The following letter appeared in the Australian Jewish News on July 10:
Last week a member of the Jewish community was slandered in the media but I’m not expecting Jamie Hyams’ “Media Week” column to point out the glaring unfairness of the description.
Why? Because the person was the community’s enfant terrible, Antony Loewenstein. I have plenty of political disagreements with Loewenstein. For a start, I support the continuing existence of the State of Israel within its internationally recognised borders and he supports the one-state solution.
Loewenstein has been totally opposed to the Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, savaging him on more than one occasion. In contrast to many supporters of the Palestinians in Australia, he was critical of Ahmadinejad’s April Geneva speech.
But facts do not matter to some journalists. In The Australian, Greg Sheridan accused Loewenstein of ignoring gross abuses in Iran, which anybody who actually read Loewenstein would know is not true.
I can only think of one reason why Media Week would ignore Sheridan’s effort. After all, Sheridan reported that Julia Gillard got good press in Israel, when there wasn’t a single article about her in any of three Hebrew dailies, at least on the internet. Perhaps Hyams regards Sheridan’s writing as fiction, which should be reviewed on the literary pages, not the media column.
SOL SALBE
Maidstone, Vic