"When I was a student, there was a rumour that Isi Leibler was a CIA agent"

A blog post by Harold Zwier

When I was a student, there was a rumour that Isi Leibler was a CIA agent.

Even then, I was never convinced that student politics provided a reliable source of information. Years later, I sat in Leibler's office with a few others, discussing post 1993 Oslo Accords politics. Leibler's hardline politics seemed to be mellowing out, marked by this meeting he'd organised with a group of left-wing people in the Jewish community. But in his final years, after moving to Israel, and after the failure of Oslo, almost all of his writing seemed marred by anger and bitterness.

On the issue of the war crimes legislation, the Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDS), a left-wing group formed in 1984 by Norman Rothfield and Moss Cass, included both those who supported the legislation, and those who opposed it.

It was agreed that the legislation should have covered all war crimes. And that perhaps, more effort should have been spent holding an inquiry into Nazis who had found refuge in Australia, rather than trying to prosecute alleged perpetrators. Especially considering the ever dwindling pool of witnesses able to provide testimony.

An inquiry would have been a more widely publicised way of airing the issue. The AJDS' concerns were, for obvious reasons, centred on the issue of the Holocaust. Even though Nazi Europe was not the only place where war crimes had taken place.

I was on the AJDS committee at that time.

—

Written by Harold Zwier. Inspired by:
https://johnmenadue.com/leibler-a-covert-agent-of-israeli-intelligence/