Richard Wolstencroft, the man who directs and founded the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, claims his decision to this year include Holocaust denier David Irving’s racist rant on film, "The Search for Truth in History" in his festival was a statement about free speech, and against censorship. Never mind that the film is 10 years old and freely available in this country, many in the media echoed this claim.

Cynics might argue that the decision was more about Wolstencroft’s search for publicity for his rather obscure film festival. However, there is at least some evidence to suggest another explanation — namely that Wolstencroft has a fascination with fascism.

In his Festival Director’s statement, Wolstencroft talks about his "dream" of what he calls "Transcendental Fascism": "I believe fascism to be about the brute application of power and that all politics is inherently fascist in nature. Why transcendental then? Because in the name of Sex, I want to change and temper this brute fact but still retain the only force possible to fight the oppressive status quo."

Nor is this the only time Wolstencroft showed an ugly flirtation with fascism and nazism. Before he started the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Wolstencroft founded and ran a Sado-Masochism club called the Hellfire Club. This venture came to public prominence in 1993 when Wolstencroft, who used the pseudonym Richard Masters for his Hellfire Club activities, organised a "Nazi Nuremberg rally" night, and advertised it by saying "that period of history has such amazing imagery, architecture and uniforms we’ve got to pay homage to the lure of fascist propaganda."

Like the Irving film, Wolstencroft’s previous Nazi effort was cancelled by the venue owners in the face of massive community outrage.

By all accounts, the pervasive incitement to violence against Israel in the Palestinian media has been reduced in recent weeks, as the Roadmap demands (which shows it could have easily been ended earlier if Arafat had wanted it ended). However, other elements of Palestinian society continue to educate children toward terrorist violence against Jews.

One example is the summer camps many Palestinian children attend this time of year, which are so often named after Palestinian suicide bombers and other terrorists. For instance, according to the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam, 100 girls in Kalkilya attended the Shahida [martyr] Wafa Idris camp. Wafa Idris blew herself up in central Jerusalem in January, 2002, killing one Israeli civilian and injuring 150 others. Moreover, the report say this camp was supported by UNICEF.

Another camp was named after Shahid [martyr] Jihad Al-Amarin, the founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an organisation responsible for dozens of terrorist murders including many suicide bombings, and all campers visited the martyr’s home, according to a Palestinian newspaper.

Meanwhile, a mid-July high school graduation ceremony broadcast on Palestinian TV featured the students performing dance to a song which repeated over and over the following words:

And then there is Arafat himself, who continues to tell Palestinian children they should aspire to be martyrs by repeatedly holding up a prominent child martyr as the example they should emulate. Speaking to hundreds of children from Jerusalem summer camps on July 11, Arafat told them, "I’m not better than martyr Fares Odeh, the brave Palestinian boy who confronted the tank. These tanks don’t frighten me." Arafat also announced that Palestinians would from now on mark July 10 as the anniversary day of Fares Odeh. "A people that has the likes of Fares Odeh and other children martyrs will not die," he added. 13-year-old Odeh was killed on Nov. 8, 2000, allegedly by Israeli soldiers, after being photographed throwing stones at an Israeli tank, and his photograph has been used extensively in Palestinian propaganda ever since.

Most media bias is subtle. For instance, reading most current coverage of the Middle East, you would be hard-pressed to find any acknowledgment that Israel is under no obligation under the Roadmap peace plan to release any Palestinian prisoners, much less all six thousand as Palestinians demand. This is due to a sort of ugly combination of laziness and bias that has predominated during most of the last three years — correspondents build their stories around the pronouncements of Palestinian spokespersons, who have repeatedly implied that prisoner releases are a Roadmap obligation. Journalists cannot be bothered familiarising themselves with what has been agreed well enough to know that this is not true.

The leaders in this, which many other sources emulate, are the major international wire services.

AP has been the best of the lot — after repeatedly implying an Israeli obligation to release prisoners, the service did state on July 21, "The release of prisoners is not spelled out as an Israeli obligation in the so-called ‘Roadmap’ peace plan"

Reuters implied without actually saying so that such releases were a part of the Roadmap, writing in a much reprinted report on July 21, "Israel agreed to free hundreds more Palestinian prisoners Sunday, disappointing Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’s hopes for a full amnesty but keeping a US-backed peace ‘Roadmap’ in motion."

AFP was even more direct in implying a Roadmap obligation, writing on July 21, "[Abbas] added: "That’s why if the Israeli government wants peace to prevail, it has to tackle all those issues, and to respect the Roadmap which involves all those issues - whether prisoners, settlements, withdrawals..." He was referring to the US-backed international Roadmap for peace which outlines steps both sides must take toward creating by 2005 a Palestinian state that lives peacefully alongside Israel.

This sort of lazy journalism allows the Palestinians to always make it appear that it is Israel blocking progress toward peace, even when the Palestinians are openly refusing to carry out their written obligations under the Roadmap — in particular, disarming and dismantling terror groups.

(Note: The above material was originally collected by Tom Gross, formerly the Middle East Correspondent with Britain’s Telegraph.)