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Ali Kazak cries wolf on racism

By Colin Rubenstein - posted Friday, 15 March 2013


Perhaps most notoriously, without a shred of evidence Kazak claimed that Australian Jews were attacking their own institutions to cast aspersions on Arabs following the firebombing of a Canberra synagogue and threats against Jewish individuals and institutions. On SBS Radio (Oct. 16. 2000), Kazak said he believed the violence and firebombing were carried out by "Jews' youth and organisations… in order to gain sympathy" and that Jews "have done it before, there is a documented history of them doing this sort of thing if it suits their interests." A laterAFP story quoted Kazak saying "I think it is most likely Jews are behind it rather than anyone else… They are behind it for a number of reasons (including) to gain sympathy."

 

Kazak also told AAP in 2007 that a potential assassination attempt on Bob Hawke by Palestinian militants in 1976 was actually designed by Mossad and accepted without investigation by ASIO. He described it as a "Mossad campaign against Palestine" according to the Sydney Morning Herald ( Jan. 1, 2007).

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AIJAC's Visitors

AIJAC has over the years brought out a diverse range of speakers to discuss Middle East politics representing different ideological perspectives and from different nationalities - including, as noted, numerous Arabs and Muslims.

We do not endorse everything every speaker says - but in the case of the only individual who has ever crossed the line into the sort of rhetoric one gets from Mr. Wilders, Rafael Israeli, we made the unacceptability of this eminently clear.

Contrary to Mr. Kazak's claim, we have never brought Professor Israeli to Australia - though we did, some years ago, host some functions with him when he came here under other auspices. However, once we became aware that he had called for limiting Muslim immigration to Australia, we immediately ceased all further involvement with him - again contrary to Mr. Kazak's untruths about this case.

Nearly all of AIJAC 's speakers support a moderate position of a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though they may disagree on the best way to arrive at this outcome. But it seems bizarre for Mr. Kazak to claim that if they do not then they are "racist" - as for many years Mr. Kazak himself openly opposed any such solution, and it remains unclear even today what he supports.

Regarding the other specific speakers Mr. Kazak pointed to in his diatribe, as pointed out in my previous note, some of them warn against Islamism as a political ideology - an ideology which drove Osama bin Laden and others to commit horrific acts of terrorism - but none condemn Islam as a whole, as Mr. Wilders does. If they did so, we would not host them or otherwise provide them with a platform.

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As for the other terrible "racists" on Mr. Kazak's list, Daniel Pipes is such a "racist" pariah that the Board of Editors of Middle East Quarterly, the magazine he publishes, includes many prominent analysts and academics including former Middle East advisor to President Bill Clinton Dennis Ross, Stanford University senior fellow and Lebanese-American Professor Fouad Ajami, Turkish analyst Timur Kuran and Lebanese scholar and human rights activist Professor Habbib C. Malik.

Furthermore, what are the terrible "racist" crimes for which Mr. Kazak condemns Dr. Pipes and AIJAC? That Dr. Pipes warned that the Muslim world is increasingly the locus of antisemitic beliefs and more attention should be paid to this problem. Given that the increase in vehemently antisemitic beliefs in various parts of the Muslim world is a well-known phenomenon acknowledged by all serious scholars of antisemitism (see here, hereand herefor more information), it is hard to see why this is such a terribly racist thing to say.

Oh and Pipes called attention to the lack of a Palestinian equivalent to the Israeli peace movement - a point also made by such terrible racists as the BBC, Israeli peace activist Amos Oz, and the Palestinian writer Mr. Kazak labelled a "traitor" for his writing, Khaled Abu Toameh.

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About the Author

Colin Rubenstein, a former lecturer in Middle East politics at Monash University in Melbourne, is executive director of Australia/Israel jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

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