Fury over Q&A tweet
A tweet drawing equivalence between Israel and ISIS that appeared on-screen during Monday’s edition of Q&A has caused communal outrage.
A TWEET drawing equivalence between Israel and ISIS that appeared on-screen during Monday’s edition of Q&A has caused communal outrage, and has drawn an apology from the national broadcaster.
The post in question stated, “Any young radical who joins ISIS or Israel should not be allowed into Australia.”
Meanwhile, two tweets objecting to the comment were not screened by the program makers.
Noting it had received complaints from both Jewish and -non-Jewish viewers, Peter Wertheim, executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, wrote on Tuesday to the ABC’s managing director Michelle Guthrie and director of corporate affairs Michael Millett, stating that, “Jewish Australians who are Israeli dual nationals are legally obliged to do national service in the IDF. Further, the IDF has clear rules of engagement which are at least as stringent in terms of international humanitarian law as those adopted by any other Western democratic military force.”
The letter added, “The IDF also has well-established procedures for legally prosecuting alleged violations of its rules of engagement. One such prosecution by the IDF of one of its soldiers is being tried at the present time and has been widely reported in the international media.” Wertheim concluded, “The comparison with ISIS is utterly false, and viciously defamatory of Israelis, including Australian-Israeli dual nationals.
“For Q&A’s Twitter selection team to allow the … tweet to go on-screen during the program betrays an appalling ignorance, flawed values and a lack of judgement, for which the ABC should apologise immediately and without reservation.”
The sentiment was echoed by chairman of the B’nai B’rith Anti Defamation Commission Dvir Abramovich, who urged the ABC “to put in place effective mechanisms to ensure that such abhorrent sentiments are not posted” and “not enable its social media platforms to be hijacked and become a powerful tool that is used to spread such vile equations”.
Apologising for the offensive tweet, Q&A producers issued a statement, which read, “An audience tweet was broadcast on Q&A which implied false equivalence between ‘radicals joining ISIS’ and Israel. It was a moderator error. Q&A apologies for any offence and removed the tweet from future broadcasts.”
AJN STAFF
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