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Muting and vilifying opposing voices

The CEO of MUP, Louise Adler, writes in an op-ed piece in The Australian today:

"Almost 10 years ago, the then Israeli ambassador to Australia Gaby Levy requested a meeting to discuss my views on the Middle East. Levy had read a review I had written on Edward Said's recently published memoirs.

In that review I described my youthful disenchantment with Israel, a state I imagined to be a utopian oasis, only to discover in the early 1970s a society deeply divided on race, class and religious lines.

We spent an hour together in which Levy argued vehemently that my views should not be aired in the nation's broadsheets and that dissenting Jews should not air the community's dirty linen in public. I was advised to refocus my attention on condemning terrorism.

That the ambassador felt it necessary to devote time to apply pressure over commentary in a book review indicates the high degree of sensitivity at play."

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