AUSTRALIA’S national broadcaster is running a “super agenda” against Israel – while fawning over Islamic terror groups, according to Jewish spokesman Dr Colin Rubenstein.
The head of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council said this week that the ABC was pushing an agenda that Israel “could do no right”.
- ABC rejects complaint after stacking Q&A panel with anti-Jewish radicals.
- Broadcaster accused of imbalance & bias both in its programming and complaints process.
- ABC adopting similar anti-Jewish narratives propagated by Australian universities.
Dr Rubenstein was speaking after the airing of an ABC Q&A program which stacked a panel with pro-Palestinian radicals – with only one Liberal Party MP to offer a balanced view. [see video below]
The Jewish Affairs Council lodged a complaint with the ABC claiming there had been “no pro-Israel Jewish voice” included.
REJECTED
The ABC subsequently rejected the complaint.
“This was a program that was advertised to discuss the Israel/Hamas conflict and the panel they came up with was four to one,” Dr Rubenstein told Sky News anchor Andrew Bolt.
“We felt this was a grossly imbalanced panel.”
Dr Rubenstein said the ABC held an anti-Israel “super critical agenda”.
“The ABC places all the fault and all responsibility for the ways of the Middle East on Israel and not the Palestinians, who seem to be innocent victims according to their narrative,” he said.
“The so-called experts on the ABC gave no pro-Israeli Jewish voice – it was left to Dave Sharma [a former ambassador to Israel] who did an admirable job, but it wasn’t his job to represent a pro-Israeli point of view.
DIVERSITY
“Our complaint was on the grounds that the ABC violated their own lofty code of practice which commits them to notions like impartiality, fairness, accuracy and a balance of diversity of views.
“We felt we were on winner there but we know how the process works and we half expected our complaint would be rejected, which it was.”
Dr Rubenstein said the reason given by the ABC was that they had “in fact, provided diversity of opinion”.
“This is clearly a nonsense and not only highlights the imbalance and bias there but also highlights the total inadequacy of the complaints procedure, which is basically an internal procedure.”
He said the ABC had adopted a narrative taught “perhaps in universities and imbibed in the media” that Israel is the eternal party at fault.
“Israel is seen as responsible for the failure of Palestinians to accept three serious offers of statehood alongside Israel…,” he said.
“And a failure to understand that their rejection of those genuine offers is because they’re not really interested in their own independent State alongside Israel – but a State instead of Israel.”PC
Ita was supposed to be the Prime Minister’s solution to fix the biased ABC mess.
She instead threw up her arms, said it was all too hard and took the money anyway.
Shame on you Ita. Kerry would be fuming at your new-found gutlessness.