Question for Q & A
October 19, 2009 by J-Wire Staff
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The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has questioned the ABC on the subjects of panellists and submitted questions on the national broadcaster’s popular Q & A program.
ECAJ President Robert Goot
J-Wire asked Peter Wertheim, the Executive Director of the national Jewish body if they would be prepared to nominate panellists from within the community if so asked. Wertheim said that he could not speak for any individual but “felt sure that there would be no problem in finding suitable candidates.”
In the meantime, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry president, Robert Goot, has fired his own questions to the ABC. His letter appears below…and J-Wire eagerly awaits the opportunity to publish the ABC’s answer.
Mr Goot, Please explain to me, unfamiliar with international law, why Israel is not in breach as a putative active nuclear weapons possessor. Have its weapons been sanctioned by the UN? Are Israel’s nuclear installations and weapons regularly inspected? As Israel does not admit to possessing such weapons but is generally believed to, it would seem to me that the only possibility that Israel’s nuclear program is legal is if the rumours are false and it doesn’t possess ‘the bomb’ in which case why doesn’t it throw open its facilities for international inspection?
Every state that participates in the nuclear cycle should accept international inspections, and that includes the major powers.
As an American-Australian Jew, I find the use of the term “cheering squad/lynch mob” deeply offensive both to common sense and to another people’s history. A lynch mob is a very real historical fact, responsible for the pubically applauded murders of hundreds of people of color. Vocal disagreement or support for an opinion is not a lynch mob. What is really happening here is a growing anxiety about the unpopularity of Israel’s military and political abuses of people under its control. And what is really disturbing is the refusal of the Jewish “leadership” to forget about public relations control and begin to question in a complex way, the multiple faces of Israel and and what their connections mean to the diaspora. Otherwise, hyprocisies of all kinds become too clear when talking about this exceptional, increasingly more unexceptional, State–such as in the same letter denying Israel has nuclear bombs and yet supporting the legality of its program.
As a frequent viewer of Q&A (as well as Lateline),it is none too soon that someone commented on what I perceive as the overt bias exhibited by the ABC in general, and Tony Jones and Q&A in particular.It is my observation that Tony Jones gives free rein to opponents of Israel and cuts short any supporters, or refuters of often fallacious statements/arguments.I am eagerly anticipating the ABC’s response to Robert Goot’s letter.Thanks for publishing it.