Hurricane Herzl

As predicted in my last post, the Sydney Morning Herald has borne the brunt of a Storm of Outrage by Zionist lobbyists following the mysterious appearance in yesterday's 'Yippee, It's Tzipi' editorial of the heretical suggestion that Israel's 'democracy' is not quite as 'vibrant' as the party line dictates.

God only knows what transpired since yesterday's editorialist unwittingly threw caution to the winds and blurted out the bleeding obvious. Did The Lobby send Juval the Avenger (see my 3/9/08 post The Israeli Mystique) around to rub him out? I'll leave it to your imagination. Whatever happened, it was certainly bloodcurdling enough to force today's editorialist to grovel big time: a whole new 'Yippee, It's Tzipi' editorial (Time for Israel to decide) on "Israel's extraordinarily vibrant democracy."

And this extraordinarily vibrant mea culpa: "[T]he point is that Israel is the Middle East's only democracy, and it abides by the rule of law. In our editorial yesterday, the Herald did not intend to imply that Israel's Jewish majority is in any way 'problematic' in itself. Indeed, it is the raison d'etre for the foundation and existence of the state itself. Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state is beyond question. [Diversion Alert!] It is those who refuse to recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, who are problematic by dealing themselves out of a constructive peace process. [Platitude Alert!] The issue, as ever, is whether Israelis and Palestinians will find the ways and means to live side-by-side in peace and security, each with their own homelands, each forging their own destiny. [Fawning Alert!] How to get to this goal, and how forthcoming Israel can be on issues like the settlements in the West Bank, are at the heart of political debate inside Israel - a debate which Israel is to be commended for holding."

An act of journalistic contrition like no other! But there's more! There, to the right, among the letters to the editor, nestled this little number from "Vic Alhadeff chief executive, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Darlinghurst (See editorial, left.)": "Your editorial attributes to Israel's ruling Kadima party 'the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel'... This reflects a fundamental minunderstanding of the political realities. Israel is the state of the Jewish people and was established with international endorsement on that basis. While there are 22 Arab-majority states, Israel is the only state in which the Jewish people exercise their right to national self-determination [at the expense of the right to national self-determination of the Palestinian people]. Neither Kadima nor any other major party in Israel believes 'the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel'*. All those parties have long accepted that, as in any democracy, the majority rules, and that non-Jewish minorities, which have been present in Israel since it was established, have the right to live there as free and equal citizens. The tyranny of the majority is no more acceptable in Israel than in any other democracy." [*Well then, why not allow the Palestinian refugees of 1948 to return?]

It would seem that here we have a textbook case of a foreign lobby with the clout to reach into the editorial rooms of the nation's newspapers and, by means to which we are not privy, enforce compliance with its agenda. What an unseemly and disturbing spectacle.

The Lobby - 1, Press freedom - 0