The Courier Mail: The Monitor, Saturday July 18th
By Ron Brunton (an anthropologist with the Institute of Public Affairs on the Sunshine Coast)
In recent decades, Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals have all been infiltrated by extremists, says Ron Brunton. But no one suggested the solution was to publish the names of all party members.
Last week the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council screamed "Gotcha" to One Nation.
Using this label - which harks to a London tabloid newspaper's exultant headline after British forces sank the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano during the Falkands war in 1992 - the council published the names of 2000 members of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party in its magazine, the Australia/Israel Review.
Like a great many other Jews, I was angry that such a nasty and foolish deed was carried out by a group which wants to be seen as serving the interests of the Jewish people in Australia. Although it is a small private body, the council's name caused many non-Jews to believe it is a representative organisation.
As is often the case in these matters, both sides of the argument made an immediate dash to the Nazis. Some opponents of the Australia/Israel Review's actions likened it to the lists of Jews sent to Hitler's concentration camps, a comparison which was overdone, to say the least.
Supporters said that the list included the lead singer of a neo-Nazi band. And a Sydney rabbi told ABC Radio that, had lists of Nazi Party members been published in Germany in the early 1930s, the Holocaust might not have occurred. But such a claim is deranged, both in its suggestion that the majority of One Nation members are comparable with Nazis and in its failure to understand the psychology of real extremists, who would not care if they were exposed.
It should also be realised that at different times and places during the last couple of decades, the Labor party, the Liberals and the Nationals have all been infiltrated by extremists of the Left or the Right. But previously, no one has ever suggested that the answer to these problems was to publish the names of all party members indiscriminately.
The Australia/Israel Review itself offered a real cant in an attempt to justify its publication of the list. It claimed to be concerned about the secrecy pervading a party which had "emerged initially as a grass roots movement" but where members were unable to communicate with one another. In other words, it seemed to be suggesting that it was acting as a benefactor and helping members to make contact with their fellows in other branches.
The magazine also claimed that it had withheld the addresses and telephone numbers of members "in the interests of privacy". But the magazine did not care tuppence about anybody's privacy. It is very easy to work out the details of many people on the list, especially those with less common names or who live in small towns. Using a sample of 250 names as a test, I was able to discover the full addresses and telephone numbers of about 30% in only a couple of hours.
Given the physical violence that has already been directed against One Nation supporters, publication of the list can only be seen as intimidation - not against the extremists who have infiltrated the party, or its autocratic leaders - but against a rather haphazard collection of ordinary people who have joined One Nation for a variety of reasons. Had an Arabic newspaper, or a magazine of the anti-Israel hard left, published a list of members of a Zionist organisation, there would have been much justifiable outrage and anxiety in the Jewish community and the Australia/Israel Review would have led the condemnation.
There are a couple of other interesting ironies in the Australia/Israel Review's action. I suspect that many of those it had "outed" and left vulnerable to harassment and worse are people who strongly support Israel.
The bulk of One Nation's membership is probably people with socially conservative, rather than racist or anti-Semitic attitudes.
Such people tend to admire Israel because of its strong sense of national pride, its compulsory military service and what they see as its uncompromising and unsentimental approach to Palestinians and the Islamic world.
And some other members of One Nation are likely to be fundamentalist Christians who support Israel because they believe that it existence fulfils biblical prophecies.
The other irony is perhaps even more difficult for the Australia/Israel Review to acknowledge. But by comparison with some of the groups which play a prominent and influential part in Israeli politics, such as the National Religious Party, Hanson and her One Nation party are quite moderate.
And Israel's immigration programme, which is designed to preserve the Jewish identity of the nation, is no less discriminatory than One Nation's desire to ensure that Australia's immigration policies maintain our essentially European character. Although there are some Jews inside and outside Israel who would like the country to change its ethnic policies - the so-called "post-Zionists" - the chances of this occurring in the foreseeable future are very slender.
One Nation's hostility to Aboriginal land rights is matched by the unwillingness of most Israeli politicians to acknowledge the property rights of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled, or who were expelled, during Israel's war of independence in 1948.
And while no Australian public figure, not even Hanson, attempts to deny the great injustices that Aborigines suffered in the course of our history, it is still very risky for any Israeli politician to acknowledge the similar wrongs that have been inflicted on Palestinians during the last 50 years.
Certainly, Israel has successfully maintained its democratic institutions under the most adverse conditions. But even though the external threats to its survival have diminished considerably in recent years, religious and right wing extremists retain their ability to prevent the kinds of changes that would create a genuinely liberal and pluralist nation.
Unfortunately, the Australia/Israel Review's offensive and counterproductive action against One Nation is an example of a more general phenomenon.
Members of other ethnic groups are also frequently angered and embarrassed by statements supposedly made in their name by self-serving and unrepresentative "spokespeople".
It is the price we ethnics pay for the debased and politicised form of multiculturalism that has taken hold in Australia.