Politics

Australian Newspapers under Fire for Publicizing Israeli Abuses

The Jewish Supremacist community in Australia has protested loudly about the publication of reports in the only non-Jewish owned newspaper group in that country, Fairfax Media, which have detailed numerous human rights abuses by the Israeli Defense Force.

The reports, based on a study issued at the end of August by the Israeli “leftist” NGO, Breaking the Silence, has been suppressed or denied coverage in almost all European and American mass media.

Only the Fairfax media group, which owns The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age newspapers, have broken with the blackout and publicized the report.

The Fairfax Media Group is majority owned by the Gentile Georgina Hope Rinehart, an Australian mining tycoon and heiress of Hancock Prospecting. She bought a majority stake in in Fairfax Media in 2010, and has been officially classed by Forbes Asia and Business Review Weekly as Australia’s wealthiest person.

The report by Breaking the Silence consists of 700 current and former Israeli soldiers’ testimonies (all “leftist Zionists) in what it called a “a bid to stir debate on the moral price Israel is paying for the occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza.

The introduction to the report, “Children and Youth: Soldiers’ Testimonies (2005-2011),” claims the “harsh treatment of Palestinian children continues unabated” and says efforts to force them to act as “human shields” continue, despite an Israeli Supreme Court ruling against the practice.

Danny Lamm, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, is reportedly “incensed”  that the newspapers have dared to publicize the report, which said that the “IDF’s arbitrary use of violence against Palestinian children, including forcing them to act as human shields in military operations, has been exposed by veteran soldiers in detailed statements chronicling dozens of brutal incidents.”

Lamm attacked what he said was “crude propaganda published by Fairfax Media” and whined that “many Australians … are being left with the false, indeed ridiculous, impression that the IDF is a serious abuser of children’s rights.”

Peter Kerr, executive editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, stood by the company’s Middle East correspondent, Ruth Pollard, saying: “Her reporting on this issue has been fair, accurate and balanced.”