Stop trying to make Eylon Levy happen

A few years ago I wrote a piece for Gawker (RIP) laying out how Australia has become a sort of international retirement home/image rehab facility for the English-speaking world’s professional right-wing grifters. Word has seemingly gotten round that our biggest media outlets are forever waiting to roll out the red carpet for whichever clout-chasing shithead has run their career into a wall and give them one last taste of big-dog status.

People like Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Katie Hopkins, Gavin McInnes, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka “Tommy Robinson”, Steve Bannon, Lauren Southern, Tucker Carlson and Douglas Murray have all tried to pitch their tents here when their careers started sputtering. Often the “speaking tour,” if its headline act doesn't manage to get themselves deported before it starts, turns out to be a scam in itself, or else so poorly planned the idiots who fork out hundreds of dollars to hear about how roundabouts are the New World Order or whatever end up having the worst evening of their lives. Candace Owens is apparently planning a tour, which means she must be pretty hard-up for cash.

It was in that context that this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday caught my eye:

For those who don’t know, Eylon Levy is a former journalist and media advisor to Israeli president Isaac Herzog. Levy’s currently on a tour of Australia hosted by the Jewish National Fund and the Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.

Not so long ago, Levy was a pretty big wheel in Israel’s hasbara machine. He was one of the Israeli government’s most prominent English-language spokespeople post-October 7, going viral semi-regularly in Zionist circles for things like raising his eyebrows when journalists asked him if Israel values Israeli lives more than Palestinian ones.

By virtue of even existing, Wednesday’s softball write-up of Levy’s visit by Herald national correspondent Matthew Knott suggests that Levy is still a serious mover and shaker. It features Levy “urging” the Australian government to do things, “accusing” Australia of other things, and offering “insights” into Israel’s government that could have been written on the back of a napkin.

The weirdest part, though, is how it obscures the circumstances of Levy’s departure from his influential and high-profile role. Knott keeps things extremely vague, saying only that Levy “eventually proved too combative for the Netanyahu government” and that “his criticism of Britain’s then-top diplomat, David Cameron, on social media” led to his firing.

All technically true, and all misleading, especially when the reality is so much funnier. In March, Levy got into an argument on Twitter (lol) with Cameron, claiming that “there are NO limits on the entry of food, water, medicine, or shelter equipment into Gaza” and daring the UK to “send another 100 trucks a day to Kerem Shalom and we'll get them in”. He was sacked by the Israeli government shortly after, either for telling a lie so obvious that even Israel couldn’t stand by it or for suggesting, even sarcastically, that Palestinians should be given aid.

Rather than tactfully retreating from the public eye until people moved onto other things, Levy immediately founded something called the “Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office” and started giving make-believe press conferences to empty rooms with a green-screened background. The closest local equivalent I can think of is when former Auburn deputy mayor and on-again off-again Silverwater inmate Salim Mehajer “announced” he wanted to run for prime minister one day, complete with a politely bewildered spouse and a lectern that he made Channel Nine set up for him.

I really recommend clicking through to the last 30 seconds of this “press conference” where, for no earthly reason, Levy stands silent and motionless and kind of looks around at various points as though he’s in a government briefing room full of journalists instead of talking to himself in his home office.

The whole thing is a great example of this weird tic Australian media has, where very senior journalists go along with people who are play-acting at still being relevant. There’s this bizarre tendency to perform seriousness in deference to someone’s CV, despite the fact that they’re objectively a ridiculous person. It might just be that we’re happy someone from the wider world, no matter how past it, is paying attention to us.

It’s almost always with people from the UK and the United States. On the same day as the Herald’s Eylon Levy thing, 7.30 ran a “wide-ranging interview” with Anthony Scaramucci, the guy who was Donald Trump’s comms director for ten days seven years ago. It covered his opinions on everything from the war in Ukraine to Project 2025, never asking why anyone, anywhere, would give a shit about what Anthony Scaramucci thinks about anything.

This apparent need to present grifting idiots as philosophers and statesmen has only gotten worse since October 7, because now D-grade Israeli has-beens can get in on it too. I assume various Israeli ministers will make their way here to become Sky News talking heads once The Hague makes it impossible for them to fly anywhere else.

What I’m looking at

• People With Disability Australia ‘devastated’ at the passage of the NDIS Amendment Bill

• From 2022: Antipoverty Centre condemns Labor’s disturbing plan to raise debts against welfare recipients

• From 2015: Red Flag — Australia’s worst union and its grub ALP leader