A reply to Paul Sakkal (The Age) on Nasser Mashni (Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network) & 3CR

1)

On Wednesday, November 8, Melbourne newspaper The Age published an article by journalist Paul Sakkal titled ‘Top Australian Palestinian slammed for radio comments on destruction of Israel’.

The ‘Top Australian Palestinian’ in question is Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni, and the comments reportedly being ‘slammed’ were broadcast on Palestine Remembered on Melbourne community radio station 3CR.

In essence, according to Sakkal, The Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network president has advocated for the destruction of the Israeli state in comments criticised by a prominent extremism expert; an expert who draws a positive parallel between Mashni’s remarks and the text of the notorious antisemitic tract and Tsarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

For context, prior to the item appearing in The Age, Mashni was the subject of other reportage, including ‘Palestine activist Nasser Mashni accused of ‘inciting hatred” (Rachel Baxendale, The Australian, October 31, 2023) and ‘Australia’s leading Palestinian spokesman calls terrorist a ‘hero” (James Campbell, Herald Sun, November 4, 2023). Along with reiterations of the content published previously, this was supplemented on Friday by another article highlighting a prior, three decades-old criminal record (‘Top Palestinian spokesman Nasser Mashni’s criminal history revealed’, Jon Kaila, Herald Sun, November 10, 2023).

2)

According to Sakkal, Mashni’s ‘comments were made at various times over this year and last year on radio station 3CR’ and — from the many hours he undoubtedly spent listening to Palestine Remembered — he identifies the following remarks as being especially worthy of further scrutiny. Quote:

• A) On his radio show in July last year, Mashni said: “The power structures that exist in the world all focus upon Zionism.” “Israel is the domino. Israel falls over, not just the Middle East – South America, the Africans, the world is a far better place once we destroy Western imperialist control of the world.” “The liberation of Earth starts with the first domino, and that’s the overcoming and the decolonisation of Palestine and the ending of Zionism.”
• B) In a March conversation on what Mashni called the Zionist lobby’s “grooming” of Australian politicians, Mashni – who last year opposed the Australian government’s listing of Hamas as a terrorist group – referred to what he said was the “antisemitic myth”. “Do you think that we hate Jews just because they’re Jews?” he said. “I wouldn’t care if they were Buddhist, Sikhs, Christians, Muslims. If you take my house, I’m going to hate you. How you celebrate God is removed from the fact that you denied me my home, killed my father, raped my mother, stole my orchards and business.”
• C) Following a recent protest in Sydney at which demonstrators chanted “gas the Jews”, Mashni said the chants were “unconfirmed” but the reports suggested “really horrible antisemitic stuff and there should be absolute condemnation of those chants”. Unquote.

Mashni’s response to these matters can be read in the article. My own, much longer response is below.

While Sakkal doesn’t specifically identify which episodes he’s drawing upon, for the record, of the 60 or so episodes to have been broadcast between January 2022 and November 4, 2023, the quotes (with one exception) derive from three episodes broadcast on July 23, 2022, March 25, 2023 and October 14, 2023.

• a) Context (Palestine Remembered with Wesam Ahmad, Center for Applied International Law at Al-Haq, July 23, 2022, 11:25):

(Ahmad) … The other reason I think it’s important for us to see it in this broader context of imperial dynamics and colonialism, is because we see a lot of similarities in other colonial contexts as well. There are nuances here, for sure, but when you step back and you see those broader connections, you see how the injustices that the Palestinian people are suffering are very much connected to injustices that are felt around the world in different contexts, and that’s why I always like to point out that the injustice facing the Palestinian people is a microcosm of global injustices, and the issues that are leading to those are very much shared in the obstacles that are created and the need to challenge them, those being neoliberal economics and white supremacy in the sense of entitlement and exploitation.
(Mashni) I’ve said many a time that in fact the liberation of Earth starts with the first domino, and that’s the overcoming and the decolonisation of Palestine and the ending of Zionism, that in fact the power structures that exist in the world all focus upon Zionism, and that with its downfall, it becomes a domino that liberates so many other people because it’s the model that today Modi is using in India, that you know, we see across most of the developing world where minorities are oppressed by a ruling junta … one of the things I really like … I really like what you said about Cecil Rhodes. I mean the world recognises Cecil Rhodes as the world’s leading colonialist, imposing a non-Indigenous person upon another person’s land, and Zionists who claim that they are not colonialists, but in fact Indigenous and returning, that the founder of Zionism, the person who gave birth to the idea of an Israel and a Jewish state, in fact approached Cecil Rhodes, and said, I want to do some, I need your help, I’ve got a project that is colonialism 101, you’re my guy.

NB. Having listened to the episode, I cannot find the phrase “Israel is the domino. Israel falls over, not just the Middle East – South America, the Africans, the world is a far better place once we destroy Western imperialist control of the world” being uttered by Mashni, his co-host or guest, at any point within the broadcast. Presumably, it’s uttered on some other episode.

Or not.

Comment: Taken in isolation, I don’t agree that ‘The power structures that exist in the world all focus upon Zionism’ — especially if (and even if the term doesn’t actually appear in this episode), that’s meant to indicate a particular priority which exceeds that of ‘Western imperialist control of the world’ in general. But Mashni’s understanding of the relationship between Zionism and these ‘power structures’, along with the meaning of this term (imperialism and colonialism), is clarified by reference to his general line of argument. For what it’s worth, I also don’t agree that Israel is necessarily ‘the first domino’ which must fall before the other institutions of ‘Western imperialism’ also collapse, but the Israeli state’s position within the global order is one worth debating for those so inclined; in any case, the antisemitic inference cannot reasonably be sustained in my opinion.

• b) Context (Palestine Remembered with Susan Abulhawa, author and activist, March 23 2023, 20:22):

I had an argument with a politician, recently. Many of these politicians are groomed, obviously, at University level, and they’re spotted by the Zionist lobby as potential leaders and taken on Rambam tours and what have you, and they buy into this antisemitic myth. And this guy said to me, you know, ‘la la la, I mean, if you just taught your kids not to hate’. You know just, just that, straight up … and I said to him, I said: ‘Do you think that we hate Jews, just ’cause they’re Jews?’ I mean, I wouldn’t care if they were Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, Muslims. If you take my house, I’m going to hate you. How you celebrate God is removed from the fact that you denied me my home, killed my father, raped my mother, stole my orchards and business. That’s the issue. It’s got nothing to do with anyone’s religion.

Comment: ‘Grooming’ typically has negative connotations, but if the Zionist lobby in Australia ‘grooms’ (aspiring) politicians and other VIPs, it does so in approximately the same sense as any other lobby or interest group and — irrespective of its merits — the fact, if not the effect, of such activity is generally regarded as being otherwise unremarkable, and constitutes the normal cut-and-thrust of normative forms of liberal (plural) governance. Of course, for those who oppose Zionism, especially Palestinians such as Mashni, it has particular relevance. As for ‘the antisemitic myth’, on my interpretation, Mashni’s point is fairly straightforward — his objection is to the colonialist subjection of Palestine, whatever its (religious or political) justification — and could, I think, be more justifiably be read as indicating opposition to antisemitism.

Here Sakkal also inserts the fact that, along with Mashni referring to the “grooming” of budding politicians, he also ‘last year opposed the Australian government’s listing of Hamas as a terrorist group’. Why add this detail here? Again, it’s possible to draw inferences *nudge nudge, wink wink* but it’s indeed true that, on March 22 last year, having already proscribed its military wing (the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades) in 2003, the Australian government proscribed Hamas in its entirety. In doing so, it joined Canada, the UK, US, Israel, Japan and the European Union; most states do not. Mashni and APAN’s objection was reported by the ABC at the time as follows:

The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) says it “strongly disagrees” with the listing, adding that it will do nothing to advance the cause of peace.

The group has raised concerns that it will only “cause more suffering for the 2 million people currently surviving under a 15-year Israeli blockade”.

“The government has failed in its duty of searching for a peaceful solution and has shown it applies one set of rules to Palestine, and another to Israel,” APAN president Bishop George Browning said.

Rightly or wrongly, theirs was not the only voice raised in opposition:

The Australian decision is flawed on both procedural and practical grounds. Procedurally, there was a severe lack of transparency and fair representation in the recommendation process. Strikingly, no Palestinians were invited to give evidence to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security. Of the non-governmental witnesses providing evidence, only experts and advocacy groups with known pro-Israel positions were given a hearing. The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network told the authors that they were not even informed that the hearing was taking place, let alone asked to make a submission.

See : Criminalising Gaza, Dr Tristan Dunning and Dr Jeroen Gunning, Australian Outlook (Australian Institute of International Affairs), May 22, 2022.

• c) Context (Palestine Remembered with Samah Sabawi, playwright, scholar, commentator and poet, October 14, 2023, 9:44):

… we’ve got now to the point in Western media where attending a rally in solidarity with the Palestinian people is described by the Western media or mainstream media here in Australia as akin to supporting Hamas. We’re not even afforded an opportunity to be able to get together and show solidarity, mourn together, without being dehumanised and delegitimised. Palestinians are humans too, our babies’ lives matter as much as anybody else’s lives matter. And the fact that we’re having to explain that in Australia is disgusting.

A couple of kids did an unnecessary action in burning a flag. I don’t condone that. I understand the frustration, and a desire to want to express an outrage at that, but there’s no space for that today. We need to be respectful of it. There were unconfirmed chants of some really horrible antisemitic stuff and there should be absolute condemnation of those chants. There is no room, no room, within our organisation for any sort of racism, homophobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia, any sort of hate. The movement for liberation for Palestine has to be, is, an anti-colonial, anti-racist, intersectional struggle for justice, for all.

Comment: Again, to note that reports of such chanting were initially ‘unconfirmed’ is understandable. I certainly found it difficult, at least initially, to determine exactly what happened on October 9 in Sydney (organisers later stated that ‘coverage had focused on a tiny fringe of “vile anti-Semitic attendees. Mostly young teens shouting ‘f*** the Jews'” who were quickly condemned and asked to leave, they said in a lengthy statement’). His initial response would be evidence of a determined hostility to Jews only if, when presented with evidence, Mashni was to deny its occurrence. In any event, Mashni states he deplores and condemns such behaviour.

Finally, Sakkal writes that: ‘Several guests on Mashni’s program have compared Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, including one who compared Israeli civilians upon whom violence was committed to plain-clothed Nazi soldiers on a day off. The show has also hosted members of a group called Samidoun, which is banned in Germany after its supporters celebrated the October 7 attacks.’

I’m unsure who the guests Sakkal refers to are, the episodes on which they appear and, consequently, the nature of their remarks or their context. That said, while the claim that the Israeli state is engaged in a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people is obviously topical, I think explicit comparisons between Nazi German and Israeli policy are rarely accurate or helpful and best avoided (others disagree, obviously). And I certainly reject the notion that Israeli civilians should be viewed as ‘plain-clothed Nazi soldiers on a day off’ as being sensible or worthy.

Regarding Samidoun, Palestine Remembered discussed it with two members on May 6, 2023, shortly after the death of Sheik Khader Adnan on May 2 following an 88-day hunger strike in protest at his detention without trial. According to German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (Germany bans Hamas activities, dissolves Samidoun group, Deutsche Welle, November 2, 2023):

Samidoun’s German wing had shown itself to be part of an international network that spreads anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda under the guise of solidarity for Palestinian prisoners.

Samidoun was behind an action in which a group of people handed out pastries in a Berlin street in celebration of Hamas’s attack.

“Holding spontaneous ‘jubilant celebrations’ here in Germany in response to Hamas’s terrible terrorist attacks against Israel demonstrates Samidoun’s antisemitic, inhuman worldview in a particularly sickening way,” Faeser said.

Further: ‘The ban adds that Samidoun compromises and jeopardizes the peaceful coexistence of Germans and foreigners and of different groups of foreigners in Germany, and compromises and jeopardizes public order because it supports violence to reach political goals and causes such violence. (Samidoun Ban para. 1.)’

At this point, it may be worth briefly considering how some have responded to Sakkal’s reportage, in this case on Twitter/X:

3)

The ‘prominent extremism expert’ in this instance is (Dr) Josh Roose, an Associate Professor at Deakin University. Previously an expert with a research focus on the various intersections between Islam, masculinity and terrorism (and so on), his attention in the last few years has turned to the far right and far left (often under the umbrella of countering violent extremism).

In the article, Roose:

… said Mashni’s comments on Zionism compared to those in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the book detailing a fabricated plot of Zionist world domination that has served as a rationale for antisemitism.

“It’s laden with the same conspiratorial underpinning that posits Jewish people as all-powerful and as wielding power behind the scenes,” he said.

Roose, who has spent years focusing on Islamophobia, has more recently taken an interest in antisemitism, which he said had surged across the far-left and far-right in the past decade.

He said the Holocaust and murder of 6 million Jews, and the antisemitism that underpinned it, was the key catalyst for the creation of the Israeli state.

“Critique of the state of Israel in a political sense due to its actions, particularly under the Netanyahu government, is perfectly legitimate. But the critique of Israel’s right to exist crosses a pretty clear line into antisemitism.”

In my view, there are obviously several points of comparison which could be chosen other than The Protocols which, because of its notoriety, certainly renders the kind of linkage Roose makes between it and the views of Mashni questionable. Equally certainly, the political effect is to marginalise Mashni: nobody who assumes its ideological framework deserves a place in any sensible discussion. Indeed, on Friday, The Australian reported that the presidents of both the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) and NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBD) have called for Mashni to be dumped from his scheduled appearance on Monday’s panel of ABC’s Q&A because Mashni is an antisemite who supports Hamas and ‘has been accused of being affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group, known as the PFLP’. Thus award-winning investigative journalist Sharri Markson reckons: ‘The charity ‘Olive Kids’, founded by Australia Palestine Advocacy Network President Nasser Mashni, is sending money to a Gaza-based health organisation that is claimed [by NGO Monitor] to be affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, known as the PFLP.’

So … Mashni’s charity, Olive Kids, directs some funds to the Union of Work Health Committees (UWHC):

… a non-governmental organization that provides health services in Gaza with focus on women and children. Al Awda hospital is the largest facility of the Union of Heath Work Committees and was established in 1997 with community contribution covering 75% of the cost. The hospital provides all emergency, surgical, and maternity services in the north of the Gaza Strip. Olive Kids collaborates with UHWC to facilitate annual Australian medical missions to operate at Al Awda.

Markson’s claim that UHWC is affiliated with the PFLP relies upon two sources. The first is material published by the NGO Monitor, which she describes as having been ‘set up to assess non-governmental organisations claiming to advance human rights’ and which ‘identifies extensive ties between UHWC and the PFLP terror group’.

Without going into greater detail, I’ll simply add that NGO Monitor has a long history, and was described in quite different terms by Jean Hardisty and Elizabeth Furdon in The Public Eye (Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring 2004), published by Political Research Associates, a(nother)monitoring group, one which focuses on the (far-)right. According to it:

NGO Monitor … focuses on perceived threats to Israeli interests. Run by the Institute for Contemporary Affairs (ICA), which is based in the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), NGO Monitor is a joint venture of B’nai B’rith International, ICA, and the Wechsler Foundation. Its website states that it was founded “to promote accountability, and advance a vigorous discussion on the reports and activities of humanitarian NGOs in the frame-work of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” NGO Monitor cites examples of anti-Israeli “distortion” by humanitarian groups such as the UN Commission on Human Rights (which it accuses of regularly adopting 5-8 anti-Israel resolutions, and using meetings for one-sided discussions of Israeli policy), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the Ford Foundation, the Israel Fund, Christian Aid, and the Advocacy Project.

In an article by two researchers at JCPA, titled “Monitoring the Political Role of NGOs,” the authors accuse “many NGOs” of “misquoting international law and overusing the terms ‘war crimes,’ ‘genocide,’ and ‘ethnic cleansing.'” They go on to say that NGO Monitor and similar initiatives serve to challenge the moral authority of NGOs, increase the accountability demanded from them, expose them to greater scrutiny by the press and by funding organizations, and question the “halo effect” that has protected them from criticism and scrutiny. The ideological slant of NGO Monitor’s work is unabashedly pro-Israeli. It does not claim to be a politically neutral examination of NGO activities and practices.

And so on. In support of her contention that ‘Olive Kids Funds Terrorism’, Markson also cites the writings of another bloke, Matthew Levitt, from another think tank, the Washington Institute but — as a thinker without a tank and better things to do — I’ll simply note that the Institute, like the Monitor, has elsewhere been described as ‘pro-Israeli’, and leave them both to one side for the time being.

Note: As I write, Al Awda is reportedly being bombed. On November 10, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHT) (Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel, Flash Update #35) stated: ‘In the early hours of 10 November, the vicinities of Al Awda hospital in Jabalia, and Al Quds hospital in Gaza city were bombarded; the intensive care unit at the latter sustained damage’. Previously, on the same date Sakkal’s article was published (Flash Update #33), the OCHT stated: ‘Al Awda Hospital indicated that its fuel stock will be exhausted within 30 hours. This hospital provides emergency services and specialized surgeries, and it is the only provider of maternity services in the northern Gaza Strip.’

Regarding the current surge in antisemitism, I’d suggest that what’s especially significant about what’s happened in the last decade is less the entrenchment of its presence ‘across the far-left and far-right’ but more its open expression by elements that have been incorporated into the political ‘mainstream’, both on an individual as well as an institutional level. By that I mean things like, first, the election of a succession of far-right governments in various parts of the world. Secondly, its ubiquity across anti-social media (and its ‘affordances’), which has temporarily peaked courtesy of The Richest Man in the World pandering to anti-Jewish and other racist sentiment on his latest, very expensive micro-blogging toy.

Finally, there are a number of critiques that could and have been made with regards ‘Israel’s right to exist’. Some advance a ‘political’ critique that denies its legitimacy on the basis of its standing as a colonial-settler and/or apartheid state based on ethno-nationalism; some do so on the grounds that it’s incompatible with the Jewish religious tradition or the interests of the Jewish diaspora as a whole; others reject the notion that ‘the state’ is a rights-bearing entity, or deny its legitimacy on more general grounds (a rejection of the ethical, philosophical and political validity of the state-form in toto). As I see it, the accusation is correct primarily if those advancing it admit to the rights of other peoples (or nations) to establish and maintain states (as a particular form of social relations) only to deny this ‘right’ specifically to ‘The Jews’.

In 2009, while noting that a ‘German hack named Wilhelm Marr is the man generally credited with coining the term ‘Anti-Semitism’ in the 1870s’, I wrote, badly, the following on the subject of anti-Zionism:

4)

‘Zionism’, like ‘Anti-Semitism’, may trace its roots back many centuries, but only really became solidified as an ideology and as a movement in the late 1800s, in particular by way of Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl (1860–1904). Like Uncle Ziggy, Herzl confronted Anti-Semitism during the course of his studies at the University of Vienna — unlike Freud, Herzl sought to confront it politically, most famously in his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), published in February 1896. (Note that Freud did join the lodge “Wien” of B’nai B’rith in 1897; he also responded to Nazi Anti-Semitism by proclaiming his Jewish identity even more strongly. Further disco on Freud’s Jewish identity is contained in the final chapter, ‘To Die In Freedom’, of Peter Gay’s biography, Freud: A Life For Our Time, Papermac, 1995 (1988). He certainly had a grim sense of humour: Just before 82-year-old Sigmund Freud was allowed to leave German-occupied Austria in 1938, the SS insisted he sign a statement claiming he had been treated well. He complied with a flourish: “I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone” — Ich kann die Gestapo jedermann auf das beste empfehlen [p.628].)

Of course, the realisation of the idea of a Jewish nation-state in/as Israel in 1948 has been considered a triumph for some, and a disaster for others. Like other Big Ideas — Australia, Christianity, Fascism, Germany, Islam, Marxism, Nationalism, and so on — nearly two thousand years after a Jewish carpenter got nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, Zionism has a long and complex history (one antagonistic account is Ralph Schoenman’s The Hidden History of Zionism, 1988) and so too ‘Anti-Zionism’. An examination of the relationship between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism — one of many — is available by way of Robert S. Wistrich’s essay ‘Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism’ (Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol.16, Nos.3/4, Fall 2004). Wistrich argues that “anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two distinct ideologies that over time (especially since 1948) have tended to converge, generally without undergoing a full merger”; the strong link between the two is one of the principal criticisms [made by] the Anti-German camp (for further elucidation, see : ‘Communism, anti-German criticism and Israel’, An interview with Stephan Grigat by Jens Misera. First published in Israel Nachrichten, the German daily newspaper in Tel Aviv in 2004; first published in English at http://info.interactivist.net in 2005.)

Of contemporary ‘Anti-Zionism’, Jacques Hersh offers some Inconvenient Truths about ‘Real Existing’ Zionism in the Monthly Review (May 2009, Vol.61, No.1); further supplemented by Daniel Lang/Levitsky’s thoughts on how Jews Confront Zionism (June 2009, Vol.61, No.2). Probably the most well-known Australian Jewish critic of Zionism is Antony Loewenstein.

5)

Fourteen years later there’s a lot that could be added to the account I provided then, but the essential point remains: anti-Zionism is not synonymous with antisemitism.

It would be remiss of me not to conclude, as Sakkal does, by noting that ‘Melbourne’s 3CR radio has featured anti-Zionist voices for decades, for which it earned the tag of “the voice of terrorism” by The Bulletin magazine in 1978, a moniker the group rejected’. In which context:

a) 3CR does indeed reject being called “the voice of terrorism” (see below for a ‘3CR Statement on Palestine Remembered‘);
b) as Susan Price notes (New book celebrates four decades of radical radio, Green Left, August 26, 2016):

One early battle, in 1978, was in defence of 3CR’s programs Palestine Voice and Palestine Speaks against opposition from the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies. This led to the launching of an inquiry by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) into whether 3CR’s license should be revoked or suspended on the grounds that it had broadcast “offensive material”. The Bulletin even tried to scandalise 3CR as “the voice of terrorism” on its front cover.

3CR survived this attack, as well as surveillance by police and ASIO (some of which was revealed when the station’s 10-volume ASIO file became available last year).

The book colourfully portrays 3CR’s role as the voice of struggle as told by the range of community programmers, activists, including trade unionists, who have been a part of the station since its inception.

Volunteers from the Victorian branch of the Builders Labourers Federation were early programmers on The Concrete Gang — a show produced by unionists in the building industry that can still be heard on a Sunday morning. Programmers adopted aliases to avoid being blacklisted by the Master Builders Association — a tradition that continues to this day.

In summary:

• I think Sakkal’s article is, at best, inaccurate, and distorts Mashni’s views to — as Roose puts it — align them with the grotesque, antisemitic fabrications of The Protocols. This is unfair, and I invite the reader to actually listen to Palestine Remembered if they wish to better ascertain his actual opinions.
• I’ll leave it to others to ponder the disciplining effects this propaganda has upon the Palestinian solidarity movement in Australia.

Disclosure : I also present a show on 3CR. (Reportedly, in October last year, Paul Sakkal took part in a visit to Israel courtesy of the NSW JBD/The Susan and Isaac Wakil Foundation.)

See also : 3CR Statement on Palestine Remembered, November 2023:

3CR is an Australian community broadcasting licence holder based in Naarm / Melbourne. We broadcast on 855AM, 3CR Digital and online via www.3cr.org.au. We first received our licence in 1975 and went to air in 1976. The station has a long history of providing access to views not adequately represented by other broadcasting sectors, directly in line with the sector’s Codes of Practice.

The community broadcasting sector nationwide consists of hundreds of stations and was specifically established to provide a voice to issues and communities that are misrepresented or underrepresented across other broadcast services. Consequently, this has meant that we have provided airtime to struggles against oppression across many decades, countries and communities including Apartheid in South Africa, the attempted genocide of the Tamil people and the struggle for freedom in East Timor.

3CR firmly adheres to the sector’s Codes of Practice in relation to station activities and behaviour in seeking to ‘oppose and break down prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, race, language, gender, sexuality, age, physical or mental ability, occupation, religious, cultural or political beliefs’. We broadcast 24 hours a day across more than 100 locally produced shows, and we do not broadcast material that is likely to ‘stereotype, incite, vilify, or perpetuate hatred against, or attempt to demean any person or group, on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, race, language, gender, sexuality, religion, age, physical or mental ability, occupation, cultural belief or political affiliation’.

Unsurprisingly the mainstream media has chosen to target Nasser Mashni and our Palestine Remembered weekly show for representing the views and struggle of the Palestinian people. Palestine Remembered will celebrate 20 years on air next year, and we are well-versed in the attention that providing the Palestinian issue with a voice brings. We also acknowledge that community knowledge of, and empathy for, the Palestinian cause has dramatically increased in the last month.

We believe that mainstream media coverage of Nasser Mashni and the station’s Palestine Remembered show is inflammatory and misrepresents the station’s purpose and content over decades. We will continue to provide a media space for views not adequately represented by other broadcast sectors and believe that Palestine Remembered is the only radio program in English presented by the Palestinian community in Australia.

Nasser Mashni is an experienced and well-respected broadcaster and advocate for the Palestinian community and is widely considered an authority on the Palestinian struggle. As a volunteer broadcaster, Nasser has presented Palestine Remembered for nearly 10 years, making a significant contribution to our station. We firmly stand with Nasser and whole-heartedly support his right to have a voice in the media on the Palestinian issue.

3CR Community Radio
Committee of Management