Response to Michael Easson

Sir: I have been afforded an opportunity to respond to the review of my book “The Case for Palestine”, which review was written by Mr. Michael Easson and published in The Spectator Australia in its May edition.

Easson asserts that mine is a “simplistic depiction of deeply complex problems”. I have found over forty years of observation that apologists for Israel like to assert “deeply complex problems”. In this way they seek to deter people from putting in an effort to understand what is a simple case of theft and ethnic cleansing.

Easson is critical of what he describes as “(t)wo egregious clangers” – factual errors. The first is the description of Kerensky as a “Jewish Bolshevik”. I did not use the term “Jewish Bolshevik” and don’t like to be misquoted. I certainly indicated that Kerensky was Jewish. I described Trotsky as a Bolshevik. I have re-visited my source as to Kerensky’s Jewishness. Further research indicates that the claim that he was a Jew is contested. Whilst accepting that, it is a fact of monumental insignificance in respect of the book as whole. As to the other matter, no half well-read reader would have thought for one moment that I was presenting Kerensky as a Bolshevik.

The second matter pertains to Sir Raphael Cilento. I stand by my suggestion that his career was ended for his having opposed the creation of the State of Israel. For Mr. Eassom to describe him as a Holocaust denier is a gross libel on him and his family. He was the first civilian doctor to enter Belsen concentration camp after its liberation. There is no suggestion of his ever having denied the Holocaust.

Eassom takes pains to misrepresent my book. I did not suggest that Israel could not build a wall to protect itself from attacks. I said – as did the International Court of Justice – that they could not do so on Palestinian land. Moreover, it is neither impossible nor unrealistic to expect them to demolish it where it does infringe – which is virtually everywhere. No less would be expected by me of my next-door neighbour if he built his fence two metres inside my property.

Eassom calls my claim that Ashkenazi Jews are descended in large part from the Khazars as ‘discredited’. I would ask “discredited by whom?” I would invite Mr. Eassom to provide me with his source – and trust that it is not the Israeli Ministry of Information.

Eassom suggests that I have “dismissed (Martin Indyk) as a Zionist”. I might be forgiven for having done so knowing that Indyk worked for twelve years for AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the principal lobbyist for Israel in Congress.

It is suggested that I am ignorant of “the debate within Israel about the wrongs associated with Israel’s early years”. I am not at all ignorant of the fact that some historians have felt forced to face up to those wrongs rather than allow misrepresentation to continue. Nor am I ignorant of wrongs in later years – in fact right up to the present day.

Eassom speaks of “the controversy over settlements”. What controversy might that be? Is it suggested that there is something controversial about this conduct which is patently illegal in international law and recognized throughout the world as such? Eassom suggests that what is needed is “Palestinians and Israelis living alongside each other”. Does he not understand that that is exactly what Israel, and particularly the recently elected government, does not want and demands will never occur?

My suggestion is that The Spectator Australia identify a more appropriate and less emotional reviewer than this “crank”.
P. Heywood–Smith QC

Australian letters

18 Carta

Sir: Normally I would have no issue with Attorney General George Brandis penning a diary column (Spectator Australia 27 June 2015).

But to have Brandis, of all people, waxing lyrical on Magna Carta’s 800th would seem a poor choice. Brandis’ miserable 18C performance when he presented arguments so ill conceived that he even assisted his opponents marks the man as being unsuited to carry the freedom banner.

There’s a long list of others with far greater credibility in the freedom of speech debate who would have been eminently suitable to celebrate the freedoms spawned by the Magna Carta .
Chris Harrington
St Ives, NSW

How to fix Detroit

Sir: When I last flew over my native Detroit five years ago, vast tracts of it still resembled Machu Picchu. From the ground, it was little better; in what had been a prosperous Italian-American neighbourhood when I lived there in 1964, there were only five houses left standing. Stephen Bayley (Arts, 27 June) marvels that ‘You could buy an entire house for $10,000’ — but in truth the taxes needed to support Detroit’s notoriously corrupt governments are so high that you can’t give them away unless they are in one of the few islands colonised by the middle classes. Indeed, the city filed for bankruptcy in 2013, with debts estimated at around $20 billion.

I have no problem with gentrification, and I’ve done a fair bit of it myself. However, Bayley is naive if he thinks that this will solve Detroit’s problems, or that Burnley and Bradford can be rescued by Audis, Ocado and fashionable architects. For a much better understanding of the systemic ills of urban governance, I recommend The Wealth of Cities by John Norquist, the former mayor of Milwaukee. Rather than using federal funds to finance prestige projects, he slashed public spending and eliminated oppressive regulation. At the same time, he reformed public services and introduced school choice. This has attracted an impressive array of new investment, and Milwaukee is now home to a disproportionate number of Fortune 500 companies and sunrise industries. By all accounts, it is also a very civilised place to live for all social classes.
Prof. Tom Burkard
Easton, Norfolk