The Kevin Rudd Road Show 3

The Fairfax press was represented on the KRRS by the sweetly smiling national affairs correspondent Lenore Taylor.

And Albert Dadon, her genial host*, would have been delighted at Lenore's thankyou, thankyou, thankyou so much, Albert note, a wonderfully obliging (pr)op-ed - Decision time looms as Iran races for the bomb (18/12/10) - complete with (Icing on the cake!) Michael Mucci's equally wonderful illustration (mis)representing the Palestine-Israel conflict as equally-matched Israeli and Palestinian (black balaclava, of course!) wrestlers, eternally seeking that decisive, winning hold, whilst lo! [or should that be LOL?], looming over the horizon, is a monstrous, hook-nosed apparition with missiles for horns, ready to nuke them both. Now who could that be, I wonder?

[*"Lenore Taylor travelled to Israel as a guest of the Australia Israel Leadership Forum," ran the appended disclosure.]

What a feather in Albert's cap! And in Fairfax, too, of all places! Well-deserved, of course, given the time and trouble he goes to with these rambamming thingies*.

[*Rambamming: Being sponsored by smooth-talking Israel lobbyists in Australia on a grooming session conducted by tough talking PR people in Israel with a view to the sponsored adopting the missionary position for Israel when required in Australia.]

Now sit back and savour Albert's Saturday morning delight:

"As we emerged stunned and silent from the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem this week onto a balcony overlooking the holy city, our guide swept her hand across the vista and asked whether now we understood why the Jewish people had re-established their homeland and would fight with all their might 'that man' who would take it all away. The man she referred to was not Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority with which Israel has for years been engaged in stuttering peace negotiations. She was talking about the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." (18/12/10)

Did Lenore find this a tad scripted? (Pr)op-ed says no. A tad theatrical? (Pr)op-ed says no. Agenda-ridden? (Pr)op-ed says no.

"A few days later we stood near the kibbutz Misgav Am, high in the upper Galilee, looking out over the now peaceful agricultural plains, up to the snow-capped Mount Hermon, and down at the Lebanese village just a stone's throw away, close enough to wave. Our guide, a former brigadier general who commanded troops in the north during the war with Lebanon in 2006, said that when the Iranian-backed Hezbollah operated freely in the area before the war it was as if Iran itself had been sitting right on Israel's northern border."

Scripted? Theatrical? Agenda-ridden? No. No. No.

"Eight years after my first visit to Israel, one of the most striking things about the discussion during this week's Australia Israel Leadership Forum has been the extent to which the increasing regional dominance and nuclear arms aspiration of Iran is overshadowing and enmeshing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Did Lenore ever wonder: This is getting tiresome. Why is everyone, from prez Peres on down - even the friggin' tour guide at YV for Jesus' sake! - constantly banging on about Iran? (Lightbulb flash in thought bubble above head) Perhaps... Just perhaps... Oh, perish the thought! Could it be they're... they're trying to mess with our minds? (Pr)op-ed suggests no.

"How would Gaza, controlled by Iranian-aligned Hamas, fit in to any peace deal struck between Israel and the Palestinian Authority? Would any deal be possible if both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were emboldened by the backing of a nuclear capable Iran?... Israeli politicians, of all persuasions, saw Iran's growing influence as both the biggest threat to Israel and the world and also a factor making a peace deal far more elusive."

You go, Dadon-backed, Israel-aligned, girl!

"The Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Kevin Rudd, who the WikiLeaks cables revealed to have been assessed by the Israeli ambassador to Australia as a great friend of Israel, dismayed the Israelis on the eve of his visit this week when he told The Australian newspaper that not only should Israel, along with other nuclear states in the region, sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but that it should also submit to IAEA inspections of the nuclear weapons facilities it does not admit it has. Even though inspections usually go hand in hand with treaty membership, the Israelis bridled at the implied equivalence of Israel and Iran. By the time Rudd was standing beside Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in Jerusalem, he had dropped any reference to inspections and was recognising Israel's 'unique security considerations'. But Rudd's overriding message was the same as everyone else's - that Iran was the 'core strategic challenge faced by us all'."

Did it seem odd to Lenore that the foreign minister of a supposedly independent country - her own - was now singing the exact same tune as every Israeli official who crossed her path? If so, (pr)op-ed doesn't say.