Two weeks ago, Mike Carlton, a regular columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald,
spent his words on the situation in Gaza. It is hardly surprising: everyone who
is anyone is writing about it. Not an hour goes by without my inbox spewing
another piece by someone wishing to share their wisdom, experience, insights
and knowledge about ‘the situation’. (To pre-empt anxiety, rest assured, I have
nothing to add to the mountains of words, deluge of tears and rows of coffins.)
Carlton’s piece was, unsurprisingly, very critical of
Israel and IDF actions in Gaza. It was titled “Israel’s rank and rotten fruit
is being called fascism.” Much of it was selective analysis, some of it was
misguided and other bits were unabashedly inaccurate: “Call it genocide, call
it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs.” None of it was new. As a true
liberal, I would even rise to his defense to write his personal, one-sided,
view as columnist. However, I confess that even my liberal views were tested
when he dished out the holocaust chestnut: “It is a breathtaking irony,” he
writes, “that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud
liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and
the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.”
Carlton’s piece was, unsurprisingly, very critical of
Israel and IDF actions in Gaza. It was titled “Israel’s rank and rotten fruit
is being called fascism.” Much of it was selective analysis, some of it was
misguided and other bits were unabashedly inaccurate: “Call it genocide, call
it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs.” None of it was new. As a true
liberal, I would even rise to his defense to write his personal, one-sided,
view as columnist. However, I confess that even my liberal views were tested
when he dished out the holocaust chestnut: “It is a breathtaking irony,” he
writes, “that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud
liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and
the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.”
Now, if Mike Carlton wishes to throw himself on the side of those who equate
Israel with Nazism, it is his calling as a fair handed journalist he betrays.
He is allowed to think what he likes of Israel. He is allowed to misread
history in the comfort of his armchair, if misreading history is his bag. I
would even venture to say he is allowed to indulge himself the perverse
satisfaction that comes with saying the unsayable, in this instance accusing a
people who have suffered a terrible calamity of now being the instigators of it
themselves.
However, it was the accompanying
illustration by cartoonist Glen Le Lievre which tipped the balance, and me off
my chair. The drawing wasn’t the usual conflation between Israel and Judaism;
it was pure, unadulterated antisemitic bile. The cartoon depicts a man sitting
in a chair, pressing a remote control to detonate a collection of buildings.
The man has a hook nose, is wearing a large kippah on his head and there’s a
Magen David drawn on the back of his chair.It was truly Der Stürmer stuff.
The Jewish community went ballistic. The
fury was tangible. The weekly Australian
Jewish News devoted its front page to an opinion piece excoriating
the Sydney Morning
Herald. Carlton remained unfazed. He described the uproar as
“febrile froth from the Likud lobby”.
It was only yesterday, 10 days after the
column and cartoon first appeared, that the paper finally responded to the
outrage. In its own editorial, the newspaper firstly ‘clarified’ that Le Lievre
routinely depicts large noses and pronounced facial features. Further, “the
cartoon had its genesis in news photographs of men seated in chairs and
lounges, observing the shelling of Gaza from the hills of Sderot”.
Antisemitism, we learn, is like a fetish; it can be ignited and driven by any
visual object. Toward the end of the op-ed, finally, there was an apology: “It
was wrong to publish the cartoon in its original form” it read. “We apologise
unreservedly for this lapse, and the anguish and distress that has been
caused.”
But this was not all – or the end of this
saga.
Carlton received a barrage of emails from
readers in response to his column. According to him their number was in the
vicinity of 700 – of which 85% were supportive. It was the other 15% which
irked him. And so he responded.
I have seen copies of some of the emails
readers sent him and have also been forwarded the replies they received from
Carlton himself. Carlton’s replies were truly revolting: abusive and nasty;
offensive and personal. They included expletives and invectives which, for
reasons of decorum, I will not quote here. If you do your own diligence, you
will find them on line. The more printable of his comments include epithets
such as: ‘Jewish bigot’, ‘pissant’, ‘turds’ and ‘demented Likudnik racists’.
This morning, Darren Goodsir,
editor-in-chief of the paper, issued an apology to readers who had received
offensive messages from Carlton. This only happened, it should be mentioned, as
a result of The
Australian, the Murdoch-owned rival paper, splashing Carlton’s
barrage of invectives on its front page. Goodsir also had the good sense to
tell Carlton that he expected him to apologise to the readers he had offended.
“I have asked Mike to apologise for these actions. Mike regrets his behaviour
and will be contacting affected readers to apologise.” All good, except that
Carlton wasn’t aware of his contrition. When told to apologise, today, he
promptly resigned from the Sydney
Morning Herald. He later tweeted: “After a fortnight of being
called Nazi, Jew-hating slime, I told a few people to f*** off. We do that in
this country occasionally.”
Journalists come, journalists go.
Sometimes they find other platforms; sometimes they disappear from public view.
Mike Carlton writes a good column and often sounds the clarion call on
important social and political issues. He is allowed to have his views about
Israel – or anything he wishes – and he can keep them too. He is entitled to
write about abuses in Gaza and share his sympathies with the people of Gaza.
There are Israeli writers who do it too. But if he finds a new place to pen his
thoughts, I hope he reconsiders how to interact with his readers in a dignified
and reasonable manner – especially those who disagree with him – and not resort
to the uncouth and vile (not to mention slanderous) language he has used. I
hope, too, that Carlton will choose to spend time thinking of and writing about
other social injustices, elsewhere. For instance, he can write about mass
executions, torture and child soldiers in Iraq where more than 5,000 have died
in gruesome and violent ways. There is no shortage of gruelling stories from
Syria where the death toll had surpassed 120,000. In Uganda children are
routinely harassed, threatened, beaten, sexually abused and killed with
impunity as the government looks on. He might like to write a column about
Iran’s war against women; a country which holds the title of the world’s
highest rate of execution of women by stoning. We have not mentioned China,
Somalia or North Korea. He has his work cut out for him.
3 comments:
Oh my,
I would like to see the reaction of Carlton and his "followers" if Sydney was attacked by thousands of missiles ...
I consider myself to be liberal, but liberalism has to have it's limits and Carlton clearly crossed that line.
Mike from Germany
Great writing. Refreshing to read your works Ori, or is it still Mr Golan? Best regards from your most avid and appreciative student of class 2012.
IP
Thank you for this clear and informative column. These are very sad and tragic times and the likes of Mike Carlton would do well to remember that he does not have the fear of missiles raining down on him and threatening his daily life. If he did, how would he react and where would his sympathies lie?
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