Pen-Pushers for Zion: A Tribute

You've really got to hand it to Zionist letter writers. Ready to swing into action at a moment's notice, they valiantly confront threats to Israel's image in the corporate press whenever these arise.

Could it be, however, that their brave efforts are insufficiently appreciated by broadsheet browsers? Are readers aware, as they imbibe a Zionist letter along with their tea and toast, that they are witness to a truly heroic endeavour? Do they ever pause to consider, as I do, that there, beneath their drips and crumbs, lies the artistry of a deluded soul who has taken on a labour so great, but ultimately so futile, as to make the legendary Sisyphus look positively sissy?

I'm pretty sure they don't, because otherwise the letters page would be flooded with applause at the sheer chutzpah of such an endeavour.

And so, in an effort to draw a jaded readership's attention to the epic struggle of those who have dedicated their lives to wrestling reality to the floor and making it cry 'uncle', I've decided to devote this post to the elucidation, not to say celebration, of that too-often overlooked literary genre, the Zionist defence of the indefensible.

This opportunity arose with the publication in the Sydney Morning Herald of a letter by Stuart Sontag of Bondi in response to Fairfax Middle East correspondent Ruth Pollard's candid report on the decidedly unhealthy interest taken by the heroes of the Israel Defence Forces in Palestinian children, Children on front line in West Bank (27/8/12).

"It is disturbing to see allegations of Palestinian children being harmed in clashes with Israeli soldiers..."

As you see Sontag opens on just the right note. You can tell immediately we're dealing with a master of the genre. In telling us what a sensitive soul he is, he deftly, expertly, sucks us in, disarms us. Here's a typically caring SMH reader, we think, alive like us to the sufferings of the wretched of the earth. And so we don't really notice that what it is that actually disturbs him is that Israel's occupying forces are generating negative publicity in the press. Pretty neat, eh?

And note the deployment of the words 'allegations' and 'clashes', with their wonderful reality-dispersing properties. When Palestinians (or in this instance, self-hating Jewish-Israeli traitors who dare to spit on the institution that tried but failed to make men out of them) report what Israeli troops get up to, it's 'allegations' all round. But when the Israelis talk about the Palestinian 'militants' (I won't even go there) they so regularly gun down in Gaza, the 'a' word never fails to make a non-appearance.

As for 'clashes', what a great word for suggesting that the all-powerful and the completely powerless are equal participants in the unfolding drama. (In the photograph accompanying Pollard's report you may have noticed Israeli troops 'clashing' with a pair of little girls as they protest the manhandling of their mother by Israeli troops.)

So much artful dodging, and we haven't even finished the sentence yet! I told you Sontag was good:

"... many of whom are barely adults themselves."

Awesome, eh? The human rights abuses of state terrorists and occupiers reduced to the dimensions of a schoolyard scuffle between the Year 8s and the Year 9s! But there's more. The master's barely stirred: 

"However, Palestinian minors using apparently primitive weapons such as rocks, Molotov cocktails and knives have killed Israeli soldiers and civilians alike."

 Apparently primitive weapons. How good is that? A rock is only apparently primitive. None of us could possibly have dreamt up the notion that a rock is actually a quite sophisticated weapon, cunningly designed to fit into the hand and incorporating such ingenious built-in features as jagged edges which can be lethal when used against fresh-faced Israeli kiddies carrying apparently sophisticated weapons who may have inadvertently blundered, whilst out on a fun run, into a Palestinian town or village. 

"Responding to such potentially lethal threats using non lethal means will always present operational challenges to Israeli forces..."

But hasn't it been dinned into us that Israel is loaded with entrepreneurial talent, that it is to the Nobel Prize winner what Australia is to Vegemite, meat pies and Holden cars? Haven't we been literally bombarded with the idea that Israel is behind practically every conceivable invention since the wheel? And yet, stone-throwing kids are somehow in the too-hard basket.

But therein lies Sontag's magic, because, while we weren't watching, he's slipped us the idea that it's actually the occupied, rather than the occupier, that constitutes the lethal threat. And so we're out to such simple ideas as: if Israel's inadvertently armed, khaki-clad kiddies are really in such danger, then maybe the Israeli government should simply end the occupation. But that's not all:

"... but also to Australian Diggers in Afghanistan and even to NSW Police in Kings Cross."

The appeal to the Aussie patriot in all of us! Brilliant! And we know he's right: rock-throwing Afghan kids have killed over 30 Australian Diggers in Afghanistan so far, and rock-throwing Australian kids have killed so many NSW police in Kings Cross over the years that the media doesn't even bother reporting it any more.

"The real culprits are Palestinian terrorist organisations..."

A masterstroke that one! Now we're a million miles away from those barely adult Israeli troops. And speaking of PTOs, you've heard about those Palestinians keys, right? No, not the ones associated with the Nakba and being turfed out of your home back in 1948. The ones to be found in every Palestinian kid's back, such that all the PTO operative has to do is wind the kid up, literally, position him on a path frequented by those barely adult Israeli troops allegedly armed with apparently sophisticated weapons, and when the latter finally appear, the joint's rocking. Why, you can just about see the evil gleam in the PTO operatives' eyes as they wind up their pawns and place those deadly rocks in their paws. But the PTOs are not the only ones responsible for the plight of the barely adult, allegedly abusive Israeli youngsters. Sontag has even bigger fish to fry:

"... using Western funds..."

Shame on you, Bob Carr!

"... which indoctrinate their own children via tainted school books,..."

Tainted with talk about some fictional entity called Palestine!

"... official media and some mosques to become media 'heroes'..."

Shame on you Fairfax! Shame on you, Ruth Pollard! Shame on you Islam!

Such is Sontag's witchery that, in our anger at this parade of villains - PTO puppet masters, their Western funders, tainted Palestinian textbooks, a lying Palestinian media, virulent sermonising in Palestinian mosques, and a gullible Western media - we've all but forgotten the Palestinian kids left shackled and bleeding in Israeli dungeons.

"... by deliberately seeking confrontations."

How masterful that substitution of 'deliberately' for 'allegedly', and, what with the synonym power that adds 'confrontations' to the earlier 'clashes', Pollard's words about "the [Israeli] military's consistent arbitrary invasion of villages and homes... to create [in Palestinians] the feeling of being chased" are way down the memory hole.

So let's hear it for Stuart Sontag of Bondi. Without his tireless efforts, and those of his fellow pen-pushers for Zion, constantly pushing poop uphill, always setting us straight on Israel's trials and tribulations, we might actually be confronted by the scary thought that this great pillar of Judeo-Christian civilization, this mighty bulwark against Islamic barbarism, isn't really all it's cracked up to be.

Perish that thought!