The Kevin Rudd Road Show 1

MERC first got wind of the bigger-than-Ben Hur KRRS back in October (See my 25/10/10 post Record Rambam) and has been waiting with the proverbial baited breath ever since for this, the third, the largest, and, it has to be said, the steamiest of Melbourne Zionist promoter and publicist Albert Dadon's Ozraeli love-ins.

Those of you who regularly visit this site might remember his first and second Australia Israel Leadership Forum (AILF) shindigs. In these earlier (2009) productions, starring then DPM Julia Gillard, The Australian Jewish News discerned merely a 'shared sense of joy', with Gillard going so far, at the second, as to dance the hora, a sort of Israeli boot scootin (See my posts Gillard Gets a Gong (29/6/09) & Just Do It, Bitch (11/12/09)). Anyway, lest you think steamy a tad over the top, just wait and see.

Now many of you may have been somewhat distracted by Oprah's recent Sydney lovefest, and so overlooked Rudd's galah performance in Jerusalem. Not that I can really blame you, but to tell the truth, it was really only given its due in The Australian Jewish News and its Maxi-Me, Murdoch's Australian. So sit back while I fill you in on this mother-of-all rambammings in a series of posts, beginning with The AJN's coverage, followed by The Australian's, and concluding with Fairfax's far less attentive fare.

The AJN's coverage was, as you'd expect, full-bodied and exceedingly fruity. Its issue of December 17 bore the brunt with a front page shot of a kneeling, kippah-ed Rudd laying a wreath at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum, his figure illuminated by a flame burning behind him. This was accompanied by the kind of words that tell you all you need to know about the politics of the AJN: "ETERNAL FLAME, ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP: This week, 50 Australian politicians, journalists, and business and community leaders travelled to Israel. From the Kotel to the Knesset, Yad Vashem to Tel Aviv, the special relationship between the two countries was embraced and cemented."

Inside, under the headline Peres spreads the love, we learned that "Israel's President Shimon Peres described the relationship between the Jewish state and Australia as one of love... 'Australia is a beloved country in Israel... Love is the diplomacy that exists from the standpoint towards Australia'."

Did I say steamy? Peres' lust for Kevvie was obviously so great at this point that it quite overpowered his syntax. This was Peres' version of Oprah's 'I love Australia. I love Australia. I LOVE AUSTRALIA'. Fortunately for those assembled, despite the pull of Kevvie's obvious charms, Peres' first and only love reflexively kicked in when he began barking about Israel's "moral superiority" vis a vis a certain "brutal Islamic regime" in Iran: "He accused Iran of trying to turn the Middle East into an 'extremist empire' and 'the centre of terror'. 'They destroyed Lebanon - it was a nice country - they destroyed Yemen, they are entering Sudan and Somalia and they are going to South America because the Middle East is too small for them'."

Iran - IRAN! - I-R-A-N! - destroyed Lebanon (and everything else within cooee it seems), and our assembled pollies, journos, business and community leaders no doubt lapped up every lunatic word, having completely forgotten, if they'd ever known in the first place, that Peres was the Israeli prime minister who presided over the first Qana massacre of 1996 with its 109 Lebanese civilian deaths. Alas, this was not the only occasion when the historical record was sent packing from the room.

In another story, Rudd: Time for peace running out, on Kevvie's keynote speech to the AILF (of which, more later), the AJN's Naomi Levin managed the extraordinary feat of topping Peres' gloriously delusional rant when she asserted that "Rudd's call [for an urgent resolution to the Middle East conflict] stands in contrast to some members of the Israeli Government, who are promoting a slower, nation-building process for the Palestinians and imploring the world to focus efforts first on Iran, then on Israel and the Palestinians."

Yes, that's right, we've been wrong all along, Israel's actually been building Palestine, not destroying it! And boy, did the punters go for that one. How do I know? Why, the AJN's editorial, A beautiful friendship: "Values can seem an abstract concept, but they became concrete to the 50-strong Australian delegation, as they questioned, queried and listened intently to some of Israel's most prominent political minds. The all-comers - from Perth to the Gold Coast to the NSW South Coast and everywhere in between - embraced the new perspectives on the peace process and the Iranian threat in particular."

Building Palestine - slowly. Smashing Iran - now! Brace yourselves as these Israeli talking points start proliferating in the Australian ms media.

But the centrepiece of the AJN's coverage of the KRRS was Kevvie's December 13 "keynote address" to the AILF.

Rudd led off with a perfect pearl, which, when and if a book titled Kevin Rudd: The Complete Joke(s) is ever published, will surely occupy pride of place, and which had The Australian's extremely foreign foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan literally squirming in his seat and led to the production of an equally fine pearl, destined for inclusion in Sheridan's own similarly titled book (of which particular pearl, more in my next post). But here's Kevvie's: "It is an honour to be among Israeli and Australian friends tonight here in Jerusalem, at the King David Hotel. Shimon Peres, Israel's President, who we met earlier today, said some years ago that when you come to the King David, you come not just as a guest, but you come also to a place which has seen almost the complete cast of players across the history of the modern State of Israel, often in this room in which we gather here tonight. From the 1930s, this hotel became the British field headquarters for what was then British Palestine, until Menachem Begin undertook some interior redesign."

Finished pissing yourselves yet? Rudd's referring of course to the blowing up of the King David Hotel by Begin's Irgun terrorists in 1946 at the cost of 88 British, Arab and Jewish (15) lives. And it is telling that our wit refers to it merely as the "British field quarters", when in fact it also housed the civilian wing of Britain's mandate government in Palestine. After all, it wouldn't do to suggest that the King David was as much a civilian as a military target, now would it? Both the 'joke' and the studied omission were a signal to his hosts that all is forgiven, that the only real terrorists in the Middle East are, have always been, and always will be, Arab. Not, of course, that the Australian contingent even knew what he was talking about. What were our Israeli hosts sniggering about at the start of your speech, prime... sorry, foreign minister?

Moving along, Rudd praised the oleaginous Shimon Peres as a "living treasure of Israel" and "one of the world's truly wise men." This assessment, of course, tells one nothing of Peres and everything you ever needed to know about Rudd. For a correct assessment of Peres, whose name graces a Center for Peace and who is always trotted out on these occasions as the smiling face of the Zionist fist in Palestine, I'll quote from Rannie Amiri's counterpunch.org article Israel's Master of Deception: "The international community has long been enamored by current Israeli President and former Prime Minister, Shimon Peres. Regarded as a voice of reason and a dove among hawks, he adroitly assuages fears and reassures critics with soothing, yet empty words advocating dialogue and the creation of a Palestinian state. By duping the world into believing significant differences exist between his 'left-wing' views and those of Israel's far right, he has proved himself a master at deception." (14/5/10)

As a fan of Peres, Rudd is more than happy to parrot his vacuous... sorry, wise words: "Shimon said earlier today that as we deal with the problems of our current age, we should not be trapped by the language of the past, but rather engage in the language of the future; the language of the generation of today. The language of the generation which thinks increasingly beyond that which is national, to that which is truly global." Needless to say, Peres hasn't had a new idea since he smashed his parents' radio when he found them listening to it on the Sabbath back in 1920s Poland.

Inevitably, of course, when Rudd is regaling a Zionist audience, he'll start banging on about Doc Evatt's hand in the destruction of Arab Palestine... sorry, the creation of Israel: "My distinguished predecessor as foreign minister, [Dr HV] Evatt, chaired the UN Commission on Palestine in 1947... This was the commission that recommended the establishment of both an Israeli [sic: Jewish] state and a Palestinian state. And when its recommendations were taken to the UN General Assembly, Australia was the first state to vote in support of the establishment of the modern State of Israel."

Par for Rudd's course, of course. A new element in these ritualised proceedings, however, was injected with some first rate Holocaust breastbeating: "Of course, in the years following the war, Australia also received tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors and other Jewish refugees from Europe as they came to Australia to make their home. Regrettably, history records that we were not always so generous. As I acknowledged last night at Yad Vashem, when Australia met with 31 other nations at the Evian Conference in 1938, we refused to open our hearts and we refused to open our doors to the Jewish people of Europe, despite the unfolding persecution against them. Disgracefully, our representative at the time said we could not help, that Australia had no racial problems at the time, nor did it wish to import any. The ancient scriptures have long enjoined us all never to harden our hearts, and yet still we and the other Christian nations of the world did just that."

This is truly gobsmacking stuff. Here we have the man (?) who, as PM, hardened his heart with a "tough but humane" policy toward the current wave of refugees from wartorn Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, invoking the historical record on the Evian Conference before an audience of Zionists and their sundry Australian dupes and fools, and apologising for supposed Christian complicity (Christian nations) in the Nazis' persecution of German Jews, when the fact of the matter is that the Zionist supremo of the day, David Ben-Gurion, was instrumental in nixing the conference: "The Jews could only have one destination - Eretz Yisrael. So in June 1938, shortly before Allied representative met in Evian, France, to seek ways of rescuing Jews, Ben-Gurion frankly voiced his concern to colleagues in the Jewish Agency Executive. He did 'not know if the conference will open the gates of other countries... But I am afraid [it] might cause tremendous harm to Eretz Yisrael and Zionism... Our main task is to reduce the harm, the danger and the disaster... and the more we emphasize the terrible distress of the Jewish masses in Germany, Poland and Rumania, the more damage we shall cause'. So be silent, Ben-Gurion cautioned his comrades... And in the silence... Evian failed." (Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire, Dan Kurzman, 1983)

After the obligatory references to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Cooper (See my 12/12/10 post The ABC of Zionist Propaganda), Mr Guilty asked, "So why do I reflect on these things at some length this evening? To say to our Israeli friends that none of us come to the history of modern Israel with hands that are completely clean. But in Australia, through the actions of successive governments since the war... we have honoured our friendship with Israel in good times and in bad. We have supported you in all the major wars you have fought, because in Australia you are among friends."

In short, because we feel we didn't pull our weight in the 30s by taking in German Jews, even though that was the last thing your founding fathers would have wanted us to do, we will give you now a free pass to grind the faces of the Palestinians, the Arabs, the Iranians, and whoever takes your fancy... in perpetuity.

Then he turned to Israel's much-hyped "security challenges," shamelessly parroting the same old, same old, proven bogus wiping-Israel-off-the-map mantra: "The Iranian leader's proclamation that Israel should be removed from the map of the world was a chilling reminder of the rank anti-semitism from decades past." And ditto for Hezbollah and Hamas, who, of course, cannot possibly be conceived as anything other than Iran's supposed "terrorist" proxies, with nothing better to do than mindlessly launch their rockets and make Israeli lives an absolute misery.

Eventually, we reach the fabled peace process, which had Rudd crying into his beer: "Sometimes it seems as if we have been wandering in the desert for the last 40 years... I am increasingly concerned that the window for peace may be beginning to close." His nightmare vision? "What happens to the security of Israel if the peace process collapses completely?" Remember the dreaded Second Intifada, he enjoins: "I remember touring the Old city then and touring it alone. There was no-one on the streets. People were afraid." Israeli people, that is. Who gives a rat's for Palestinian fear? Certainly not Rudd or his handpicked camp followers. Certainly not the Israeli officials lapping all this up.

"What will happen in Egypt? What will happen in Jordan?" he wailed. "And what dividend would a collapse in the peace process deliver to Iran and its quest for political legitimacy and the expansion of its diplomatic and security footprint across the wider Middle East and beyond." Doesn't bear thinking about, eh?

But, my friends, "there is another scenario to consider": The Israeli lion lieth down with the Palestinian lamb, the Arabs beat their swords into ploughshares, Iran and its proxies vanish in a puff of smoke, and "7.5 million Israelis" get to make a grab for those lucrative Arab markets.

But, hey, don't think I'm trying to impose anything on you blokes, no, these are just "scenarios worthy of careful analysis," cuz always remember, my beloved friends in Zion, "Whatever the future holds through this peace process and beyond, you will forever have strong and reliable friends in Australia."

Yes, you heard it. Forever! As Oprah would say, "Who is feeling the love right now? Do you feel sexy, Australia?"