Until recently the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement was on its last legs in Australia. Few Australians had heard of Jake Lynch of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. That all changed when the celebrated Dan Avnon of Israel’s Hebrew University asked Lynch for a reference to support his proposed research at Sydney University under the Sir Zelman Cowen fellowship programme. Lynch turned Avnon down citing his Centre’s boycott of Israeli universities. The resulting ‘academic freedom’ controversy was of the expected or traditional kind. But it turned toxic when legal action was launched against Lynch in the federal court alleging his breach of Australian law including the Racial Discrimination Act. The case has made Lynch famous and breathed new life into the BDS. There is now a Jake Lynch Fighting Fund and the first of many rallies will be staged next week. The usual BDS suspects, including their anti-Semitic collaborators, cannot believe their luck. Ill-judged litigation.

Another Israeli story still in the news is the mysterious case of the Melbourne Zionist Ben Zygier, a self-proclaimed ‘Mossad agent’ who hanged himself in an Israeli prison in December 2010 before he could be brought to trial for what was rumoured to be treason. It’s back in the news with the recent publication of a book on the case — Prisoner X — by Rafael Epstein of the ABC. Epstein was the ideal writer. He knew Zygier well from their days together in Zionist youth movements in Melbourne. He knows the respected Zygier family. He knows his way around Israel. He is an experienced journalist — never willing to take no for an answer, although in pursuing the Zygier story he had to get used to it. In an exculpatory ‘Author’s Note’ he says that in trying to uncover espionage, you enter a hall of mirrors. You only see what you already know or what others want you to know. ‘Very few facts are verifiable.’ If you work in a national security agency, you have to learn to be a good liar.

Epstein faced this ‘steel gate’ of valiant liars in both Israel and Australia. He could not get answers to many ‘crucial questions’ especially about Israel’s misuse of Australian passports, notably in the ‘Dubai hit’ or assassination of January 2010. He does not believe that Australian ministers or their shadows told lies but they would not answer his questions, respond to his emails or even speak with him. Foreign Minister Bob Carr brushed off one reporter at a press conference: ‘Listen pal, I can’t shed any more light on it.’ But Epstein soldiered on and Prisoner X, with all its qualifications, is as handy a book as we are likely to get on the case. Was Zygier really ‘a Mossad agent’ or simply a willing helper whom Mossad may have foolishly, if briefly, trusted? Was he a sad and restless Walter Mitty fabulist? Was he, as one ‘good friend’ thought, ‘really up himself’? Are we back in the weird and murky company of Mordechai Vanunu or David Hicks? Epstein discussed his book at Gleebooks during the week in a ‘conversation’ with Mark Colvin of the ABC’s PM programme. (Colvin knows a thing or two about ‘the intelligence community’. His father was, he says, a British spook.) He asked Epstein if and when he would bring out a new edition to finally answer many of the now unanswered questions. Zygier shook his head. He has had enough of banging it on the ‘steel gate’. But in his ‘Author’s Note’ he construes Mossad’s motto: ‘Without ruses, Israel would fall, but when there is plenty of misinformation, Israel finds salvation.’ Adapted, this could be the motto of all national security agencies. That may be why they so often make mistakes.

They still call her ‘the Packer girl’. This is because Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley has written so many books on the Packer family and their enterprises. She was inevitably the ‘historical consultant’ to the television series about the magazine Cleo, World Series Cricket and the Packer-Murdoch wars. As it turned out, by the time Channel Nine broadcast the last in the series (Power Games) the viewing public seemed Packered-out and the ratings were unexpectedly poor. This may have led HarperCollins to drop its plan to reissue Bridget-Foley’s meaty and comprehensive biography of Sir Frank Packer. Fortunately Sydney University Press saw its chance and have now brought out a new edition, which was launched the other night at Sydney University. Launched with it was the 150th issue of Media International Australia, first published in 1976. It discusses subjects ranging from astrology columns to suburban newspapers and presents a foretaste of entries from the forthcoming Companion to the Australian Media edited by Griffen-Foley. The commemorative issue will be a collector’s piece if only for its dramatic cover portrait of the late Henry Mayer, its founding editor — dishevelled, disdainful, his rage barely controlled, and buried in manuscripts.

The joint was really jumping at the Chauvel Cinema last weekend as Sydney’s noisy bohemia gathered for the world première of Garry Shead’s latest film In the Steps of Lawrence recreating D.H. Lawrence’s encounter in 1922 with the Australian ethos, the Australian Bush and a secret anti-socialist militia. Beautifully illustrated with Shead’s paintings of Lawrence and Frieda, well acted by Shead’s friends and narrated by Jack Thompson, with appropriate newsreel footage, pointed interviews (especially with Robert Darroch), and a splendid score by Peter Sculthorpe, the film is part jeu d’esprit and part tribute. Either way it delighted the ever-burgeoning ranks of Shead fans.