News Corp editor evokes Nazis in posts about Sydney Palestine march
Weekend Australian Magazine editor accused of "sanitising authoritarianism" and "weaponising Jewish trauma"
Organisers of the recent Sydney March for Humanity have hit out at The Australian after one of the newspaper's editors seemingly evoked historic Nazi gatherings in reference to the protest.
Up to 300,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday, demanding that the federal government take all available steps to secure a permanent ceasefire and the immediate distribution of aid in Gaza, end the Israel-Australia arms trade, and sanction the Israeli government. The march made international headlines and was quickly followed by the government announcing a $20 million boost in funding to humanitarian organisations in Gaza.
On Monday two Stories were posted to the private Instagram account of Elizabeth Colman, the editor of the Weekend Australian Magazine. The first featured a photo of Austrians cheering Adolf Hitler in 1938, accompanied by a caption reading "Like... in the long run". The second showed another photo of a crowd of people in front of the Reich Chancellory in 1940, also throwing Hitler salutes, with an accompanying GIF of a stylised Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The GIF in the second Story does not return as a result in Instagram's search function using the keyword "bridge". It does, however, show up in a search of "Sydney Harbour Bridge".
Colman and The Australian were contacted for comment but did not respond by deadline.
The Weekend Australian Magazine has taken a stridently pro-Israel editorial stance in its coverage of Israel's genocide in Gaza. In June, the magazine published a feature article calling author and commentator Clem Ford "the new face of hate" and a "jihad apologist with a megaphone" for her criticism of the genocide.
"It has always been the tactic of propaganda merchants to try to conceal their support for state sanctioned violence, projecting the sins of their own crimes onto the resistance movements that threaten to bring them down," Ford told Deepcut in response to questions.
"Elizabeth Colman is the editor of a weekend supplement for one of the country’s most rabidly racist, hateful media outlets. It is utterly laughable to take her seriously on anything, least of all the febrile suggestion that people opposed to the forced maiming and starvation of children are secretly Nazis in disguise."
The posts have also prompted angry responses from the marches' organisers, as well as Muslim and Jewish groups that were involved in the rally.
Amal Naser of the Palestine Action Group, the activist collective that organised the march, said that sentiments like those expressed by Colman "will be remembered to be on the wrong side of history".
"Over 300,000 people came to demonstrate in opposition to what has been classified as a genocide in Gaza by, among others, Amnesty International, B'Tselem and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967," Naser told Deepcut.
"We are opposing racist Israel for committing one of the most heinous crimes, and calling on international leaders to abide by their obligations under the Geneva Convention which was brought into place to prevent the atrocities of the Holocaust from happening again."
The Muslim Vote, a political advocacy group that was involved in the marches' planning, called Colman's rhetoric "dangerous".
"If Elizabeth Colman believes that walking across a bridge in protest of genocide constitutes fascism, then she is not critiquing extremism, she is protecting it," a Muslim Vote spokesperson told Deepcut. "She is shielding a government and a foreign rogue actor currently accused by international human rights bodies of war crimes and mass starvation. That’s not journalism. That’s complicity.
"It dehumanises tens of thousands of Australians who oppose their government’s silence on Gaza. It criminalises the pursuit for justice. And it sanitises real authoritarianism by suggesting that mass protest against injustice is somehow comparable to the movements that engineered genocide, not those trying to stop one."
Colman's posts were also criticised by the Jewish Council of Australia, which said they "reflect a disturbing and persistent pattern in the Murdoch press of vilifying and dehumanising Palestinians and those who stand with them".
"Comparing Sunday’s March for Humanity to Nazi rallies is deeply offensive and contemptuous of the broad majority of Australians who oppose Israel's violence and starvation," JCA president Max Kaiser told Deepcut.
"Weaponising Jewish trauma to attack a growing movement for justice in Palestine is completely morally bankrupt. It cheapens the memory of the Holocaust with the aim of legitimating Israel's genocide of Palestinians."