AFP apology slammed
THE Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has condemned a “belated, self-righteous” apology from the Australians for Palestine (AFP) group, 18 days after it sent out an email with a photo of dead children in Syria, portraying them as children killed by Israel in Gaza.
THE Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has condemned a “belated, self-righteous” apology from the Australians for Palestine (AFP) group, 18 days after it sent out an email with a photo of dead children in Syria, portraying them as children killed by Israel in Gaza.
Stating that Israel’s bombs strike with “vengeance” at civilians, the August 10 email read: “Almost 2000 Palestinians have been slaughtered and some 10,000 Palestinians have been wounded. Make no mistake about it: more than 80 per cent of those already killed were civilians.”
The email also compared the conflict to the Shoah.
“We cannot shed tears over yesteryear’s Holocaust victims when reading books, seeing films or visiting museums and not see that these innocent Palestinian children today are just as deserving of your sorrow and outrage,” AFP editor Sonja Karkar wrote.
She added: “This is happening now and we will all be complicit if we do not bring pressure on Israel to stop its bombings, its siege and its occupation. It will be too late to say ‘never again’ if Israel has its way.”
Karkar apologised on August 28, saying she “inadvertently used an image of dead children in Syria when I was intending to show children killed by Israel in Gaza”.
But she defended the claims about “Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian children”, saying the group makes no apology for reporting these “crimes against a besieged and oppressed people. When people are being bombarded as the Palestinians certainly were, we need to report on the outrages as best we can.”
AIJAC executive director Colin Rubenstein told The AJN Karkar’s apology “repeated the wrong-headed, damaging myths about alleged Israeli behaviour”.
“This deceptive flyer sent to MPs was sadly typical of the demonisation Israel faced from many sources during Operation Protective Edge – not only in regard to the false photo, but also in regard to other claims it made, for instance regarding casualties,” he said.
“If Australians for Palestine really had the interests of Palestinians at heart, they would be condemning Hamas for forcing this war on Israel and for committing multiple war crimes thus being responsible for the death, destruction and suffering in both Israel and Gaza, rather than engaging in a misleading hate campaign against Israel.”
EVAN ZLATKIS
A screen grab of the apology.
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