Ali Kazak cries wolf on racism

Again Ali Kazak, in his piece "How is Wilders different to these?" (8/3), has unfairly attacked the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), suggesting we harbour racist sentiments against Muslims.

To assess the substance of his claims, it is necessary to provide some background information on both AIJAC and also on our accuser.

AIJAC

AIJAC has a long and proud history of promoting multiculturalism, interfaith dialogue, a non-discriminatory immigration policy and advocating for laws that protect people of all faiths and ethnicities from racial hatred in Australia.

AIJAC's Director of Community Affairs, Jeremy Jones, AM, was a key player in the NGO Coalition Against Racism, was the Convenor of Faith Communities for Reconciliation, is a founding participant in the Australian Partnership of Religious Organisations and the Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims & Jews and established Community Alert Against Racial Violence. He has spoken in a number of mosques and Muslim schools in Australia, was invited by the peak national Muslim body to be a speaker at the launch of the booklet "Appreciating Islam" in 2003, and has engaged in constructive interreligious activities with Muslim colleagues in South East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. His advocacy of Jewish-Muslim (and other interfaith) dialogue has led to him being invited to participate in intergovernmental and other international fora on inter-religious engagement on many occasions over the past 15 years.

AIJAC National Chairman Mark Leibler, AC, served on the board of Reconciliation Australia from 2000 until 2011 and was its co-Chair from 2005 until 2011. Since 2012, he has served as Co-Chair of the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians appointed by the Federal government.

As for myself, I served from 1997 until 2006 as a member of the Federal Government's Council for a Multicultural Australia and its predecessor, the National Multicultural Advisory Council, and helped draft key policy documents related to Australian Multiculturalism.

AIJAC has hosted a series of interfaith "Conversations" where speakers have included Muslim scholars from countries as diverse as the USA, India, Indonesia, Bosnia and Israel. Australian participants have included Sunni and Shia Muslims from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. We invite, and actively promote, open and frank discussions in efforts to challenge bigotry and prejudice founded in ignorance. As recently as February 15, AIJAC hosted a function for a Jewish-Muslim relations activist, Indian Muslim academic, Dr Navras Aafreedi, Assistant Professor in History, Gautam Buddha University,

Academics, journalists, politicians and others who are investigating racism in Australia regularly consult AIJAC for our expertise in analysis of antisemitism and religious bigotry and our documentation of extremist organisations.

AIJAC did not support Geert Wilders' visit to Australia, publicly opposes his beliefs on Islam, and urged members of the Jewish community - and everyone else - not to give credence to him or provide him with oxygen. An article criticising Wilders was published in the latest issue of our magazine, the Australia/Israel Review.

Ali Kazak

Ali Kazak is an Australian Palestinian who became the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Australia in 1981 and later, when the Oslo Accords were signed in 1994, became head of the General Palestinian Delegation in Canberra. He was replaced in that role in 2006 by Izzat Abdulhadi.

Over the past three decades, Kazak has promoted rejectionism, extremism, conspiracy theories and engaged in apologetics for terrorism. His behaviour while PLO representative made him unwelcome in many quarters in Canberra.

To give but a few examples of many, in a 2000 interview, he defended the lynching of three Israeli soldiers who made a wrong turn into Ramallah, saying Palestinians should not be expected to "have to guarantee the safety of the occupier and the butcher." Asked by a reporter "If there is a continuing cycle of violence, you're saying it's up to them [Israelis] to stop it, you won't try to stop it?" he replied "Absolutely." (Parliamentary News Network, Oct. 12, 2000).

Kazak characterised the activities of the terrorist group Hamas, at a time when it was already increasingly using suicide bombings on Israeli public transport, thus: "Hamas is a Palestinian opposition struggling against Israeli military occupation/ oppression and the denial of the basic Palestinian national and human rights. It is a patriotic movement and the problem is not HAMAS but the problem is Israel's occupation and the extremist Jewish movements," (Radio 2RN, 2 June 1994).

Displaying a contempt for history, in a letter in theCanberra Times (15/1/2004), Kazak asserted that "the Canaanites of yesterday are the Palestinians of today. The Palestinians built the city of Jerusalem more than 1000 years before Abraham and his tribe came to it." Kazak has also claimed Jewish people did not have any historical connection with the most important religious site in Judaism, the remains of the Temple in Jerusalem (SMH, 23 March, 2001). In a press release dated 2 October 2000, he claimed that Israeli excavations under the Temple Mount had found no evidence of the existence of a Jewish Temple (there are no such excavations but no serious historian doubts the existence of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which existence is amply documented by Roman era sources as well as archaeology. It is also part of the Islamic tradition).

In 1996, he claimed on television that the Israeli government sent "3,500 troops" to attack the "al-Aqsa Mosque" - something which never happened.

He also reportedly told the Australiannewspaperthat Palestinian journalist "Khaled Abu Toameh is a traitor" for writing about Palestinian corruption and went on to say "Traitors were also murdered by the French Resistance, in Europe, this happens everywhere," (Australian, May 15, 2010).

He has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany, which should automatically bring him into conflict with opponents of racism. In 1996 he said "the entire Palestinian population were in concentration camps." In 2001, he wrote "The Western world, which once was silent over the Nazi killing of Jews… will feel its guilt and be ashamed of its silence and its failure to act while the Palestinian people were put to a slow death." (AdelaideAdvertiser, May 25) In 1994, he said of the acts of lone Jewish terrorist murderer Baruch Goldstein "Not even the Nazis committed such acts against Jews" (Radio 6PR).

Kazak's conspiracy theories are well documented, and wide ranging, including accusations against Israel, the US and Australia.

He told the Canberra Times that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks were most likely an "inside operation", were beyond the capacity of Osama bin Laden and that he would not be surprised if right-wing groups in America were responsible. Yet he also said he hoped US politicians had "learned a lesson" from their supposed hypocrisy in supporting Israel. (CanberraTimes, Sept. 13, 2001)

When the world was applauding Israel's rescue of Ethiopian Jews from famine and war, Ali Kazak condemned it (Australian, 8 January 1985) stating on 2BL on January 9, 1985 that it was a political ploy aimed at boosting the settler population and that the Ethiopian Jews would have been happier in Ethiopia.

He alleged "Zionist" financial control over Australian politics in 1992 in a media release in which he admonished the Australian Government for letting "the pro-Israeli lobby use the Jewish Community's financial contribution to the ALP election campaign as a bribe to dictate Australia's Middle East policy." The media release stated, "This is a pure bribe, blackmail and a cheap price they are attempting to buy Australia's Middle-East policy with, Mr Kazak said… He also acknowledged that the 'Israeli-lobby' makes donations to the Liberal Party and called on all major parties to stop Israel 'occupying and raping Palestinian and other Arab territories.'"

Regarding the US response to Iraq's annexation of Kuwait in January 1991, Kazak said "It is sickening that the United States rejects an international peace conference and launch its war in order to protect Israel," (Radio 2UE, 18 January 1991).

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).

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.

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.

Then there is the prominent English writer, novelist and journalist David Pryce-Jones, who is such an extremist and racist figure that the Australian Financial Review published a book review by him last Friday (March 8). In 1989, Mr. Pryce-Jones wrote The Closed Circle, a still much-cited book on certain structural constraints in many Arab societies that, he argued, are making it difficult for those societies to achieve democracy, human rights and development. Apparently, in Mr. Kazak's world, to do that is to become a racist.

And then there is the other terrible crime of Mr. Pryce-Jones. On the night Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, he expressed - in words that probably could have been better chosen - concern that Israeli society might be catching the unfortunate disease of political assassination that has afflicted numerous neighbouring authoritarian states. Examples include the deaths of Egyptian President Sadat, Algerian head of state Mohamed Boudiaf, Iraqi King Faisal II and later Prime Minister Nuri Pasha as-Said, Iranian Prime Ministers Ali Razmara, Hassan Ali Mansur, Mohammad Beheshti, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and President of Iran Mohammad Ali Rajai, Jordan's King Abdullah I, Lebanese leaders Bachir Gemayel, Rashid Karami and René Moawad, Saudi Arabia's King Faisal, North Yemen's Presidents Ibrahim al-Hamadi and Ahmad al-Ghashmi and many others. But apparently it is racist to express concern that Israel might be following in this unfortunate and undemocratic political path.

As noted, Mr. Kazak is entitled to disagree with either of these people or any of AIJAC's other guests. The fact that he is unable to make a coherent case against them other than to baselessly shout racism - and that he is unable to distinguish the blatantly anti-Islam stance of Wilders from people who have negative things to say about the ideology behind al-Qaeda - says far more about Mr. Kazak, his extremism, his conspiratorial mindset and his addiction to angry and counterproductive rhetoric, than it does about AIJAC.

AIJAC has worked for years to promote tolerance and actively promotes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ali Kazak in contrast has advocated for extremist positions calling for the destruction of Israel and denying any Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, while spreading bizarre conspiracies about supposed Jewish financial power, the 9/11 attacks, and terrorism. It is almost a mark of honour to be called a racist by such an individual.