Chair of the ABC Kim Williams has commented on Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Speaking to The Age‘s Jacqueline Maley, the self-described “dedicated supporter of the state of Israel”, used an unexpected term.
Williams’ words came in the context of Maley asking him about a 2013 speech he gave at the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce.
“I ask him if his engagement with Jewish spirituality has affected how he perceives the objectivity of news coverage of the Israel/Gaza war,” Maley writes.
She then reports Williams’ response:
“I don’t have any dilemma bifurcating the Netanyahu government completely away from my very deep engagement with, and respect for, Jewish humanism.
“I don’t think [Netanyahu] is part of that very long, deep history. I think he is an aberrant creature … I think he’s frankly an aberrant creature in the history of Israel.
“He checks himself. ‘But that’s a very inappropriate thing for me to say and I shouldn’t really be saying it’.”
Kim Williams, ABC chair.
Kim Williams’ history of supporting Jewish people
Maley explains that Williams “has a profound, longstanding engagement with Judaism, to the extent where it has even been reported he converted to the religion, although he tells me this isn’t true.”
She adds that he describes the relationship as: “I have a continuing, distinct empathy with the spirit of Jewish religious practice and ethical precepts.”
Maley cites Williams’ history with Sandy Gutman, whose comedic persona is Austen Tayshus, as an example of his support:
“When one [radio] station declined to feature Gutman, he went straight to the chair, whom he had known only vaguely, according to both men, decades prior. According to Media Watch, Williams intervened five times on behalf of the comedian.”
When Maley asked him about the events, Williams prefaced his response by saying he doesn’t want “to fan the flames of issues of very deep division in the community over matters to do with October 7, the Israeli response and what has happened in Gaza, and I think whenever people talk about it, it gets mixed into a miasma of other matters.”
On Gutman, with whom he’s denied any friendship, he relates: “[Gutman] went on about the ABC being … and this is why it’s awkward to talk about because I don’t want to fan any flames. He said the ABC was profoundly antisemitic, and I was just focused on getting emotion out of the room.”
According to Good Weekend, Williams wrote to the ABC’s director of audio Ben Latimer and head of regional, rural and metro news, Donna Field, highlighting Gutman’s credentials as a comedian.
Gutman told the publication that Williams “helped me in every possible way he could”, and added: “I made a comment to him that the ABC was biased against Israel. It was a general observation I made to Kim in passing.”
Top image: Kim Williams, ABC chair and, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel