Two intellectual journals advocate the destruction of Israel

We’ll never figure out how it is that people – let alone intellectuals – can seriously discuss Israel as if its continued existence is optional. Seven and half million people live in Israel, six million of them Jewish.

The arrogance of those who talk about the country – and the millions there – as if it’s an abstract or debating point is beyond fathoming. Hoping those opposed to Israel’s existence or self-defence don’t really mean what they’re ultimately saying is our usual approach. But it is really is time to call out these people for what they are.

WHAT HAS GONE WRONG IN ACADEMIA?
Academic Philip Mendes is a well-known left-wing academic but he’s been fighting a running battle with extremist elements in the academic community who express startling hostility and hatred to Israel.

He explains that these characters have come to dominate two intellectual journals, Overland and Arena.

Mendes argues that the worst of them is Overland, edited by a Jeff Sparrow.


Overland’s website claims the support of the Australian Government, the Australia Council, Arts Victoria, the Victorian Government and Victoria University.

In our view, the constant false-labelling of Israel in an attempt to paint it as an apartheid state, campaigns for boycotts and vilification are all calculated to delegitimise Israel in the eyes of the world, in an attempt to make possible its obliteration.

Mendes makes the argument in his paper which we re-publish here that these minority arguments for a “one-state solution” as he politely calls it are not new but are the re-hashed extremism of Maoists, Trotskyists and Hartleyites from the 1970s.

His fight is an important one and we can only admire his courage in prosecuting it against those who don’t tolerate rival opinions very much at all, as he explores below.

PEACE IN THE MIDDLE-EAST
We can only hope as the blind hatred for Israel reaches its mostly absurdly shrill fever-pitch that the volume can go down a little to allow voices of moderation, reason, compromise and common-sense to be heard.

There is clearly misery in Gaza. Much of it, we would say, self-imposed. But no-one can take joy in it, however fiendish and murderous the political masters the people of Gaza have elected.

We hope there is a solution – whatever it is – that delivers peace in Israel and all the Middle East.

Meanwhile left-wing Australian intellectual journals have painted themselves into a dark, sad and arguably evil corner where the solution they advocate is the destruction of Israel and its six million Jews.

Long after peace reigns in the Middle East, these journals, if they survive, will find it very hard to wash off the stain on their reputations from this time.

Deborah Stone of the Anti Defamation Commission that combats anti-semitism wrote in reference to Mendes’s paper:

Overland and Arena Magazine are small Left magazines that speak to the intellectual Left of Australian academia. While their readership is small, both have significant influence on academics in significant segments of the university community.

Traditionally both journals have covered a range of perspectives in relation to Israel and the Palestinians. But Philip Mendes argues that in recent years the journals’ perspective on Israel has become fanatically anti-Zionist, excluding balanced perspectives and even arguments for a two-state solution.

In this report he analyses recent coverage of Israel in Overland and Arena which he characterizes as “a particularly fanatical form of pro-Palestinian orthodoxy”.

Demonising Israelis, Infantilising Palestinians: Australian Left journals and the Middle East Conflict by Philip Mendes

Historically, the international Left has incorporated a wide spectrum of views on Zionism and Israel ranging from unequivocal support for Israel to even-handedness to hardline support for Palestinian positions.The contemporary Australian Left also lacks any consensus on this issue.

Nevertheless, it is fair to say that a wide majority on the Left support a two-state solution which encapsulates recognition of both Israeli and Palestinian national rights. It is also fair to say that those anti-Zionist fundamentalists who advocate the elimination of Israel and its replacement by an Arab State of Greater Palestine represent a small if vocal, minority.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, this minority group attempted to censor and exclude any Left voices in favour of the continued existence of the State of Israel. For example, the assorted Trotskyists and Maoists in the far Left Australian Union of Students (AUS), and Bill Hartley’s extreme Left faction of the Victorian ALP hurled abuse and vitriol at any Jewish-identifying leftists who didn’t identify unconditionally with the abolish Israel aims of the PLO.

Political scientist Dennis Altman – himself Jewish, non-Zionist and sceptical of both extreme Zionist and anti-Zionist perspectives – famously wrote at the time that this anti-Zionist fundamentalism had become a new symbol of ideological purity in the radical Left.  In the UK, a significant number of student unions even disaffiliated Jewish student societies on the prejudiced grounds that they were Zionist and hence allegedly racist.

This fanatical intolerance for moderate two-state views went on the backburner during the years of the Oslo Accord, but returned with a vengeance as the fundamentalists were reinvigorated by the blood and guts of the Second Intifada.  Recent debates suggest that this vocal, but still small, pro-Palestinian lobby is enjoying some success in excluding and censoring the majority of Left voices.

For example, the proponents of an academic boycott of Israel essentialise Israeli Jews by claiming that left and right-wing Israelis are no different, and that they are all racist oppressors of the Palestinians. They argue that the rights of the oppressed Palestinians – who they also collectively essentialise as being uniquely innocent and deserving victims – should always take precedence over the rights of Israeli Jews.

The fundamentalists also attack all Jewish supporters of Israel’s existence as apologists for oppression, irrespective of whether they are supporters of two states, or alternatively advocates of a Greater Israel. They reserve particular hate for the so-called “left Zionists” who oppose the West Bank occupation and settlements whilst also critiquing Palestinian violence and extremism.  These moderates are constructed as little more than the equivalent of left-wing Nazis.   And then they use the old Soviet trick of highlighting the views of a few Jewish “Uncle Toms” who are willing to exploit their own religious and cultural origins in order to vilify their own people. That malevolent game was used in the 1950s to defend Stalinist anti-Semitism. Now it is employed to misrepresent the historical and political context of the creation and development of the State of Israel.

The crude political objective is the exclusion of all Jewish-identifying leftists from Left debates on Zionism and Israel. And any means are justified to achieve this outcome including the ad-hominem abuse of individual Jewish activists, and a horrific lowering of intellectual and scholarly standards. The pro-Palestinian lobbyists are willing to throw out the most basic academic conventions regarding accurate presentation of evidence and correct citations and referencing if they don’t serve the interests of the Palestinian cause.

Two recent examples that come to mind are those of Overland and Arena Magazine. Some will say that these journals have a small readership within the Left elite and do not matter. Yet both journals are read widely by students and intellectuals, and have an influence far beyond their formal subscription figures. They are not the equivalent of party propaganda sheets such as Green Left Weekly, and that is precisely why they should incorporate a diversity (rather than narrow uniformity) of Left voices on Israel/Palestine. For the record, I have regularly contributed to both journals in the past on a range of issues, and continue to respect their broader political projects despite their current adherence to a particularly fanatical form of pro-Palestinian orthodoxy.

Overland
The case of Overland is particularly disturbing. This Melbourne-based quarterly journal was formed by ex-communist Stephen Murray-Smith in 1954 to promote progressive and democratic debate. Overland is best known for its publication of local poets and short story writers, and its powerful cultural presentation of Australian progressive politics. Although Murray-Smith published a powerful critique of Soviet anti-Semitism in issue 32 (1965), it has rarely covered Jewish-related issues. To the best of my knowledge, it rarely if ever published material on Israel until 2007.

    “[Overland’s contributors] form a mad hatter’s picnic of fanatical attacks on Israel and supporters of Israel followed by more fanatical attacks of the same ilk.”

Under the editorship of Jeff Sparrow, the pro-Palestinian lobby has captured Overland’s agenda.  This is particularly reflected in the four recent articles that appeared in issues 184 by Ned Curthoys, 187 by Ned Curthoys, 193 by Antony Loewenstein, and 198 by Michael Brull. As a combination, they form a mad hatter’s picnic of fanatical attacks on Israel and supporters of Israel followed by more fanatical attacks of the same ilk.

Curthoys, who co-ordinates the two person Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism with his father John Docker, is a serial hater of Israel and Zionism. In Issue 184, he provides not surprisingly a positive review of Antony Loewenstein’s anti-Israel text, My Israel Question. He also cannot resist promoting his favourite obsession concerning the campaign for a cultural, economic and academic boycott of Israel based on the racial stereotyping of all Israeli Jews as oppressors.  But in Issue 187, he firmly criticises the founding statement of Loewenstein’s Independent Australian Jewish Voices group for being too moderate, and specifically for accepting Israel’s right to exist. Instead, Curthoys returns to his theme of the necessity of an economic and cultural boycott of Israel, and particularly targets Left Zionism as inherently racist. He proposes the elimination of Israel, and its replacement by an Arab majority state.

Not to be outdone, Loewenstein denounced Israel in Issue 193 as a racist state supported only by Jewish zealots who allegedly direct hate-mail and death threats at any Jewish critics of Israel. Loewenstein claimed he “didn’t wish to see Israel’s destruction”, but then contradicted himself by demanding the establishment of a bi-national state in place of Israel.

Even worse was the contribution in Issue 198 of Michael Brull, an Independent Australian Jewish Voices blogger, who claims to support a two-state solution whilst regularly demonising Israel and any supporters of Israel.

Brull’s particular contribution is rambling, repetitive and contradictory, and of a standard that one might expect to find on a blog devoid of editorial oversight, not as an article chosen for publication in a refereed intellectual journal. In parts of his essay, Brull seems to support two states and oppose an academic boycott of Israel, but in other parts he seems to argue the exact opposite. Strangely, he seems to believe that anybody who supports the continued existence of Israel including fanatical anti-Zionist Noam Chomsky is a Zionist. This would be news indeed to the millions of Communists including even Arab Communists who supported the creation of Israel in 1948, but remained philosophically anti-Zionist.

Particularly bizarre are his final four paragraphs which consist of ad-hominem hysterical abuse of myself and others. This misrepresentation of my views and opinions on the nature of the relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism (which I have always portrayed as reflecting complex historical and political influences)  is not surprising since Brull has regularly levied similar ridiculous accusations on his blog. What is surprising is that a serious journal chose to publish this unsubstantiated nonsense. Nevertheless, Brull enjoyed the last word, oddly ending his treatise with a call for “free debate without the usual flood of hysterical name-calling”. Maybe Brull’s kettle is coloured brown as well as black.

The only exception to Overland’s pro-Palestinian hegemony was an article by respected political scientist Dennis Altman in issue 196 which presented a more subtle and sophisticated overview of this debate. But Altman offered only a mild critique of the anti-Zionist fundamentalist position which he balanced by also attacking the narrowness of the Zionist perspective. However, this did not stop Curthoys taking him to task in Issue 197 for failing to support the proposed boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions.

In response to this one-sided discourse, a group of six Australian academics consisting of Douglas Kirsner, Andrew Markus, Bill Anderson, Bernard Rechter, Nick Dyrenfurth and Philip Mendes sent a polite, but firm private letter to the Overland editor, Editorial Board and patron, Barry Jones. The letter questioned why Overland chose to highlight the most extreme voices who “contribute only fanatical polemics and represent nobody in either the Jewish community or the Left, and chosen to ignore or actively censor the large group of Jewish (and broader Left) voices who support two states, strongly oppose Israeli settlements and expansionism, but also totally reject the simplistic “Israel oppressor, Palestinians victim” argument presented by Curthoys et al, and seek to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation rather than continued violence and enmity. Their views represent the majority of the Left, but seem to have been deliberately excluded from the pages of Overland magazine”.

The Overland editor Jeff Sparrow, founder and long-time activist in the far Left Trotskyist group Socialist Alternative which aggressively opposes the existence of Israel, immediately published this letter on the Overland blog without our permission which raised some serious ethical questions. He then launched into an inflammatory polemic, claiming erroneously that we had argued that Overland excluded contributors on the basis of ethnic or religious affiliations.  The letter in fact made no reference to anti-Semitism, and Sparrow’s argument conformed to a long-standing far Left political strategy whereby any criticisms of anti-Zionist fundamentalism are deliberately misrepresented as allegations of anti-Semitism. The intention behind this strategy is to delegitimize any critique of hardline pro-Palestinian arguments as involving “crying wolf” tactics, and hence not deserving of a serious response. This also neatly allows the target to avoid an objective analysis of the existence of some serious linkages between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
Sparrow also defended his highlighting of anti-Zionist fundamentalist views by arguing that the critical two-state views held by the majority of the Australian Left gained regular access to the Murdoch-owned newspapers such as The Australian.

This argument is a red herring. Firstly, The Australian has over recent years published a wide range of views on the Middle East including those of pro-Palestinian hardliners such as Michael Shaik from the Australians for Palestine lobby group and Antony Loewenstein, and this month the perspective of visiting Palestinian academic George Bisharat who argued explicitly for the so-called one-state solution. Secondly, most on the Left are rightly sceptical of the content of the mainstream press, but expect a better range of serious critical arguments from a left-wing journal such as Overland. They certainly do not expect to be served propaganda disingenuously dressed up as “refereed scholarly essays”, to cite Overland’s inside front cover. And finally, many Left intellectuals give particular priority to having their views published in Left journals, and potentially exerting an influence on their own Left constituency.

In a separate contribution, Sparrow concocted a conspiracy theory even more bizarre than that of his most extreme contributors, implying that Israeli policies since 9/11 were a direct threat to Australia’s peace and security.  He also urged the introduction of so-called “fresher” perspectives on Israel/Palestine, but what he really meant was the re-introduction of the same old hateful “abolish Israel” perspectives propagandized by the Hartleyites and the AUS in the 1970s.

    “The crude political objective is the exclusion of all Jewish-identifying leftists from Left debates on Zionism and Israel. And any means are justified to achieve this outcome including the ad-hominem abuse of individual Jewish activists, and a horrific lowering of intellectual and scholarly standards.”

Sadly, the final shameful contribution came from the once moderate Australian Jewish Democratic Society, which historically supported two states, but is increasingly using the language and arguments of the anti-Zionist fundamentalists. The AJDS’ new media officer Les Rosenblatt, who was formerly a Committee member of the now defunct far Left Jews for a Just Peace group and is also a regular contributor to the left-wing Arena Magazine (discussed later), issued a statement of unequivocal support for Overland’s pro-Palestinian orthodoxy. He bizarrely claimed that Overland were actually seeking to broaden rather than limit the range of views in the debate, and even more strangely cited with approval Brull’s article in favour of their (AJDS) concern to promote “civility and respect in debate on political differences over the issue and strongly oppose the vilification and abuse that often follows expression of radical or minority opinions”. The AJDS clearly did not even bother to read the content of Brull’s article for otherwise they would have realised that they were endorsing personal abuse instead of a diversity of opinions.

Arena Magazine
The case of Arena is equally disappointing. This intellectual journal of “Left political, social and cultural commentary” was formed by dissident party and non-party Communist intellectuals in 1963. Originally informed by Marxist ideology, it published a useful critique of Soviet anti-Semitism by Jewish leader Isi Leibler in the mid 1960s, and some views to the contrary. In recent decades, it has been increasingly influenced by a wider range of ideologies including particularly post-modernism.

Arena has some history on Israel/Palestine, having published some fanatical contributions from anti-Zionist fundamentalist John Docker in 1986 (Issues 75 and 77), and occasional contributions from pro-Palestinian Middle Eastern specialist Jeremy Salt in the 1990s. But until the mid 2000s, they still seemed open to a range of views.

For example, the December 2000 (No.50) issue contained contrasting contributions from Jeremy Salt and myself on the causes of the second intifada. Similarly, Geoff Levey wrote a devastating critique in (No.66) August-September 2003 of Ned Curthoy’s earlier advocacy of an academic boycott, and Douglas Kirsner brilliantly exposed in (No. 67) October-November 2003 John Docker’s earlier defamation of key sections of Australian and world Jewry simply on the basis of their support for the State of Israel. And in Issue 76 (April-May 2005) Arena published my critique of PLO representative Ali Kazak’s shallow attempt to rule out any linkages between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

    “True internationalists do not take sides in national conflicts, or demonize whole peoples or nations as inherently oppressive.”

The publication of my response to Kazak led to a synchronised attack on Arena by a group of pro-Palestinian lobbyists whose stated names had never previously appeared in any Australian public discourse on this issue. Their hysterical arguments included the following: Jews and Zionists enjoy an unfair and exclusive entrée to Arena Magazine; Philip Mendes was trying to dictate the editorial policy of Arena Magazine; criticism of Jews was not anti-Semitic; and hard-core Zionists including Philip Mendes believe in Jewish world supremacy. Hyperbole aside, the three letter writers seemed to be saying that it was inappropriate for a Left journal to publish any views critical of anti-Semitism or supportive of Israel.

At this stage, Arena bravely affirmed their support for “a diversity of views and opinion…and respectful dialogue”. They clarified that Mendes and Kazak had expressed their own views, and “neither dictated Arena’s editorial policy”.  But since that time, Arena do seem to have surrendered to pressure from pro-Palestinian lobbyists, and have made little or no attempt to present a diversity of views.

For example, the August-September (Issue no. 85) 2006 issue published three contributions from Antony Loewenstein, Jeremy Salt and John Hinkson which all presented a parochial Palestinian narrative instead of a balanced internationalist perspective.  Worse was to come. The February-March 2009 issue on the Gaza war contained no less than three pro-Palestinian articles by Jeremy Salt, Les Rosenblatt, and the Docker/Curthoys tag team backed up by four biased photo montages from anti-war demonstrations in Israel. The contribution from Docker/Curthoys of the Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism was uniquely fanatical, contesting the legitimacy of Israel’s creation in 1948, and advocating an unconditional return of 1948 Palestinian refugees to Israel which would mean the immediate end of Israel as a Jewish state.

guyrundle In response, a group of academics comprised of Douglas Kirsner, Allan Borowski, Yoke Berry, Suzanne Rutland, Andrew Markus, Greg Rose and Philip Mendes penned a letter condemning the “hate-filled diatribe by John Docker and Ned Curthoys against the Jewish State of Israel where six million Jews out of a total population of 13 million live”. We added that “they also fail to recognize that the Left does not essentialise entire peoples or nations as evil. It is only fascists and xenophobes who classify whole peoples as inherently bad or inferior, and hence deserving of what Docker and Curthoys disingenuously call “dismantling” but which in reality would almost certainly mean the national destruction of the Israeli Jews including the real potential of a second Holocaust”. The remainder of the letter exposed their indifference to the historical reality of the Nazi Holocaust, and their misrepresentation of the historical and political context of contributions to this debate by Gandhi and Sir Isaac Isaacs.

Arena refused to publish the opening two paragraphs, and insisted that they be removed from the letter which was eventually published in edited form.  They then published a reply twice the length of our letter by Docker and Curthoys which opportunistically exploited the absence of our concerns regarding the prejudiced nature of their earlier article. In particular, they claimed falsely that we had argued that left-wing magazines should endorse Zionism and the state of Israel when in fact we had attacked their collective stereotyping of all Israeli Jews as evil oppressors. They also repeated their long-standing advocacy for the abolition of Israel, and its replacement by an Arab majority state of Palestine.

Conclusion
The editor of Overland and his supporters have absurdly defended their politics of censorship by suggesting that they are the victims of some type of ruling class offensive allegedly directed from our privileged universities.  But many of the most hardline contributors to Overland and Arena are themselves current or former academics.

Moreover, true internationalists do not take sides in national conflicts, or demonize whole peoples or nations as inherently oppressive. Rather, they support moderates and oppose extremists on both sides of conflicts, and favour policies leading to peace and reconciliation. This is why the majority of the Australian Left support a moderate two-state position based on balancing various competing political tensions and dilemmas. They support both Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself against external violence and terror, and the creation of an independent Palestinian State based on an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the dismantling of settlements.

It would be reasonable to expect serious Left journals such as Overland and Arena to provide ample opportunity for this viewpoint in favour of conflict resolution to be expressed. But sadly their agenda has been taken over by the pro-Palestinian lobbyists who wish to silence this perspective, and instead demand exclusive space for their infantile tale of never-ending violence  inexorably leading to the elimination of Israel.