It's a Family Affair

One thing always leads to another on the internet. While looking for something else, I stumbled on this:

"The Israel-Palestine conflict has been going on for years and will probably continue for many years to come. There's almost a sibling rivalry between the two. Little Palestine hassles and taunts Israel, coming into his room every morning to flick him in the face. Unsurprisingly, Israel punches him in the face one morning, and we all know who ends up getting the sympathy from mum and dad."

Now I've seen some truly revolting takes on this subject in my time, but this little reverse-reality fable is up there with the best of the worst. The kind of quality blindness that has gone into something like this doesn't come easily, however. Brainwashing from birth and an astonishing reluctance, bordering on fear, to think things through, are required. I'm reminded of Bertrand Russell's adage: Some people would rather die than think.

It comes from an article by a certain Louise Easson, Warning: may contain traces of bombs, and was published in a Sydney University student paper called The Bull (2-8/6/08). The blurb reads: "Louise Easson explains the phenomenon of travel in dangerous, war-torn countries."

Now Ms Easson is a scion of Labour royalty. Her father, Michael, was once a NSW ALP senior vice-president. Her mother, Mary, was the ALP member for the federal seat of Lowe from 1993 to 1996. This rather too-close-for-comfort relationship with a Zionised ALP (Louise even worked for Kristina Keneally the year after the above was written!) goes a long way to explaining the above comment. Add to that the fact that Mary Easson, and Louise's sister, Amanda, were part of the entourage, led by then foreign minister Kevin Rudd, which flocked to Albert Dadon's Australia Israel Leadership Forum in Jerusalem in 2010, and you've got even more of the jigsaw.

But the clincher, which really complete's the picture, has got to be a comment of Mary Easson's on Israel's illegal West Bank wall, made after accompanying a Young Labor delegation, including Amanda, to Israel in 2007: "A wall in principle sounds like a terrible thing, but you go and see it and you think, 'Oh well, yeah, I can see why you would need that.'" (See my 30/3/09 post I've been to Israel too...)