Ram Bam Thankyou Ma'am

The more tarnished Israel's reputation becomes, the more the Zionist propaganda mill must work to maintain Western support for, or neutralise Western opposition to, Israel's relentless hammering of Palestine and its people. One tactic is to approach Western politicians, civic leaders, media personnel, or celebrities (whether past, or in, their prime) and sell them on the dubious virtues of a sponsored pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

To mention only the most recent examples that I am aware of, an Israeli invitation to Prince Charles to make an official visit came to light in October last year only when his minders' emails were accidentally leaked. These revealed just how leery they were of the blandishments of Israel's propaganda millers: "Acceptance," acknowledged Charles' private secretary in one of the emails, "would make it hard to avoid the many ways in which Israel would want HRH to help burnish its image." (The Australian, 17/11/07) Ah, yes,"the many ways."

More recently, the same propagandists of Zion are trying to entice the remaining Beatles (whom they knocked back in the 60s as corruptors of youth) to attend Israel's 60th 'birthday' bash later this year. We can only hope that Paul and Ringo (or their minders) will be as savvy as Prince Charles (or his).

In Australia, however, it seems that our movers and shakers, in politics, the media, or elsewhere, simply can't resist the charms of Israel's thrusting statesmen-warriors.

Author, journalist and blogger, Antony Loewenstein, in his invaluable 2006 investigation into Australian Zionism, My Israel Question, raised the subject of the Australian/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council's Rambam tours to Israel:-

"[AIJAC]'s Rambam program...is designed, in the words of its Sydney-based founder Brian Sherman, to 'lift the veil' on Israel for opinion-makers whose knowledge of the Israel-Palestine issue 'is formed by day to day reports in the media where Israel is largely seen as an occupying force'. Since 2003, around 120 fellows have participated in the program, including unionists, ALP and Liberal MPs, political advisers, journalists and editors. The journalists include: Herald & Weekly Times editor-in-chief Peter Blunden and journalist John Ferguson; the Australian Financial Review's Ben Potter and Robert Bolton; chief editorial writer for the Age, John Watson; The Courier-Mail's Dennis Atkins; SBS's Sally Watson, the SMH's Louise Dodson; and Channel Ten's John Hill...The week-long program includes meetings with prominent Israeli politicians, a tour of the separation fence, brief meetings with Palestinian leaders in Ramallah and a host of other conservative individuals inevitably singing from the same song sheet, including former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu." (pp 220-221)

The latest(?) 'Rambam fellows' to 'benefit' from an AIJAC-organised pilgrimage to Israel are a batch of unrepresentative swill (to borrow from Paul Keating) from the West Australian Legislative Council. According to The Australian Jewish News (25/1/08), they included Nick Griffiths, George Cash, Ray Halligan and Bob Kucera. These ALP and Liberal MLCs "visited the ANZAC cemetery, where they were briefed on WW II historical connections between Australia and Israel [apparently oblivious to the fact that the war had ended well before the creation of Israel, when Palestine was still Palestine] and were treated to a tour of the city of Sderot. They also met Israeli leaders, including Knesset members Ephraim Sneh and Yochanan Plesner...Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus... [also] explained the nature of his work to the Australian politicians." Cooed AIJAC's executive director, Dr Colin Rubenstein, "the MPs gained a better understanding of the many dimensions of Israeli society, its achievements and the challenges it confronts."

Ephraim Sneh, a two-time visitor to Australia, who has said of our political masters, "Thankfully, I don't think that in Australia there is one side that loves Israel more than the other," appears to be a permanent fixture of such junkets. We've already encountered him in the conclusion to Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan's plucking silly Deep inside the plucky country PR piece in The Australian on 19/1/08 [See my posts, Gullible's Travels and When Even the Retraction is Dodgy 1 & 2].

Sheridan had been wined on a glass of vintage Israeli paranoia: "I had gone to see Ephraim Sneh, a white-haired veteran Labour Party politician and soldier, a former cabinet minister and a former general. He points to a picture on the back wall of his office. It is of 2 Israeli F-15 fighters flying over Auschwitz. 'When we didn't have F-15s, we had Auschwitz,' he says." One imagines our WA political junketeers imbibing much the same toxic brew. Or perhaps Ephraim served them this heady little (molotov) cocktail: "There are countries which try to evade the unavoidable confrontation with evil, but in Israel, we don't have this privilege because we are the first name on the hit list" (AJN, 24/8/07). Parenthetically, don't you just love it when the guys who have raised the hit list (not to mention the hit) to an art form talk this way? Hm, what's on today's to-do list: Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran? OK, let's warm up with a couple of liquidations in the West Bank, or maybe a spot of collateral damage in Gaza. A Hard Day's Night indeed!

And Yochanan Plesner, president, no less, of Ehud Olmert's governing Kadima party, did he outline for them "the growing hostility of Israel's neighbors in a geopolitical context," as he did to those Jewish students from the US who documented (on israelactivism.com) the highs of their 2006 Hasbara* Fellowships (designed to enable them to "communicate a pro-Israel message to the Diaspora community, specifically on college campuses"). [*hasbara: Hebrew for 'explanation', as in explaining/promoting Israel to the world]

Did the inimitable Itamar Marcus, Israeli settler, former advisor to Likud leader, Netanyahu, and director of the Zionist propaganda site, Palestinian Media Watch, recycle the same "provocative clips of incitement and indoctrination in Palestinian schools," viewed by the aforementioned incited and indoctrinated US students? After his presentation, we're told the students "discussed a campaign called Teach Kids Peace which Hasbara Fellowships has been bringing to campuses across North America," and which "stresses the need to end the hate being taught in Palestinian schools as the cornerstone for ending the violence in the region." Such a pity, though, those photos flashed around the world during Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon of prepubescent Israeli schoolgirls writing From Israel with love on tank rounds about to be lobbed across the border onto their Lebanese sisters. 'After everything I've worked for', poor old Itamar must have groaned.

Whatever, you can be sure that Ephraim, Yochanan, Itamar, and the rest, vital cogs in Israel's vast propaganda mill, did their orchestrated best to lay our polly waffles in the proverbial aisles.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, if the wooed and wowed WA wallies think they can just sink back into the leather of the Legislative Council and while away their days dreaming of their most recent foreign fling, they've got another thing coming. That is, if the experience of another mob recently returned from a Journalists Mission sponsored by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, is any guide. A NSWJBoD advertisement (AJN 15/2/08) informs us that Glen Wheeler (2UE), Kirsty Needham (SMH), Tim Blair (Daily Telegraph) and Joel Labi (2GB) will be "reporting to the plenum" on 19/2/08 about their "intensive fact-finding programme" in Israel.

No doubt, like the Jewish students from the US on their 2006 Hasbara Fellowships program, and the NSW journalists on their 2007 Journalists Mission, the Rambammed WA MLCs will henceforth be expected to adopt the old missionary position for Israel when required.