The ABC’s 'town square' felt more like a gated community
By Bart Shteinman
When the ABC announced the National Forum as the successor to Q+A it promised us a place for the “nation’s campfire” to facilitate respectful, informed dialogue. But as I watched last Monday’s inaugural broadcast on the experiences of Jewish Australians, I didn’t see a campfire; I saw an echo chamber, writes the Jewish Council of Australia’s Bart Shteinman.
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Judaism is a religion rooted in disagreement. From the theological Machloket l’shem shamayim - ‘argument for the sake of heaven’ - to the hackneyed joke of “two Jews, three opinions”, plurality and dissent are intrinsic to who we are. As a Jewish boy from Bondi, growing up I can scarcely remember a Shabbat dinner that did not eventually erupt into fierce debate, be it over climate change, multiculturalism or, inevitably, Israel/Palestine.
When the ABC announced the National Forum as the successor to Q+A, it promised us a “town square”, a place for the “nation’s campfire” to facilitate respectful, informed dialogue. But as I watched Monday night’s inaugural broadcast on the experiences of Jewish Australians, I didn’t see a campfire. I certainly didn’t see my Shabbat dinners. I saw an echo chamber.
Louise Rugendyke, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, described the program as “stilted,” “boring,” and resembling a muted “dinner party”, where everyone agreed with one another. She’s right, but the reason it failed as television is the same reason it failed as an act of public service: the ABC intentionally curated a panel that flattened Jewish identity into a political monolith.
For an hour, the broadcaster presented a version of “the Jewish community” that was almost entirely defined by its relationship to Zionism and the State of Israel. From legacy communal leaders to Labor MPs, the spectrum of opinion ranged from “staunchly Zionist” to “moderately Zionist.” Entirely missing from the stage and, we are told, from the audience, were the tens of thousands of Jewish Australians who identify as non-Zionist or anti-Zionist.
Even when ‘Zionist’ is defined in the most minimalist and innocuous terms, 23% of Australian Jews did not identify with the label even before Israel’s latest onslaught on Gaza. While no polling of the question has been done since, recent surveys show that roughly 50% of Canadian Jews and 70% of American Jews refuse the Zionist badge. Importantly, all these surveys were undertaken by organisations that identify as Zionist themselves.
As an Executive Member of the Jewish Council of Australia, I know this excluded constituency well. We are the Jews who have seen our support surge since Israel began its onslaught in 2023. We are the Jews who believe that our safety is inextricably linked to that of our Muslim and Palestinian neighbours and that our identity is not a political loyalty oath to a foreign state. We are the Jews who the ABC chose to leave out in the cold.
By excluding our voices, the ABC did more than just produce dull television; it failed to highlight the full diversity of views within the Jewish community. It failed to shine a spotlight on one of the fastest-growing grassroots groups in the community.
That exclusion does damage to all Jews. I am embarrassed, as a Jew, by one voice the ABC platformed who obliviously claimed (with no challenge) that “we are the only group in Australia that others have tried to either shame or scare into hiding who they are… you don’t see Muslims students being shamed into taking off their hijabs”. What message does it send to our Muslim neighbours that we, as Jews, are apparently blind or indifferent to the pervasive and violent Islamophobia they face, including at universities?
This erasure is particularly damaging given the timing. We are currently amidst the hearings of the Royal Commission. If our national broadcaster cannot manage to facilitate a debate that reflects the actual complexity of Jewish life, what hope do our other institutions have?
That the ABC wanted to devote prime-time hours to discussing antisemitism is in itself a good thing, even if the discussion was unhelpfully disconnected from the broader struggle against all forms of hatred.
But erasing the voices of Jews who unequivocally advocate for Palestinians meant overlooking the particular form of antisemitism that is targeted against us - the harassment, doxxing and vilification we cop for being “anti-Jew Jews” and “Kapos” - a Holocaust reference for Jewish traitordom. We receive regular messages from Jewish Australians who tell us how they self-censor their views for fear of retribution, and who would have felt seen had the ABC let just one Jew speak for them.
The ABC managing director, Hugh Marks, and chair, Kim Williams, have spoken about engaging more with local communities. But community engagement is not about finding the safest, most quiescent voices that won’t rock the boat. It is about representing the full, sometimes messy, reality of the public you serve.
True social cohesion isn’t built by pretending we all agree; it’s built by creating spaces where we can disagree without being erased.
As the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, a woman who understood the dangers of totalising ideologies better than most, once wrote: “Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.”
By failing to acknowledge our plurality, the ABC chose the comfort of a muted dinner party over the vitality of a real town square. It’s time the broadcaster stopped treating the Jewish community as a monolith and started treating us as people.
The Jewish community is not a monolith, and it’s time the ABC stopped treating us like one.
About the author
Bart Shteinman
Bart is a Jewish advocate for Palestinian liberation from Gadigal/Sydney. He is an executive member of the Jewish Council of Australia.
I did have an uneasy feeling while watching National Forum. Couldn't put my finger on it. Bart Shteinman has clarified for me why I felt this disquiet. Spot on! Thanks, Bart.
As has become par for the ABC in the last two years - this was naught but an imperial propaganda session. You don't need to listen to a word of the "discussion" but only look at the panel selected to understand what the project is. It's a textbook example of Chomsky's observation about how propaganda works so insidiously in a democracy where consent needs to be manafactured.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate [not even in this case] within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”