Howe takes aim at media and education on Israel

Veteran newspaper editor Alan Howe has told a Jewish community audience that shifting attitudes towards Israel will take sweeping reform, beginning in schools and universities.

“This is a root and branch change in Australian society that we’ve got to undertake, and it starts at the universities and in the schools where poison is taught as fact,” he said.

Howe, a former editor of The Herald Sun and Sunday Herald Sun who now writes for The Australian, was interviewed on stage by AJN senior journalist Bruce Hill at an Armchair Society event run by B’nai B’rith and the Lamm Jewish Library of Australia on October 20.

Asked whether a more balanced view of Israel was likely soon, he replied: “Not in the short term.”

He agreed that many younger journalists had become activists.