by Albert Langer

After preliminary hearings from March to August, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal made no findings about Melbourne's Community Radio Station 3CR and announced that its six-month-old inquiry had never actually begun. 

3CR made a unilateral declaration reaffirming its policy ‘that Zionism is a form of racism’, its policy ‘to exclude Zionist organizations and viewpoints from membership or 3CR's programming’ and its ‘determination to continue, to broadcast Palestinian and anti-Zionist viewpoints through programs such as 'Palestine Speaks’, ' Palestine Voice.' and ‘JAZA’. 

The declaration even rubbed salt in the wounds by declaring that the station's long-standing right of reply (which the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies had never applied to use) would be restricted to purely factual rebuttals and would be given ‘to people who apply in good faith’ and ‘ entirely at 3CR’s own discretion’.

Previously for example, Norman Rothfield of the ‘left-wing’ Zionist magazine 'Paths to Peace' had been allowed to present three half-hour programs advocating his views, as a ‘right of reply’ to attacks on those views, although 3CR drew the line at giving Rothfield a regular program. 

Now Rothfield would be restricted to purely 'factual rebuttals to specific grievances' about the section of the community he represents (i.e. Israeli agents) being maligned or misrepresented - and then he would only be let on in the unlikely event that 3CR was satisfied, 'entirely at 3CR’s own discretion', that the application was in ‘good faith’ and was not just a continuation of Rothfield's campaign against the station. 

Moreover, the declaration underlined that 3CR ‘will not voluntarily enter into any agreements, or give, any undertakings, to the Board of Deputies, the Tribunal or any other outside body’. 

The only consolations for the Board of Deputies were clauses saying that material will not be broadcast which ‘promotes hatred against or hostility towards’, or ‘brings into contempt or ridicule.’ groups ‘distinguished by their sex, race, religion, color or ethnic or national origins'.  This provision is not great consolation since it simply reaffirms 3CR's long standing opposition to racism. 

The point at issue was whether the anti-Zionist broadcasts were racist, not whether racist material should be broadcast, and 3CR has kept on right on insisting that the programs were not racist and will be allowed to continue as before. 

Implicit understandings.

Indeed, at 3CR's general meeting of affiliates an amendment was moved by JAZA (Jews Against Zionism and Anti-Semitism) to spell this out:  ‘This guideline does not inhibit the continuing broadcast of material similar to that complained about by the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, since 3CR has repeatedly declared that it does not consider this material to be racist or anti-Semitic in any way.’ 

That amendment was defeated by one vote only after the movers of the declaration repeatedly stated that it was implicit anyway, having been said many times before, and that it was well understood by the Board of Deputies.  (They argued that rubbing it in would make it difficult for the Board to withdraw from the inquiry and 3CR could not afford the legal fees just to humiliate the Board further.) 

A further general meeting of listener sponsors will be held at the Collingwood Education Centre on Monday 24 September at 8 p.m. and probably will result in a future general meeting of affiliates amending the unilateral declaration or rescinding it entirely. 

Humiliating defeat.

The Board of Deputies or at least its leadership were well aware of the situation through their ‘observers’ at 3CR meetings (one of whom even tried to register as the proxy for an inactive affiliate!).  The fact that a unilateral declaration could be unilaterally interpreted, amended or rescinded was also spelt out to them in public at the Tribunal hearings.  Yet they were determined to get out of the inquiry. 

Why, after spending two years and thousands of dollars campaigning for a public inquiry into 3CR, did the Board of Deputies accept such a humiliating slap in the face?   The best proof is the dog fight that has already broken out among the Zionists as to who should  bear responsibility for the disaster, and the fact that while 3CR has mailed out copies of its declaration to all 3000 listener sponsors, the 'Australian Jewish News' has studiously refrained from publishing its text at all. 

Already Board President, Arnold Bloch, is issuing pathetic statements defending his stand, and seeking popularity on the basis that at least he is not as Neanderthal as the notorious Rabbi Rapaport, while Isi Leibler, who kept his Executive Council for Australian Jewry (normally responsible for Commonwealth matters) well clear of the 3CR inquiry, has already stuck the knife well and truly into Bloch and is beginning to twist it. 

The normally voluble Rabbi John Levi has been strangely silent, while Norman Rothfield, who had hoped by his attacks on 3CR to re-establish ‘left-wing’ Zionism and the Labor Party as a legitimate influence on the VJBD (as it is for example in NSW), has been driven back to his previous position of being only slightly more respectable than JAZA within the Jewish community. 

Dr. Knopfelmacher is saying ‘I told you so’ (which indeed he did), and even the Bundist fossils are hoping they will again have a chance to unseat the dominant Mizrachi Religious Zionists from their hold on the Board. 

The Board of Deputies didn't even want the Tribunal to read the 3CR declaration it accepted as a basis for withdrawing its complaint, and tried to slip them a copy omitting the crucial preamble and conclusion - which resulted in some rapid document shuffling with 3CR's counsel as well, when the subterfuge was discovered. 

So why on earth did the Board of Deputies withdraw its complaint on the basis of a declaration it didn't want the Tribunal, let alone the Jewish community, to read?Certainly it wasn't because the Boards' demands had been met. 

What they wanted and what they got.

The Boards' first demand was for an anti-racist clause (similar to that adopted as an internal guideline by 3CR), to be imposed as a license condition so that it could be enforced externally in line with the Board's interpretation that anti-Zionist views are racist and Zionist views are not. 

Instead, 3CR will continue to be the only commercial broadcasting station in Australia with an explicitly anti-racist policy and will continue to implement this policy in line with its own interpretation, not subject to outside review, that Zionist views are racist, and anti-Zionist views are not. 

Although the Board explicitly disassociated itself from 3CR's declaration that Zionism was racist etc, it accepted without comment point 1 of 3CR's declaration, which ‘strongly supports the concept of self-regulation within broadcasting' and holds that licensees should not have ‘arbitrary standards imposed and enforced by Government regulatory bodies’.  Instead of getting the license condition it wanted, the Board accepted a general declaration against license conditions of any kind. 

The Board's second demand was that: '...where a station...chooses to give a substantial time, and attention only to one point of view on a public issue, then those who have an interest in presenting an opposing view on that issue should be given rights of access to present their view…’ 

What they got, and accepted, was a declaration, point (iii) and paragraph 2 of which explicitly excludes Zionism from access to 3CR.

The Board’s third demand was that:  '. . . those organizations which wish to affiliate to Radio Station 3CR (for example Paths to Peace) should be entitled to affiliate if otherwise entitled to do so.  They should not be disqualified because 3CR chooses to characterize them as Zionist.’ 

What they got, and accepted, was a declaration, point (iv) and paragraph 3 of which explicitly excludes 'Zionist '- organizations and viewpoints from membership or 3CR’s programming. 

Perhaps the ultimate humiliation was that supporters of ‘Paths to Peace’, in their desperation to get out of the inquiry, voted at the 3CR listener sponsor general meeting, in favor of this resolution to exclude themselves.

This may explain the extreme bitterness of the personal attacks in the latest issue of their magazine. 

Fools rush in

Originally the inquiry was meant to support the current, Zionist campaign to prove that ‘anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism’ as a counter to the UN declaration that, Zionism is a form of racism’. 

In the Board of Deputies' annual report, President Arnold Bloch boasted that this would be: ‘... the first judicial....inquiry into the relationship between anti-Zionism of a certain type and anti -Semitism, which has taken place since the UN resolution of  1975 equating Zionism with racism.’ 

Keen to have such an inquiry, Bloch even rejected a request from the Tribunal to attempt to resolve differences with 3CR at a private meeting.  On 18 October 1978, he smugly declared:  ‘Even were 3CR to concede full so called 'rights of reply' this would not conclude the matter since we have asked the Tribunal to impose certain conditions on 3CR's license.’ 

‘It is accordingly our view that the matter should proceed direct to a public inquiry by the Tribunal.’ 

After insisting on it so eagerly, what made the Board suddenly change its mind?  Before the inquiry began, the Board's campaign against 3CR was simply a matter of media manipulation, at which the Board is very skilled indeed.  Once the inquiry started, it became a matter of hard evidence instead of press releases, and the Board suddenly discovered that it didn't have any, while 3CR had plenty. 

Apart from the Board of Deputies' half a dozen familiar faces (Rabbi Levi , Rabbi Gutnick - who also reckons President Carter is an anti-Semite - Sam Lipski etc), a grand total of only two complaints from Jewish listeners to 3CR were received in response to the Tribunal's advertisements in every major newspaper.  There were more complaints about programs on Malaya, South Africa and Turkey (i.e. one each). 

JAZA called more Jewish witnesses to say that they were offended by Zionism than the Board called to say that they were offended by 3CR, and a whole reading room at the Deputy Crown Solicitor's office had to be set aside to house JAZA's several hundred volumes of documentary evidence.

All the Board had was not evidence but assertions, and they were totally isolated from non-Zionist support.  They even had to go all the way to WA to find ALP politicians who would support them (Perth being the farthest spot in Australia from 3CR's reception area). 

Nazi-Zionist collaboration

At the very centre of the Board's complaints were certain 3CR broadcasts alleging that the Zionist leadership collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of European Jews.  The Board claimed that this was simply an extremely offensive anti-Semitic conspiracy theory designed to bait the Melbourne Jewish community, and they called an 'expert witness' to prove it. 

As usual with attempted censorship, the result was the exact opposite of what the censors wanted.  JAZA produced a whole book of evidence on Nazi-Zionist collaboration, drawing on official transcripts of Israeli court cases and based on sources such as 'Perfidy' by Ben Hecht, the well-known American supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Begin (from his early terrorist days), and 'The Holocaust Victims Accuse' by Rabbi Moshe Shonfeld of the extremely orthodox 'Guardians of the City' in Jerusalem.

Some of that material, on the notorious 'Kastner case', has already been published in 'Nation Review' (28 June 1979, p.660).  It was met with silence from the Board of Deputies, although it did cause their expert witness to reverse some of his views.  'Informed sources' tell us that it was mainly to avoid a public inquiry into these matters, that the Board withdrew its complaint.  But never mind, the evidence will be available shortly in book form.

It may sound fantastic to say the Board backed off because they were afraid of what would come out.  But anybody who doesn't believe this should check through the material already published, and to be published shortly, and try to find another explanation for the Board 's Humiliating withdrawal.

People in the Jewish community especially should take note of Isi Leibler's remarks that a Tribunal hearing would have been 'disastrous' for the Jewish community (read ‘for Zionism’) as it would have given splinter groups a platform on which to publicize their views.    ('Australian Jewish  News',  7  September.) 

People who believed the Board's allegations about 3CR will want to check out exactly what 'views' Leibler was so desperate to prevent being publicized.  They will be especially interested in the question of Nazi collaboration. 

What about 3CR?

The only remaining question is why did 3CR let the Zionists off the hook?

Given the Board's extreme weakness, 3CR could have used the inquiry as a platform to counter some of the extremely damaging allegations about anti-Semitism that have been made over the past few years, and to have this issue resolved, one way or the other, so it could not be kept alive to be used as grounds for not renewing 3CR’s license. 

Although Arnold Bloch has now publicly admitted, and the Board’s  counsel, Alan Goldberg QC, has confirmed, that the Board didn't think it could win anything at the public inquiry ('AJN', 7  September), 3CR Committee members were just too scared of 'the bosses court' to believe this when they were told it a few weeks ago.  By leaving the whole situation open, 3CR has allowed the Board to mount a more carefully prepared attack at the renewal hearings in 18 months, when 3CR's license really will be up for grabs. 

Exactly as 3CR was warned, the Board has already declared its intention to do just  that  (although whether this intention is carried out remains to be seen).  According to Arnold Bloch:  ‘I have, no regrets about what we have done, and I hope I will have no regrets if we take, action again, as I believe probably we will have to do.’      ('Australian Jewish News', 7 September - so much for ‘good faith').

 ‘There is no doubt that 3CR will continue, to broadcast anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda.  (Whatever happened to 'anti-Semitic'? - A.L.).   We will have, to consider in due course whether we ought to oppose the renewal of 3CR’s license.’

 ‘We have to keep two issues completely separate.  The first is whether or not a station which is avowedly and rabidly anti-Zionist (note, not 'anti-Semitic' - A.L.) should be allowed to hold a license at all.’ 

‘That is one issue which we think that the Tribunal would not have resolved in our favor in the context of the present inquiry.’ 

'However we do not exclude that as an issue in the future.

('AJN ',  17   August). 

Quite clearly, despite previous hypocritical declarations, the Board of Deputies is still out to get 3CR's license and they hope to be in a stronger position to do it at the renewal hearings than if the inquiry had gone ahead now.  As Arnold Bloch says:   'We have achieved what was feasible (i.e. nothing - A.L.), and if we come back (to the Tribunal) we will be in a substantially stronger position.'       ( 'AJN ', 7  September). 

The only explanation for 3CR's accepting this seems to be a panic reaction to the high cost of legal representation (which proved entirely worthless throughout the inquiry), and the general demoralization within the station as a result of certain internal problems which are mentioned in the version of this article appearing in 'Nation  Review'. 

3CR won the battle hands down.  But it failed to press home this victory to win the war.  So the war may well continue.

(Originally published in Free Palestine, No. 8, 1979, Melbourne, Australia)

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APPENDIX C   (Unilateral declaration by Community radio Station 3CR)