In Interview With Lebanese Hizbullah's Terrorist-Designated Al-Manar TV, Fired Australian Senior University Lecturer Tim Anderson Compares Israel To Nazi Germany

On December 2, 2022, MEMRI TV published a clip of former senior university lecturer Tim Anderson's November 21, 2022 appearance on Lebanese Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV, which has been a U.S. specially designated global terrorist entity since 2004.[1] The channel, which is banned also in France[2], was investigated in 2003 in Australia[3] but is not currently banned. Hizbullah itself is banned in nine countries in Europe,[4] as well as in Australia.[5]

Anderson is a former senior lecturer in political economy at Sydney University who was terminated in 2019 after one of his lectures featured a slide in which a Nazi swastika was superimposed over the Israeli flag. He had previously attracted criticism from federal education ministers for his numerous trips to Syria and North Korea, and has expressed solidarity with the Syrian regime.[6] He had been convicted and imprisoned in connection with the 1978 Hilton Hotel bombing in Sydney but was acquitted on appeal in 1991.[7]

In his interview on Al-Manar TV, Anderson again compared Israel to Nazi Germany, saying that Israel's "pseudo-racist theory" about a "mythical people" that owned the Levant has led to "large scale racialized massacres" in Gaza. He also claimed that the protests in Iran were engineered and financed by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, saying this is similar to their actions in Syria in 2011, which led to the Syrian civil war. In addition, Anderson said that the war in Ukraine is a proxy war and is also similar to the situation in Syria, where he said foreign powers financed various militias.

The same day that MEMRI TV published a clip of Anderson's Al-Manar interview, Anderson tweeted that his original interview had been blocked on YouTube.[8] In the tweet, he linked to the MEMRI TV clip of his interview, writing: "YouTube blocked this interview on Al-Manar, but the Zionists at #MEMRI re-issued some of it on Twitter."

To view the MEMRI TV clip of statements by Australian former senior academic Tim Anderson on Hizbullah TV, click here or below:

The following is a transcript of the MEMRI TV clip of Anderson's Al-Manar interview:

Tim Anderson: "It's a proxy war, as we know, in Ukraine, just as the proxy war in Syria was being carried out. They were sending huge amounts of money and weapons to al-Nusra and Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and now they are sending it to these neo-Nazi groups in southeastern Ukraine, who have been largely defeated in a way, and they are creating their own militia from the NATO groups now. There is [also] a new confrontation between Russia and the British, which are deeply involved in attacks on Crimea, and so this escalation of the crisis in Ukraine is recent and significant. But in many respects, it parallels the proxy wars they've carried out against really all of the independent states here in West Asia."

[...]

Interviewer: "Do you think that they are intervening now in the Iranian protests?"

Anderson: "They are intervening right now. In fact, it's very similar to the way they intervened in Syria in 2011. They have taken cover under a type of protest movement and they've put their assets, Daesh and the MEK, in to kill security forces. It looks very [much] like Syria in March 2011."

Interviewer: "In Iran, are there protests – rightful protests – or riots?"

Anderson: "There are protests. There have been protests and there have been people who for different reasons are concerned about things, but they have been infiltrated by terrorist groups who are assets of the U.S. And we know their names, and we know where they're trained, and we know who is funding them. And the same people who are funding the Saudis, of course, are also funding them.

[...]

"Most of the media articles do not mention the Palestinians, do not mention the massacre of Palestinians. And of course, then the racialized massacres based on a pseudo-racial theory about some mythical people that own the Levant land is why I was making the parallel with Nazi Germany. People do make the parallel with Nazi Germany too much, but I think when people have the pseudo-racial theory, [and] they carry out large-scale racialized massacres against thousands of people – mainly civilians in Gaza, I think that parallel is justified."