Tomorrow – or perhaps the next day, those who enjoy seeing the Jews look stupid in the media are going to have a real mechiah! Tonight, there was a reading in Melbourne of that silly little 8 minute play, by and for people, some of whose best friends are Jews. You know the types. One or two have some media training, but they’re generally content to sit around agreeing with each other that Israel is the problem behind everything from climate change to the NRL footy group sex scandal. Raise your fist in solidarity, man. In other words, these types are pretty boring and we could so easily deprive them of oxygen if we just let them get on with their performance art, face painting, or whatever the hell it is that floats their boat.
But some genius decided that our best course of action was to mount a protest! Yes! With placards! And raised fists! And slogans! Seriously! Please imagine the undecided Aussie sitting at home watching Lateline (tonight on ABC), and seeing these angry Jews shrieking and looking like they were having a go at trying to hinder free expression. Reckon our Aussie mate was convinced? Any first year communications student can tell you that before mounting any sort of public campaign, you need to think about your audience.
I assume the protesters’ audience was the Australian community at large. Aussies don’t like rabid, ethnic sloganeering from anyone. That’s possibly one reason this country is such a good place to live. Perhaps these fist-raisers saw their audience as the performers – in which case the protesters must be delusional. Delusional, because either they think their spittle-flecked chants might sway the Friends of Palestine, or intimidate them.
But best of all, Lateline broadcast our very own Danny Lamm, President of the State Zionist Council. Not only was he a stuttering mess and thoroughly inarticulate, but he was ranting about how the “truth” was somehow held by him, violated by the participants in the play, and strongly implied that the players did not have a right to perform their work.
Now let’s get something straight: any sane person will agree that this play has no artistic or political value, and is execrable in that it seeks to apply a patina of artistic seriousness over its attempt at agitprop. The fact that it’s rubbish, however, does not give us an automatic right, as Mr Lamm seemed to imply, to demand that the play not be performed at all. If freedom of speech means anything, it must mean that crap and beauty co-exist in artistic realms because the would-be arbiters – like Lamm – simply cannot be trusted to decide on our behalf.
There was something profoundly shameful about Lamm’s performance tonight, and the fact that our leadership convinced a bunch of misguided Jews to sloganeer in public. The shame is, that in such a vibrant, educated, and diverse community as ours, we can’t find anyone better to speak for us, or lead us in action that might have some actual positive effect. There is also something shameful in our apathy – that we assent to unelected ideologues with no media training, skills, or ability speaking on our behalf.
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Where is our Walid Ali? Indeed, there has to be someone who can keep their emotions in check, or at least channel them into something articulate AND impassioned.
And yet again, what would otherwise have gone under the radar as eight minutes of propagandizing is now national news. Waking to an enraged Danny Lamm holding forth on ABC News Breakfast is enough to put me off my Crunchy Nut.
Maybe we need to mount a hostile takeover of Beth Weizman!
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Whoops…Waleed Aly, with a ‘y’. I’m no dummy.
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Shouldn’t that be, “dummi”? Heh. Paroggan, the storming of Beit Weizman may be a little ways off. But it does seem as though Danny Lamm has been employed by the “other side” – he makes their case so eloquently for them, as did the protesters. That Miriam Margolyes came off as the voice of reason in the Lateline story, is a stunning indictment of our own advocates.
As for Walid Aly – you’re right: he’s a brilliant practitioner of the media’s dark arts. We have no one in our community approaching his skill. This is both good and bad. There is definitely a reactionary element to Aly which he deftly disguises with moderate language. A greater criticism of Aly might be that he is able to sound so moderate because he doesn’t actually say very much, content-wise. He’s more about form.
What we need is a youngish person (30+), practised in public relations who can present a modern, likeable Jewish face – basically, the diametric opposite of what currently exists. He or she would be experienced enough to know when to stay the hell away from a non-story, such as the 8 minute play, promote feel good Jew news, and talk sympathetically about the plight of Palestinians. He or she would understand that berating people about Israel issues wins no friends and only confirms prejudices. He or she would be intelligent enough to offer such sympathy in the context of “global” standards of good governance, human rights, democracy, education and other areas in which Israel is by far the most advanced nation in the Middle East.
The pro-Palestinian lobby plays the media brilliantly. They have effectively established an uncontestable distinction in mainstream, academic, and media discourse between being anti-Zionist and Anti-Semitic, even when the distiniction is really a chimera or excuse for Jew bashing. They trumpet their cause in the language of human rights and use the discourse of the oppression and liberation. These have been very effective.
It seems that our own bumbling spokespeople have no strategy whatsoever, and occasionally try to match the Palestinian lobby with claims to victimhood. This is a ridiculous narrative to attempt to use in the western media as Israel cannot be perceived in such a way while there is the simple dichotomy, available to every lazy journalist, of militaristic state versus the stateless. Only by embracing Israel’s strength can an effective PR jumping off point be established, because otherwise we seem disingenuous.
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My question to parragan and to you is to describe how you would handle the situation given that the Age is acting as the promoter for all Australians for Palestine functions and the ABC is not much better.
How do you propose to give a voice to those Jews who are sensible and want the wider community to be aware of the offensive nature of pro Palestinian agitprop?
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Hi Blistering. This is a really great question. It deserves a serious answer, so we will post an alternative PR strategy to the one that was used later tonight as a Reader Response.
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Hey Blistering,
Herein lies the delicacy: it’s very difficult to intervene in something without drawing undue attention to it, and it’s especially difficult to intervene in something that someone else is already drawing attention to, with the intention of diverting the attention to yourself.
Essentially that’s what happened with this play. The frustrated screams of the understandably upset Jewish protesters and their spokespeople drowned out the play itself, but instead gave more legitimacy to the angry, anti-Israel side of the equation.
What I would aim to do in this situation, if I were acting in a public relations capacity for us sensible Yidden, is go directly to the media in order to shift their bias. In situations like this, where we have a travelling freakshow that will soon be off circuit, all the anxiety about how to deal with the immediate situation is actually a distraction from what we should be doing generally — I would try to influence the way the media portrays these stories in the future, by actively providing alternate community contacts for comment on issues that come to light.
Definitely easier said than done, and it’s kind of a circular solution because in theory we’d have to reinvent our own peak bodies in order to put such people in such positions.
But, if you do happen to know someone who could take such an opportunity it’s often easy to put them in touch with the journalists and producers involved — like a moderate Israeli to speak on the radio about how the 2006 Hezbollah war affected them, which is what I organised for Triple J’s Hack show at the time.
It’s only small bikkies I’m talking about, but we have to work actively to change the media’s opinion of Israel and the Jewish community, and simultaneously keep our emotions in check, one step at a time.
Paroggan
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Hey there all,
This is a really great discussion. I don’t have anything to contribute further to what’s been said so far because I think between you all you’ve wrapped up most of the main issues. Instead I have a suggestion of a possible way to take this further.
What if we (I’m not sure who “we” is yet) were to hold a real-world event, like a town hall meeting, moderated by someone who was known for neutrality and objectivity (I’m sure there must be at least one of such person in the Melbourne Jewish Community..). This event would be open to anyone who wanted to come forth, the agenda of the meeting could be worked out through this forum, and then people could come along, have their say, and then the results of it could be published here and anywhere else that might be appropriate.
Whether such an event would devolve into a mere talk-fest, or be something that actually advanced an agenda forward, I’m not sure.
But what it does seem like, is that The Sensible Jew has a real constituency and that the silent voice of the moderates is perhaps finally ready to heard.
Your thoughts…
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I think that there is an assumption being made on this blog by various posters that the media (other than The Australian, which is in a class of its own in this country) would actually be interested in sensible Jewish views.
The Age in particular, and to a lesser extent ABC and SBS (commercial media is so severely lacking in intellect that it is not even worth discussing) is only interested in portraying the Jewish community in one way.
And that is: A largely homogeneous conservative parochial reactionary group, that is trying to control what everyone else thinks and does. In addition, there exists a small heroic group of dissenting voices from the Lowenstein left – cue the Che Guevara t-shirts and the Arafat kaffias.
Interestingly, the image of the Jewish community that The Age loves to portray is the same image of the Jewish community that the Lowenstein camp loves to promote. I guess that’s why The Age loves Lowenstein so much
Ironically, the AIJAC/JCCV people also see the Jewish community as a largely homogeneous group, thus that’s at least one thing that all these antagonists have in common (there are more things they have in common, but that’s for another post).
Evidence of my media hypothesis can be seen in the aftermath of the Blackman article published in The Age. The vast majority of letters by Jews that were published were authored by those in the Lowenstein camp, or by those in the JCCV camp. I am sure that this was not representative of the full set of letters received by The Age. And sadly, this is the case with the publication of letters of all other ‘Jewish’ issues.
In conclusion, the biggest problem is not the quality of potential spokespeople in the Jewish community. There is an abundance of articulate, educated, and intelligent Jews (with a diverse range of opinions) who could be called upon to comment on Jewish-related issue. The biggest problem is that the media (again, with the exception of The Oz) are not interested in giving them a voice.
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Wow! Paroggan, Yoram, and Frochel! Your comments are fantastic. There does seem to be a fair bit of interest in what we are discussing. Today alone – so far – there have been over 400 unique visitors.
Regarding a media approach, Paroggan and Frochel, we’ll soon post some of our ideas.
Yoram, your town meeting idea is absolutely wonderful. I wonder if we need to get up some momentum on this site first and try to encourage more people into discussions. There seems to be a fear among many Jewish moderates that they are alone in a sea of Lamms and Lowensteins.
Our opinion – entirely instinctive and not scientific – is that there are many of us and we may even constitute the largest single political grouping of Jews in Melbourne. This is because moderates are both religious and secular, come from both left and right wing traditions, were educated in both the Jewish-and non-Jewish schools, married Jewish or married out… moderation only requires one to reject the extremes – nothing more.
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400. Thats way impressive. And the blog is barely a week old. You should be very proud.
Frochel – I think you are probably right. I dont want to sound like a broken record, but I think there needs to be more to leadership than just our media/pr image. Its definitely important, very important, but I fear that “sensible-ness” needs a greater raison-detre than just making sure the wider popular media see us in a non-biased way, (whatever non-biased means.)
Back to sensiblejew (Calling you SJ from now on), you are also probably right that the forum needs to gain more traction online first before it goes out into the real world. However I will say this; at my shule (shameless plug here – http://www.auburnroad.org.au), we often have these open-forum style discussions.
Instead of simply delivering a drasha/sermon, we attempt to actually have interactive discussion between myself and the kehilla. Everyone really enjoys the interplay and dynamic of it, because being Jews, everyone loves the sound of their own voice, but more seriously, when put in an environment that is open, questioning and as free from dogma as possible, people feel comfortable to make their views heard, engage each other and even debate. And above all, people like it because its fun.
So what Im saying is that when this is ready to go offline and into the big, wide world, I am entirely convinced you will find not only an audience, but many willing participants as well.
As you have already commented, perhaps the acceptance of less than desireable leadership was a direct function of there being no clear pathway to change it. Perhaps the internet does open up avenues that were previously closed, leading towards a genuine paradigm shift in the politics of governance.
Fun huh;)
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Another thought: whilst it bothers me when I see AIJAC/JCCV people presenting themselves as spokespeople for the entire community, I am not looking to silence their views. Although I disagree with them, and although I disagree with Lowenstein, I believe strongly that not only should all people be free to express their views, but indeed that diversity of opinion is valuable in and of itself.
In stark contrast to the view expressed by John Lennon in his song Imagine, stripping Jews or any other community of its diversity would hollow life out of much of what is interesting and valuable.
Not only do I agree with Yoram’s post in another thread that it would take years or indeed be impossible to draft a statement of values upon which all Jews would agree, but I am also not sure that it would be ideal to try to do so.
I am worried that when we complain about AIJAC/SZC/JCCV etc, we unwittingly accept the assumption that they share with Lowenstein that the Jewish community does and should speak with one voice.
It is not just that there is no ’sensible’ Jewish public voice, but more so that there should not only be one voice. I wonder whether it would be possible to introduce more voices into the debate without silencing the current conservative leadership.
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Frochel, re: free speech, you’re completely right, of course. But I don’t think the objections stem from their opinions, but from the way that they paint themselves as representatives of all Melbourne/Australian Jews.
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Yoram, quite right that this blog needs to be more than just a discussion of PR – but about leadership as well. It’s just that our leadership’s PR has been so egregious lately, that the topic’s taken over temporarily. But as you can see, we’ve posted a transcriptr of Michael Fagenblat’s address at the 8 minute play, in order to inject some tachles back into proceedings.
And thanks for your kind words about the number of visits. It’s great that so many people come, but really, the true value of this blog is in the comments section. That was always our original hope: that The Sensible Jew could provide a place for people to talk about these matters.
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Sensiblejew, firstly I would like to congratulate you on putting together this blog. Yasher Koach!
Secondly, to confirm your “entirely instinctive and not scientific” opinion, I would like to point out that an independently (non-JCCV/ECAJ funded/supported) run survey from 2008, demonstrated overwhelmingly and unanimously that the members of the Jewish community do NOT feel that the “leadership” reflects their views, their needs and certainly not their voices.
Many participants also felt frustrated by the fact that these “Leaders” had been elected from within the ranks of their own self-appointed committees and sub-committees and that no other system existed whereby ALL members of the Jewish community could have the opportunity to choose whom they would like to have speaking on their behalf.
Frochel, I agree, the media, aka The Age/ABC/SBS, is only interested in portraying Jewish views in one way. And yes there are an abundance of articulate opinions available in contrast to the homogenous ones of the JCCV or that of Mr Lowenstein. And those articulate opinions will only have a place in the pages of the The Age if and when they are given a space to become more credible voices within our own community. (I also agree with you that this does not necessarily mean that the JCCV should be silenced, or their opinions made irrelevant.)
Although if we were going to be completely honest with ourselves, (and Yoram makes a similar point in response to SJ’s post about the “Jews and the Media”), regardless of how articulate the views, ultimately any pro-Jewish opinion is almost always going to be placed at the extreme clearly labelled “pro-Jewish, pro-Zionist, anti-Arab fanaticism”, because its just something the media like doing and its what sells papers,. whether we consider ourselves to be level-headed, clear thinking moderates or not. So it may well not be worth obsessing over what the media think of us and where they will place us, as that seat was marked “reserved for anti-Semitic bias” years ago, whether or not we demand to be seated somewhere else
I would like to preface my remark by stating that the current leadership bodies of the Australian Jewish Communities have no doubt done plenty of outstanding work. Some of which I have had the pleasure of benefiting from personally. However there remains a major flaw in the current system.
Only presidents and executives of the ECAJ/JCCV/ADC/SZC and yes even BB, have the power to speak a view, write a letter or publish an opinion on any issue affecting the Jewish community AND claim it is the view of “the Australian Jewish Community”.
Even within these organisations, permission must be sought from every level of this leadership structure before a “position” can be taken. If someone from within these organisations speaks out of turn or more specifically voices a view which is not shared by those who fund or lead on these committees, then that individual is immediately removed from the organisation. (This is how a homogenous view is retained.)
The result, of course, is a climate of doubt, fear and hesitancy in the midst of our community. And only when conducted with absolute anonymity, is a survey able to produce valid and unbiased opinions, given by real Jews in the real community. Rich and poor, Doctors and Dry-Cleaners, Lubavitchers and Reforms, Teens and the Elderly, Large families and Single Parents – they all want change, and there is no tangible way to get it. This is terribly sad.
Lets not just ‘Imagine’ (thanks Mr Lennon) a leadership which caters for the diversity which Frochel mentioned (and which we all know has made the Jewish People who they are), lets begin a real and meaningful process of collecting all the data about what that means in practice.
I say lets run Yoram’s suggested town hall-style meeting, give real people a chance to voice real opinions and ultimately elect real leaders who represent the real needs and views of the Jewish community, not just within itself but also in the pages of The Age.
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Welcome, Malki! Thank you for a wonderful – and complex – contribution. It needs its own Reader Response post. We’ll post this later in the day.
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Great Blog!
Malki,
It’s so interesting that you say “elected”. These elections are only elections insofar as they are reverse engineered to give an impression of transparency. The process works like this:
1. The next President is identified.
2. He (using “he” for the sake of convenience) is approached and asked if he would be interested in taking the role.
3. If yes, the politicking to get the organisations to vote him in takes place.
4. An “election” is held, and he gets the role unopposed.
Where are the smart people to challenge for the role? Where is the informed debate between potential Communal Leaders?
Danny Lamm’s son Rafi is being groomed to take over as President of the ZCV. What a joke.
There are young, dynamic, eloquent people of Waleed Aly’s ilk in our community (and even on the executives of the JCCV and ZCV) – but you won’t see the big ego’s developing these people and putting them forward as “the face” of the community.
As a community, we’re certainly not as cohesive, organised and effective as we may appear to the outside world.
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Hi Insider,
I totally agree with the sadness of non-representative ego freaks dominating jew committees.
but I don’t think its as political or conspiratorial as your 4-step process suggests.
There’s no fake elections or politicking. Basically,no one wants to take on these roles and sit around at meetings putting forward progressive initiatives to ego freaks who aren’t interested until 1am once a month.
In essence, whoever puts their hand up gets the job. If a non-ego freak ever decides to get involved, they get voted in and then do it for a year or two before getting extremely frustrated with the ego freaks who will stay on eternally. Last one standing!
That’s why some sort of organized (group) resistance to ego freaks representing us will be more effective than the occasional entry of a sensible jew into a major Jew org board who will eventually be worn down.
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Sensible Jew may signal to disenfranchised community members that a forum finally exists which acknowledges and promotes the plurality of views on questions of religion and Israel’s position that truly exist in our community.
I fear the emphasis on the poor PR performance of our leaders may undermine that promise. Is this forum really concerned with encouraging the public dissemination and communication of this diversity of opinions (both within and beyond our community walls)? Or, is it concerned with developing a single view for PR purposes (the so-called “sensible” one?)
Educated jews must feel there is a forum where they can freely voice questions about Israels’ conduct, and even temporarily allow themselves to flirt with the Lowensteinian (or the Lamm for that matter) camps, in order to clarify for themselves what their own position is. That is the academic liberty I am afforded in the secular world. And I cant see myself returning whole-heartedly to the jewish community until I am confident the same liberty will be afforded to me there.
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As poster of previous “anonymous” post, I have given myself a name. Upon reflection, I do see your position SensibleJew. Point taken.
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[...] have written in the past about the abysmal failures in PR that our leadership have demonstrated. Danny Lamm’s performance was of particular [...]
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Hi, Anonymous. We ask that you provide a name in your future comments. It needn’t be your real name, but it becomes very confusing when we have a number of different, “Anonymouses” posting.
As for debates on Israel/Palestine, we have explained often why we wish to avoid that on this blog. There are multitudes of fora for that issue. And we are not interested in developing a single view for the community. We are interested in debate on issues affecting our community. Our relations with other communities and broader Australian society is a crucial matter.
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Hi Still Listening. Thanks for that. We look forward to hearing more from you.
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