Hi again. I commissioned my colleague and Webdiarist Antony Loewenstein to research and write a chapter on the Hanan Ashrawi controversy for my book. The campaign against Ashrawi was spearheaded by the Melbourne think tank AIJAC (the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council), led by Colin Rubenstein. According to Liberal Senator George Brandis, Rubenstein had also endorsed his speech to Parliament accusing the Greens of being Nazis. I wanted to raise this in my introduction to Antony’s chapter, so I emailed Rubenstein to ask whether Brandis’s statement was true. In the course of a long correspondence, Rubenstein not only pointedly failed to answer my question, but demanded a retraction of something I’d written in Webdiary. So here are all the emails on the matter.
And then, Webdiary’s Meeja Watch man Jack Robertson suggests Rubenstein have a word to a certain Herald columnist about the anti-semitism of Mel Gibson’s film The passion of Christ.
Webdiary entries on Hanan Ashrawi are The battle for minds; Ashrawi and Brandis: the great debate; Real Sydney people meet Hanan Ashrawi; Ashrawi leaves behind a fresh air debate on the Israel Palestine question; More than two sides to Ashrawi fallout story and Ways of thinking: Stuart Rees on the lessons of the Ashrawi ‘debate’.
Webdiary entries on the Brandis speech are Nazi Greens an enemy of democracy, government decrees; Teeth bared, Howard’s team mauls our latest outbreak of democracy; Howl of the despondent historian andGreen historian to Brandis: my work’s been abused;
Margo to Colin, January 12, 2004
Hi. I’m writing a book about democracy in Australia. A contributor to the book, Antony Loewenstein, has been in touch with you with respect to his chapter on the Ashrawi controversy, and I understand that you have exercised your right not to comment on that or any other matter.
My interest is specific, in relation to another chapter in the book, on the addresses to Parliament by Presidents Bush and Hu last October.
In the wash up of the visits, George Brandis stated that the Greens were the new Nazis. This comparison was repudiated by Jeremy Jones (president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry) but, in a conversation with me, and two days later, on Lateline, he stated that you had endorsed his speech. In our conversation, he said he had called you the day after the speech to run it by you and that you agreed with it without reservation. On Lateline, he said you had called him:
“I was contacted by a very large number of leaders of the Jewish community who told me that they fully supported what I had said, in particular the leader of the other peak Jewish community in this country, Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia Israel Council told me not only was he not critical of the speech but he supported it and he was pleased that it had been given.”
I ask:
1. Did you call him or did he call you?
2. Did you endorse the contents of his speech?
3. If you did endorse the speech, on what basis did you do so and in what capacity?
4. Was there any aspect of his speech that you disagreed with?
Regards,
Margo Kingston
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Colin to Margo, January 28
Your communication of Jan. 12 has drawn to my attention your weblog of November 6, 2003 in which you said, “To Rubenstein, it’s fine to call the Greens Nazis”. Prior to attributing such a view to me you should have checked with me whether it was accurate. You did not check this with me. It is not – and never has been – my view that the Greens can be called Nazis.
Accordingly, I would appreciate a retraction.
In my view, equating Greens and Nazis trivialises the horrors of Nazism which one should always avoid, a view I believe Senator Brandis shares. I note in passing that Senator Brandis has stated unequivocally that he “did not assert the Greens are Nazis”.
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Margo to Colin
Hi. As you will see from the text of Senator Brandis’ speech, he does equate the Greens to Nazies. For example:
“The commonalities between contemporary green politics and old-fashioned fascism and Nazism are chilling.”
And:
“It is time that somebody in this country blew the whistle on the Greens. The Greens are not the well-meaning oddballs we thought they were. The Greens are not the scruffy ratbags we thought they were. The Greens are a sinister force in this country inspired by sinister ideas, wrapped up in a natural mysticism – which is hostile and which sets its face against the very democratic values which this parliament represents and then cynically uses the procedures of this parliament in order to give itself political cover so that the sinister and fanatical views represented by Green politicians can grow and gain strength under the cover of democratic forms.
“As well – and I will not go too much further into this – we see other common features. We see the very clever use of propaganda. We see the absolute indifference to truth. We see the manipulation of bodgie science in order to maintain political conclusions. We see the hatred of industrialisation. We see the growth of occultism built around a single personality. We see a fundamentalist view of nature in which the integrity of the human person comes second to the whole of the natural system.
“My point is that the behaviour we saw from Senator Nettle and Senator Brown last Thursday was not just a publicity stunt. It was not just a random event. It was the very mechanical prosecution in this parliament of a profoundly antidemocratic ideology having deeply rooted antidemocratic antecedents. To hear Senator Brown – and no doubt Senator Nettle in a moment – stand up and seek to claim democratic cover for their actions and for their ideology should shock us. It should alert us to their game and it should send a message loud and clear to the Australian people – not just to the 90 percent of Australians who condemned their behaviour last Thursday but to 100 per cent of Australians – that this is the kind of crypto-fascist politics we do not want in this country.” (speech at Brandis)
When I said to Brandis that jews of my acquaintance had been distressed by his speech, he replied that the day after his speech and the furore which followed, he ran it by you and that you agreed with it:
“Brandis told me over coffee last week that after the furore over his speech he called Colin Rubenstein, who agreed with it. Brandis suggested on Lateline last Friday night that Rubenstein called him:
“I was contacted by a very large number of leaders of the Jewish community who told me that they fully supported what I had said, in particular the leader of the other peak Jewish community in this country, Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia Israel Council told me not only was he not critical of the speech but he supported it and he was pleased that it had been given.”
Could you advise if this is the case?
Regards,
Margo Kingston
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Colin to Margo, February 2
Dear Ms. Kingston,
Thank you for your response. My previous statement stands. Please advise me when I can expect your retraction of the statement in your weblog.
Yours,
Colin Rubenstein
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Margo to Colin, February 2
I assume, therefore, that you did approve his speech contents.
Regards,
Margo
PS: I see no need to make a retraction of Webdiary.
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Colin to Margo, February 17
Dear Ms. Kingston,
I have returned from overseas to find your email dated 2 February 2004, which I regard as mischievous.
My email to you dated 28 January 2004 sets out my position and your comment of Nov. 6 “To Rubenstein, it’s fine to call the Greens Nazis” is untrue and defamatory.
I once again request you either make a retraction of your webdiary or publish in its entirety my email to you of 28 January 2004.
Yours,
Colin Rubenstein
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Margo to Colin, February 17
Hi Colin. I’m hoping to be back at work next week, and will publish your emails when I do so. Re the book, I still do not have an answer to my question of whether you agreed with the contents of the Brandis speech, as claimed by him. In view of your failure to answer, I propose to record this in my book.
Regards,
Margo
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Colin to Margo, February 25
Dear Ms. Kingston
Thank you for your email of February 17. It would be false and incorrect to state in your book that I have not responded to your questions. I have provided my views in detail in my email of January 28 and suggest that should you wish to cover this issue in your book, your omission of my response would present an inaccurate and biased account to readers.
Yours
Colin Rubenstein
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Margo to Colin, February 25
OK, one last attempt. Was George Brandis correct in his statement that after his Greens and Nazis speech Mr Rubenstein contacted him to say he supported it and he was pleased it had been given.
Regards,
Margo
***
The following email was added to this Webdiary entry on April 27.
Colin to Margo, March 04, 2004
One more time. Your failure to want to comprehend my previous email leaves me with my initial impression that you are out to create mischief and misrepresent the truth. I reserve my rights.
Colin Rubenstein
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MEEJA WATCH
Drop Miranda a line, Colin
by Jack Robertson
If Colin Rubinstein is worried about apologists for anti-Semitism and wacky conspiracy theorists embedded among Fairfax journos, maybe he should drop Miranda Devine a line.
In this little one-year lesson in conservative religious hypocrisy, Miranda begins by ignoring her own Infallible Pope’s explicit pontifications on behalf of God and attacking those who oppose the Iraq war or question US foreign policy as ‘anti-Semitic’, having ‘blinkered amorality’ and ‘slip-sliding priorities’, and ‘undermining the war effort’. (Yes, give that nasty ‘neo-pacifist’ Pope a piece of your mind, Miranda!)
She ends by generously slip-sliding over and around and past Mel Gibson’s blinkered refusal to condemn his father’s ‘outrageous’ Holocaust denialism and disavowing that Gibson’s new film has a whiff of anti-Semitism to it (in the face of explicit protest from Jewish groups worldwide), before finally going on to proclaim her own Faith’s imperative lessons: to ‘end war’, ‘love your enemies’, and ‘pray for those who persecute you.’
Colin Rubinstein and supporters, I put it to you that we lefties at Webdiary aren’t an anti-Semitic threat. There’s plenty of genuine stuff out there – no arguments from me on that score. But the true danger is exported Saudi Arabian Wahhabism – an ugly distortion of Islam that was effectively underwritten for decades by the US oil industry. I’d also be keeping an eye on the more extreme elements of George W. Bush’s own home-grown Fundamentalist voting base if I were you – Christian zealots not entirely unlike one Hutton Gibson, say.
But then I’m a Green ‘Nazi’ myself, so what do I know about God.
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1. Pope says Iraq war threatens Humanity (24 March 2003)
Pope John Paul, in his first public comment on the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq, said on Saturday that the war threatens the whole of humanity, and that weapons could never solve mankind’s problems.
“When war, like the one now in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is even more urgent for us to proclaim, with a firm and decisive voice, that only peace is the way of building a more just and caring society,” he said. The Pope, in a speech to employees of Catholic television station Telepace, added: “Violence and weapons can never resolve the problems of man.”
The Pope led the Vatican in a diplomatic campaign to avert war, putting the Holy See on a collision course with Washington and its backers in the Iraq campaign.
Miranda knows best, though. Who does the Pope think he is – leader of the Catholic world?
2. The Joke is on the Pacifists (Miranda Devine, April 10, 2003:
Still, ridiculous though [Iraq Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf] is, he is a valuable metaphor for the sorts of “truths” we have been hearing about the war from a group of people you could call neo-pacifists. This is a tiny unelected cabal of influential left-wingers who have infiltrated the media, universities, newspapers’ letters pages, and Simon Crean’s brain. They all share a common hatred of John Howard and a sense of cultural superiority, more akin to the French than the Americans.
Before the first coalition soldier entered Iraq, these neo-pacs were most concerned about the influence of another cabal, the neo-conservatives of Washington DC, who had persuaded the Cowboy Moron in the White House to invade Iraq. With the help of sinister background music, ABC Four Corners’ Jonathan Holmes exposed their “hidden agenda”. They are “almost all Jews whose parents had emigrated from Eastern Europe”. Crikey!
In beautiful Iraqi Information Ministry style, Holmes later claimed those who pointed out the anti-Semitism embedded in his story were the “bigots”. As the Jerusalem Post pointed out last week, neo-conservative has become a code word for Jewish, just as neo-pacifist is a code word for delusional. Having uncovered the dastardly plot by Jews to take over the world, starting with Iraq, the neo-pacs moved on to more mundane matters, like undermining the coalition war effortThankfully, with their blinkered amorality and slip-sliding priorities, the neo-pacs are making themselves as irrelevant as al-Sahaf. Come to think of it, al-Sahaf deserves his own show on Radio National.”
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3. Holocaust exaggerated: Gibson dad (19 Feb 04)
A WEEK before the United States release of Mel Gibson’s controversial movie, the filmmaker’s father has repeated claims the Holocaust was exaggerated.
Hutton Gibson’s comments, made in a telephone interview with New York radio talk show host Steve Feuerstein, come at an awkward time for the actor-director who has been trying to deflect criticism from Jewish groups that his film might inflame anti-Semitic sentiment.
In his interview on WSNR radio’s Speak Your Piece, to be broadcast on Monday, Hutton Gibson argued that many European Jews counted as death camp victims of the Nazi regime had in fact fled to countries like Australia and the United States.
“It’s all – maybe not all fiction – but most of it is,” he said, adding that the gas chambers and crematoria at camps like Auschwitz would not have been capable of exterminating so many people. “Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it?” he said. “It takes a litre of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That’s why they lost the war.”
Gibson’s father caused a furore last year when he made similar remarks in a New York Times article. In a television interview with Diane Sawyer this week, Mel Gibson accused the Times of taking advantage of his father, and he warned Sawyer against broaching the subject again.
“He’s my father. Gotta leave it alone Diane. Gotta leave it alone,” Gibson said, while offering his own perspective on the Holocaust.
“Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenceless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do; absolutely,” he said. “It was an atrocity of monumental proportion.”
During his lengthy radio interview, Hutton Gibson, 85, said Jews were out to create “one world religion and one world government” and outlined a conspiracy theory involving Jewish bankers, the US Federal Reserve and the Vatican, among others.
The Passion, which gets its US release on February 25, purports to be a faithful and graphic account of Christ’s last 12 hours on earth. Jewish leaders who have attended advance screenings have voiced concerns that its portrayal of the Jews’ role in Christ’s execution could stir up anti-Semitic feeling.
Again, Miranda knows best, though. Who do all these ‘Jewish leaders’ think they are – leaders of the Jewish world?
4. Christians the most eager to cast stones (Miranda Devine, 26 February, 2004)
Inside the bathroom at the Academy Cinema in Paddington on Tuesday night, there was a most unusual silence as a long line of women waited to get into the cubicles. They had just watched a preview of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and seemed lost in their private thoughts. For long minutes in that bright, crowded room there was no sound but the whirring of a fan. It is one sign of the power of Gibson’s movie that, in such a noisy era, silence is the first response.
Of course, inside the theatre after the last credits rolled, critics chatted away about the biggest movie controversy of recent memory – the charge that Gibson’s portrayal of the last 12 tortured hours of Jesus Christ’s life was anti-Semitic.
It is a charge that began last year with a vicious article in The New York Times about Gibson’s devout Catholicism and his 85-year-old father Hutton, who keeps giving outrageous interviews saying the Holocaust was exaggerated and the September 11 terrorists were Americans. The controversy grew when a stolen draft of the script found its way to an interfaith committee of the United States Bishops Conference. Scholars and Jewish activists denounced Gibson and called for boycotts before seeing the movie, which opened around the world yesterday, Ash Wednesday.
According to the New Yorker magazine, the scholars demanded 18 pages of changes, including that the two men crucified with Christ be described as “insurgents”, and not robbers. Much furore appears to have been whipped up by Christians whose ideological hatred of conservatives such as Gibson in their churches has overwhelmed their faith.
Even the Pope’s reported verdict – “It is as it was” – became a political weapon, and later was denied by a Vatican official.
Critics have called the movie a “blood libel” against Jews, and a “religious splatter” film. The New York Times critic Frank Rich was among the most vicious, writing at one point that even if the final product was not anti-Semitic, “either way, however, damage has been done: Jews have already been libelled by Gibson’s politicised rollout of his film”. Which was rich of Rich, considering his newspaper politicised the rollout.
One New York Daily News critic wrote that it was “the most virulently anti-Semitic movie since the German propaganda films of World War II”. It makes you wonder if she watched the right movie. Maybe, as a Catholic, I am not in a position to judge, but it is difficult to see how the movie is anti-Semitic.
There are Jews portrayed as villains, particularly the merciless high priest Caiaphas, who incites the crowd to chant “Crucify Him”. But other priests call for mercy and just about every good person in the movie is a Jew, including Jesus and His mother Mary.
The people who really could complain about being portrayed as sadistic brutes are the Roman soldiers. They laugh as they flagellate Jesus, and His skin flies and blood splatters their faces. Even when He has endured more suffering than you think possible, they torment Him, pressing a crown of thorns deep into His head.
They whip Him as He struggles to carry His cross through the streets of Jerusalem. And when they nail Him to the cross, and the blood spurts from His broken hands and feet, they still laugh. In a squeamish age, we have the sanitised version of Christianity, in which, if crosses are worn at all, they are plain, with no nails, no body. But Gibson has deliberately rejected what he calls the “fairytale” version. “Think about the crucifixion,” he said in one interview last year. “There’s no way to sugar-coat that.”
His movie is gruelling to watch, with no relief, from the dark opening scenes in the garden of Gethsemane until the brief resurrection scene at the end. The close-ups of Jesus are remorseless. You don’t want to look at His poor ruined body, His destroyed eye, His skin in strips, bloody gore underneath. Even His mother can hardly bear to look.
One of the most touching scenes has Mary at the foot of His cross, reaching for His feet but afraid of hurting Him more. She kisses the tip of His toe, getting blood on her lips. Only Gibson, at 48, with all his residual pretty boy glamour, could have made this movie so successful as church groups around the globe flock to advance screenings, breaking all records for a subtitled film. Projections now are that he will make back his $40 million in the first five days.
It was an admirable gamble for the movie star, backed up by a life that seems equally admirable. A 24-year marriage and seven children with his wife Robyn, a former Australian dental nurse, is no mean feat but for a Hollywood sex symbol, it is remarkable.
Gibson has said making the movie was an act of faith. And in a post-September 11 world, with talk of a “clash of civilisations”, and fears of a religious war between Islam and the West, his movie has a profound resonance. A clue to what he hoped to achieve comes in an upcoming Reader’s Digest interview. When he is asked: “Give me the headline you want to see on the biggest paper in America the day after The Passion opens,” he replies: “War ends.”
The Passion’s central message comes in a flashback when Jesus tells His disciples: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. For if you love only those who love you, what reward is there in that?” It is the central message of Christianity, which many of us too easily forget. Miraculously, and against all odds, Gibson has made that message more difficult to ignore, and will reignite the faith of many in the process.
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Miranda claims that the film isn’t anti-Semitic because only some Jews are bad guys and plenty more are good guys. She may be right – I haven’t seen it and don’t intend to because I think the whole ‘crucifixion thing’ has long been turned by bad Catholics into a deeply destructive (and creepy) fetish, rather than the profoundly moving creative metaphor it was really meant to be. Funnily enough, Devine didn’t and presumably still doesn’t extend the same flexibility of appraisal to the debates about the neo-cons and the Iraq War and terrorism. No; apparently all the many Jews worldwide who opposed the war and remain among the fiercest critics of the American neo-conservatives aren’t similarly living, breathing arguments against HER anti-Semitism blanket slanders. Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Eric Akerman, Naomi Klein, Susan Sontag, Ian Cohen anti-Semitic?
Only if that term no longer has any meaning, Colin Rubinstein.
But how about that cracking line from Mel’s dad – that the Americans weren’t simply ‘to blame’ for the attacks of S11, but actually DID them. Wow, Miranda – even a Lefty West-hater like me wouldn’t try to take the root cause argument to those extremes! But – where’s the Devine vitriol? Why is she extending so much deference to Mel Gibson’s pathetic calls for the media to lay off his nasty old man? This is a woman who relentlessly flays us sad Lefties for our ‘anti-Americanism’ – I’m confused!