It is not unusual for anyone with a dog­mat­ic­ally one-sided view of any public issue to blame the media for the lack of support for their view among the general public.  That is what Greg Barnes has done in his latest anti-Israel diatribe, “Palestini­ans cop unfair media treatment as nameless, faceless as Arabs”, Mercury, 17.2.2020.

According to Barnes, the only reason Aus­trali­ans don’t’ share his ludicrously skewed take on the Israel-Palestini­an conflict is because we see the Palestini­ans as “the other”, and only recognise the unique identity of Israelis, who are seen as “living among the savage “others” in an inhos­pit­able land”.

That’s a round­about way of calling Aus­trali­ans racists.

In the process, Barnes iron­ic­ally indulges in a bit of ste­reo­typ­ing of his own. Aus­trali­an attitudes are shaped by the media, he tells us, and Israel is “a rich nation with a large diaspora that knows how to influence politi­cians — they are master lobbyists — and use the media”.   Elsewhere he refers to “the Israel lobby and its media friends”.

That “large diaspora” appar­ently means Jews living outside of Israel, spe­cific­ally the vast majority of Jews who feel a sense of respons­ib­il­ity to ensure that the State of Israel continues to exist.   According to a 2017 survey, 88% of Aus­trali­an Jews fall into that category.

The jux­ta­pos­i­tion of Israel, Jews, supposed wealth and alleged control of the media is all too familiar.

According to the Working Defin­i­tion of Antisemitism of the Inter­na­tion­al Holocaust Remem­brance Alliance, of which Australia is a member, when criticism of Israel is couched in terms which employ or appeal to negative ste­reo­types of Jewish people generally, or deny the Jewish people their right to self-determ­in­a­tion, or apply double standards by requiring of Israel standards of behaviour not expected or demanded of any other demo­crat­ic nation, or hold Jews col­lect­ively respons­ible for actions of the state of Israel, then the line has been crossed.

It is a fallacy to suggest that every criticism of Israel is antisemitic. The serious charge of antisemitism should never falsely be made in order to stifle political debate. However, as the Working Defin­i­tion demon­strates, it is equally fal­la­cious to assert that there are no forms of criticism of Israel which are antisemitic.

It is beyond belief that Barnes accuses the Sydney Morning Herald of under­play­ing the Palestini­an per­spect­ive.  Has he forgotten the incident in 2014 when, after a public outcry, the Herald apo­lo­gised for pub­lish­ing an antisemitic cartoon about the conflict in Gaza alongside a vicious polemic against Israel?

Barnes quotes another habitual critic of Israel, Peter Manning, in aid of his accus­a­tions against the media. Yet Barnes and Manning rarely if ever look to the Palestini­ans them­selves, and their leaders, to under­stand why they do not have their own State.   They do not treat the Palestini­ans as active actors in history who have made, and continue to make, their own choices for which they should be held account­able.  Many of the choices made by Palestini­an leaders over the last 100 years have had dis­astrous con­sequences, most of all for their own people.

The latest offer of a Palestini­an State made by the US in January was rejected by Palestini­an leader Mahmoud Abbas more than two years earlier, well before the details were even crafted.   He refused repeated offers to discuss the matter, and now complains that the Palestini­ans were not consulted.

In 2008, Abbas did not respond to an even more generous offer of a Palestini­an state that was made by then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.  Now he insists that any resump­tion of nego­ti­ations must use the Olmert offer as a starting point.

In 2001, the US President Bill Clinton put forward proposals for a Palestini­an State to bridge the gap in nego­ti­at­ing positions between Israelis and Palestini­ans.   The Israelis and Palestini­an nego­ti­at­ors issued a joint statement declaring that they were “never closer to reaching an agreement”, and that they believed the remaining gaps could be bridged with intens­i­fied nego­ti­ations.  Palestini­an leader Yasser Arafat then ordered an escal­a­tion of suicide bombings and other forms of terrorist violence against Israeli civilians, which continued for another four years.

In 1947, decades before the 1967 war, Israeli set­tle­ments and “the occu­pa­tion”, the UN General Assembly recom­men­ded the estab­lish­ment of two States, one Jewish and one Arab, in the Holy Land.  The area allotted to the Jewish State was tiny, and excluded Jerusalem.  It consisted of three ‘cantons’ which were not truly ter­rit­ori­ally con­tigu­ous and were mil­it­ar­ily undefend­able.  The area allotted to the proposed Arab State was far larger than anything offered since.

Yet the Jewish leaders accepted the proposal, while the Arab leaders not only rejected it polit­ic­ally, but also declared and initiated a war of exterm­in­a­tion against their Jewish neigh­bours.  The Arabs, not for the last time, lost the war they had started, resulting in the exodus of 710,000 Palestini­ans.

Barnes and Manning do no favours to the Palestini­ans by over­look­ing the shocking choices their leaders have made in rejecting every two-State proposal that has ever been put to them, and blaming the media instead.  Encour­aging the Palestini­ans to continue demanding all or nothing, will only leave them with more of nothing.

Peter Wertheim AM is the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry