Tuesday, August 30, 2005
I sent this long email on Sunday 28 August 2005. It includes items from my web pages about Danby, the Australian Jewish News (AJN) aka Israeli Zionist Times, Rubinstein and the Hanan Ashrawi affair, and an analysis of letter publications between the Sydney and Melbourne editions of the AJN.
As I am on Sol Salbe's mailing list I received a copy of a letter written by Michael Danby to the Australian Jewish News and probably published on 25 August 2005. I stopped buying the so- called Australian Jewish News at the end of 2004 when I finally realised that it wasn't giving a voice to those of us who didn't "toe the zionist party line!", so I would not have seen whether Danby's "letter" was published or not - but of course it would be - he is a federal member of parliament.
Michael Danby, Federal Member for Melbourne Ports, has written a letter to the Australian Jewish News dated 25 August 2005. The letter is headed "DISGUSTING PROJECT".
Danby is a member of a party which, in 1992, instituted concentration camps for asylum seekers to Australia, was silent in the face of the Tampa issue, the children overboard issue, the war on Iraq issue, and is now caving in on voluntary student unionism.
Danby's disgusting project at which he is railing is about a forthcoming book to be published by Melbourne University Press, and is written by Antony Loewenstein, a Jewish journalist who has criticised Danby about his Israel politics and his railing against Hanan Ashrawi when she was presented with the the Sydney Peace Prize.
Danby has decided that Loewenstein's supporters would fit inside a telephone booth.
Well, the news for Danby is that the telephone booth in Australia happens to be the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground if not larger, and of the 100,000 Jews in Australia more than just one happen to agree with Loewenstein in his views about the zionists of Australia.
If Danby feels so passionate about Israel, and it is obvious that he does, why doesn't he take his supporters, all those vocal zionists who, together with that publication which should be called the Israeli Zionist Times but is otherwise known as the Australian Jewish News, and move to Israel where Sharon has said that he needs all the Jews in the Diaspora to come and live in Israel to reduce anti-semitism around the world.
That means that the three of us, Louise Adler, Antony Loewenstein and Mannie De Saxe can get on with wearing our own badges of honour.
Let me make one matter clear. The more that people like Danby recommend to people that they not buy Antony Loewenstein's forthcoming book about the Australian Jewish Community, the better the sales will be.
I am waiting for Danby to tell us how he represents the telephone booth numbered Australian Jewry, not how he represents Israeli interests in Australia. The non-telephone booth Australian Jewry appears for the most part to be narrow-minded, reactionary, zionist, and not able to brook any criticisms of their policies and behaviours.
I have yet to see Dan Goldberg and the publication of which he is editor, that weekly paper called the Australian Jewish News, actually present and represent the views of the telephone booth Australian Jews other than the presentation and representation of Israeli life and times.
Danby has called on MUP to drop what he calls "this whole disgusting project". He is urging the Australian Jewish community, and particularly the Australian Jewish News, to treat the book with dignified silence.
It would have been better for Danby to have heeded his own advice.
When the book is published without Danby's god forbidding it, I will buy it for as many people as possible as a gift for them to read a little of the truth which is censored from them by the mainstream press in general and the Jewish press in particular.
Loewenstein and MUP will get the dollars, Adler and Loewenstein will get the credit, and Danby will be further discredited. Danby's attack on Adler is mean-spirited and demeaning and diminishes his own standing as a Federal member of parliament.
The more Danby rails against Adler and Loewenstein the better the sales of the book will be!
Mannie De Saxe
This is Danby's letter:
DISGUSTING PROJECT
The graduating class of Mount Scopus of 1972 had some interesting people, many of whom made a mark on wider Australian society. One of my fellow graduates of that year is Louise Adler, the current publisher of Melbourne University Press (MUP).
Louise was and is an intellectually engaging person, if a little predictable with her inevitable criticism that Labor is a "sell-out" and that supporting Israel, moderate democratic Israel, as I do, makes me a "Zionist right- winger". It's a badge of honor, Louise.
However, faint praise for Adler is a sidebar to the substance of the issue. I want the entire Jewish community to know that I absolutely dissociate myself from her decision to publish a book edited by Anthony Loewenstein about the Australian Jewish community.
In preparation for writing his book, Loewenstein sent me a number of questions, based on assumptions, which made his views so blatantly obvious that I refused to answer them or participate in his book.
I will have no part in his and Adler's propaganda tract scheduled for publication in 2006, which will be an attack on the mainstream Australian Jewish community.
MUP should drop this whole disgusting project. If they proceed, I urge the Australian Jewish community, and particularly the Australian Jewish News, to treat it with dignified silence. That is our best response. If, God forbid, it is published, don't give them a dollar. Don't buy the book.
MICHAEL DANBY MHR
Federal member for Melbourne Ports
[Letter to the Editor Australian Jewish News, 25 August.]
The items below here are from my web pages:
1 AUGUST 2004
The following letter was sent to the Australian Jewish News and has not been published. Fortunately Antony Loewenstein has published it on the web blog Not Happy John, so it will get an airing in a different forum.
Mannie De Saxe PO Box 1675 Preston South Vic 3072 Phone:(03)9471 4878
email: josken_at_zipworld_com_au web: http://www.zipworld.com.au/~josken
1 August 2004
The last three editions of the AJN have six letters attacking Antony Loewenstein for his article in the AJN (9 July 2004) and his chapter in Margo Kingston's book, "Not Happy, John".
One wrote that Loewenstein's sole defender in the AJN is his girl friend! No letters in the AJN have been published supporting the Loewenstein arguments. All the attacking letters have Australian addresses. Israel is desperately attempting to get Diaspora Jews to "fight the good fight" there, especially from France because of the rise in anti-Semitism.
How do people like Rubenstein and Danby know how many of the 100,000 Jews in Australia are zionists? They do not speak for all of us.
If the AJN was truly the Australian Jewish News, it would give those Jews who are Jewish and not self-hating - as some zionists call us - space in its letters columns to agree with Antony Loewenstein and express our views on Israel/Palestine, anti- Semitism and the Ashrawi affair. Otherwise censorship and apartheid are alive and well.
Mannie De Saxe, Jews Against Oppression and Occupation
31 AUGUST 2004
This letter was sent to the Australian Jewish News in Melbourne and Sydney, but was, of course, not published!
Mannie De Saxe PO Box 1675 Preston South Vic 3072
Phone:(03)9471 4878 email: josken_at_zipworld_com_au web: http://www.zipworld.com.au/~josken
31 August 2004
It's time for an analysis of the Sydney and Melbourne editions of the AJN and what they each publish and what constituencies they represent.
Starting with the 23 July editions: in Outlook page 19 of the Sydney edition 5 of the six letters printed were from Melbourne, one of which was from the federal ALP member for Melbourne Ports/Israel. On the equivalent page 15 of the Melbourne edition there were seven letters, 5 from Sydney, one from the ACT and one from Melbourne and no letter from the ALP Member for Melbourne Ports/Israel.
Now to the 6 August editions: in Outlook page 15 of the Sydney edition there were 12 letters, 6 from Melbourne, one of which was from the federal ALP member for Melbourne Ports/Israel, 5 from Sydney and one from Queensland. In the Melbourne Outlook page 15, of the 8 letters, 2 were from Sydney, 4 were from Melbourne and one each from New Zealand and the USA.
The next part of the analysis shows that the two letters from the ALP Member for Melbourne Ports/Israel in the Sydney edition are almost identical, one printed two weeks after the other, and both attacking Antony Loewenstein (and others), in which Michael Danby, who has obviously done some considerable analysis of the 100,000 Jews in the Australian population claims that Loewenstein is a non-entity who represents a telephone-box group of Jewish Australians.
This is quite a dramatic claim for a member of the Federal Parliament to make without any substantiation.
Then in the 6 August Sydney edition is a letter responding to a previous letter of mine which was published in the Melbourne edition, but I didn't see the Marsha Foxman letter of reply because it was not in the Melbourne edition.
What perturbs me most in the above analysis is that people such as members of parliament are given space in your columns for vicious and outrageous attacks and then letter writers who refute these statements are denied right of reply.
I interpret this as censorship equivalent to some of the worst I experienced in my 50 years of living in South Africa, half of them under the apartheid regime.
What is the Australian Jewish News afraid of? Or is it the fact that ownership of the paper dictates policy and direction and there is no editorial independence, just as there is no editorial independence in the Murdoch, Packer and Fairfax media.
Are we being muzzled, and if so, why? Homophobia and zionism rule the roost and no unpleasant contradictory views are to be permitted. If this isn't censorship, what is it?
Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne, and Jews Against Oppression and Occupation.
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As I am on Sol Salbe's mailing list I received a copy of a letter written by Michael Danby to the Australian Jewish News and probably published on 25 August 2005. I stopped buying the so- called Australian Jewish News at the end of 2004 when I finally realised that it wasn't giving a voice to those of us who didn't "toe the zionist party line!", so I would not have seen whether Danby's "letter" was published or not - but of course it would be - he is a federal member of parliament.
Michael Danby, Federal Member for Melbourne Ports, has written a letter to the Australian Jewish News dated 25 August 2005. The letter is headed "DISGUSTING PROJECT".
Danby is a member of a party which, in 1992, instituted concentration camps for asylum seekers to Australia, was silent in the face of the Tampa issue, the children overboard issue, the war on Iraq issue, and is now caving in on voluntary student unionism.
Danby's disgusting project at which he is railing is about a forthcoming book to be published by Melbourne University Press, and is written by Antony Loewenstein, a Jewish journalist who has criticised Danby about his Israel politics and his railing against Hanan Ashrawi when she was presented with the the Sydney Peace Prize.
Danby has decided that Loewenstein's supporters would fit inside a telephone booth.
Well, the news for Danby is that the telephone booth in Australia happens to be the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground if not larger, and of the 100,000 Jews in Australia more than just one happen to agree with Loewenstein in his views about the zionists of Australia.
If Danby feels so passionate about Israel, and it is obvious that he does, why doesn't he take his supporters, all those vocal zionists who, together with that publication which should be called the Israeli Zionist Times but is otherwise known as the Australian Jewish News, and move to Israel where Sharon has said that he needs all the Jews in the Diaspora to come and live in Israel to reduce anti-semitism around the world.
That means that the three of us, Louise Adler, Antony Loewenstein and Mannie De Saxe can get on with wearing our own badges of honour.
Let me make one matter clear. The more that people like Danby recommend to people that they not buy Antony Loewenstein's forthcoming book about the Australian Jewish Community, the better the sales will be.
I am waiting for Danby to tell us how he represents the telephone booth numbered Australian Jewry, not how he represents Israeli interests in Australia. The non-telephone booth Australian Jewry appears for the most part to be narrow-minded, reactionary, zionist, and not able to brook any criticisms of their policies and behaviours.
I have yet to see Dan Goldberg and the publication of which he is editor, that weekly paper called the Australian Jewish News, actually present and represent the views of the telephone booth Australian Jews other than the presentation and representation of Israeli life and times.
Danby has called on MUP to drop what he calls "this whole disgusting project". He is urging the Australian Jewish community, and particularly the Australian Jewish News, to treat the book with dignified silence.
It would have been better for Danby to have heeded his own advice.
When the book is published without Danby's god forbidding it, I will buy it for as many people as possible as a gift for them to read a little of the truth which is censored from them by the mainstream press in general and the Jewish press in particular.
Loewenstein and MUP will get the dollars, Adler and Loewenstein will get the credit, and Danby will be further discredited. Danby's attack on Adler is mean-spirited and demeaning and diminishes his own standing as a Federal member of parliament.
The more Danby rails against Adler and Loewenstein the better the sales of the book will be!
Mannie De Saxe
This is Danby's letter:
DISGUSTING PROJECT
The graduating class of Mount Scopus of 1972 had some interesting people, many of whom made a mark on wider Australian society. One of my fellow graduates of that year is Louise Adler, the current publisher of Melbourne University Press (MUP).
Louise was and is an intellectually engaging person, if a little predictable with her inevitable criticism that Labor is a "sell-out" and that supporting Israel, moderate democratic Israel, as I do, makes me a "Zionist right- winger". It's a badge of honor, Louise.
However, faint praise for Adler is a sidebar to the substance of the issue. I want the entire Jewish community to know that I absolutely dissociate myself from her decision to publish a book edited by Anthony Loewenstein about the Australian Jewish community.
In preparation for writing his book, Loewenstein sent me a number of questions, based on assumptions, which made his views so blatantly obvious that I refused to answer them or participate in his book.
I will have no part in his and Adler's propaganda tract scheduled for publication in 2006, which will be an attack on the mainstream Australian Jewish community.
MUP should drop this whole disgusting project. If they proceed, I urge the Australian Jewish community, and particularly the Australian Jewish News, to treat it with dignified silence. That is our best response. If, God forbid, it is published, don't give them a dollar. Don't buy the book.
MICHAEL DANBY MHR
Federal member for Melbourne Ports
[Letter to the Editor Australian Jewish News, 25 August.]
The items below here are from my web pages:
1 AUGUST 2004
The following letter was sent to the Australian Jewish News and has not been published. Fortunately Antony Loewenstein has published it on the web blog Not Happy John, so it will get an airing in a different forum.
Mannie De Saxe PO Box 1675 Preston South Vic 3072 Phone:(03)9471 4878
email: josken_at_zipworld_com_au web: http://www.zipworld.com.au/~josken
1 August 2004
The last three editions of the AJN have six letters attacking Antony Loewenstein for his article in the AJN (9 July 2004) and his chapter in Margo Kingston's book, "Not Happy, John".
One wrote that Loewenstein's sole defender in the AJN is his girl friend! No letters in the AJN have been published supporting the Loewenstein arguments. All the attacking letters have Australian addresses. Israel is desperately attempting to get Diaspora Jews to "fight the good fight" there, especially from France because of the rise in anti-Semitism.
How do people like Rubenstein and Danby know how many of the 100,000 Jews in Australia are zionists? They do not speak for all of us.
If the AJN was truly the Australian Jewish News, it would give those Jews who are Jewish and not self-hating - as some zionists call us - space in its letters columns to agree with Antony Loewenstein and express our views on Israel/Palestine, anti- Semitism and the Ashrawi affair. Otherwise censorship and apartheid are alive and well.
Mannie De Saxe, Jews Against Oppression and Occupation
31 AUGUST 2004
This letter was sent to the Australian Jewish News in Melbourne and Sydney, but was, of course, not published!
Mannie De Saxe PO Box 1675 Preston South Vic 3072
Phone:(03)9471 4878 email: josken_at_zipworld_com_au web: http://www.zipworld.com.au/~josken
31 August 2004
It's time for an analysis of the Sydney and Melbourne editions of the AJN and what they each publish and what constituencies they represent.
Starting with the 23 July editions: in Outlook page 19 of the Sydney edition 5 of the six letters printed were from Melbourne, one of which was from the federal ALP member for Melbourne Ports/Israel. On the equivalent page 15 of the Melbourne edition there were seven letters, 5 from Sydney, one from the ACT and one from Melbourne and no letter from the ALP Member for Melbourne Ports/Israel.
Now to the 6 August editions: in Outlook page 15 of the Sydney edition there were 12 letters, 6 from Melbourne, one of which was from the federal ALP member for Melbourne Ports/Israel, 5 from Sydney and one from Queensland. In the Melbourne Outlook page 15, of the 8 letters, 2 were from Sydney, 4 were from Melbourne and one each from New Zealand and the USA.
The next part of the analysis shows that the two letters from the ALP Member for Melbourne Ports/Israel in the Sydney edition are almost identical, one printed two weeks after the other, and both attacking Antony Loewenstein (and others), in which Michael Danby, who has obviously done some considerable analysis of the 100,000 Jews in the Australian population claims that Loewenstein is a non-entity who represents a telephone-box group of Jewish Australians.
This is quite a dramatic claim for a member of the Federal Parliament to make without any substantiation.
Then in the 6 August Sydney edition is a letter responding to a previous letter of mine which was published in the Melbourne edition, but I didn't see the Marsha Foxman letter of reply because it was not in the Melbourne edition.
What perturbs me most in the above analysis is that people such as members of parliament are given space in your columns for vicious and outrageous attacks and then letter writers who refute these statements are denied right of reply.
I interpret this as censorship equivalent to some of the worst I experienced in my 50 years of living in South Africa, half of them under the apartheid regime.
What is the Australian Jewish News afraid of? Or is it the fact that ownership of the paper dictates policy and direction and there is no editorial independence, just as there is no editorial independence in the Murdoch, Packer and Fairfax media.
Are we being muzzled, and if so, why? Homophobia and zionism rule the roost and no unpleasant contradictory views are to be permitted. If this isn't censorship, what is it?
Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne, and Jews Against Oppression and Occupation.
