Grace Tame and the litany of libels
Grace Tame’s apology means little without confronting the harm caused by her words and the company she keeps.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” is the misquote from Hamlet that came to mind when I listened to Grace Tame last week.
“I do not hate Israelis. I do not hate Jewish people … I believe Israeli survivors, I believe Jewish survivors …”
There is a BUT, of course: “I abhor the crimes of the State of Israel.”
And, “I acknowledge and sincerely apologise for any harm [my comments’] mischaracterisation has caused.”
Ah, not for any harm her actual comments have caused. Just for any harm their “mischaracterisation” has. Though I’m not sure how one can “mischaracterise” the words “debunked propaganda”, which was what she called the reports of sexual violence against Israelis.
So, to use another quote from Hamlet: there’s the rub. Because Tame’s many, many comments about Jews and Israel have caused incalculable harm.
She has referred sneeringly to “the Israel lobby” as “people with money who can engineer that [electoral] outcome”. She has shared Rothschild conspiracy theories. She has called Israeli president Isaac Herzog a “war criminal” and said that all the “fascist state of Israel” has left is “lies, bombs and bloodlust”.
Her posts about “the genocide” are countless.
She led thousands of Australians in the chant “from Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada,” and those words stain her with the blood of 15 murdered and 55 injured Australians on Bondi Beach.
Even before Bondi, Gazan Hamza Howidy responded to Tame this way, on a Jewish Independent podcast: “Some people in the West, they don’t know the history of the word … Take some time and learn it … if you want to say it, to protest for it, just spend five minutes reading about it because it’s harming us when you don’t know anything you are talking about. 4000 Palestinians were killed in the Second Intifada, so no, please don’t shout for that.”
Just days before her “apology”, Tame shared a Norman Finkelstein post denying the sexual violence and on the day of it reposted a story implying that Australian children playing basketball are threatened by evil IDF technology.
As a former Australian of the Year, Tame is a trusted messenger to many people. The Red-Green Marxist-Islamist alliance which has colonised Western academia, culture and media with the virus of antizionism, breeds and cultivates such messengers: young, passionate and female.
As a superspreader of this virus, which I call Jew Hatred 3.0, Tame is one of the many voices who have poisoned our national discourse.
Watching her infamous Sydney Town Hall rant you can see the religious fervour in her stance, her eyes and her voice. Hating Israel and Zionists is an article of faith, which is why reason doesn’t touch it.
The cult of antizionism gives people like Tame and her disciples an easy Manichean division of the world into good (themselves) and evil (Zionists); it gives them community and identity – another reason it’s so hard to break free from.
Such people are often called “useful idiots”. I don’t think they are idiots. Mostly they are well-meaning people motivated by justice. But many are also wilfully ignorant. They don’t want to know things that challenge their worldview, their place in their community, or their identity. They have too much to lose by doing so.
So I’m not really surprised that Tame has twice ignored my calls to meet and talk. I call on her to prove her bona fides. To put her “apology” to the test of an actual conversation. An actual meeting with some Israeli victims of the rapes she now says she believes happened; or with some Palestinians who denounce Hamas.
As an English teacher (including of Hamlet) I used to employ a pedagogy of cyclical action and reflection. Tame’s “apology” must have come after some reflection.
Let’s see her act on it – maybe watch Sheryl Sandberg’s film Screams before Silence, or read some of the accounts detailed in The Dinah Report or the Civil Commission.
Come to one of our National Council of Jewish Women events. Let us introduce you to Israel’s Michal Sela Forum, which battles violence against Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze and other women using technologies unknown here in Australia.
Or to the Palestinian and Israeli women we know from Sindyana, who beg Westerners not to boycott their joint olive oil business, along with their livelihoods and chance for a shared peaceful future.
Grace, your litany of libels against Zionists and Israel has brought not one Palestinian closer to liberty or saved one life.
You’ve taken a first step by staging an apology. Now that you #BelieveAllWomenIncluding IsraeliWomen, how about rethinking the company you keep? You might not only free yourself from the cult of antizionism that has been strangling your ability to think straight, but even help free some actual Palestinians.
Lynda Ben-Menashe is president of National Council of Jewish Women Australia.