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ANTONY CONFUSED
A press release from the office of Labor MP Michael Danby:
Michael Danby, Federal Member for Melbourne Ports, has condemned anti-Israel polemicist Antony Loewenstein for his attempt to explain the recent anti-Semitic attacks in Melbourne by blaming them on Israel.
Following the anti-Semitic attack on Menachem Vorchheimer in Melbourne last week, Mr Loewenstein was interviewed by the Geelong Advertiser, and suggested that the attack was caused by Israeli actions. “My feeling is that Israeli actions in Israel and Palestine and more recently Lebanon are clearly related to a rise in anti-Semitic attacks,” he said.
“It’s no surprise that Mr Loewenstein, who has made a career of attacking Israel and the Australian Jewish community, should now be found blaming Israel for the actions of anti-Semitic yobbos such as those who attacked Mr Vorchheimer,” Michael Danby said. “This fits in with a pattern of Mr Loewenstein’s behaviour which includes saying about the comedian Sandy Guttman (Austen Tayshus), he said at his website: ‘Jews are often their own worst enemies. It might help if Tayshus didn’t look so much like those awful caricatures we know from the 1930s!’”
“What can we expect from the author of a book which has been praised by the anti-Semites of the Australian League of Rights? It is disgusting that someone who says he is proud to be a Jew should seek to use this attack to further his ideological campaign against Israel.
“The fact is that the people who attacked Mr Vorchheimer did not make any reference to Israel or the Palestinians. They said ‘Go the Nazis’ and made shooting gestures at Mr Vorchheimer and his children. In other words they were straight-out anti-Semites, not people outraged by Israeli actions.”
In his Geelong Advertiser interview, Mr Loewenstein denies that there has been a rise in anti-Semitic attacks. “For the Jewish community to say there’s a wave of anti-Semitism occurring is nonsense, it’s just not true,” Mr Loewenstein said.
Michael Danby pointed out that ECAJ’s figures show a clear rise in anti-Semitic attacks and abuse in Victoria this year.
“There have been five reported attacks on Jews in Caulfield alone this year. In March a 17-year-old boy was beaten up by four men who shouted ‘Fuck off Jews’ and gave Nazi salutes,” Danby said. “I would ask his publisher and chief apologist, Louise Adler of Melbourne University Press, whether she agrees with these comments, and what she will do to rein in Loewenstein’s excuses for violent attacks on Jews.
“One minute Mr Loewenstein says there is no rise in these attacks, which is untrue, and in the next breath he says that there is a rise in attacks, but that this is due to Israel’s actions – which is also untrue,” Danby said. “Mr Loewenstein should make up his mind. He should also stop trying to drag his campaign of denigration against Israel into every issue that comes along. He should join the rest of the Jewish community, and indeed all decent Australians, in condemning anti-Semitism.”
Meanwhile, Loewenstein recently faced a Jew-hating heckler in Adelaide. I blame Loewenstein.
UPDATE. An article by Danby from last week’s Jewish News.
Further from Michael Danby, continued from above:
Since his book came out, becoming a hero of the anti-Israel commentariat seems to have gone to Mr Loewenstein’s head. Despite being lionised at writers’ festivals around the county, he still complains that the “Zionist lobby” is working to silence him. His attacks on Israel are growing more strident. In Brisbane, debating Phillip Mendes, he said: “Israel’s behaviour in theWest BankandGazaare the tactics of a rogue, terror state. Enough with the Holocaust, alleged Palestinian ‘terror’ and victimhood. Take some responsibility for the parlous State of Israel in the international community. For all of us who want a safer Middle East, today’s Israelis are currently the problem, not the cure.”
In August I was given a chance to confront Mr Loewenstein face-to-face on ABC Radio, and I must thank the Jon Faine program for setting up this debate, which was ably moderated byGerard Whately and Gideon Haigh. The debate was conducted in a civil manner, but I made a point of taking Mr Loewenstein to task over a comment of his which I considered particularly offensive. Speaking of the comedian Sandy Guttman (AustenTayshus), he said at his website: “Jews are often their own worst enemies. It might help if Tayshus didn’t look so much like those awful caricatures we know from the 1930s!” So Mr Guttman is to be criticised because he looks too Jewish for Mr Loewenstein’s sensibilities!
Mr Loewenstein is, of course, entitled to his views – ignorant, offensive and superficial though they are – but I don’t apologise for my decision to launch a “pre-emptive strike” against his book last year. Nor do I resile from my view that a person who thinks that a Jewish state is “a fundamentally undemocratic and colonialist idea from a bygone era,” and that the Australian Jewish community is “vitriolic, bigoted, racist and downright pathetic” was not a suitable person to be commissioned by a major publisher to write a book about our community and its attitudes towards Israel.
This is not MUP’s first excursion into anti-Israel polemic under Louise Adler’s direction. In 2005 she published Jacqueline Rose’s The Question of Zion, a tract so blatantly anti-Israel that even a self-professed anti-Zionist reviewer, Simon Louvish in The Independent, called it a work of “overriding shallowness” which showed “a lack of basic understanding” and “over-reliance on certain dissident Israeli historians, and avoidance of others.”MsAdler is, of course, free to publish as many bad books as she likes, but why do they all have to be anti-Israel bad books? Why does she lend the prestige of the MUP imprint to a one-sided rehashing of all the usual anti-Israel propaganda?
I am reminded of another literary lioness, Dame Leonie Kramer, a few years ago, lending her authority to the fraudster Helen Darville-Demidenko and her bogus-Ukrainian anti-Semitic novel The Hand that Signed the Paper. At least Dame Leonie can claim she was conned. Ms Adler has no such defence.
From Ant’s Adelaide talk:
He was also critical of the media in Australia for not providing an Arab voice.
Ant should be happy now - the media publicised the Sheikh’s words.
Posted by manbag's bagman on 2006 10 26 at 01:09 AM • permalinkGee willikers, for someone who is being silenced and repressed, M Loewenstein sure gets a lot of airtime/column inches/bandwidth.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 10 26 at 01:12 AM • permalinkThe Ant is in this for the attention. He’s a narcistic media whore, selling civilization short so that he can preen in front of cameras and admiring crowds, and keep his ego inflated for a few more days. God knows he lacks the intelligence and ability to do much more than that, since he can’t write worth a damn.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 10 26 at 01:30 AM • permalinkMr Loewenstein in town to talk about his controversial book My Israel Question - which tackles Israel’s occupation of Palestine - was harangued by a man who said the gassing of Jews during World War II never happened.
The 50-strong audience at the Rendevous Allegra Hotel shouted the man down.
In his speech Mr Loewenstein told the audience that Israel would cease to exist unless it develop stronger ties to the Arab world.
He was also critical of the media in Australia for not providing an Arab voice.
Ants obviously has the ABC and SBS blocked, along with the various ethnic radio stations, and hasn’t spotted any of the awful Arabic rags flogged in western Sydney.
Even the MSM is vaguely pro-Arab, with the two bucketheads on channel 7’s Sunrise acting as apologists for el Hillbilly’s moronic misogyny, beating even Keyter to the ol’ "quoted out of context"line.
What particularly tickled me was the fact that Ants could only muster 50 dingbats for his tiresome tirade, and one of those was David Irving.
What a maroon.
Attn. Tim B.
Andrea doesn’t like it when people submit long quotes from other sources. (And you don’t want to be in her bad books!)Posted by andycanuck on 2006 10 26 at 02:24 AM • permalinkAnt should not be surprised that he was set upon by a holocaust denier which is after all the home of the Adelaide institude run by Fred Tobin a freind of Mel Gibson’s dad. Seems he meust have summoned up a following before he was closed down by the authorities.
The incident is the fifth physical assault on a Victorian Jew this year. More than 140 incidents - a national record - were reported in July, at the height of Israel’s war with Hezbollah. There has never been a conviction for an antisemitic incident in Victoria. -from the AJN#7 Too right Andyc
Somebody needs to teach this troll a lesson.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 10 26 at 06:08 AM • permalinkThe Ant is in this for the attention. He’s a narcistic media whore, selling civilization short so that he can preen in front of cameras and admiring crowds, and keep his ego inflated for a few more days.
I think it’s more than that. He’s trying to become a new version of Chompsky. He can acquire a professorship position in some American university, write leftwing books, and go on the moonbat lecture circuit.
Price of admission: selling out your people and selling your soul. But what does he care.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 26 at 06:27 AM • permalinkIn his speech Mr Loewenstein told the audience that Israel would
cease to exist unless it develop stronger ties to the Arab world.I don’t get it. Why in G-d’s name would anyone believe this crap??? The Arab world, IN CASE the ANT HASN’T BEEN LISTENING, is determined to wipe Israel off the map. ‘Developing stronger ties’ infers a 2-way street of communication & I don’t recall anyone in the Arab world expressing such a notion.
Have I missed something, or is he dumber than I am?
#18, Auntie KC:
Ma’am, you are making a rather common mistake. That mistake is to even attempt to apply any form of rational view or competency to anything that comes from the minds or mouths of lefties.
Concepts such as actual cause and effect have no place in their mindset.
When attempting to interpret what they are trying to say, just imagine yourself in a dream world where everything is subject to your personal whim and fancy.
It is only when all possible rules, restraints and groundings in reality are removed that they begin to make any sort of sense. Even then it tends to be a bit “iffy”.
The incompetent Luvviestein’s reflex action in attributing any rise in attacks on Jews to the most recent Arab-related incident [ie The Attacks on Jews from Hezbollah and Hamas]
is exactly parallel to the false linkages made between the war in Iraq and Islamist terrorist attacks and threats.
The motive in both cases is sinister and cynically political - suggesting even a relish in these increases..Attacks on Jews in France and England have been strongly increasing since at least 2000 -countries with quite different political records.
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By Michael Danby:
In July last year I learned that Louise Adler, publisher of Melbourne University Press, had commissioned Antony Loewenstein, a little-known online journalist who has his own far-left blog, to write a book about the Australian Jewish community and its attitudes to Israel.Mr Loewenstein sent me a questionnaire asking my views on various subjects. After making some inquiries about him and reading the extreme anti-Israel views at his website, I decided not to participate in this project, knowing that my participation would give it a credibility it didn’t deserve. I wrote to the Jewish News urging readers to have nothing to do withMrLoewenstein’s book.
Ever since, Mr Loewenstein has painted himself as a heroic dissident being persecuted by the “Jewish establishment” for daring to criticise Israel and the Jewish community. It is sometimes perfectly obvious what is going to be in a book before it is published. If a leading publisher commissioned Pauline Hanson to write a book about multiculturalism, or Fred Nile about the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, no doubt all the commentators at the ABC and The Age would have plenty to say, because it would be obvious what such books would be like.
The fact is that I and many other people knew Mr Loewenstein’s views on Israel and on Australian Jews long before his book appeared. This is the point that Mr Rodgers and his ilk persistently fail to acknowledge so they can misrepresent criticism of Mr Loewenstein. After all, he stated them openly at his own website a year ago, where he called Israel “fundamentally undemocratic and colonialist” and “a terror state”, and described the Australian Jewish community as “vitriolic, bigoted, racist and downright pathetic.” He also said that “so-called Western ‘values’ deserve to be challenged and overthrown.” I give Mr Loewenstein credit for honesty – he stated his views quite openly, so everyone knew what would be in his book long before it appeared.
Of course, when the book appeared, my anticipation about its contents was proved to be correct. The book is shallow, predictable, trite and obvious, as well as riddled with factual errors. This was not my view alone. Dr Philip Mendes of Monash University, author of Jews and Australian Politics (and himself a frequent, but fair, critic of Israeli policies), said: “The majority of the text [of Mr Loewenstein’s book] is overwhelmingly simplistic and one-sided. This could have been a serious and objective examination of the role of local lobby groups in influencing Australia’s Middle East policies. Unfortunately, that book still waits to be written.”
Dr Michael Fagenblat, of Monash University’s Centre for the Study of Jewish Civilisation, says: “There’s nothing new or interesting here and several things that seem patently false. These remarks seem completely one-sided; they overlook the complexity and manifold responsibility that has contributed to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
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