SBS World News reporter Essam Al-Ghalib returned to work this week after being suspended with pay following calls from pro-Israel organisations to have him stood down for anti-Israel tweets posted nearly a decade ago.
“Following the outcome of the review, Mr Al-Ghalib continues to be engaged on a casual basis with SBS as a cross-platform journalist, and appropriate measures have been taken to manage this issue,” an SBS spokesperson told Crikey.
“SBS is a public broadcaster and all our journalists are expected to be, and be perceived as, impartial and balanced in their reporting.”
SBS launched an investigation into Al-Ghalib’s use of social media earlier this month, after pro-Israel media-monitoring website HonestReporting picked through tweets posted by Al-Ghalib from 2014 and 2015, which the broadcaster says “did not align” with its standards and values, or community expectations.
The tweets, which were posted before Al-Ghalib was employed by SBS and have since been deleted, coincided with the Israeli Defence Force’s mobilisation into Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks, which were fired at Israel following the reported arrest of some 350 Palestinians for the alleged kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.
The UN says the conflict, later dubbed the 2014 Gaza War, killed at least 2251 Palestinians, including 1462 civilians, of whom 299 were women and 551 children. Six civilians were killed in Israel as a result of the conflict, as well as 67 soldiers, a United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry into the conflict found. A ceasefire was agreed to after 50 days of fighting.
Among the offending tweets posted by Al-Ghalib at the time was one that praised Al Jazeera’s coverage of the conflict, accompanied by the hashtag “#F***Israel”.
Another tweet condemned the conduct of an Israeli soldier who was allegedly seen “choking a Palestinian boy”. Other tweets claimed Israeli soldiers were “bloody murderers”, who from the late 1940s operated “little-known concentration and labour camps”, and that Israel is “the biggest terrorist in the world”.
The Australian Jewish News (AJN) reported HonestReporting’s findings shortly after they were released, citing a spokesperson at SBS who ensured the publication that “action” was being taken, and that Al-Ghalib was stood down “from all duties” pending an internal investigation.
The story raised questions over Al-Ghalib’s capacity to report on the region with balance and impartiality, which most recently took the form of an audio report on US State Secretary of State Antony J Blinken’s recent visit to Israel. The story has since been deleted by SBS without explanation.
Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni said in offering AJN on-the-record commentary on individual employment matters, the broadcaster wrongly validated the publisher’s charges without the necessary context, which put Al-Ghalib’s career at risk.
Mashni said he does not condone the contents of the tweets, but thinks SBS management could have better handled the matter.
“The first thing they should have done was to investigate the entity that brought forward the complaint. And once they had ascertained that HonestReporting’s only job is to trawl through Palestinian-sympathetic tweets or posts… it’s at that moment you go, ‘Perhaps this isn’t real’,” Mashni told Crikey.
Mashni said coordinated lobbying efforts like the one that led to Al-Ghalib’s suspension can often be the “kiss of death”. He said it “should be” the case for anti-Semites, but not for those sympathetic to Palestine, which are too often conflated.
Staffers at SBS privately fear the broadcaster’s swift action could have a chilling effect on the broadcaster’s coverage of the region, stoked by fears they mightn’t be safe or supported carrying out reporting that doesn’t favour Israel.
Jennine Khalik, a Palestinian-Australian journalist and advocate, said that a chilling effect has already taken hold, “not just at SBS, but at most media outlets”.
“Palestinian and Arab staffers, along with others, have long felt fear at SBS and ABC, and are navigating a minefield. Leadership at these institutions have moved swiftly to kill stories and threaten journalists and staffers with punitive measures. I myself experienced this,” Khalik, a former ABC journalist and digital producer, told Crikey.
“Unfortunately, there have long been concerted efforts by pro-Israel organisations and outlets to smear and defame Palestinian advocates and any critics of the Israeli apartheid state. This is far larger than SBS.”
You have to wonder at the legitimacy of any government that needs a worldwide network of people whose sole purpose is to conflate “Antisemitism” with “Israeli criticism”.
Judge people by what they do, not what they say………
………..and if history is any indication, the only lesson that Netanyahu and his cronies learned from the 1930s is
“Do unto others what they did to you”
Because to an outsider, the similarities are remarkable.
It might just be a matter of time before they start confining Palestinians to camps promising a reward for hard work……………
Thank you! My grandfather used to say “How do you judge a man?” “By what he says or by what he does?”.
Maybe it’s an old geezer thing……………..
……….I remember when Queen Victoria was a hot young chick and the Cutty Sark was the quickest thing on the high seas.
……….and if you had sixpence you could take your best girl to the flicks on Saturday morning, buy her a box of chocolates, and still have enough left over for a deposit on a Ferrari.
Spot on. Annoys the crap out of me that any criticism of Israel is labelled anti-Semitic. Almost like the fear of the accusation is meant to stifle any discussion on the Israeli state’s desire to remove the Palestinians from the earth.
That is precisely what it is meant to achieve………….
Perhaps more correctly, consistent Israeli policies to remove Palestinians from any piece of earth they’ve decided Jewish Israeli’s want. What Israel has become through these policies is a cause for bitter tears both in Israel and among those oppressed by the colonial settler state.
There was an article published by Al-Awda on October 19, 2014 and reposted by Israelpalestinenews.org on February 8, 2023, called Israel’s little-known concentration and labor camps (1948-1955), which draws on reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross made available to the public in 1996, as well as testimonies from former Palestinian civilian detainees of these camps. And it’s well-established that Arab-Israelis were held under an oppressive martial law regime right up until 1966
Agree, but one would suggest like most issues it is neither black nor white, but more a Venn diagram with much grey and need for nuance in the middle…. especially when factual reporting or commentary is described negatively or falsely; many Israeli governments, especially of the right, are very well versed and tutored in the dark arts of political PR and manipulation.
It seems to me that Israel is looking a lot more like 1930s Germany these days. You would think that after suffering so badly their society would have been a bit more live and let live.
My thoughts too. Adolf Netanyahu ?
Comparing Israel with Nazi Germany is now considered to be a variety of anti-Semitism, as is comparing German treatment of Jews with Israeli treatment of Arabs. These things are officially not comparable.
Different degree, same principle – treat people differently according to their ethnicity to justify stealing their land and creating lebensraum (settlements).
I would say the closer parallel is South Africa during the Apartheid era.
I know things were bad, very bad in South Africa during the Apartheid era.
However, the world is still treating Israel as if some of their actions are justified, as with Germany in the 30’s and 40’s.
Whereas the world did increasingly sanction South Africa, leading to the boycott actions, after the excesses were widely reported.
Israel does really appaling things like shoot journalists and there is maybe a wave of finger, after a see through token lie.
More like late 30’s Germany.
A very distinguished Jew, Sigmund Freud, explored the notion of projection, by which one’s own unacceptable impulses are attributed to another.
The prime example being Donald Trump……………..
They were, it’s the subsequent generations that are veering hard right. Those that I knew or know of who lived thru the Holocaust were more ‘live and let live’ as you say. Harder to be pro war when you have lived thru one, rather than just grown up on stories of suffering.
I must be an anti-Semite. I loathe and despise the nation that Israel has become. Their actions towards the people whose land they stole then and now, in the West Bank, are stealing on a daily basis are little better than the confiscations of the Nazis ( I am not referring to the Holocaust). It is rather, like the Sudeten and the doctrine of Lebesraum. Having survived the worst reign of terror in the modern world does not give the right to mistreat other people and steal from them in turn. Given the past, you would expect a standard of ethics and humanity, which of course many Israelis display on a daily basis. This is notably absent in the government and the their Zionist apologists in the US. It is worth rememebring that Israel was a big time military supporter of Apartheid South Africa.
This all sounds a little familiar…
The conflation of Antisemitism with Israeli criticism, is very disappointing.
I note also that the ex CEO of the Jewish Board of deputies now has a role on the SBS board and said on joining: “(SBS) ethos accords precisely with my own, as I have dedicated my career to building a more resilient, respectful and inclusive society” Hmmmm.
Bollocks rules, okay?………….
Whilst the pro-Israel organisation cleverly framed its complaint as about ‘balance’, the objective is to bully news organisations into a more pro-Isreal bias. The allegation of an inability to report in an unbiased way because a journalist has a private opinion is nonsense. Objectively, Israel is a violent bully to Palestinians who Israel displaced. Being anti-Israel is not being anti-Semitic, although increasingly that is the basis of complaint from the broad pro-Israel lobby who clearly believe Israel can do no wrong.