Talk Show Producer Tweets Hooey and Why It Matters

I’m struggling to understand why the producer of a New Zealand current affairs talk show retweeted a nasty anti-Israel comment three months after it was originally tweeted.

Israel’s not an “apartheid state” that is “keeping millions of people prisoners in their own land” or carries out genocide. And the Holocaust has nothing to do with the Israeli army’s handling of recent Gaza border clashes. But tell all that to Annabelle Lee, executive producer of TV3’s current events talk show The Hui. And to the anonymous person — who has a Russian-inspired name Novi choke and Twitter handle @sputnikke — who Lee echoed to her 7,100+ followers.

This was Novi choke’s response to Israeli diplomat George Deek’s April tweet about the environmental hazards of burning tires along the Gaza border.

Three months later, out of the blue, Lee retweeted @sputnikke. The retweet appeared in her Twitter feed sometime between July 13 (homeless pregnant woman turned away from emergency shelter on cold night) and July 15 (kia kaha Palestine, which is Maori for “be strong Palestine.”)

Lee’s entitled to free speech, and so is @sputnikke, though the issue of anonymity on social media is a hot topic. Concerned about disinformation, fake accounts and bots, Twitter purged 58 million accounts in the last quarter of 2017.

Regarding the tweet’s reference to genocide and the Holocaust, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism includes “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” This is one of the reasons Britain’s Labour Party is taking flak for its watered-down definition of antisemitism. (The UK adopted the IHRA’s full definition in 2016.)

As executive producer of a talk show like The Hui (which in Maori means an assembly or gathering, akin to what Americans might call a “town hall” meeting) Lee ought to be dialed in with the qualities of positive public discourse: accuracy, relevance, and proportion come to mind, as do accuracy, and fairness. Unfortunately, I don’t see those qualities in Lee’s retweet.

Moreover, when NZ Jewish activists David Cumin and Juliet Moses engaged Lee, she denied that she was an antisemite or Holocaust denier (Holocaust denial wasn’t an issue) and petulantly stuck her fingers in her ears, telling Cumin “I don’t intend to engage with you anymore.”

So much for discourse.

As far as the online conversation was concerned, Lee just tweeted hooey.

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