Minns office
A pro-Palestine demonstration outside the Sydney office of NSW Premier Chris Minns (Image: AAP/Bianca De Marchi)

If you know what’s good for you, don’t speak out in Australia against Israel’s indiscriminate mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

Don’t call for fairness and balance in media coverage. Don’t apply rigour to claims made by Israel’s defenders and Israel itself. Don’t suggest Israel may be committing war crimes. Don’t suggest it’s another chapter in a much longer conflict that has seen atrocities, barbarism, sexual violence and slaughter on all sides. Don’t suggest that Palestinian children slaughtered by Israeli bombs should be mourned as much as Israeli kids butchered by the depraved monsters of Hamas.

At best you’ll be labelled anti-Semitic, or an advocate for rape and the beheading of babies. If you’re a journalist or MP, you’ll be publicly criticised by your own leaders. Your job may be threatened, you may be censored. You may lose your job.

Take NSW Premier Chris Minns, who has been running a protection racket for Israel. Two weeks after the Hamas atrocities that began the latest assault, he criticised his own MPs for signing a letter expressing support for Palestine and demanded they “speak with one voice”. Minns also attacked Palestine supporters, said they wouldn’t be allowed to protest, and complained about how much it cost to heavily police them. Minns has also rebuked Labor MPs who have criticised Israel since.

The leadership of Australia’s commercial media, similarly, has attacked journalists who have called for balance. Nine newspapers are censoring journalists who have signed an open letter calling for balance, rigour and context in coverage of the conflict. The normally woker-than-thou Guardian Australia, too, has criticised journalists who have signed the letter. News Corp has not merely reflexively backed Israel’s mass slaughter but worked assiduously to frame anything less than full-throated backing of Israel as anti-Semitism. Naturally, it has engaged in a witch hunt of any media figures who have failed to sufficiently support Israel. One News Corp journalist mocked “mummy bloggers” expressing support for Gazans, although the resulting, comprehensive demolition by one “mummy blogger” might serve to deter any further ridicule.

At the ABC, journalists who signed the open letter were also criticised, and the broadcaster has now sacked fill-in radio presenter Antoinette Lattouf for her social media support for Palestine. Coincidentally or not, Lattouf co-wrote a piece for Crikey pointing out the lack of evidence for claims peddled by Israel supporters and News Corp that pro-Palestinian protesters chanted “gas the Jews” at the Sydney Opera House.

Question the pro-Israeli narrative, lose your job — even if you’re not employed as a journalist.

The behaviour of News Corp is standard. Its business model is peddling hate, division and white grievance. That its phalanx of diehard advocates for free speech have been silent on attacks on journalists is no surprise — free speech is only ever for punching downward at News Corp. If its support of Israel and denigration of its critics leads to more slaughter of Palestinians and the inevitable creation of another generation of enraged, aggrieved people determined to obtain revenge on Israel, all to the better — terrorism can be exploited as part of the business model. We saw that in the failed “war on terror”, which News Corp cheered enthusiastically from the outset.

But the behaviour of other media outlets, if not as extreme, is also aimed at normalising an uncritical stance on Israel and portraying anything other than support as problematic. It’s not just about sacking or censoring people — it happens in minor ways as well. For example, a persistent narrative from the political media, especially at Nine newspapers, has focused on how Labor is split on Gaza, and how there’s something problematic about anything less than full alignment with Israel.

Consider the coverage of the government’s UN vote, along with 152 other countries including France, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Spain and Japan, to call for a ceasefire last week: Nine headlined its coverage “Australia angers Israel with surprise UN ceasefire vote“, with the journalist regaling readers with how the vote “did not go to cabinet for approval”, “came as a shock to several senior ministers” and upset some “prominent Jewish groups”. It quoted Israel’s ambassador extensively and gave Liberal Senator and Netanyahu propagandist Dave Sharma space to accuse Penny Wong of “capitulating”. All for a call for ceasefire that included a demand that all hostages be released.

Nine then followed up with a detailed article on how the decision around the vote was “secret” and Labor was split, and then another that claimed Labor was “under pressure to follow its closest international security partners” and being accused of “missing in action” on sanctions on Hamas. You had to wade through to the end of the article to find out it was recycling the talking points of Coalition shadow foreign affairs minister Simon Birmingham, rather than reflecting any real-world statements, “pressure” or accusations.

But you get the message: anything less than strong support for Israel is problematic, reflective of internal dissent and the product of decisions made in secret. What is normal is unquestioningly supporting Israel. What is abnormal is being in any way sceptical of the Israeli narrative, or expressing concern for 20,000 dead Palestinians (with the caveat that the number is “according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health ministry”). Forget that at your cost.

Disclosure: Bernard Keane signed the November open letter calling for improved coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict, and in 2016 visited Palestine as a guest of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network.