COMMENT: The Daily Telegraph struggles to retaliate ...

Poor Luke McIlveen from the Daily Telegraph today claims to have exposed ABCTV's Media Watch

... fighting claims of hypocrisy after its website published anti-Semitic comments mocking the Holocaust and claiming a Jewish conspiracy.

McIlveen says the offending comments were placed on the MW forums the day after the episode which castigated the Tele (and, to a lesser extent, the Sydney Morning Herald) for moderating and allowing racist and inflammatory comments on its blog.

It took McIlveen an entire 7 days to discover the comments. By that time, as McIlveen’s Opinion Editor Tim Blair notes on his personal blog, the comments have already been removed. Blair himself first published the comments on his blog on 18 June 2007.

I’m not exactly sure where the hypocrisy on MW’s part is. It’s not as if anyone at MW is suggesting that such views should be aired because they are “held by many Australians, especially in Sydney ”. Nor does anyone at MW suggest that only persons with “bourgeois sensibilities” insist the law be obeyed.

The anti-Jewish comments are appalling. But then, McIlveen quotes MW’s executive producer Tim Palmer saying “the posts remained on the website for a ‘few minutes’ before being taken down” (this is confirmed by Blair’s blog). Further, the removed comments don’t talk about turning Jews into compost or vilifying them for the colour of their skin or other physical features.
Tim Blair wasn’t a happy camper on Tuesday night, after MW was broadcast. Those commenting on his blog were complaining about their posts on MW’s forums not being published. Perhaps the reason for this is that Palmer believed (with good reason) that in fact the comments were posted by Tim’s blog fan club.

As if to underscore the amount of pain the MW expose has caused him, Blair made a highly personal attack on Tim Palmer. However, Blair’s attack on Palmer was nothing compared to his highly defamatory references to an up and coming Australian children’s author.

McIlveen goes to all this trouble to castigate the kinds of comments that his own editor would happily allow to be moderated on his blogs. Clearly, on the Tele’s past of the blogosphere, racism is only wrong when it’s against indigenous people or anyone deemed Muslim.

The Tele’s editorial asks:

Perhaps its opposed to the vilification of Arabs, but has no problem with the harassment of Jews.

The author of that editorial should read the blog of the Tele’s Opinion Editor and ask whether vice versa is true.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007



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COMMENT: Loewenstein's novel?

An article on the Australian Jewish News website talks about Melbourne University Press publisher Louise Adler in rather non-complimentary terms.

Adler is one of a number of prominent Jews who has signed a petition saying she refuses to defend anything and everything the Israeli government or armed forces does. This naturally makes her unpopular in some Jewish circles.

Yet the real source of wrath toward Adler can be found here ...

Adler has been criticised in the past for publishing Antony Loewenstein’s anti-Zionist novel, My Israel Question. (emphasis mine)

Well, that's one novel way of attacking someone's book.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007



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COMMENT: Reporting on Malaysian Politics

Last June, I found myself in Malaysia on an exchange program organised by the Australia-Malaysia Institute. Our program was managed by staff at the Australian High Commission.

Ours was one of a number of programs organised by AMI. Another program is organised specially for journalists. Someone associated with the journalists’ tour told me something very interesting about the attitudes of some Australian journalists. Here is what that officer told me, more or less …

I was with a group of other journalists to Kelantan state, which is currently ruled by the PAS Party [the Islamic Party of Malaysia]. They met with PAS officials and also with a group of non-Muslim PAS supporters called the PAS Supporters’ Club.

I was shocked by the behaviour of a number of the journos. One couldn’t believe how any non-Muslim could even consider supporting for PAS. He kept badgering a PAS supporter about the dangers of sharia law and how they could honestly accept status as second class citizens. Each time the PAS supporters explained why they supported PAS, this journalist would shake his head and say things like: “You must be brainwashed” and “How much are they paying you?”

A few weeks ago, I dined with a group of Malaysian journalists who were visiting Australia on an AMI exchange program. One was of Indian Catholic background from Kelantan. I asked him about PAS and non-Muslims. The journo told me about his father.

My dad is on the executive of our parish council. Before approaching PAS, he had been waiting for 8 years to get our church extensions approved. UMNO were in charge of planning in our state at that time. They kept making promises but my favour could never get anywhere with them.

Then PAS came into power. My father told his committee he wanted to approach the new Chief Minister. The committee told him to try but not to expect too much as this was an Islamic fundamentalist party and they would probably try and shut down the church.

My father approached the Chief Minister and told him about the problems he was having with the church extensions. The Minister listened careful, shook his head and apologised to my father.

“This is terrible. You have every right to worship, and we have no right to stop you. Let me see what I can do. We are all believers in God, and no believer in God should stop another believer from building a house for God.”

Within a week, we received confirmation of planning approval. My father was surprised. Later, he found out from Hindu friends of his that their contested temple approvals were also granted.

PAS and UMNO both compete for the Muslim vote. But UMNO shows its Islamic face by Malay chauvinism and making life difficult for non-Muslims. PAS shows their Islam by helping all religious people.

You won’t believe this, but the PAS Chief Minister comes to our special Mass services as much as he can. He also visits the opening of Hindu temples.

How can one explain this? Is PAS just making hard-headed political decisions? Are they being pragmatic? Quite possibly, yes. But this is the power of democratic government. Short of ethnic and religious cleansing, democratically elected governments have little or no choice but to ensure they seek and maintain support from as many sectors of the community as possible.

The problem with some Western journos and commentators is that they believe democracy doesn’t have enough strength to reign in religious parties. Others used their own sectarian prejudices to argue that anything even remotely resembling Islam can never sit comfortably with democracy.

Aussie journos and commentators reporting on Malaysian politics need to read more widely and think outside the square. Subscribing to news portals like Malaysiakini.com is a good start. Getting to know and understand the ethnic and religious landscape of the country is another. But whilst Aussie journos continue presuming that any group or party related to Islam is little more than an outlet of al-Qaeda or part of some international conspiracy to destroy the West, they really won’t get far.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007