RUTHFULLY YOURS

Clementine Ford, I’m sorry to report, has found a new way of making a pest of herself. Since Hamas’ pogrom of October 7, Ford has become one of Australia’s most prolific anti-Israel activists, a project she has undertaken with all the rigour and restraint we have come to expect from the feminist termagant.

This was all on display, for example, when Ford helped dox the names and details of about 600 Jewish artists and creators, an act that led, of course, to harassment and death threats. It was also around this time that Ford herself was outed as a devoted pal of Laura Allam, the Palestinian activist currently facing charges of stomping on the head of her kidnapped victim. “I love YOU”, gushed Ford to Allam on Instagram, which, to be fair, was a rare departure in her behaviour on that social media platform. More often, Ford is shouty and deranged, fond of directing her venom at Jewish women who object to Hamas’ psychopathic campaign of rape and murder. Ford has labelled these “Zionist women”, in politer moments, as pathetic crybabies.

None of this, I’m even sorrier to report, has disqualified Clementine Ford receiving government grants. To its discredit, Screen NSW has provided her with $30,000 to co-create a TV series called Smile Bitch, which, I predict, most viewers will find unwatchable.

As usual, it gets worse. Clementine Ford isn’t some weird outlier here. A penchant for anti-Israel fanaticism, I have come to suspect, is much more likely to assist prospective applicants in their quest to be awarded with taxpayer funds. For example, Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg recently introduced herself to the Australian public as one of Ford’s fellow doxxers. As The Australian reported, Ms Tuet-Rosenberg used the incident to show off her talent for organising and delegating, as she split up her various lists of Jews into categories like ‘Artists’, ‘Sports Zios’, and the like. She then exhorted her social media followers to “let these f***ing Zionists know no f***ing peace.” This seems to be about the extent of her vocabulary, though, as she has also posed for photos where she sports both a maniacal rictus and a t-shirt with profanity-laden imprecations against Zionists and Israel.

Again, none of this has prevented Tuet-Rosenberg from being gifted thousands of taxpayer dollars via — go on, see if you can guess — the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). Her social justice organisation, Hue, is contracted to provide anti-racism education resources for — God help them — primary school children, and despite the backlash, the AHRC hasn’t thought to ask for any of our money back.

Some more familiar foes of Quadrant are also among this expanding rogues’ gallery, including Evelyn Araluen, an Aboriginal poet and co-editor of Overland. After a number of subscribers wondered why they never seemed to encounter a sentence that denounced or even mildly reproached Hamas, Araluen helpfully clarified the magazine’s contemptible stance. “Our line on Hamas”, she wrote, “is that we support Palestinian liberation from their violent oppression by Israel.” Again, to be fair, she hinted at her openness to publishing pieces critical of the militant terrorist organisation. (That’s my descriptor, obviously, not hers.) The problem, though, is that she’s never found a single anti-Hamas argument to be at all convincing. “We just haven’t received any which meet the standard of fact and good-faith that we hold as a publication,” she risibly added.

Regarding those standards, I doubt that even Evelyn Araluen’s moral idiocy can stop the Australia Council for the Arts from flinging even more tax dollars at Overland when its funding is next up for inspection.

Unfortunately, the government’s support for Hamasnik editors looks like small change compared to what the Australian Research Council (ARC) splurges. Another Quadrant favourite, sociologist Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, of Macquarie University, stacked up $802,000 in a recent round of ARC funding, which I’m sure she’ll put to good use. I hope none of it goes towards her side hustles, though, as her academic focus has lately switched to denying the mere possibility of Hamas’ well-documented and horrific sexual violence. Abdel-Fattah’s other hobbies include calling on her followers to make Zionists “feel culturally unsafe” wherever they go, praising the “heroes” who doxxed her Zionist enemies, as well as justifying the armed resistance against — yeah, she bangs on about them a lot — the Zionists.

What makes the case of Randa Abdel-Fattah particularly bothersome is that she’s looking forward to the demise of both Israel and Australia. When Invasion Day 2024 rolled around and Melbourne’s troublemakers took to the local Captain Cook statue with an angle grinder, Abdel-Fattah was positively giddy about the crime. “This energy everyday (sic),” enthused Macquarie’s Future Research Fellow. “All colonies will fail starting here.” Her ARC grant, by the way, must have required a statement of sorts on how her research would advance the Australian national interest. I’m not sure how she could possibly have filled in that part of the form, as Abdel-Fattah doesn’t seem to think that Australia should continue to exist for much longer, a prospect I perceive she finds cheering.

All these loathsome characters could learn an important lesson from one of their comrades, Matt Chun, who is best known as Clementine Ford’s co-doxxer and a fanboy for — his words — the “freedom fighters” of Hamas. Until quite recently, Chun was also a Children’s Literature Fellow at the State Library of Victoria, but he’s just quit of his own accord. He eschewed the more formal resignation letter in favour of some creepy and conspiratorial ranting about the Library’s connection with “Zionist interests” and wotnot. In the end, Matt Chun’s conscience wouldn’t allow him to remain in a state government-backed position, and we should all be very pleased with his decision.

I encourage Ford, Araluen, Abdel-Fattah et al to follow this example. If they so dislike the Australian regime’s complicity with settler-colonialism, Zionism, and whatever else is on the bill of complaint, they ought not accept taxpayer lucre from such a tainted source. In the meantime, though, perhaps the rest of us can cultivate a bit more annoyance with Arts Ministers and their lackeys in the bureaucracies. So long as our government agencies are seemingly on the lookout for the nearest Israel-hater to throw money at, I’d say it’s time to put the latest grant-giving criteria up for review.