view that is critical of Israel’s genocide. Powerful Zionists have managed to dictate the terms and conditions of our society. We see its unreasonableness and its tangible lasting impacts on the careers of those in our theatres, symphony orchestras, journalists, academics, politicians, and now in the cricket commentary box. 

There may be financial, diplomatic, and ideological reasons that Australian executives are swinging a Sword of Damocles onto the heads of good people who are great at their jobs, but those reasons don’t make sense to many Australians, who, for the most part don’t like bullies, or shitty bosses, or someone who supports genocide. 

We have revelations from the AFP that several of the grotesque attacks targeting the Jewish community, unsettling moderate secular Australian society in ways not experienced, are the result of “foreign actors” using organised crime to carry out the attacks. ASIO Director General Mike Burgess has admitted quite frankly that some of the most worrying sources of foreign interference in our domestic affairs is being carried out by “our friends”. 

What kind of country do we live in, where a commentator can’t retweet a clip about human rights, and a journalist can be removed for mentioning a genocide? As a society in which fairness and mateship are the supposed conventional tenets of the land, it seems unacceptable that everyday livelihoods are suddenly under threat for this. 

The controversial removal of a popular cricket commentator for a humane stance on Gaza has stirred anger in the diverse world of sports consumers, and introduced an entire new cohort to the ongoing issue of foreign interference and influence in our society. A new cross-section of the Australian public is experiencing the disproportionate pressure that is being placed on our country from Israel’s influence lobby, and joining in increasing numbers with people across the aisle wanting to do something about it. 

In the spirit of good cricket, as the unreasonable becomes more unreasonable, the message becomes more unacceptable, and the public more aware. The unfair sacking of Lalor will only go on to amplify a dire national problem to a wider and more diverse audience looking for urgent answers.