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How is Wilders different to these?

By Ali Kazak - posted Friday, 8 March 2013


In his response to my article Dr Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), claimed that my accusation of AIJAC's invitations to racists and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propagandists is"false", and criticised On Line Opinion saying that I 'should not be given license and a platform to crudely and baselessly misrepresent and defame our organisation or our guests as "racist"'.

Dr Rubenstein claimed that "The values of AIJAC are plain to see for anyone who has followed our activities over the years" and said "Contrary to Mr. Kazak's implication, we have never hosted someone who says things about Islam of the sort that Mr. Wilders does, nor would we ever do so."

I would therefore like to present readers of On Line Opinion with some of the evidence for my accusations.

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In one of a number of speaking tours organised by AIJAC in Australia and New Zealand for David Pryce-Jones, he was reported in The Weekend Australian of 1-2 Dec. 1990, as describing the Arabs as having a "culture of violence", saying "aggression and war are nearly inevitable in the Arab world" and that "Arab culture is a closed circle of status-seeking from which the Arabs cannot escape". "When the West tries to be understanding and progressive in its dealing with the Arabs, it is really making the mistake of thinking that the Arabs are just like us".

And on another speaking tour organised also by AIJAC he was reported by the Melbourne Herald-Sun on 7 Nov. 1995 saying in a speech delivered at the Beth Weizman Centre "to shoot one's prime minister is what the Arabs do, not what the Jews do", ironically he said that at a time when Israel's prime minister Rabin was shot by an extremist Jewish terrorist. He furthermore, described the Arabs, and Palestinians in particular, as assassins, lawless and living like animals. Arab society he says is a violent society. But this time as a result of a complaint by the Australia Arabic Council, under the Racial Hatred Act, AIJAC was forced to make a public apology which appeared in the Herald Sun on 23 Dec. 1997. And if you think that AIJAC's apology was genuine you are mistaken. More speaking tours were organised by AIJAC to David Pryce-Jones.

Another favourite and regular guest of AIJAC's is Daniel Pipes, who built his career on preaching hate against Muslims and Islam. A review of one of his books in the Washington Post in 1983 found his work exhibiting "a disturbing hostility to contemporary Muslims...and frequently contemptuous of them." He has repeatedly called into question the loyalty of American Muslims and singled them out as somehow anti-American.

On a visit to Australia in 1998 Pipes vilified and offended the Australian Moslem community by claiming that anti-Semitism was "a Moslem phenomenon". His aims were to stereotype Moslems and incite the public against them, especially the Jewish community by deliberately mixing Zionism with Judaism and showing Moslems as anti-Jewish rather than against Zionism and the Israeli government's occupation, aggression and oppression.

The Australian Jewish News (AJN) of 18 Dec. 1998 reported him saying "Antisemitism is now primarily a Moslem phenomenon…I advise Jewish organisations to take their eyes off the Christians and start focusing on Islam." And to a question about Palestinians who favour peace? He replied "Show me a moderate Palestinian. If one looks at leading politicals (sic), media outlets, academics, there is no place or voice for those calling for a general resolution."

In an article in The Nation on 11 Nov. 2002, Kristine McNeil wrote "Pipes is notorious for calling Moslems 'barbarians' and 'potential killers' in a 2001 National Review article, and accusing them of scheming to 'replace the [US] constitution with the Koran'. In a 1990 National Review article [he] insisted that 'Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene…All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Moslem customs are more troublesome than most."

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Pipes is unashamedly against the Oslo Accords and even former President Bush's Roadmap to Peace. The Israeli daily Haaretz of 14 April 2003 described him as espousing "a theory of conflict resolution that rests on the assumption that peace usually is achieved only by one side defeating the other with military force or other pressure and only rarely through reconciliation or negotiation. He has also drawn criticism for calls for increased surveillance of Muslim Americans, particularly soldiers and government officials."

He was even nominated by Global Vision 2000 for "The Islamophobia Awards 2006", in recognition of his anti-Arab, anti-Islam articles and his campaigns and discrimination against them, which is an annual event to acknowledge - through satire, revue and comedy - the worst Islamophobes of that year. It defined Islamophobia as a contemporary and emerging form of prejudice Islamophobia can be described as stereotypes, bias or acts of hostility towards individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general. In addition to individual acts of intolerance and racial profiling, Islamophobia leads to viewing Muslims as a greater security threat on an institutional, systemic and societal level and perceiving their views to be intrinsically problematic, violent or unethical.

As for AIJAC's guest professor Raphael Israeli, the AJN of 16 Feb. 2007 reported him urging Australia to cap its intake of Muslim immigration warning "life will become untenable, unless the Muslim population is kept in check … then they control whole section of the economy … even students who apply to come from Islamic countries to the West" and called for a "preventative policy " to protect national security and ensure Muslims remained a "marginal minority".

Only following a storm of protest over his racist comments, AIJAC was forced to withdraw its support.

An article in the AJN on 23 Feb. 2007 titled "A few facts in the service of gross distortion" expressed the views of many Jews who are unhappy with the extremist activities of some mainstream Jewish organisations such as AIJAC, Dr Mark Baker wrote "One needn't be a prophet in an age of Google to predict what Professor Israeli would speak about behind open doors. The same can be said for Melanie Phillips, the author of Londonistan, whose visit is being sponsored by the Australia/Israel &Jewish Affairs Council to provoke the same message of fear and discord. No doubt, the invitation has also been extended to Bat Yeor, author of Eurabia, along with the annual visit by Daniel Pipes, thought-patroller of western academia."

And in a letter to the editor in AJN under "AIJAC Achievement" (9.3.2007) Mr Gordon Drennan wrote "My congratulations to Mark Leibler and Dr Colin Rubenstein at AIJAC. It's quite an achievement to arrange things so that you get to have your cake and eat it too. They invite professor Raphael Israeli to Australia, knowing full well he's an Islamophobe. They could not know, they could not have invited him for any other reason – he's written 20 books. Then they make sure his views end up in the mainstream media so they then get the chance to disown him and say his racist views are repugnant to Jews. But he still gets to stay here, give his talks and spread his race hate, and he gets way more publicity when he does. Masterful."

The above are only some examples of the anti-Muslims and anti-Arabs amongst the numerous guests of AIJAC and other Jewish organisations in Australia.

So much for Dr Rubenstein and AIJAC's "support" for multiculturalism and interfaith cooperation with the Muslim community, and "advocate for constructive steps towards peaceful coexistence between Israel and its Arab neighbours, and a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians."

If Dr Rubenstein and AIJAC think that through such extremist activities they "advocate for constructive steps towards peaceful coexistence between Israel and its Arab neighbours, and a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians" then there must be something wrong with their vision as they see things upside down. They are unfortunately playing on ignorance and fear. They are prolonging the conflict and are part of the problem.

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About the Author

Ali Kazak is a former Palestinian ambassador and head of delegation.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Ali Kazak

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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