Israel must learn to live with its neighbours
By Michael Backman
The Age
January 17, 2009
THERE'S a memorable scene in the Stephen Spielberg film ‘Munich’. After the 1972 Munich Olympic Games killings of Israeli athletes, prime minister Golda Meir tells confidants she wants to show the plotters that killing Jews "is expensive". She then organises for the assassination of each of the plotters.
Today, it is Israel itself that has become expensive. Most directly, it is very expensive to the US, which subsidises and arms it.
But Israel's utter inability to transform the Palestinians from enemies into friends has imposed big costs on us all. We have paid for Israel's failure with bombs on London public transport, bombs in bars in Bali, and even the loss of the World Trade Centre towers in New York.
It is not true that these outrages have occurred because certain Islamic fundamentalists don't like Western lifestyles and so plant bombs in response. Rather, it is Israel — or more correctly the treatment of the Palestinians — that is at the nub of these events.
The world's Muslims have no head: no overarching caliph or pope equivalent exists — no single power source with whom to negotiate. Instead, Islam is remarkably decentralised. So, how extraordinary that Israel and the West have managed to unite this headless, diverse, dispersed grouping without any institutional framework, around just one issue — anger at the treatment of the Palestinians.
Otherwise dispersed groups of Muslims do seem to feel for one another in a way that Christians and others do not.
In this respect, the international Islamic community is like a body: kick it in the leg and the rest of the body feels it. Kick it hard enough and the entire body will be energised to defend itself. Pictures of distraught Gazan mothers beside the mutilated bodies of their children are circulating right now among Muslim communities worldwide. It is pictures like these that make them want to do something.
Consider Malaysia. Every citizen of this outpost of Islam has printed in his or her passport that the passport is not valid for Israel. And given that Malaysians are not allowed to hold dual citizenship, this essentially means that every Malaysian citizen, including the 40% who are not Muslims, are banned from visiting Israel.
"When will Malaysia recognise Israel?" I once asked the then finance minister. "Once Israel treats the Palestinians better," was his reply. How would he determine that? "When the Palestinians tell us," he said. It is not Israel's right to exist that is at issue.
The enmity many Muslims now feel for Israel has nothing to do with religion. The historical persecutors of the Jews have been Christians — their punishment for the death of Jesus. Jews and Muslims have lived in peace for hundreds of years in many parts of the Islamic world. When Catholic Spain and Portugal expelled its Jews, the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul invited them in. It is the Palestinian issue that has ruined all this.
Of course, today Israel must defend itself. If the residents of Bendigo started firing rockets into Melbourne you would expect Melbourne to retaliate. But what must Melbourne have done to Bendigo to make them do such a thing? Constantly slapping an opponent in the face, kicking it down to its knees, and watching it struggle in the dirt will not teach the opponent to love or respect you. It teaches only hatred.
Persecuting people does not weaken them. Israel should know that. The Jews have been persecuted for centuries. It didn't destroy them but gave them the impetus to survive.
One characteristic that is common among persecuted groups is a strong investment in education — when people's physical wealth is in danger of destruction from war and persecution one store of wealth that stays with individuals even when they must flee as refugees is education. It explains why such groups often insist on their own schools — education is too important to be entrusted to others.
Hamas did not enjoy the support of all the people of Gaza. It does now. Why does Israel keep getting it wrong?
Trekking in Nepal is fashionable among young Israelis. So much so that many shops in Kathmandu and Pokhara have signs in Hebrew. But once you get on the trekking circuit and speak with local Nepalese guides and guesthouse operators you soon discover how disliked the Israelis are. Many guesthouses in this poor country will even tell Israeli trekking groups that they are full rather than accept them. This has nothing to do with religion or politics: Nepalese people are some of the warmest, most hospitable in the world. Rather, they say that the young Israelis are rude, arrogant, and argue over trifling amounts of money even though they clearly have means.
Israel needs to change. The Parsees of India might provide a model. The Parsees are a very tiny, very rich ethnic and religious minority. They own perhaps most of the land in central Mumbai as well as the country's largest conglomerate. And yet ordinary Indians admire and respect them. Violence against them is unthinkable.
How have they achieved this? They are not flashy or arrogant. Their overriding characteristic is a deep interest in the welfare of others. They have established hospitals, libraries, schools, museums and many other institutions and, most importantly, not for the Parsee community exclusively but for everyone. So the Parsees have peace and the Israelis do not.
And more from Crikey on 23 January 2009 on the Michael Backman article above:
Luke Hughs writes: Re. "How does The Age publish a column 'in error'? Here's how" (yesterday, item 6) Interesting to note that the introduction to Age columnist Michael Backman's own website makes the noble claim that "truth belongs to the people; not to governments. And there is only one way to write the truth." And yet Backman has in the last 24 hours removed all active links to his offending article about Israel and the Jewish people, as well as his own contact details.
Does Backman not have the courage of his own well-advertised convictions? And, curious too, that the mysterious Wikipedia contributor "Migchin" seems to have created the laudatory Backman Wikipedia page, and is religious (so to speak) about amending others' contributions. It seems Migchin is an active editor/contributor to only one Wikipedia page -- Backman's.
Alan Kennedy writes:
In all her pieces on Michael Backman's column in the Age, a column the thought police have now eradicated from our cyber memory banks, Margaret Simons proceeds from the position that the column should not have run. Her proposition is that inexperienced people allowed it to run and they should have censored it.
Now, if you don't accept that central proposition you see the matter in a different light. I, unlike many, have read the column and apart from some clumsiness about Israeli backpackers, which he never fully explained -- although on her blog Margaret Simons was able to provide a possible source for his views -- it was a well constructed column.
It was not anti-semitic and all the anti-semitic constrictions placed on it by the Jewish lobby in Australia and cheered on by The Australian are in their heads only. The controversy here is that it is controversial that the column ran. It was just part of the tapestry in this big issue.
The controversy is that The Age felt pressured to apologise and that it pulled the column from its archives. Backman's own website which contained the column was cyber attacked and he had had to pull the column down. This is the obscenity in all this.
24 JANUARY 2009
After seeing the above pictures, I am not sure why anyone should feel the need to apologise to the Melbourne or any other so-called Jewish community - and by the way, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) and the Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV) do NOT speak for all Jews and have no right to claim that they do!
Having said that, the two items below need to be responded to and I will do so by writing my own open letter about the whole issue.
The two items below, an article in The Age newspaper on 24 January 2009 and Michael Backman's letter in the same paper on the same day are both ridiculous.
Writer apologises for 'any hurt' to Jewish community
Jewel Topsfield
January 24, 2009
COLUMNIST Michael Backman has apologised to the Jewish community for a controversial opinion piece that blamed Israel's treatment of the Palestinians for the Bali and London bombings and the World Trade Centre attacks.
But Backman, a London-based business writer, denied he was anti-Semitic and said he believed Israel had the "absolute right to exist".
His column, which appeared in last Saturday's Age, made claims about Israeli travellers and, separately, suggested ways in which Israel needed to change.
The Jewish community responded furiously, saying the column was anti-Semitic, racist, malicious and wrong.
In a letter to The Age, Jewish Community Council of Victoria president John Searle and Zionist Council of Victoria president Danny Lamm said such commentary incited violence and hatred against Jews.
The Age apologised on Tuesday for the distress the column caused many readers, saying it was published in error and the newspaper did not endorse the views of the columnist.
In a letter to Mr Searle and Dr Lamm, Backman apologised for "any hurt and distress" caused and said he now saw that some of the "forms of words used" did not adequately explain what he intended to say.
Backman said he had a deep interest in, and respect for, Jewish culture, to the point where he named his son Shimon after Israeli President Shimon Peres.
"The accusation of anti-Semitism is itself hurtful and offensive," Mr Backman said.
Mr Searle said he had trouble accepting that Backman was incapable of choosing the words to portray what he wanted to say after many years as a writer.
Dr Lamm said he was not satisfied with Backman's apology, which did not address the problems the column had created.
"The content of his argument, blaming Israel for everything in the world, has not been withdrawn," he said.
The Age's editor-in-chief, Paul Ramadge, said the newspaper recognised immediately that the publication of the column was an error and it responded appropriately by running the apology.
"It has been suggested that, because it published such a column, The Age is itself anti-Semitic," Ramadge said. "This is a false charge. This newspaper has a long and proud history of reporting on Israel and the Middle East with fairness, sensitivity and an awareness of the complexities of the issues."
I'm no anti-Semite: Michael Backman
I AM writing about my column published in last Saturday's Age (BusinessDay 17/1) which has caused much consternation among members of the Jewish community. My main interest in writing the column was to demonstrate how Israel's military action in Gaza was playing out in Muslim communities, particularly in Asia. I can now see that some of the forms of words used did not adequately explain what I intended to say. Most particularly, they have allowed some to read into the column sentiments that I did not intend and which I do not believe.
I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for any hurt and distress that this has caused. I would also like to counter one accusation against me: that I am anti-Semitic. The reality is very different.
I believe that Israel has the absolute right to exist and that that the Jewish diaspora is one of the world's great and most talented diasporas. At a personal level, I have a deep interest in and respect for Jewish culture to the point where I named my son Shimon after Shimon Peres. The accusation of anti-Semitism is hurtful and offensive.
As with many of my columns, I fully expected some to disagree with the thrusts of my arguments, even if they had been expressed more clearly, but the threats and personal abuse that I have received — some of which have been expressed in terms of indescribable filth — have been shocking and unprecedented.
My writing style is robust and I like to take a stand. I fully expect people to disagree with me. I feel that this sort of debate is healthy in any Western democracy, and in co-operation with The Age, the column has in the past generated many interesting debates and discussions.
On this occasion, I do understand that an injudicious use of words and themes has caused upset in the Jewish community and for that I can only apologise.
Michael Backman, London
OPEN LETTER TO MICHAEL BACKMAN, THE AGE, AND JEWISH ORGANISATIONS IN AUSTRALIA
The first part of this letter is in response to Michael Backman's letter of apology in The Age newspaper.
There is absolutely no reason why you should not have written what you did in your article. Views expressed there were very much what many of us Jews around the world think about the Israel-Palestine situation, but many of us, including myself, do not have forums for our views, because papers such as The Age and the Australian Jewish News (aka the Israeli zionist Times) refuse to publish what we write. Fortunately, until such time as the federal government sees fit to try and censor the web (and it is trying very hard at the moment, and will only succeed in making a bigger fool of itself than it already has!!) we are able to put our views into public arenas such as our web pages and blogs, and our views will reach an audience, even if a somewhat limited one.
The fact that we think as we do does not make us anti-semitic, nor does it make us self-hating Jews, as so many of the zionist lobby and their friends like to call us. If anything they are self-haters who are in effect in a closet of non-admission about the failings of the Israeli state. We do not live in denial about our Jewish families, parentage and ancestry and we are not ashamed of our families and friends. In my own family there were zionists of many persuasions who all believed that it was necessary for the Jews to have their own homeland so that they would no longer be persecuted.
Anti-semitism abounds everywhere, together with all sorts of other hates of other groups, and I belong to two of them, the Jewish group and the gay group, and both of them are still persecuted, discriminated against, bashed and murdered in whichever countries they happen to be living . However, you will note with interest that thousands of Jews are still living in Australia and not packing up their bags to go and live in the Jewish state of Israel, and you have to ask yourself why.
Now, Michael, let's take one of your early statements which suggests that you have upset members of the Jewish community because of the way you worded your first statements about Israel, Gaza and Muslim communities. What you said was correct and was in no way offensive or inaccurate. The people who think otherwise are those who think they have a right to speak as one voice for the Australian Jewish communities. Well, they don't have that right and we don't speak with one voice. So, an unnecessary apology.
The next accusation of your being an anti-semite is just the typical smear used by the zionists when they object to Israel being exposed for what it is - a rogue state like many others around us in the world. There is nothing in your article to suggest that you are anti-semitic, and it is objectionable of them to even have suggested it. However, before you decided to call your son Shimon after Peres, you should perhaps have read more widely on Peres and his part in the Israel of today. Perhaps Chomsky, Finkelstein, Rose, Loewenstein and others would have enlightened you about the people who have been involved with government in Israel for the last 60 years. You may then have decided on another name, unless you just happened to have liked that one.
Of course there will be people who take exception to the thrust of some of your arguments, which is what one would expect in a so-called free and open society in which we supposedly live. However, there will always be those who are unable to argue their points and resort to death threats, filth, abuse and other nasty behaviours. It is certainly very difficult to live with such unpleasantness because of one's views, and I trust that if you have had some serious threats that you have informed the police, either in Australia or the UK or both.
Ultimately the truth will prevail, but in the case of Israel and Palestine it is taking even longer, perhaps, tha it did in South Africa, the country in which I lived for 50 years. Apartheid there came to an end of sorts in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela, but apartheid in Israel-Palestine continues unabated and the world sits on its hands and supports Israel while mouthing platitudes about the "situation in the middle east!".
Robust debate is necessary, words do not kill, your words and themes were not injudicious, and you certainly do not need to apologise. It is they who should do the apologising for their disgraceful and unpardonable behavior. I hope you will not be deterred by this epsiode and will continue to write on this topic which so urgently needs attention from the world's leaders to help close another chapter in the behaviour of what should be democratic countries but in which some of the basic skills of democracy are sadly absent.
Now we come to The Age and its subservience to the JCCV and the ZCV who assume they speak for all Jews in Victoria and possibly all Jews in Australia. The Age newspaper has been on a slippery slope for some time editorially speaking, ever since Michael Gawenda sat in the chair, and this latest episode is as disgraceful as any other of their recent past behaviours in relation to events here and around the world.
As an inveterate letter-writer to newspapers -something I have been doing for the last 60 years - I always hope that my letters will be published. However, a search through the letters archives at The Age will reveal very few of my letters. Thank goodness for my web pages and my blog - I get to express my views, and they get printed without being censored, or not printed at all!
Jewel Topsfield of The Age reports that "The Jewish community responded furiously, saying the column was anti-Semitic, racist, malicious and wrong.
In a letter to The Age, Jewish Community Council of Victoria president John Searle and Zionist Council of Victoria president Danny Lamm said such commentary incited violence and hatred against Jews.
Just notice the tone of the statement - "-----such commentary incited violence and hatred against Jews". Since when has there NOT been violence and hatred against Jews. Certainly in the South Africa in which I grew up from 1926 till 1978, and despite the fact that Israel and South Africa worked together to develop a nuclear device, something which Israel still strenuously denies, anti-semitism was rife and continues to this day in both black and white communities. In the 30 years I have lived in Australia I have been involved with anti-semitic behaviour which has had NOTHING whatever to do with Israel and its actions in the middle east. So what is different?
Also, strangely enough, despite the fact of Israel's existence, South Africa and Australia continue to house over 100,000 Jews in each country. If the anti-semitism was so dangerous to the lives of the Jews in these countries, why do they continue to live there, when Israel is open to all Jews at all times?
John Searle and Danny Lamm and others have apparently contemplated suing The Age for publishing Backman's article. They have already made fools of themselves with their intemperate explosions. How much worse if they actually decided on legal action! And, too, Searle and Lamm continue to live in Melbourne, do they not?
Topfield's article concludes with these statements from The Age's editor-in-chief, Paul Ramadge, who said "the newspaper recognised immediately that the publication of the column was an error and it responded appropriately by running the apology.
"It has been suggested that, because it published such a column, The Age is itself anti-Semitic," Ramadge said. "This is a false charge. This newspaper has a long and proud history of reporting on Israel and the Middle East with fairness, sensitivity and an awareness of the complexities of the issues."
How pathetic - The Age has SELDOM in recent years reported on the middle east with fairness - their bias has ALWAYS been in favour of Israel, and the Palestinians are ALWAYS shown in the worst possible light. Fairness? Not in my life time!!
