Orly Noy, a Mizrahi Jew, is currently visiting Australia as a guest of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDS), a fringe organisation that is renowned for supporting left-wing rhetoric and hell-bent on demeaning Israel .
In 2016 I invited Orly Noy, who describes herself as a self-hating Jew, to be interviewed on my radio program ‘The Israel Connexion’ to talk about an article she had written for the website +972 that has a reputation for its anti-Israel agenda. She gratefully accepted my invitation. I had prepared a script with the questions I was going to pose to her and I sent it to her so she could be aware of what was going to be discussed.
There was one question related to the article that she had written for +972 which was:
“I mentioned your article in my program last week in connection with remarks expressed by Professor Estie Galili, the Head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Hadassah, in which she mentioned that a vitally important issue we are facing is the impact the 400+ terror incidents in Israel have had on the psyche of the Israeli population, particularly children. There was also one comment that echoes Galili’s remarks in response to your article on +972:
“How Israelis have kept their sanity and decency while being under constant terrorist threat is beyond me.”
Have you fallen in line with the propagandists who are extrapolating from this incident involving the misguided soldier to damning the whole of Israeli society?
That question was all too much for Ms Noy who decided at the last minute to pull the plug on our interview:
“Thank you for sending me the questions, which clearly indicate a political line that is very far from my own. I wouldn’t mind that generally, but I really don’t see the point in participating in your show just to be accused of having been brainwashed by Palestinian propaganda. Given this mindset, I’m afraid there is very little room for something actually interesting to be said and therefore I prefer not to go on your show.”
This time round, notwithstanding that the AJDS was inviting the media to interview Orly Noy during her visit to Australia, I decided to avoid Ms Noy, who obviously doesn’t like to be challenged. With views like hers no doubt she would prefer to speak without facing any criticism which she definitely deserves.
However Jonathan Green, an ABC presenter of Jewish descent was happy to take the bait, and he invited Noy to be joined by Sarah Saleh, a Palestinian activist, in a combined interview where they discussed a so-called new way to forge a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by bringing Israel’s Arabs and Mizrahi Jews together.
Jonathan Green grabs every opportunity he can to do stuff critical of Israel and has his own program on ABC radio called Blueprint for Living, which is meant to be “a weekly rummage through the essential cultural ingredients—design, architecture, food, travel, fashion—for a good life. “ The number of times that he has managed to produce something that shows Israel in a bad light and extols the ‘virtues’ of Palestinian culture, only demonstrates a bias that is symptomatic of what our ABC has become infamous.
In the interview with Jonathan Green Ms Noy is damning Israel society for being racist and gets plenty of help from Sarah Saleh who really is in no position to be talking hypocritically about Israel’s internal affairs, while she wilfully ignores what is going on in corrupt, intolerant Palestinian society.
Orly Noy, who belongs to groups like the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition and Mizrahi-Palestinian Partnership, co-wrote another article in +972 this year in which she dismissed the idea in Israel of those espousing the notion of a “Jewish-Arab partnership”, claiming that is erasing the Palestinian struggle and lacking validity because it is stemming from the actions of Jewish-Ashkenazi men. (Why doesn’t she come right out and call them white supremacists?)
Orly Noy has suggested that the majority of Jewish Israelis vote for the right simply because they are racists trying to protect their privilege. In short, she thinks that Jewish Israelis are shitty people. By negating the honest efforts of Jewish Israelis attempting to forge relationships with Israeli Arabs and Palestinians she strengthens the argument that that the Palestinians fundamentally don’t want to establish normal relationships with Israeli Jews and have no real intention of ever living peacefully alongside Jewish Israelis.
Lyn Julius, the author of the book ‘Uprooted’ which tells the sad tale of about “how 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight” has written an article about Rachel Shabi, another Mizrahi Jew of Orly’s ilk. Like Ms Orly Shabi has used the discrimination and injustice suffered by Mizrahi Jews in Israel as an instrument to attack Zionism itself, declaring that Jews from Arab countries value their ‘Arab-Jewish’ identity which is being obliterated by Zionism.
In Orly’s case, her views that Mizrahi Jews are actually Arabs, or have more in common with them, are even shakier because Iranian Jews come from a non-Arab country and do not speak Arabic but Farsi.
Ms Noy has even written an article on +972 in which she expressed her preference for Iran over Israel where she now lives. One might ask why she hasn’t decided to pack her bags to go and live in Iran if she identifies more closely with that repressive regime.
Orly Noy, who is loaded with discredited post-Zionist Mizrahi polemics, should be avoided. She does nothing but inflame false notions of endemic anti-Mizrahi racism in Israel, aligning herself everywhere with forces intent on demonising Israel.
By David Schulberg (Jmedia campaigner)
P.S. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has lodged a complaint to the ABC over their interview with Orly Noy.