Netanyahu As You've Never Known Him Before

You may have seen them by now. In the press, outdoors or on the web.

I'm talking about Fairfax Media's new set of ads for their revamped Sun-Herald.

Each ad features 3 rhyming, attention-grabbing names, in bold and differently coloured.

There's:

Clover Moore.
Haute Couture.
Jersey Shore.

There's:

Afghanistan.
Pakistan.
Kardashian.

And then there's:

Benjamin Franklin.
Benjamin Netanyahu.
Benjamin Marshall.

And it's this one I wish to draw your attention to, specifically as I found it in today's Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend magazine. Because if you read past the names you'll come to the following 'fine print' paragraph (my emphasis):

"Slip your mind into neutral, release the handbrake and see where it takes you. You could find yourself pulling up alongside a disgruntled founding father, ruing the demise of years of his hard work. Or in a race with a determined Prime Minister, trying desperately to prevent a nuclear war. Then again you could be coughing up dust behind one of the NRL's brightest stars. Wherever your mind chooses to go, there'll always be something to stop it in its tracks, roll down the window and listen for a while."

Well, didn't that third sentence stop you in your tracks?

Talk about talking up Benjamin Netanyahu. The PM desperately trying to prevent nuclear war?

Is this the same Benjamin Netanyahu who advises Israeli West Bank settlers to "beat [the Palestinians] up so it hurts so badly, until it's unbearable"?

Is this the nutcase who's really a Pole by the name of Benjamin Mileikowsky but postures as Binyamin, the son of Jacob who roamed the 'Judean' hills with his daddy 4,000 years ago?

Is this the paranoid who can't quite decide whether the Iranian president is Adolf Hitler or an ancient, Jew-hating Persian monarch?

Is this the hypocrite who loudly accuses a non-nuclear Iran of having a nuclear weapons program while presiding over the Middle East's only nuclear power which no one's allowed to mention?

Is this the warmonger who so desperately wants to bomb Iran that Obama has to pay him to behave and concentrate on beating up on the Palestinians instead?

And while I'm in a questioning frame:

Is this the kind of blatant propaganda we can expect from a paper hyped as the "intelligent choice on a Sunday, targeting a smart and affluent audience"? (Fairfax Media launches Sun-Herald consumer ad campaign via Whybin/TBWA/Tequila, Sydney, campaignbrief.com, 19/3/12)