In 2021, Australian journalist John Lyons published Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment. It examined the pro-Israel lobby in Australia which I have described as the most powerful foreign influence operation in our country. Lyons quoted Chris Mitchell, the long time editor of The Australian, saying that the Israel lobby became more right-wing after the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.
Yet the lobby is moving further to the right. The recent Federal election confirms it. As a result a key message for the new prime minister and foreign minister is that no matter what concessions Labor gives the lobby it will always in the end support the coalition. Always.
There’s a reason for this. The lobby is accommodating new right-wing voices, specifically the Australian Jewish Association which stakes out conservative positions on social issues as well as the hardest of hard lines in support of ultra-nationalism in Israeli politics. During the election, under pressure to accommodate its hardliners, the lobby kept up an aggrieved and agitated anti-Albanese message. This is a reminder of things to come as the lobby runs a campaign to deter the new Labor government from implementing a policy adopted three times, without opposition, at national ALP conferences, and in 2021 enshrined in the platform: recognition of Palestine.
To make her status clear the Australian Jewish News on October 15 endorsed Sharri Markson as its kind of journalist. In a profile (a newspaper profiling a journalist- unusual) she was quoted saying that since 2018, both The Australian and Sky had given her a platform on which to support Israel. The article reported:
“Sentiment in the left-wing media to attack Israel is deeply upsetting and it makes me really, really angry- absolutely furious,” she said. “I’m really worried that if the Labor party gets in in the next federal election there won’t be the same support for Israel that we have seen under the coalition government,” she added.
For its part the Jewish News was to boldly state its preference for the Coalition only days before the election, quoting the Executive Council of Australian Jewry that “…we are still concerned at the prospect than an ALP government would unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state, withdraw Australia’s recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and revert to a voting pattern at the UN that is less sympathetic to Israel under the current government.”
Read the article by Bob Carr on Pearls and Irritations.