Journalist John Pilger. Photo: AJN file
DALIA SABLE
THE Australian Jewish community has expressed concern over the award of the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize to Australian journalist, author and filmmaker John Pilger.
Pilger, a supporter of Palestinian causes and a critic of Israel, received the award for his “commitment to peace with justice by exposing and holding governments to account for human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form”.
President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) Robert Goot said that bestowing the honour on Pilger “reflects adversely on the institute awarding the prize”.
“Awarding a peace prize to John Pilger is bizarre and disgraceful,” Goot said. “Pilger does not promote peace, but is a polemicist, a distorter of facts and history, and he promotes an extreme Palestinian narrative at the expense of Israel’s narrative and objective analysis.”
Chief executive officer of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies Vic Alhadeff echoed these sentiments.
“Presenting the Sydney Peace Prize to Mr Pilger makes a farce of the award. Some of his work over the years has been noteworthy for its extreme lack of either balance or context, which has done nothing to promote the cause of peace. The choice of winner is very unfortunate as there are so many worthy recipients out there.”
In addition to his many writings on the topic, in 1974 Pilger produced the documentary Palestine Is Still The Issue “about a nation of people – the Palestinians – forced off their land and later subjected to a military occupation by Israel”. In 2002, he released a follow-up documentary of the same name, revisiting the region where “nothing has changed”.
More recently, he called the Likud Party “fascists” and accused Israel Defence Forces soldiers of large-scale domestic violence when they returned from “their war on Palestinian women and children” to “make war on their own”.
Pilger has also produced documentaries about Cambodia, East Timor and the people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.
The only international peace prize awarded in Australia, organisers of the Sydney Peace Prize claim it recognises organisations or individuals who have made significant contributions to global peace.
Past winners have included Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson, secretary-general of Amnesty International Irene Kahn and, to the disdain of the Jewish community, Dr Hanan Ashrawi for “her commitment to peace in the Middle East”.
Pilger will receive the award at a function at The University of Sydney in November. The following day he will deliver the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture at the Sydney Opera House.
As with Robert Fisk and Antony Loewenstein, one can go through Pilger’s writings line by line, showing all the omissions of relevant but inconvenient fact, the distortions of truth, the logical fallacies and the childish tricks of sophistry relied upon to support the preconceived and utterly predictable ‘opinions’. All three are propagandists, not journalists, and this is the final nail in the coffin containing the Sydney Peace Prize’s credibility.
John Pilger is not ‘balanced’ as he reports the oppressor and the oppressed, those occupying someone else’s land and the occupier. He is an admirable journalist. He grew up in Bondi but is unpublished here, except in the Green Left Weekly. I have lived in Britain, and he is just about mainstream there. I suggest Goot and Alhadeff continue to attack John Pilger until they look utterly foolish. In fact, they have done it already. And, by the way, bravo to David Langsam on his excellent letter demanding an apology to John Pilger.
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Sure Pilger is a real lefty but his stance on some social, human rights and policical issues is admirable and his TV documentaries are often informative too
I find this sort of attitude a disgrace. Pilger has an astounding body of work and deals in subjects and issues many would like not to be thought about, or seen or exposed.
Yes, the way Israel acts IS a story, deserves accurate exposure and being critical of that nation does not make one racist. The only bigotry and hate on this issue comes from various jewish groups and individuals who apparently aren’t familiar with the concept of free speech.
Sorry you feel uncomfortable that reality isn’t always so blatantly pro Israel. Learn to live with debate, with criticism and with other people’s views.
John deserves the award for so much of the work he’s done, often when no one else would.
This community’s whining and outright character assassination techniques used to stop full and proper information on this complex issue is seen is rather telling.
perhaps not directly related however on the same subject, how anti-israel narrative is gaining international acceptance, linked is a very interesting article by Ben Dror Yemini, of NRG news agency in Israel (translated into English from hebrew), the anti-israel lie industry is working under the cover of ‘human rights’.
After reading the included link it is really no wonder how the Sydney Peace Prize is strongly opinionated against israel and is pro-arab;
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AWXYV56qlacKZGdwYzRoYzlfMTMzaG5mamJ3Y2o&hl=en
perhaps Pilger himself should pay a visit to the SJM (similar to editor of HPJ newspaper of syndey west)?
for an australian based prize, an australian based voice of opposition is far more relevant than prize’s organizers to try to ‘internationalize’ their prize, especially when not looking at the whole (international) picture.
Israel is a strong supporter of peace all through history and through any of its governments, yet, this Sydney based prize seems to be a very pro-arab narrative prize, and should at least be announced as such.
Maybe they should consider renaming this so-called “peace prize”. It seems there is a history of it being awarded to rabid hate-mongers.