Under the Influence at The Australian

No one does Palestine/Israel editorials quite like Murdoch's Australian. Yesterday's editorial, After UN vote, Israel digs in: settlements are a provocative but predictable response, is a case in point.

Far out, man, you reflect, after imbibing, no reefer madness was ever quite like this.  If altered states are your thing, Zionism beats psychedelics out of the proverbial strawberry fields... forever.

"It is all very well for Foreign Minister Bob Carr to join others across the world in denouncing Israel for pressing ahead with more Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, but they all would have done better to realise this is one of the consequences of the vote in the UNGA that granted non-member statehood to the Palestine Authority."

Right, so Carr and the rest of the world are responsible for Israeli settlements. Pretty trippy, eh?

"Certainly, the Israeli move appears short-sided and potentially self-defeating."

But not, apparently, when you're snorting Zionism:

"But, if it does nothing else, it underscores the foolishness of the Palestinian ploy in trying to achieve statehood through the back door at the UN rather than in negotiations with Israel."

Wow, the Israelis achieved statehood through the same back door at the UN in 1947, rather than in negotiations with the Palestinians, but far from underscoring their foolishness, that just underscores their brilliance, right?

Right... Did I not intimate that Zionism was pretty potent stuff?

Another thing it does is make you see double. For example, no sooner had I taken on board the current American foreign policy wisdom that there is no daylight between Israel and the US than I'm reading here in the Australian about two quite separate entities:

"The announcement of the new settlements is just the start of a range of retaliatory measures that the Palestinians now face, and not all from Israel. In the US Senate, for example, moves have begun to cut American funding to the PA by 50%, something that would cripple the Palestinian administration."

Now one of the downsides of inhaling Zionism is that the user can become markedly paranoid when contemplating even the most mundane of human activities, such as voting in the UNGA for example:

"A majority of the 138 'yes' votes came from countries who crowded into Tehran in August to acclaim Holocaust-denying Iran's accession to leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement."

Another is that the user loses all grip on reality, even projecting his own strange Herzlian life history - If you will it, it is no dream - onto those of other people:

"The UN vote has only served to encourage the PA in its adherence to a make-believe world in which it can achieve statehood through a so-called UN 'birth-certificate'."

But don't think that this kind of substance abuse is confined to just a few bad apples over at the Australian. No, the fish, as they say, stinks from the head down. That's right, Rupert Murdoch himself, who's been tripping out on Zionism for yonks, recently tripped up big-time over this particularly mind-bending little tweet: 'Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?' (See Murdoch sorry for 'Jewish owned press' tweet, The Australian Jewish News, 30/11/12)

Better to stay well away from the stuff I reckon.