The National Press Club of Australia Cancels My Talk on Our Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actor

Text originally published October 3, 2025.

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I was scheduled to give a talk at the National Press Club of Australia on October 20 called “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.” It was to focus on the amplification of Israeli lies in the press, which most reporters know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel. But, perhaps inadvertently proving my point, the chief executive of the press club, Maurice Reilly, cancelled the event. The announcement of my talk disappeared from the web site. Reilly said “that in the interest of balancing out our program we will withdraw our offer.”

The Israeli Ambassador, retired Lt. Colonel Amir Maimon, who spent 14 years in the Israeli military, is reportedly being considered to speak.

It is true that I know only one side of the picture from the seven years I spent covering Gaza. I was on the receiving end of Israeli attacks, including being bombed by its air force and fired upon by its snipers, one of whom killed a young man a few feet away from me at the Netzarim Junction. We lifted him up, each person taking hold of an arm or a leg, and lumbered up the road as his body swayed like a heavy sack. I saw small boys baited and shot by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others.

I was present more than once as Israeli troops shot Palestinian children. Such incidents, in the Israeli lexicon, become children caught in crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets bombed overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children. This became a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. I have watched Israel demolish homes and entire apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the Palestinians and the Israeli troops that ring Gaza. I have interviewed the destitute and homeless families, some camped out in crude shelters erected in the rubble. The destruction becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists. I have stood in the gutted remains of schools as well as medical clinics and mosques and counted the bodies. I have heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the buildings were being used as arms depots or launching sites.

I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, including the over 278 Palestinians journalists and media workers who have been killed by Israel since the start of the genocide, many in targeted assassinations, have reported a reality in Gaza that bears no resemblance to how it is portrayed by Israeli politicians, its military and many media outlets that serve as Israel’s echo chamber.

Lt. Colonel Maimon can obviously, if he chooses, enlighten us about the artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender” and how it selects people, along with their families, in Gaza for assassination. He can explain how Israel determines the quotas of civilian dead, how soldiers are permitted to kill as many as 20 civilians in order to target a Palestinian fighter and hundreds for a Hamas commander. He can let us know why Israel continues the mass slaughter when an internal Israeli intelligence database indicates that at least 83 percent of Palestinians killed are civilians. He can tell us how Palestinian civilians are abducted, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, have their hands tied, and are then forced to walk as human shields in front of Israeli troops into buildings and underground tunnels that are potentially booby-trapped. He can explain how the special unit called the “Legitimization Cell” carries out propaganda campaigns to portray Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives to justify their assassinations. He can detail the targeting, bombing and controlled demolitions that have damaged or destroyed 97 percent of Gaza’s educational system, including every university and nearly all its hospitals. He can explain how, after Israel blocked all humanitarian aid on March 2 to starve the Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli officials set up the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to lure emaciated and malnourished Palestinians to four aid hubs in the south — aid hubs with little food and which Human Rights Watch calls “death traps” and Doctors Without Borders calls “orchestrated killing.” These hubs, open only an hour, usually at 2:00 am, ensure a chaotic scramble for scraps of food. Israeli soldiers, along with U.S. mercenaries, who include members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club, a self-professed anti-“radical jihadist” biker group that counts members with Crusader tattoos among its ranks, fire live rounds into the crowds killing over 1,400 Palestinians and injuring thousands more in and around the hubs since May. He can lay out the plans for the concentration camps in southern Gaza and the efforts to ultimately expel the Palestinians from Gaza and repopulate it with Jewish colonists. He can explain why Israel abandoned its own hostages, why it fired on vehicles headed into the Gaza strip on October 7 carrying Israeli captives and why it used Hellfire missiles to obliterate the Erez Crossing installation when it was seized by Palestinian fighters knowing that dozens of Israeli soldiers were inside.

If Lt. Colonel Maimon spoke with this honesty and candor we could call this balance. It would fill in a side of the equation I glimpse from the outside. It would complete the circle. It would match truth with truth.

But Lt. Colonel Maimon, I see from his past statements, will spew out the mendacious narratives used by Israel to justify genocide — Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields, it operates command centers in hospitals, it sexually assaulted Israeli women on October 7 and beheaded babies. He will make the spurious claim that Israel “has the right to defend itself,” ignoring the fact that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups, which lack an air force, mechanized units, artillery, a navy, fleets of militarized drones and missiles, pose no existential threat to Israel. More important, he will not address Israel’s flagrant violation of international law by occupying and settling colonists on Palestinian land and carrying out a livestreamed genocide.

This is not balance, unless we accept a world where truth is balanced by lies. It is an abandonment of the fundamental mission of journalists — to hold power accountable. But most egregiously, it is a terrible betrayal of our colleagues in Gaza who have been killed for chronicling the daily savagery in Gaza, for doing their job.

No doubt, the corporate sponsors and wealthy donors of the press club are pleased. No doubt, the club is able to slither away from its journalistic integrity. No doubt, it is spared the attacks that would come from allowing me to speak.

But please, have the decency to remove the word press from your club.

Photos

Australia’s 48th Parliament Sits For The First Time

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - JULY 22: Ambassador for Israel Amir Maimon (L) and Shadow Minister for Small Business of Australia Tim Wilson (R) at the ecumenical service at Wesley Churc on July 22, 2025 in Canberra, Australia. Parliament reopened on Tuesday following Labor’s decisive election win. (Photo by Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images)

Israeli attacks over Gaza continue

ISRAEL - OCTOBER 07: Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes targeted residential areas in the Gaza Strip, as seen from Israel near the border, on October 07, 2025. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Palestinians Clash With Israeli Soldiers Near Neve Dekalim

KHAN YOUNIS REFUGEE CAMP - GAZA STRIP - SEPTEMBER 01: Palestinian boys run away from an Israeli tank as it opens fire during clashes near the vacant Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim on September 1, 2005 in the southern Gaza Strip. (Photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images)

Israeli military mobility on the northern border of Gaza

GAZA CITY, GAZA - MAY 29: Military mobility of tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks and military jeeps belonging to the Israeli army continues on the northern border of Gaza on May 29, 2024. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)

TOPSHOT-MIDEAST-GAZA-PULLOUT-YOUTH

TOPSHOT - Palestinian kids throwing stones run towards an Israeli tank near the fence separating the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunes and the Israeli settlement of Ganei Tal 06 September 2005. AFP PHOTO/ROBERTO SCHMIDT (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP) (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

IDF And Greek Air Force Joint Military Exercise

EILAT, ISRAEL - DECEMBER 09: An Israeli F-16 jet takes off on December 9, 2014 at the Ovda airbase in the Negev Desert near Eilat, southern Israel. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

Israel’s Military Leaders At Odds With Netanyahu Over Gaza Plan

SOUTHERN ISRAEL, ISRAEL - JULY 3: Smoke rise over the Gaza Strip after an Israeli bombardment as seen from a position on the Israeli side of the border on July 3, 2024 in Southern Israel, Israel. Recent press reports have suggested Israel’s military leadership wants a ceasefire in the war with Hamas, which has raged since the Oct. 7 attacks. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT

TOPSHOT - This picture shows people walking amid tents set up next to the rubble of destroyed buildings at the Jabalia camp for displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip on April 8, 2025. Israel resumed major strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)

TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-GAZA-MEDIA

TOPSHOT - Demonstrators gather in solidarity with journalists killed by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, during a protest organised by the Gaza Journalists Syndicate, in Gaza City, on August 26, 2025. Gaza’s civil defence agency said five journalists were among at least 20 people killed on August 25 when Israeli strikes hit a hospital in the south, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing regret over the “tragic mishap”. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP) (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)

TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT

TOPSHOT - Palestinian women and children hold out their empty pots in front of a charity kitchen in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on August 21, 2025. Rights group Amnesty International earlier this week accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza. Israel heavily restricts aid coming into Gaza but has repeatedly rejected claims of deliberate starvation. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-GAZA

TOPSHOT - A ball of fire erupts from the Jala Tower as it is destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, controlled by the Palestinian Hamas movement, on May 15, 2021. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP) (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images)

TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-US-GAZA-AID

TOPSHOT - People carry relief supplies from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US-backed aid group that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory, as displaced Palestinians return from an aid distribution centre in the central Gaza Strip on June 8, 2025. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP) (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)

PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT

A female journalist comforts a distressed woman as injured and killed Palestinians are brought to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, following the Israeli bombardment of a residential apartment in Deir al-Balah and an area of al-Maghazi, on June 8, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)

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