Arabist Lobby (2)

“It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair

During Israel’s recent war of self-defence against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, Ross Burns, a former Australian Ambassador to Israel and Syria, attacked at a public forum in Perth Australia’s bipartisan support for Israel. Speaking on the ABC’s 7.30 Report, Burns insisted: “People increasingly look at the statements by Australian ministers, and they don’t see us as trying to maintain a more balanced attitude to a crisis.” Worse, he said, was that Labor was as bad as the Coalition: “Labor doesn’t seek to establish any different policy towards Israel than the Coalition,” he said.

“Mr Burns, is, sadly, a typical example of the “Pro-Arabist” mindset that was highly influential in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Michael Danby argued. When a small democratic state is subjected to an unprovoked attack by a terrorist militia armed to the teeth by a mad theocratic regime, when missiles are being fired indiscriminately into populated areas, Australia’s position should not be to support the attacked country, according to Mr Burns and his colleagues – it should be to ‘maintain a balanced attitude’ so as not to offend any of the people who want to see Israel destroyed. I am reminded of Neville Chamberlain, who thought that Hitler’s assault on Czechoslovakia was ‘a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing’.”

In recent months Michael Danby has exposed the origins of the pro-Arab, anti- Western views of some people in DFAT. Some officials in key DFAT positions turned a blind eye to the AWB “wheat-for-weapons” scandal despite repeated warnings about what was going on. Ministers and their advisors were negligent in not heeding the evidence that Saddam was being bribed by Australia’s wheat export monopoly. But there are deeper institutional reasons that underline this scandal.

Some Arabist officials share interlocking memberships of the AWB, the National Farmers Federation and the Council for Arab- Australian Relations (CAAR) and above all the Saudi and Emirates funded University faculties. Mr Brendan Stewart, for example, is both chairman of CAAR and chairman of AWB. When Alexander Downer appointed Mr Stewart chair of CAAR, he commended his “expertise on Australia-Arab commercial relations.” We have now seen at the Cole Royal Commission what Mr Stewart’s “expertise” consisted of.

The Arabist lobby in the universities

Many of the Arabist lobby were trained or are influenced by the Middle Eastern Studies departments of Australian universities. Danby has been particularly critical of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, where DFAT specialists in Middle East policy are trained. Pointing to reparks that gave the tenor of leading Arabist, Professor Amin Saikal, who is at the ANU Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Danby said: “Professor Saikal castigated Israel in the Sydney Morning Herald for trying to contain ‘what it calls terrorism, including suicide bombing’. I do not think many people outside the halls of academe at the ANU regard suicide bombing anywhere as anything other than terrorism and something that all decent people would be opposed to. It is not surprising that Liberal MP Sussan Ley, until recently head of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, is on his supervisory board.”

Former ambassador Ross Burns

In Parliament Danby argued: “Dr Saikal has also said that: ‘Iran has developed a sort of democracy which may not accord with Western ideals, but provides for a degree of mass participation, political pluralism and assurance of certain human rights and freedoms.’

“Let’s get this straight. In Iran there is mass persecution of minority religions, whether they are Zoroastrian or, in particular, the Baha’i faith. Let’s not have any equivocation or shilly-shallying about this: the torture of and the attitude towards the Baha’i in Iran are a disgrace to any country. Any objective analyst would cry out on behalf of the persecuted Baha’i of Iran.

“Professor Saikal’s comment about ‘certain human rights’ also seems very peculiar to me in the context of the decision at the last Iranian elections to exclude 1,000 candidates, including some hundreds of sitting members of parliament, from being able to contest the elections. With that decision I think you can understand why the current Iranian government has adopted such an extreme international posture in calling for the elimination of certain countries. The lack of democracy in Iran is something that we should certainly be very critical of, despite the shoddy excuses from Dr Saikal.”

Danby was also critical of the Macquarie University Centre for Middle East and North Africa Studies, headed by Dr Andrew Vincent. In his August speech Danby said: “We have seen that public and political pressure have a good effect on public affairs reporting in Australia, where you get both sides of the argument being put. Unfortunately, that is not the case in academia. This was crystallised in a remark from Dr Vincent on Melbourne radio. He is the only person I know outside the Muslim Reference Group who joined them in demanding that the Prime Minister delist Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.” This year Dr Vincent appointed none other than Antony Loewenstein to the board of the Macquarie University Centre, despite his relative lack of academic or professional credentials for such a position. Dr Vincent said: “We wanted a Jewish person on the board. We didn’t have any Jews on the board and it seemed to be an absence.” Ted Lapkin of the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council commented: “In looking to fill his kosher quota, Andrew Vincent made sure to find someone whose ideology he found palatable… The only contenders who might meet Vincent’s requirements came from well beyond the fringe of the Australian Jewish consensus on the Middle East. It’s because the pickings were so slim that the standard had to be set so low.”

The Arabist lobby and the AWB scandal

Danby linked this Arabist bias in Australian universities to the AWB scandal. “All of this would be of rather minor concern,” he said, “except for the effect on policy in Australia that this has in the long term. It leads to a distortion of Australian policy. We are going to see that soon with the Cole commission, which will bring down some very grave findings about how Australian policy in that part of the world is made.

The scandal surrounding AWB Ltd and Australian wheat sales to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq has been one of the biggest news stories in 2006. In a series of speeches during the year, Michael Danby has supported Kim Beazley and Kevin Rudd in their attacks on the Howard government and its role in the “wheat for weapons” scandal, in which AWB (formerly the Australian Wheat Board) paid $300 million to a non-existent “trucking company” as a disguised bribe to Saddam’s regime to buy Australian wheat.

“I believe that over many years a lobby has existed in this country that has led to serious looting, almost pillaging, of Australian taxpayers’ money to provide effective subsidies to countries in that part of the world which we knew at the time would never be repaid,” Danby said. “We gave money to the Saddam Hussein regime through the eighties and nineties when we knew that that money would enable the Iraqi government, who would never repay the money, to spent hard currency on terrorism and armaments. This is the result of endless one-sided propaganda by university faculties producing graduates who move into DFAT and other organs of this government with a one-sided view of the conflict in the Middle East. We need to have a balanced view on the issue of the Middle East.”

In 2004 John Anderson, then Deputy Prime Minister and National Party leader, was all smiles with Seif el-Islam Gaddafi, son and heir of the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi

Two-track foreign policy

In his recent speeches, Michael Danby has exposed Australia’s “two-track” foreign policy under the Howard Government – the public foreign policy of Mr Howard and Mr Downer, which is pro-western alliance, pro-U.S. and pro-Israel, and the secret foreign policy of the National Party, which is pro-any regime which is willing to buy Australian products and help keep the National party in business.

This policy was developed under former National Party Tim Fischer, whose anti-Israel views were an ill-kept secret during the time he was Deputy Prime Minister. It was Mr Fischer who suggested that Mossad agents stole Malcolm Fraser’s trousers during the notorious Memphis episode. The policy has continued under later National Party leaders, such as John Anderson and the hapless Mark Vaile, whose parliamentary performances on AWB were the worst most Canberra observers can remember.

In a speech in February, Danby said: “The National Party has its own foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, where it saw Saddam as a valued customer who needed to be flattered and pandered to so he would buy our wheat—if necessary, with $300 million in illegal bribes. This is the same two-track, doublespeak policy which sees the foreign minister condemning Syrian sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq and the Assad regime’s involvement in the murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, while at the same time it sees Australia welcoming eight dubious Syrian diplomats for purposes which have still not been made clear but are probably linked to some murky trade deal cooked up by some mate in the National Party.”