Why the ABC should apologise for its Good Friday interview of Rev Dr Stephen Sizer

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For centuries, Easter Holy Week was an occasion for incendiary sermons and outbreaks of mob violence against Jewish communities throughout Europe…writes Peter Wertheim.

Peter Wertheim

In recent years we have seen a more subtle version of that tradition take shape. Commentaries about Israel, especially in the lead-up to Easter, often go beyond mere criticisms that are similar to those levelled against any other country or government, and are couched in terms that evoke ancient calumnies against Jews as a group.

Some of Rev Dr Steven Sizer’s public statements have been in that vein and were explored, in part, in David Rutledge’s interview of Sizer on the ABC RN Breakfast program on Good Friday.

In fairness to David Rutledge, he did question Sizer about his 2014 appearance at the New Horizon conference in Tehran, and about his 2015 Facebook post which blamed Israel for the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001.  He asked Sizer “do you accept you do sail pretty close to the wind or at least invite that accusation [of antisemitism]?”

However, on any fair view, David Rutledge projected a generally supportive attitude towards Sizer from the outset, which resulted in a soft interview that allowed Sizer’s self-serving, inaccurate answers to pass unchallenged.

For example, David Rutledge allowed Sizer to get away with claiming that none of the speakers at one of the conferences he addressed in Tehran in 2014 were criticised as antisemitic. In fact, as was reported at the time, the Iranian government-run Press TV described the conference as intending to “unveil the secrets behind the dominance of the Zionist lobby over the US and EU politics”, with one session devoted to examining “Mossad’s role in the 9/11 Coup d’Etat”, and another discussing “9/11 and the Holocaust as pro-Zionist ‘Public myths’ ”.

Rev Dr Steven Sizer

In questioning Sizer, David Rutledge gave only partial information about, and under-played the full extent of, Sizer’s own statements legitimising outlandish conspiracy theories that blame Israel for the September 11 terror attacks in the US.  The audience was not informed that the link which Sizer posted on his Facebook page in 2015 was to an article entitled “9/11 Israel did it”, and that Sizer publicly apologised for posting it. There was no mention of the fact that Sizer’s Church in the UK had been so embarrassed by his public statements that it had extracted an undertaking from Sizer to stop commenting on the subject while he remained a vicar, an undertaking which Sizer broke.

Nor was there any mention of the fact that in November 2016, Inter-Varsity Press (IVP), one of Britain’s largest Christian publishers, withdrew Sizer’s books from sale and ceased to list them on its website.

Worse still, David Rutledge took it upon himself to tell Sizer “I accept you are not an antisemite”, instead of allowing the audience to draw its own conclusions.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews described Sizer’s 2015 Facebook post as “unquestionably antisemitic” and the Church of England voiced “sorrow and shame” at what he had done.

Under the working definition of antisemitism adopted by the 31 democratic countries of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, including the UK, the US and most EU countries, certain kinds of criticism of Israel are internationally recognised as antisemitic.  It is strongly arguable that some of Sizer’s statements about Israel, including his promotion of conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, and his opposition to Israel as an expression of the Jewish people’s right of self-determination, fall within that definition. This question was not put to Sizer, and David Rutledge ought not to have made the concession that Sizer is not an antisemite.

Sizer should also have been challenged over his egregious comments about Israel ceasing to be a democracy if it retains the settlements in the West Bank.  At official permanent-status negotiations between Israel and Palestinian leaders at Camp David in 2000, in Taba in 2001, in Jerusalem in 2008 and in Washington DC in 2010, both parties accepted the principle of “land swaps”.  This would involve incorporating into Israel’s territory a small part of the West Bank where the major settlement blocs are located in exchange for Israel ceding to the Palestinians an equivalent area of land from within Israel’s pre-1967 territory.

When David Rutledge told Sizer “You seem to have stuck your neck out further than most”, it was said as an admiring, not a critical, statement.
Overall, I believe the interview was far beneath the standards of probing, well-researched, journalism that regular listeners expect from an ABC RN current affairs program.  For this reason we called for the ABC to apologise not only to the Jewish community but to the ABC’s entire audience.

It also seems odd to us that an examination by the ABC of any idea, such as Christian Zionism, should feature only one of its critics.   The ABC audience is surely entitled to know what Christian Zionism is from the point of view of a knowledgeable and articulate exponent, not merely from the point of view of a harsh and discredited critic.

The ABC said it received only one formal complaint about the interview. The interview occurred on the eve of the festival of Pesach (Passover).  For Jewish people it is both a religious and a national holiday.  According to a just-completed study by Monash University, Pesach is observed by 90% of Jewish Australians. Jewish families began their preparations for Pesach on the morning of the interview, so it comes as little surprise that few of them initially would have heard or responded to the interview.

However, our organisation subsequently received some two dozen email, text and phone complaints, an unusually high level of response for our community.  The fact that these complaints were not directed to the ABC indicates to us a loss of faith in the ABC’s internal complaints process and perhaps in the culture of the ABC itself.

We have written to the ABC’s Managing Director offering to meet with her, David Rutledge and his producer to discuss these matters further and to give them an opportunity to respond.

Peter Wertheim is the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.