‘We’re living in Orwellian times’
JOURNALIST Paul Sheehan pulled no punches in his presentation to the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies’ annual general meeting last week, taking aim at Western universities, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, the political left in general and even his own industry.
JOURNALIST Paul Sheehan pulled no punches in his presentation to the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies’ annual general meeting last week, taking aim at Western universities, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, the political left in general and even his own industry.
Conceding that he was “preaching to the converted”, the Sydney Morning Herald columnist argued that “we are truly living in an Orwellian time”.
“I work in the media. I’ve been in the belly of the beast for 40 years and what I’ve seen is the media evolve from an imperfect but genuine attempt at objectivity to a world where objectivity is deemed impossible and naive,” he said at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
“It’s a world in which the media has blurred the lines to the point of obliteration between reportage and analysis, and opinion.”
His criticism of our university campuses was even more scathing. “I never thought that in the span of my own life I would see our universities become places that are the least free of thought, the most dangerous places for what is deemed to be heterodoxy,” he said.
“The social sciences of the Western universities have become a place where anti-Semitism [is] rebadged – old-fashioned Jew baiting, ancient anti-Semitism – rebadged under the BDS movement, under the badge of solidarity with the Palestinians.
“I happen to believe that we live in a world where universities now sanction, tolerate and in some ways promote anti-Semitism … you now have to be very careful what you say about Israel, you have to be very careful … if you represent yourself as a nationalistic, passionate Jewish person if you’re at university – these supposed enlightened beacons of thought.”
Noting that the real goal of BDS is a one-state solution, he said it should really be known as “III”, or “intimidate, inundate, isolate”.
“And I think this is a very sinister thing that is like a cancer spreading through the university system,” he said.
“Outside of these narrow universities and some elements of the media, I’m hoping that people are cottoning on to a very successful nation, a successful people, up against a very menacing, dysfunctional and malevolent trend in society.
“[I hope] that you will be the beneficiaries – finally – of common sense coming back into society and realising what an enormous contribution Israel is making to the security of the world, and that the Jewish community disproportionately has made to every society in which it has been there in numbers.”
GARETH NARUNSKY
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