4 days ago
Palestine pulled
And now to the chorus of international condemnation of Israel last week to which our freshly re-elected prime minister lent his voice:
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well, Israel's actions are completely unacceptable. It is outrageous that there be a blockade of food and supplies to people who are in need in Gaza.
- ABC, 26 May 2025
Anthony Albanese accused the Netanyahu government of choking off food and vital supplies to a war-ravaged people whose desperation and hunger were on full display last week:
FERGAL KEANE: An agony that cannot be denied.
DOCTOR: This is [inaudible], he is 5 years old.
FERGAL KEANE: Today a British doctor captured these images in the pediatric ward at Nasser hospital …
DOCTOR: Skin and bone.
REPORTER: There was abundant aid that could have helped them. But nearly three months of Israeli blockade kept it out of Gaza …
- BBC News, 26 May 2025
Pictures like these which have hardened opinion even further against the government of Israel and prompted diplomatic protests from across Europe, the UK and Canada. Last Monday the Prime Minister ratcheted up the rhetoric too:
ANTHONY ALBANESE: People are starving and the idea that a democratic state withholds supply is an outrage.
- ABC, 26 May 2025
The ABC carried those remarks in its news bulletins across the day before inviting Nasser Mashni, President of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, to come on air to respond.
In the four minute interview which followed he pushed for a stronger response to the carnage on the ground:
NASSER MASHNI: It's a rogue state. It's time to treat it that way. And that includes sanctions, includes recalling our ambassador, expelling the Israeli ambassador ...
- ABC News Channel, 26 May 2025
Combining serious critiques with inflammatory invective which it should be said was met with inadequate challenge:
NASSER MASHNI: … the space that Israel inhabited on October 6th has disappeared. The milk's been spilt. Israel never gets to go back to being that normal country again.
- ABC News Channel, 26 May 2025
Within half an hour of the interview in which the ABC claims Mashni was factually wrong on one point, it was posted on iview and on the ABC website.
But try and watch it now and this is what you find because within two hours of the video going up it was taken back down prompting accusations by the advocate that:
'… This appears to be another instance of Palestinian voices being silenced.'
- Crikey, 27 May 2025
So why was the video removed?
Was it as a frenzied internet believed the result of pro-Israel lobbying? Or the intervention by a cowed ABC executive?
None of the above. The video was pulled because it was originally designated to not run online in the first place.
The original content was done as a live-to-air interview as part of broader coverage and was not intended to be published as a stand-alone clip. It was mistakenly uploaded and when that was noticed it was taken down.
- Email, ABC Spokesperson, 28 May 2025
This clumsy error has inflamed already intense scrutiny on the public broadcaster's handling of the conflict.
And it comes amid a new flashpoint with Benjamin Netanyahu desperate to cling to power having launched a new phase of the war and being accused of using a US-backed aid program as a bargaining chip while Hamas, which continues to hold dozens of hostages, and is accused by Israel of threatening those who assist.
The result? Yet more bloodshed.
And for those who resile from Nasser Mashni's criticisms of Netanyahu, they might consider them in light of these words from one of Israel's most steadfast defenders and a former prime minister:
What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians …
It is time to halt, before we are all banished from the family of nations and are summoned to the International Criminal Court for war crimes, with no good defense.
Enough is enough.
- Haaretz, 27 May 2025
And this is why deleting a pro-Palestinian voice from your website, even if it was posted by error, will inevitably be seen as censorship.
Indeed, it's so very telling that the ABC received no complaints about the interview itself but more than a hundred about the decision to remove it.
We see no reason why the interview cannot be reposted online perhaps with an editor's note to address any errors or shortcomings and allow audiences to make up their own minds.
