Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism's Toughest Assignment : Lyons, John: Amazon.com.au: Books

Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism's Toughest Assignment : Lyons, John: Amazon.com.au: Books

Temporarily out of stock.

Order now and we'll deliver when available. 

We'll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information. Your account will only be charged when we ship the item.





Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism's Toughest Assignment Paperback – 1 October 2021
by John Lyons (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (14)
Part of: In the National Interest (21 books)


Rarely is the public taken deep into the inner sanctum of major news organisations. In this extraordinary book, award-winning journalist John Lyons goes to the heart of how the media reports - or does not report - one of the biggest stories of our time: the conflict in the Middle East. He looks at the power of lobby groups and shows how they determine much of what is written about Israel, and he turns the spotlight on his own profession and its failings.

For Lyons, the six years he spent in Jerusalem as Middle East correspondent for The Australian were the toughest of his forty-year career. He explains how lobby groups attempt to prevent the real story being told, revealing how he himself became a target, and the dirty tricks that are used. He describes how journalists who accurately report what they see can be hounded and vilified, part of a practice of intimidation, harassment and influence peddling that is designed to stop the truth from being told - a practice that must stop.

This is an insider's account of why the real story of the IsraelPalestine conflict goes largely unreported. It is also the story of why, in the wake of the international backlash against media coverage of the May 2021 IsraelHamas violence, this could be about to change.

John Lyons (journalist) - Wikipedia

John Lyons (journalist) - Wikipedia

John Lyons (journalist)

• Article
• Talk

• Read
• Edit
• View history

Tools

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Lyons (born 1961) is an Australian journalist. As of 2025, Lyons is Americas editor at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, having previously been its global affairs editor.

Early life and education

John Lyons was born in 1961.^[1]

Career

Lyons was formerly editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and executive producer of the Sunday program on the Nine Network.^[2]

He was associate editor (digital) and a senior reporter at The Australian, before being appointed executive editor of ABC News and head of investigative journalism for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 2017.^[2][3][4] In 2017 he was a foreign correspondent in the United States and Israel.^[2]

On 5 June 2019, Lyons live-tweeted when the Australian Federal Police raided the Sydney office of the ABC, the day after their raid on the home of Annika Smethurst. He reported that they had downloaded 9214 documents which then had to be assessed in terms of the warrant issued.^[5]

Lyons became Americas editor at the ABC in March 2025, after having been its global affairs editor.^[6]

The ABC was barred from US president Donald Trump’s UK press conference in September 2025 after Lyons asked Trump: "Is it appropriate, President Trump, that a president in office should be engaged in so much business activity?" Trump was upset by the question and prevaricated, saying that it was his sons, not him, who were involved in the businesses.^[7]

Awards

Lyons won the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award in 1999 for his work with The Bulletin.^[4]

Lyons has won the following Walkley Awards:

• 1999, for Commentary, Analysis, Opinion & Critique, for his national affairs reporting for The Bulletin^[8]
• 2001, for Broadcast Interviewing for his television interviews on the Sunday^[8]
• 2014, for Investigative Journalism as part of a Four Corners team's reporting on the Israeli military's treatment of Palestinian children^[8][9]

In August 2024, at the Kennedy Awards for Outstanding Journalism, Lyons won the Journalist of the Year award, as well as Outstanding Team Player or Mentor and Outstanding Feature Writing awards, for his reporting from the Middle East.^[10]

Books

• Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir (HarperCollins, 2017)^[11]

• Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism's Toughest Assignment (Monash University Publishing, 2021)^[12][13][14]

• A Bunker in Kyiv: The Astonishing Story of the People's Army Defying Putin (HarperCollins, April 2025)^[15]

Personal life

Lyons married Sylvie Le Clezio and they have one son.^[11] As of 2021 they were living in Sydney.^[16]

References

1.  "Lyons, John (1961-)". Trove. National Library of Australia. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
2.  "John Lyons quitting The Australian to replace Bruce Belsham at ABC News". MediaWeek. 16 August 2017. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
3.  Lyons, John (15 July 2019). "AFP requested fingerprints of ABC journalists" (audio (7 min.)). ABC Radio National. RN Drive. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
4.  "Top journalists join our team". The Australian. 21 July 2017.
5.  "I live-tweeted the raids on the ABC — and it was a first for the AFP". ABC News. 8 June 2019. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
6.  Meade, Amanda (7 May 2025). "Laura Tingle moves from political editor of 7.30 to global affairs role at ABC". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 May 2025.
7.  Meade, Amanda (18 September 2025). "ABC barred from Trump's UK press conference after his clash with Australian journalist John Lyons". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 18 September 2025.
8.  "Walkley Winners Archive". Walkley Awards. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
9.  "Stone Cold Justice". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 10 February 2014. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
10.  Hilton, Aoife (17 August 2024). "John Lyons named Journalist of the Year at 2024 Kennedy Awards". ABC News. Retrieved 17 August 2024.
11.  Lyons, John; Le Clézio, Sylvie (2024) [2017]. Balcony over Jerusalem. HarperCollins. p. 374. ISBN 978-1-4607-5256-2.
12.  Lyons, John (2021). Dateline Jerusalem : Journalism's Toughest Assignment (Paperback ed.). Clayton, VIC: Monash University Press. ISBN 9781922464842. Retrieved 14 April 2022.
13.  Sprusansky, Dale (April 2022). "Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism's Toughest Assignment". WRMEA. Retrieved 14 April 2022.
14.  Loewenstein, Antony (4 April 2022). "Who Deserves To Be Boycotted? | Anthony Loewenstein on John Lyons". Sydney Review of Books. Retrieved 14 April 2022.
15.  Lyons, John; Le Clézio, Sylvie (April 2025). A Bunker in Kyiv. ISBN 9780733343490.
16.  "Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism's Toughest Assignment". Monash University Publishing. 30 September 2021. Retrieved 14 April 2022.

External links

• John Lyons on Twitter

How Israel can be discussed in the media without fear or favour

How Israel can be discussed in the media without fear or favour



Touchy subject: We must end self-censorship on Israel and Palestine
John Lyons

October 2, 2021 — 9:55am


Palestinian children in the village of Bilin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; John Lyons (right) in Bilin with an Israeli soldier during a Palestinian demonstration there in 2010. AP, Sylvie Le Clezio
===
As someone who’d tried to avoid running most of my life, I was surprised to find myself, at the age of 52, pounding along the old railway track in Jerusalem, sweating under the Middle Eastern sun but determined to be ready for the prize fight.

Over four months, I’d become the fittest I’d been since I was 18. I needed to be: I was about to face the full fury of Australia’s pro-Israel lobby. I was busy working on a story — Stone Cold Justice — as a guest reporter for Four Corners. I knew the hardline supporters in Australia of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories well enough to understand that this story would unleash a propaganda fatwa against me.

I knew that if I reported the truth about the treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank, I would be the target of a backlash which would be tough, nasty and prolonged. I knew that the report would not encourage a debate about the central theme of the story — whether it was fair that in the West Bank there is one law for Jewish children and one for Palestinian children — but rather a round of attacks on me.

Most journalists based in Jerusalem who report exactly what they see in front of them are trolled and abused. As an indication of how far right much of the pro-Israel lobby has leant, correspondents of The New York Times — traditionally one of the newspapers most supportive of Israel — have been systematically targeted.

Jodi Rudoren, who was from an observant American Jewish family and came to Jerusalem to report for that paper when I was there, was attacked even before she landed in Israel. Her crime? After she was announced as the new NYT correspondent, an Arab American sent her a note of congratulations. She replied with a thank you in Arabic: “Shukran”. For that, she became a target. Later, a prominent US-based pro-Israel lobby group branded her “a Nazi bitch”.

Having lived with these sorts of attacks for many years — and this book will lead to a new round — I believe that they are a deliberate tactic. I think the aim is to make journalists and editors decide that, even if they have a legitimate story that may criticise Israel, it is simply not worth running it because it will cause “more trouble than it’s worth”. As Agence France-Presse correspondent Philippe Agret says, the aim is to “exhaust” journalists and editors so they think twice before writing anything critical of Israel.

Over my time as a journalist and editor, I’ve upset a lot of powerful people. As the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, I dismayed both major party leaders in Australia at that time — John Howard and Paul Keating — along with a few others, such as Kerry Packer. Keating and Packer were the most ferocious, but Howard was not far behind. He once unleashed on me while we were having pre-dinner drinks at The Lodge over the Herald’s coverage of the Mabo and Wik decisions: “You’ve murdered me politically in my own hometown.” Keating once got a member of his office to ring me to say that I was editing “the second most corrupt newspaper in the country”. Keating was outraged by stories we’d been running about his connection to a piggery.

“Please tell your boss that he knows how to wound us,” I told his staffer. “Please relay to him that we’d either prefer not to be on his list at all or we’d rather be No.1 — we don’t like coming second for anything.” I added: “Just out of interest, which is the most corrupt newspaper in the country?” His staffer replied: “The West Australian.”

But nothing matches the fury of the right-wing supporters of Israel, who are often bundled together and described as “the pro-Israel lobby”. When I refer to “the pro-Israel lobby”, I include the Israeli embassy in Canberra, several of the formal lobby groups, and several individuals who are affiliated with these groups — activists who support the continuing expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Advertisement


This book is the story of why many editors and journalists in Australia are in fear of upsetting these people and therefore, in my view, self-censoring. It’s the story of how the Israeli-Palestinian issue is the single issue which the media will not cover with the rigour with which it covers every other issue. And, most importantly, it’s the story of how the Australian public is being short-changed — denied reliable, factual information about one of the most important conflicts of our time.

Material which the lobby opposes being published in Australia is routinely published in Israel.

Depriving Australians of objective information about Israel and its occupation of the West Bank means they, as citizens, cannot evaluate or question Australia voting for Israel at the United Nations, no matter the issue, or if Australia’s continued support of Israel’s 54-year occupation meets our values and interests.
Schwartz Media’s coverage of Israel has seen a social media campaign launched against it, which Morry Schwartz believes is motivated by anti-Semitism.Peter Braig

Some media outlets believe the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is given too much attention. Schwartz Media is the most notable of these. Founded by Melbourne-based property developer Morry Schwartz, the group publishes The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, Quarterly Essay, Black Inc books and Australian Foreign Affairs.
Advertisement


Schwartz Media’s coverage of Israel has resulted in a social media campaign launched against it, which Morry Schwartz believes is motivated by anti-Semitism: “The campaign is like information terrorism. We’re being targeted by an extremely savage social media campaign. And you know why this is happening? In my view, it’s because I am Jewish. In my view, this is anti-Semitism. I’m from a Holocaust family, and I know what anti-Semitism feels like.”

In 2014, Schwartz launched The Saturday Paper. The person hand-picked to be its editor, Erik Jensen, contacted Hamish McDonald and said he would like McDonald to be the publication’s world editor. McDonald said yes. But then, McDonald recalls, Jensen said “something like, ‘There’s one touchy subject — Morry [Schwartz] is very sensitive about stories about Israel. He would not like to see Israel under attack’.”

It’s worth reflecting on that conversation. Here were two journalists as far away as it’s physically possible to be from Israel and the recruiting editor is telling the would-be world editor that Israel is a “touchy” subject. Whether intended or not, the impact of these discussions can be that if you want to succeed in that organisation, the best thing you can do is avoid this “touchy” subject. It can lead to self-censorship.

Jensen, when I put to him McDonald’s recollection of the conversation, says: “I shared with him the proprietor’s personal view on how the media covers Israel and Palestine … it was by no means a directive about coverage.” And Schwartz, when I tell him of McDonald’s recollection, says: “What this is probably referring to is that when I started The Saturday Paper, I told staff I did not want Israel to be over-covered … But I am a publisher, and when there is big news it should be covered, which we showed in the recent Gaza conflict.”

Finally, to the most important matter of all when it comes to language: that the accusation of anti-Semitism cannot be used to shut down debate. In recent years in Australia, we’ve seen some tough and confronting reporting of the Australian military. Mark Willacy, Dan Oakes and Sam Clark from the ABC, and Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters from Nine [the owner of this masthead], have revealed some horrible things done in the Australian uniform in Afghanistan. No one could reasonably suggest that by doing this reporting they were being “un-Australian”.
Advertisement

Likewise, the notion that anyone who criticises Israel or its army is being anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic is nonsense.

Likewise, the notion that anyone who criticises Israel or its army is being anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic is nonsense. Worse than that, in my view it’s used way too often to try to scare the media away from reporting without fear or favour. I spoke to scores of senior journalists and editors for this book, and over and over I was told words to the effect: “No editor wants to be accused of being anti-Semitic.”

The Australian media needs to get to a point where the reality of Israel can be discussed. Israelis are able to read the views of more than 300 retired senior members of [their foreign and domestic intelligence agencies] Mossad, Shin Bet, the Israeli army and the Israel Police who are part of a growing group called Commanders for Israel’s Security. The group dismisses the claim that Israel cannot support a Palestinian state because it would endanger the country’s security: “There is no basis to the intimidating claims that a political arrangement will undermine security. The opposite is true!”
Gareth Evans says “calling out Israel for its sabotage of the two-state solution and creation of a de facto apartheid state is not to be anti-Semitic.”Daniel Munoz

In Israel, that sort of statement is part of the dialogue, but if reported in Australia, that sort of news would be branded as biased, anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. One of the most eloquent recent warnings of the misuse of anti-Semitism came from former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans in a letter to the Herald: “Calling out China for its persecution of Uighurs is not to be a Sinophobic racist. Calling out Myanmar for its crimes against Rohingya people is not to be anti-Buddhist. Calling out Saudi Arabia and Egypt for their murder and suppression of dissidents is not to be Islamophobic or anti-Arab. And calling out Israel for its sabotage of the two-state solution and creation of a de facto apartheid state is not to be anti-Semitic.”
Advertisement


This is a point supported by Rupert Murdoch’s former senior editor, Chris Mitchell. He says that while there are, indeed, anti-Semites, the accusation of anti-Semitism is too often used to block debate.
Dateline Jerusalem by John Lyons.

AFP’s Philippe Agret says he believes Israel’s endgame is Eretz Israel [a “Greater Israel” which annexes the Palestinian territories]. The global picture, he says, is: “Let’s do it progressively, gradually, quietly, building, building, building. We cannot get Nablus, so let’s leave Nablus as a Bantustan. We cannot get parts of Hebron, so let’s leave Hebron as a Bantustan.”

I ask Agret who is self-censoring in their reporting of Israel. Without hesitation, he replies: “Everybody.”

Australians deserve better.

This is an edited extract from Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment by John Lyons, published on October 1 as part of Monash University Publishing’s In the National Interest series.

Lyons slammed over 'Israel lobby' claims – The Australian Jewish News

Lyons slammed over 'Israel lobby' claims – The Australian Jewish News



Dateline Jerusalem
Lyons slammed over ‘Israel lobby’ claims
ZFA: "The notion that the Australian media suppresses debate about the Israel-Palestinian conflict is patently false to anyone who reads the newspapers, listens to the radio or watches television."
By Peter KohnOctober 7, 2021, 11:00 am




Join our website

John Lyons. Photo: Twitter


Get The AJN Newsletter by email and never miss our top storiesFree Sign Up

JEWISH community groups have strongly criticised a book by journalist John Lyons, in which the former Middle East correspondent for The Australian claims media covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are “trolled and abused” and subjected to “the full fury of Australia’s pro-Israel lobby”.

In an extract from his new book, Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment, published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday, the author claims it “is the story of why many editors and journalists in Australia are in fear of upsetting these people and therefore, in my view, self-censoring. It’s the story of how the Israeli-Palestinian issue is the single issue which the media will not cover with the rigour with which it covers every other issue. And, most importantly, it’s the story of how the Australian public is being short-changed – denied reliable, factual information about one of the most important conflicts of our time”.

In the extract, Lyons recalled his 2014 Four Corners report Stone Cold Justice, claiming, “I knew the hardline supporters in Australia of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories well enough to understand that this story would unleash a propaganda fatwa against me.

“I knew that if I reported the truth about the treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank, I would be the target of a backlash which would be tough, nasty and prolonged.”

Recounting protagonists in other challenging stories he has written, Lyons – who is ABC News executive editor and ABC head of investigative journalism – maintained that “nothing matches the fury of the right-wing supporters of Israel, who are often bundled together and described as ‘the pro-Israel lobby’.”

He claims the aim of such attacks is to “make journalists and editors decide that, even if they have a legitimate story that may criticise Israel, it is simply not worth running it because it will cause more trouble than it’s worth”.

Lyons also stated that “the notion that anyone who criticises Israel or its army is being anti-Israeli or antisemitic is nonsense. Worse than that, in my view it’s used way too often to try to scare the media away from reporting without fear or favour.”

Hitting back at Lyons’ claims. Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) president Jeremy Leibler stated, “The notion that the Australian media suppresses debate about the Israel-Palestinian conflict is patently false to anyone who reads the newspapers, listens to the radio or watches television.

“Lyons’ book argues that people and organisations like the ZFA … who support Israel’s right to exist in peace and security alongside a future Palestinian state, are not entitled to play the same role as other groups that lobby on behalf of migrant communities, religious communities, environmental causes.”

On the claim that charges of antisemitism are used to shut down criticism of Israel, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein said Lyons fails to provide “even one bona fide example of a mainstream pro-Israel group making such an accusation”.

“It is simply shameful that genuine concerns about antisemitism are being weaponised against Jews by an ABC employee,” Rubenstein said.

“His gross oversimplifications, misrepresentations and inaccuracies would be laughable if not for the fact the writer is a senior employee of the public broadcaster with a network of cynical supporters.”

Rubenstein added that if Australians were to rely on Lyons’ book, “They would not know that there was a Palestinian terrorist intifada in which over 1000 Israelis were murdered; that Israel has made several far-ranging offers of a Palestinian state which were rebuffed by Palestinian leaders; or that the terror group Hamas rules Gaza and is totally dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

“Lyons’ book offers a perfect example of the type of reporting that should be scrutinised and held to account,” he said.

“AIJAC looks forward to continuing to constructively contribute to debate in this country and won’t be deterred by Lyons’ bullying attempts to shut down our efforts to expose one-sided, distorted or historically illiterate media coverage wherever it comes from.”
read more:

Threading the Needle: A Review of John Lyons’ Dateline Jerusalem – Arena

Threading the Needle: A Review of John Lyons’ Dateline Jerusalem – Arena



Threading the Needle: A Review of John Lyons’ Dateline Jerusalem


Separation Wall, West Bank, Palestine


Arena Quarterly no. 9

Ned Curthoys

Mar 2022




John Lyons, a Walkley Award winning journalist who has worked for Fairfax media and News Corp, and is currently head of journalism at the ABC, has written an important book. Dateline Jerusalem makes for sobering reading in that it confirms that mainstream coverage of Israel and Palestine has become less honest, less reflective, and more reluctant to air heterodox perspectives. This is an insider’s story with lots of fascinating insights into Zionist pressure tactics and the workings of editorial decision making, by a former Jerusalem correspondent for The Australian. Lyons is perhaps best known for his exposé on the way the Israeli military and its judicial apparatus treat Palestinian children in the Occupied Territories. His central premise, which I think this book amply demonstrates, is that the fourth estate is miserably failing the Australian people by not honestly and fearlessly reporting on the truth of Israel’s devastating occupation of Palestinian lands and its discriminatory treatment of Palestinians.

Lyons has been witness to the activities of the pro-Israel lobby in Australia, as Zionist functionaries relentlessly and deliberately intimidate newspapers and other media organisations into self-censorship when it comes to reporting on the occupation and Israel’s flagrant contraventions of international law, which include Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians and infrastructure under the cover of war. Lyons describes a world in which lobby groups such as the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and Israeli diplomats are given relatively unfettered access to editorial boardrooms—access that helps shape permissible representation. The Australian media in Lyons’ depiction is beholden to a sanitising Orwellian mindset that assists Israel’s Hasbarah (pro-Israeli public diplomacy) offensive, in which use of terms such as ‘apartheid’ and ‘Palestine’ are off-limits. Lyons has a differentiated version of the Israel lobby (which he is careful not to conflate with a unified Jewish perspective or the views of the Jewish diaspora), reserving particular opprobrium for right-wing Zionist organisations such as AIJAC and its executive director, Colin Rubinstein, who is apparently ubiquitous enough in his coaxing and complaints to be tagged only as ‘Colin’ in many newspaper boardrooms. Lyons’ former employer News Corp, he reveals, seemed to accept as normal practice that a private lobbyist such as Rubinstein could provide it with a ‘fact sheet’ to use in its coverage of Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2017 visit to Australia.

Lyons’ indictment of Australian media, however, is much broader than News Corp and details active self-censorship and disciplinary action by more progressive mainstream media against wayward journalists, prompted by the fearful attempt to anticipate the Israel lobby’s response to a given feature article, geopolitically sensitive map, or naming practice. Lyons, for example, reports that Scott Stephens from the religion and ethics department of the ABC dutifully sent a piece by Samah Sabawi to Bren Carlill, of the Zionist Federation of Australia, before its publication, without seeking Sabawi’s permission, in contravention of the organisation’s own guidelines. The functional intention of the Israel lobby’s insistent targeting of news organisations, Lyons correctly analyses, is that those organisations should either reproduce the permissible narrative of Israel as a vulnerable country motivated by security concerns and working its way towards a political resolution of the conflict, while lamentably lacking a partner for peace, or simply remain silent. In the wake of the Sabawi affair, the ABC seems to have readily consented to the latter approach, with Stephens indicating to colleagues that in-depth analysis of Israel and Palestine is now to be considered too ‘hot’ to handle.

Lyons’ book isn’t just a discussion of the politics of representation; he’s concerned for the future careers of talented younger journalists and so spends quite a bit of time discussing the impact of pro-Israeli coverage, as an enforced consensus, on individuals. The pressure of this consensus becomes particularly acute when the Israel lobby (including Israeli diplomats and other functionaries) consistently targets Palestinian journalists and spokespeople. One particularly disturbing episode Lyons relates concerns the recruitment by The Australian of a young journalist of Palestinian origin, Jennine Khalik, to reflect a changing Australia and report on Arab and Islamic communities in Western Sydney. Not long after this appointment, Lyons recounts, Israeli diplomats visited Chris Mathieson, a former chief editor of The Australian who had recruited Khalik in 2015, letting him know that, as a Palestinian, she was ‘on their agenda’. After directly quoting a Palestinian refugee and singer who had used the word ‘Palestine’ in an interview, Khalik was verbally assaulted by a sub-editor and has since quit the newspaper. Lyons contrasts Khalik’s targeting and denigration with his knowledge of journalists, and many federal politicians, who take junkets to Israel and are yet rarely accused of pro-Israeli bias, such is the effortless normalisation of that world view in our corrupted media landscape. Lyons’ point is that in multicultural Australia, with its significant Arab and Palestinian diasporas, the silencing of Palestinian perspectives can take a real and particularly harmful material form when abetted by political and editorial interference. As Lyons summarises, ‘if someone has a Palestinian or Arab background, they will personally be targeted, whereas this never occurs on the other side’. Edward Said has memorably described the relentless hostility towards Palestinians and the idea of Palestine as the denial of the permission of Palestinians to ‘narrate’ their own identity and aspirations, a denial that intersects closely with what Nur Masalha describes as the ongoing ‘memoricide’ of the material and linguistic history of Palestine.

As someone who used to assume that US political fealty to and imaginative sympathy with Israel was unparalleled in its intensity, it was startling to absorb Lyons’ take on Australian journalism as, in fact, representing the global nadir of coverage of Israel and Palestine. Lyons points out that even a newspaper that has been reliably pro-Israel, such as The New York Times (see Chomsky’s The Iron Triangle and its discussion of the paper’s reporting of the 1982 Lebanon invasion), has become much more critical of the occupation and of Israeli military aggression in light of the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2020 Gaza War, recognising BLM solidarity with the Palestinians and the now long-standing support of African American writers and activists for the Palestinian cause. Lyons discusses a remarkable petition launched in June 2021 and signed by more than 500 journalists in the United States, including some from The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, who have called for the media to stop ‘obscuring the Israeli occupation and the systemic oppression of Palestinians’. He points out that Australian media outlets are deeply reluctant to undertake a thorough reassessment of how the conflict is covered. A May 2021 open letter from Australian journalists and media workers seeking to improve fairness and accuracy in reporting of Israel and Palestine seems to have generated disciplinary action by newsrooms, whose instantaneous reminders to signatories about what counts as ‘impartiality’ in our newsrooms were not matched by any qualms about their journalists’ frequent media junkets to Israel.

The lack of serious progress on representing the Israeli occupation in line with the empirical findings of human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem is not surprising, when, as Lyons points out, even highly respected journalists can find themselves in danger of being censored if they approach the reality of the situation or more directly describe what they know and experience. Lyons discusses a farewell feature column by respected former Middle East correspondent Ed O’Loughlin filed in May 2008, which claimed that the Israeli army had a ‘culture of denial and impunity, repeatedly condemned by Israeli and foreign (human) rights groups’ and that Palestinians live in a constant state of vulnerability, as they’re studied by Israeli military intelligence on TV screens or through a gun sight. This admission of Israeli aggression towards the Palestinians and its psychological effects on a population under siege might be consistently reported in Israel itself through Haaretz and other media, but in Australia it was published only by The Age and not by The Sydney Morning Herald. Beholden to a particular mode of right-wing diasporic idealism about Israel that would be laughed at in Israel itself, media organisations in Australia are liable to take fright when journalists do not affirm the higher ethical principles of the Israeli army and the entrenched notion that Palestinians are, in essence, aggressors that are engaged in a continual war against the existence and legitimacy of Israel.

Another intriguing titbit is Lyons’ discussion of Schwartz Media, which publishes The Saturday Paper, The Monthly and Quarterly Essay among other prominent progressive publications. The proprietor, Morry Schwartz, the son of Holocaust survivors who spent part of his childhood in Israel, tends to regard social-media criticism of his publications’ failure to adequately cover conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as motivated by anti-Semitism. The compromise between a pro-Israeli media owner and a left-wing readership is silence about or minimal coverage of Israel and Palestine, which is well understood by journalists working for the organisation. Thus the organisation did not give any substantial coverage to the 2021 Israeli military assault on Gaza, prompting Alex McKinnon, the former morning editor of The Saturday Paper, to lacerate his former employer, noting an ‘unofficial but widely known editorial policy’ within Schwartz Media publications to avoid coverage of Israel’s human rights abuses, a policy which, McKinnon notes, was often divulged to him unprompted by staff. The palpable, internalised fear of substantively deviating from the correct line—there’s a ‘conflict’, not asymmetrical violence; Israel’s military actions, even if disproportionate, are motivated by security and are primarily retaliatory; relative silence about the Nakba and of continuing subsequent Israeli efforts to displace the Palestinians from their lands and homes; minimising of spatial, legislative and electoral apartheid practices by Israel, as documented by Lyons, referring to the detailed findings of human rights organisations; reluctance to ever cartographically visualise the ongoing Bantustanisation of Palestinian areas, as that would destabilise the comfortable chimera of a two-state solution; settler extremism is rogue and religiously motivated rather than deliberately assisted by the Israeli army; consistent minimisation of the expansionist fantasy of ‘Eretz Israel’ as animating political Zionism—in Australian media coverage of Israel differs, as we have seen, from the situation in the United States, which constitutes the epicentre of military, financial and economic support for Israel. This difference is due to significant countervailing tendencies at play in the United States, including, as Lyons has argued, the pro-Israel pro-peace lobby group J Street’s attempt to offset the Likud-aligned, pro-settlement approach of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Turning to Lyons’ current employer, ‘our ABC’, the national broadcaster has mostly ignored the opening up of debate about the future of Israel as an occupying state and instead remains reluctant to help its audiences to form mature opinions about the conflict. Lyons rues the fact that the ABC largely ignored Human Rights Watch and its landmark report A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, which makes stunning reading as a systematic indictment of Israel’s persecutory and discriminatory treatment of the Palestinians. That report concurs with Lyons’ pessimistic view of Israeli policy: the achievement of ‘Eretz Israel’ or greater Israel, which will involve the annexation of the West Bank, the removal to the greatest extent possible of the Palestinians from their own lands, the continuing appropriation of fertile land and water resources from the Palestinians, and the ongoing subjugation, harassment and violent intimidation of those Palestinians who seek to assert their rights to remain on their ancestral lands by settlers assisted by the Israeli army.

Having explained the broad and seemingly systemic failure of the Australian media to give coverage to the enduring reality of Israel as an occupying settler-colonial state pursuing apartheid practices, a discriminatory regime which, as B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) points out, ‘is inextricably bound up in human rights violations’, Lyons’ book gives a forthright indication of what Australian media consumers are not learning and deserve to know. For example, Lyons observes that Israel’s attempts to achieve a Jewish demographic majority in Jerusalem mean that Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem are routinely demolished or occupied; that at the time of the book’s writing, 3000 Palestinians in 200 East Jerusalem properties were living under the threat of eviction according to Peace Now; and that 20,000 Palestinian homes were under threat of demolition. As Lyons’ earlier reporting revealed, in the Occupied Territories there is a military system ruling over Palestinians, and not Jewish settlers, that routinely subjects Palestinians to torture and lengthy imprisonment. We know little about it here, even while the US criminal justice system’s treatment of African Americans receives constant critical attention. Lyons discusses the abject situation in Hebron, where 500 Jewish settlers effectively imprison 200,000 Palestinians with the assistance of the Israeli military. He reminds us that Palestinians are effectively prevented from using settler roads. He discusses the cancellation of the Israeli citizenship of hundreds of Palestinian Bedouins and the violent repression of Palestinian rights to assembly and cultural expression in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).

Housing demolition is at the forefront of this book, as Lyons wants us to understand Israel’s sustained policy of displacement and demographic transformation in the name of Judaisation. In Area C of the OPT, where 61 per cent of Jewish settlers live, he reminds us, 98 per cent of Palestinian building applications are refused. Despite living under de facto Israeli control, Palestinians in the West Bank cannot use Israel’s international airport, Ben Gurion, and do not have control of their water supply. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem cannot vote in Israel’s national elections, and to entrench and legitimise this regime of apartheid and persecution Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law reserves self-determination for Jewish citizens alone. Imagine the uproar, Lyons points out to readers who blithely assume Israel is a democracy much like ours, if a law entrenched the supremacy of white Australians in Australia.

Of course, framed as one man’s lonely quest to right the wrongs of the noblest profession, the book has its flaws. Rather than discussing the reasons for the post-war pro-Israel consensus in this country, which dovetails with the agenda of media proprietors, state power, geopolitical interests, and profound cultural sympathies with another ‘youthful’ settler colony, Lyons somewhat fatuously implies that more realistic coverage of Israel depends on the whims of particular editors. Rather than exploring the limitations of the mainstream media more generally, Lyons reproduces its tendency towards middle-brow complacency, anti-intellectualism, and superficial historical understanding. Anxious to avoid the predictable charge of anti-Semitism, Lyons reminds us earnestly that, off the record, there are Jewish supporters of Israel who demur at the excesses of the occupation. But, as Alison Caddick has pointed out in Arena Online, where is the discussion of decades of opposition by Jewish intellectuals and activists to Israeli policies, including the important analyses of Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Naomi Klein, Jeff Halper, Judith Butler and Australia’s Antony Loewenstein? The reality that Israel views the two-state solution, if given lip-service at all, as a handy PR technique to distract from ‘facts on the ground’ does not suggest to Lyons that there are other normative horizons including a decolonising post-Zionist state that offers genuine democratic inclusion to all of its citizens. Rather than directing readers away from the mainstream Australian media and, as Caddick suggests, towards independent media such as the Arena group that have performed important service in covering this issue for many years, Lyons, as a beneficiary, cannot conceive that the ‘Australian media’ consists of more than the organisations he works for. He will not acknowledge that the mainstream media lags well behind a counter-public sphere, energised by social media and its power of collective witnessing, that will no longer tolerate Israel’s contraventions of international laws against occupation, annexation and discrimination.

Yet the empirical vacuum on this issue matters, as Lyons points out. It has allowed the response to the Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions (BDS) campaign endorsed by Palestinian civil society and embraced by younger activists to be framed as an eruption of anti-Semitism rather than a tactical response to the ordeal of the Palestinians. Reading the muted media coverage of the withdrawals of some of Australia’s leading performers from the recent Sydney Festival in protest against a grant accepted from the Israeli government, many Australians reading mainstream media coverage of the boycott, which demonstrated to a larger constituency that BDS is proving resilient, would either be bemused by it or accept that it was an act of censorship or even supposed left-wing anti-Semitism. The sense in which Israel’s sponsorship of the event is an act of cultural brand-washing to distract from its human rights violations was barely entertained by the mainstream media.

I can imagine Lyons pointing out that this is not how political boycotts of China and the Winter Olympics will be covered by our compliant media. More obedient than ever, cowed by a scarcity of jobs, the threat of funding cuts, and a deeply internalised fear of the charge of anti-Semitism that is clearly belied by the plurality of Jewish perspectives that are better recognised in other media ecologies, we can expect that acts of civil disobedience in favour of an emancipatory goal, the just treatment and political enfranchisement of Palestinians, will continue to be decried in the Australian media as inimical to freedom of speech. At the same time, pro-Zionist pressure groups and their ancillaries in editorial boardrooms will continue to influence sanitising media coverage of Israel’s persecutory policies. The future looks bleak, but the Sydney Festival BDS movement, which was quickly mobilised, indicates that a counter-public sphere exists and will not disappear. It does not accept the cowardice and systemic bias of the Australian mainstream media. That counter-public, an Australian media in the process of becoming, is not a few large, morally bankrupt news organisations that silence, expel or ignore dissident voices. That Australian media will be constituted by our capacity to hope, by our ability to imagine otherwise, and by our willingness to engage with one of the great injustices of our age.





The Palestinian Question: Celebrating the Liberal Media?

Alison Caddick, 14 Oct 2021

A certain anti-intellectualism, perhaps especially rife in the Australian context, is arguably one of the major problems of mainstream respectable media.




About the author
Ned Curthoys

Ned Curthoys is a senior lecturer in English and Literary Studies at the University of Western Australia. His work ranges across literary studies, philosophy, Jewish studies and political theory. He is the author of The Legacy of Liberal Judaism: Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt’s Hidden Conversation (Berghahn, 2013) and ~~the Bildungsroman in a Geoncidal Age~ (Bloomsbury, 2024).

More articles by Ned Curthoys