Herald-Sun slanders peace actvist

Tony Iltis, Melbourne

Peace activist and socialist David Glanz has received messages of solidarity from the National Tertiary Education Union, the RMIT Student Union and various left activists following a slanderous attack on him in the August 4 Herald-Sun.

Under the headline "S11 protest leader takes up new career", the News Ltd tabloid reported that "The leader of the violent S11 protest that left police and horses injured has been made the public voice of RMIT". In fact, Glanz has been working for the RMIT media office for four months.

The Herald-Sun has had a private vendetta against Glanz since he was president of the Australian Journalists Association at the paper, before being sacked for his role in a 1991 strike.

Glanz was a member of the organising committee for the 20,000-strong three-day protest outside the September 11-13, 2000, World Economic Forum in Melbourne. The article on Glanz's "new career" was an opportunity for the Herald-Sun to rehash its slanderous claims made at the time about protesters pelting police with urine-filled balloons and other missiles, claims made to disguise the appalling police violence that marred the anti-WEF demonstrations.

At the time of the S11 protests, the Herald-Sun also ran a campaign against RMIT's Community Advocacy Unit for allegedly supporting the protests. Since then the Murdoch daily has waged campaigns about alleged radicalism at RMIT.

In April, RMIT lecturer Robert Austin was sacked after the Herald-Sun ran a campaign against him for rescheduling a class to allow students to attend a protest in defence of student unionism.

Apart from pursuing old vendettas, a clue as to why the Herald-Sun published the article can be found in its second sentence: "David Glanz ... at the weekend also declared his support for the Arab militant organisations Hamas and Hezbollah."

At the 5000-strong anti-war rally on July 30, Glanz did declare his support for the resistance of the Lebanese and Palestinian people to attacks of the Israeli "Defence" Forces (IDF), as did the other 11 speakers.

For the Murdoch media, solidarity with those resisting Israeli aggression is equated with terrorism. This may explain the most scurrilous accusation in the article — that the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), of which Glanz is a leading member, has "advocated assassinations, blowing up military targets and tearing up the roots of the capitalist system".

While the ISO is indeed anti-capitalist, it has not advocated that its members or anyone else in Australia carry out "assassinations" or "the blowing up of military targets". Perhaps the Herald-Sun has confused the ISO with the IDF and its actions in Gaza and Lebanon, which also extend to the massacring of civilians and the blowing up of civilian targets.

From GLW issue 679