It seemed an odd thing to begin with. Australia’s National Press Club is a rather ordinary, stuffy institution, where enlightened, let alone contentious thought, rarely intrudes. For those guests of unorthodox disposition, questions of establishment swinishness await to douse any fiery rebelliousness. That they had invited war correspondent Chris Hedges, former Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times, was itself a surprise. Did they not get the catalogue of his recent writings and addresses, notably on how the Western media have covered the war in Gaza?
With three weeks to go, Hedges received the news that he would not, after all, be allowed to give his address. In its October 4 statement, the slippery NPC obfuscated and deflected, first suggesting that the initial date had been “tentatively agreed to”. The club was in the business of constantly reviewing its schedule (that’s how reliable they are), and a decision was made “when more details of the address were made available”. (The proposed title of the talk, “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists” might have been a clue.) It was suggested that the schedule had bulked up with individuals conversant with the Gaza conflict and Palestinian recognition: Chris Sidoti and Ben Saul (on Palestinian recognition), and UNICEF Global Spokesperson James Elder and Judge Navi Pillay on the war, slated for future addresses.
Sidoti and Pillay are members of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. In September, the Commission published their lacerating report, concluding that Israel had committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. Of the five elements outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, it had violated four. Its political and military leaders had been responsible for incitement; the Israeli authorities had failed to punish them; and “circumstantial evidence of genocidal intent and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the totality of the evidence.” The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was terse in response: the authors, in publishing a report “distorted” and “false”, had acted as “Hamas proxies, notorious for their antisemitic positions”.
To have Hedges address the stuffed shirts, it would seem, was a case of over-egging the pudding, or, as it were, adding too much tang. But to parry suggestions of bias and being compromised, the NPC went on to state with weak conviction that its board and the Chief Executive Officer Maurice Reilly made “decisions on speakers independently.” No “outside” pressure had been brought to bear on the board regarding the war in Gaza. The inference that the decision to withdraw the offer to Hedges had been the sordid result of appeasement and work of lobby groups was “false, exemplified by the speakers we have had on the issue.” Reilly, in separate remarks, explained that the offer had been withdrawn “in the interest of balancing out our program”.
What was to be made about the proposal that the balancing act in question would be the Israeli ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon? “The inference that Mr Hedges was being cancelled to make way for the Israeli ambassador is also false and without basis.” The board could not have done a better job of hoisting themselves by their own petard. And if such organisations as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation can be swayed by lobby groups to remove journalists who challenge the Israeli narrative on Gaza, confidence in the impartiality of the NPC can hardly be brimming.
The cancellation merely served to embarrass the press clubbers while adding even more exposure to the Hedges train. On October 20, he delivered the address intended for the NPC to the New South Wales Teachers Federation. The theme should have resonated for those serious about journalism, notably war correspondents. But authentic war correspondents are a rare and diminishing breed.
As Hedges says in his address, two types present themselves. “The first type does not attend press conferences. They do not beg generals and politicians for interviews. They take risks to report from combat zones. They send back to their viewers and readers what they see, which is almost always diametrically opposed to official narratives.” The second type, far more abundant in number, are those of the “inchoate blob of self-identified war correspondents who play at war.” They tend to be barnacled occupants of mahogany ridge, on the sauce and expenses, and keen to stay out of harm’s way. It is that very blob, so devastatingly satirised by Evelyn Waugh in Scoop, which had sought the views of officials in background briefings and press conferences, willingly collaborated with appointed minders of authority “who impose restrictions and rules that keep them out of combat.”
In the Gaza War, Palestinian journalists had proven to be the mortal enemies of such frightful “poseurs”. In exposing them as “toadies and sycophants”, they had drawn that blob’s ire in print and broadcast. “Palestinian reporters expose Israeli atrocities and implode Israeli lies. The rest of the press does not.” For that service to journalism, they had paid with their lives in the hundreds (one account suggests 245, another 273).
These staggering numbers dwarf the scribbling dead in cumulative numbers across several previous conflicts. Hedges draws from a report published in April this year by the Costs of War project at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University. Authored by Nick Turse, it found that since October 7, 2023, the war in Gaza had taken the lives of more members of the fourth estate than the US Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean War, the Indochina Wars, the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined.
Examples of shabby, disingenuous reporting – there are many to pick from – also feature. Hedges points to the woeful assessments by the press stable on the August slaying of Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha and Mariam Dagga in August. The “double tap” strike on Nasser Hospital not only killed the journalists but 15 others, including health workers. The talking points of the Israeli authorities were dutifully recorded. From CNN, we hear the IDF claim that the “hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera”. Reuters repeated the line. From AFP, “Israel army says six ‘terrorists’ killed in Monday strikes on Gaza hospital”.
Such work was very much the poisonous fruit of Israel’s military unit known as the “Legitimisation Cell”, an entity tasked with blackening the name of Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives. The libellous exercise also served to justify extrajudicial murder. That revelation, Hedges notes, came from the productive labours of the Tel-Aviv-based magazine +972, an outfit that knows a thing or two about war journalism. With all this, the only point of curiosity is why Hedges wished to address NPC in the first place? Even inchoate blobs can exert a pull.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
