My personal experience of this saga began in 1974. Lane was, at the time, working with the religious programs department of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. I had been warned by one of his colleagues that this former pastor from the Church of Christ was anti-Jewish. Sadly, he soon exposed his bias in the course of an unfortunate TV interview he conducted with Britain’s first woman to study for the rabbinate. My knowledge from that experience was cold comfort when, in his column in the Sunday Age of 11 March 2001, Lane asserted "Rabbi Levi, late last year, called the Uniting Church of Australia ‘anti-Semitic’… As a member of the Uniting Church he has committed a perfidious slander of me and my Church."

There was a slight technical problem. I was a co-President of the Council of Christians and Jews and I had not said any such thing. The Age had misreported me and subsequently apologised in print. It was a shame that Terry Lane had not taken the trouble to read his own newspaper before uttering his personal "perfidious slander" (‘Perfidious’ was a bad choice of adjective for anyone with the slightest knowledge of theological anti-Semitism).

For the past thirty years Lane has woven a tangled web of disdain for Jews, Judaism and Israel. Repeatedly Lane’s fulminations have been met by the determined and principled opposition of Michael Danby, now the Federal Member for Melbourne Ports. It must have added to Terry Lane’s ire last year when he saw Danby returned to Canberra with a majority that resisted the nationwide swing against Labor and gathered support from widely disparate sections of the electorate. That was bad enough, but Danby had published an advertisement in the Australian Jewish News, which read, " Israel needs your support more than ever. Michael’s commitment to Israel has stood the test of time. As our local MP he has stood up for the Jewish community on issues such as private school funding. Whichever party you normally support, now is the time to support Israel. Vote 1. Michael Danby."

In the Sunday Age of 25 November 2001, Terry Lane lashed out. Michael Danby had "got away with thumbing his nose at party policy". Danby, according to Terry Lane, had chosen his heresy carefully. Lane asked, "How many non-Jewish voters in the electorate of Melbourne Ports knew that by voting for Mr Danby they were casting a vote ‘to support Israel’?" Now that is an interesting question. Would the non-Jewish voters have preferred a man who was ashamed of his faith and hidden his commitments? Had the Labor Party secretly decided to cease funding non-government schools? Lane’s attack on Michael Danby’s integrity has to be understood within the context of a long story.

Way back in 1986, Lane weighed in with a public defence of the right of the Holocaust-denier David Irving to visit Australia, and on some points, defended Irving’s view of history. Later Terry Lane wrote movingly about "The Right to be Racist" (Sunday Age, 29 July 1990) in which he defended Mr John Bennett’s right to denounce "the power of the Zionist lobby" and the "Hollywood Holocaust propaganda industry" which was directed by "a new wave of officious czars, some of them straight from Israel". These matters, said Lane, should be publicly debated and by repeating Bennett’s assertions in the mainstream media our democratic Marxist depressive had certainly done his best.

Ten years ago, in a letter to Quadrant (December 1991), Lane denounced Michael Danby as a "war lover" for his support of the Gulf War. Danby pointed out that a dislike of all things American was a constant theme through all Lane’s public utterances. Danby wrote, "I don’t dispute Terry Lane’s right to make these personal judgements and no one has accused the poor man of treason for his unproductive and virulent opposition to the just and subsequently vindicated attempt to deter Saddam Hussein. I just wish he’d stop posing as God’s gift to liberalism."

After a series of broadcasts about Israel and the Middle East, Lane declared that he would "never again" discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict on his radio program. He had received "so many vicious and menacing letters". He had been subject to "Harassment, vilification, threats and abuse". He would later explain, "The Zionist lobby in this country is malicious, implacable, mendacious and dangerous.…there is not one (radio station) manager or editor in this country who will defend an underling. We are thrown to the jackals. In the end the truly tolerant have no defence against intolerance. I surrender. To the Zionists I say you win. To the Palestinians forgive my cowardice" (Australian Jewish News, 4 December 1992).

In May 1993, the Weekend Australian published "Stirrer at Large", which publicly asserted that Lane was described as "a racist, bigot male chauvinist, anti-Semite" by his critics.

Tact is not part of Terry Lane’s big picture. On Anzac Day 1999, Lane launched an article "Still Sacrificing Children to the Gods of War" in which he attacked attempts to commemorate the Jewish community’s proud contribution to the defence of Australia in time of war. He sneered, "I would guess that there would have been one or two more Christians than Jews in the ranks". It had been revealed that some of the Jewish refugees to Australia had been used for medical experiments. Lane wrote kindly, "There is something really annoying about the ingratitude of the refugee rescued from almost certain death who defames the hospitable souls who gave him safe refuge". Once again Michael Danby took Lane to task, observing, "Lane’s column says more about him than the brave men of the (Army’s) Employment Companies. On the topic of Jews, Terry Lane is utterly predictable".

Fifteen years ago in the Australian Jewish News (5 September 1986), Professor Bill Rubinstein, writing about Lane, asked, "Are We His Problem?" He concluded that Lane is "too intelligent to be an anti-Semite" but "Jews…are a component of the anti-American, anti-militaristic world view that pervades Lane’s writing…I do believe that for many it is the role of the Jews to suffer, when they fight back and moreover win, though, they are reprehensible, especially when they appear to ‘control’ America and its equally dangerous military behemoth."

Could this explain Terry Lane’s hang-ups about Jews and his personal feud with Mr Michael Danby, who had the temerity to win his seat in the Federal Parliament?