Radio Gaga – the ABC has allowed Radio National to be used by fanatics pushing a vir­u­lently anti-Israel agenda

by Alex Ryvchin
This article appeared ori­gin­ally in “The Spectator Australia” on 22^nd August 2015
A series of programs on ABC Radio National, produced by a long-standing anti-Israel activist, has under­mined the objectiv­ity of the national broad­caster and exposed serious failings in its editorial process. The programs may also have put the ABC in breach of its statutory oblig­a­tion of ‘main­tain­ing inde­pend­ence and integrity’, and its Code of Practice requiring ‘impar­ti­al­ity’ in current affairs.
The programs, Jerusalem: a divine crime scene, and An unholy mix – Jerusalem, religion and archae­ology, produced by former Greens Mar­rick­ville Coun­cil­lor Cathy Peters, presented the views of a parade of veteran anti-Israel pro­pa­gand­ists, whose unstated purpose was to discredit the his­tor­ic­al con­nec­tion between Jerusalem and the Jewish people, and to level an array of unchal­lenged and inac­cur­ate accus­a­tions against Israel in the guise of expert analysis.
An editor’s note published online described Peters as a member of the NSW Greens, an executive member of the Coalition For Justice and Peace in Palestine and a member of Jews Against the Occu­pa­tion. What the ABC failed to disclose is that Peters is also a fierce proponent of the Boycott, Divest­ment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. She was the instig­at­or of the 2010 Mar­rick­ville Council motion urging the Council to consider boy­cot­ting all goods made in any part of Israel, as well as Israeli artists, athletes and academics. The motion, which also called on state and federal gov­ern­ments to adopt BDS, provoked a surge of protest and derision, espe­cially from rate­pay­ers unim­pressed that the Council was being used as a vehicle to prosecute a pet inter­na­tion­al cause of a few Coun­cil­lors. [PJW Note: When an internal Council report revealed that the imple­ment­a­tion of a boycott of Israel would cost rate­pay­ers $3.7 million, the ensuing uproar forced the Council to abandon the idea. Peters was non­ethe­less among the minority of coun­cil­lors who unsuc­cess­fully voted to persist with the boycott.]
None of this back­ground was disclosed by the ABC. The Code of Practice requires the ABC ‘to equip audiences to make up their own minds’ about news and current affairs issues, but Peters’ audience was not given vital inform­a­tion about her partisan record on the issues about which she was sup­posedly ‘reporting’.
Further, the require­ment of ‘inde­pend­ence’ and ‘integrity’ in the ABC Act does not merely mean inde­pend­ence from the influence of the gov­ern­ment of the day and political parties, as important as that is. It also means inde­pend­ence from the personal opinions, agendas and private activism of program producers and journ­al­ists con­trac­ted or employed by the ABC itself. Peters’ use of her position on Mar­rick­ville Council to push an anti-Israel agenda was rejected by rate-payers. The use of the national broad­caster for the same purpose is as objec­tion­able.
Given her back­ground in the anti-Israel movement, it was unsur­pris­ing that the two programs were as blatantly inac­cur­ate and one-sided as they were, featuring a panel of speakers all coming from a relent­lessly one-eyed anti-Israel per­spect­ive. One panellist, Ross Burns, the former Aus­trali­an Ambas­sad­or to Israel, has pre­vi­ously served on the board of the Palestini­an lobby group, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network.
Sara Irving, described as a historian and a writer, has filed over 200 stories for the vir­u­lently anti-Israel Elec­tron­ic Intifada website.
Jeff Halper, the Israeli professor, ostens­ibly chosen to present an Israeli per­spect­ive, calls for the erad­ic­a­tion of a Jewish national home through a ‘one-state solution’ to the conflict, and has made the bizarre claim that Israel has developed a ‘spectral dust’ it can spray over wide areas of land, every grain of which is a sensor, pro­grammed with a person’s DNA to track, locate and kill that indi­vidu­al.
Shawan Jabarin was presented as a human rights activist from a Palestini­an NGO. The audience was not told that he has also had a long asso­ci­ation with a Palestini­an terrorist organ­isa­tion. In 2007, a court found that Jabarin is a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ figure: ‘in part of his activ­it­ies, he is the director of a human rights organ­iz­a­tion, and in another part he is an activist in a terrorist organ­iz­a­tion which does not shy away from acts of murder and attempted murder which… deny the most basic of all human rights – the right to life.’
The former Jerusalem city coun­cil­lor, Meir Margalit, provided perhaps the most extreme turn of all, in likening archae­olo­gic­al digs which seek to under­stand, preserve and honour the history of Jerusalem, to the acts of wholesale archae­olo­gic­al destruc­tion and grotesque vandalism committed by Isis.
The opinions of the pan­el­lists were punc­tu­ated by record­ings sup­posedly present­ing Israeli and Palestini­an per­spect­ives. The audience heard a gentle-sounding Palestini­an poet reciting incant­a­tions of longing and pain. The ostens­ible Israeli per­spect­ive was presented in the form of thick American accents repeatedly speaking of God and King David. As if those are the only, or pre­dom­in­ant, voices on either side.
Ignored was the vast body of his­tor­ic­al, poetic and literary works from the empires of antiquity to Josephus to Amoz Oz, that capture the essence of the long and deep Jewish bond to Jerusalem. Instead of present­ing Israel and Israelis in all their rich diversity and com­plex­ity, Peters portrayed them as a cari­ca­ture, precisely as BDS leaders would have everyone see them – American inter­lopers, settlers with pistols and prayer shawls.
There were also straight-out factual errors. Listeners were told ‘if you’re not Jewish in Jerusalem you don’t have the right to vote.’ In fact, all citizens of Israel (Jewish and Arab) have the right to vote and enjoy identical civic rights. With the end of the Jordanian occu­pa­tion of east Jerusalem following Israel’s military victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, Jerusalem’s Arab residents were granted permanent residency status entitling them to vote in municipal elections and were offered full Israeli cit­izen­ship. Some 12 per cent have taken up Israeli cit­izen­ship while the remainder are evidently deterred by nation­al­ist­ic con­sid­er­a­tions and long-standing threats and accus­a­tions of treason by the Palestini­an lead­er­ship.
While Peters is free to hold her views, no matter how offensive or misguided they may be, the ABC’s listeners are entitled to question why the broad­caster trusted an activist with a record of fanatical anti-Israel cam­paign­ing to produce current affairs content directly relating to Israel, and without dis­clos­ing the full extent of her biases to the audience.
At best, the ABC may have naively believed that Peters could set aside her extreme views and produce sensible, balanced content. At worst, those in charge of the ABC’s news and current affairs pro­gram­ming ignored their statutory and Code oblig­a­tions and indulged Peters’ agenda by com­mis­sion­ing the programs knowing exactly what they would be getting, without requiring even a semblance of balance, impar­ti­al­ity or accuracy.
Alex Ryvchin is Public Affairs Director of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry