Thursday, November 13, 2014

The Australian Fangs Bob Carr

If Murdoch's Australian is really, as it it hypes itself on its masthead, The Heart of the Nation, then I'm afraid it's a black one.  
Robert Manne, in his 2011 Quarterly Essay on the paper, Bad News: Murdoch's Australian & the Shaping of the Nation, correctly described it as "unusually ideological... committed to advancing the causes of neoliberalism in economics and neoconservatism in... foreign policy... a remorseless campaigning paper."

He went on in his essay to discuss The Australian's various ideological campaigns, whether against 'the Left', black armband historians, The Greens, the ABC, the Rudd government, those opposed to Australian involvement in Iraq, and what it has lately taken to calling, in the area of climate science, 'warmists'. But (for reasons best known to himself) Manne devoted no space whatever to The Australian's wholly uncritical and unrelenting editorial support for the state of Israel, something that renders it indistinguishable from the Likudnik Australian Jewish News.

The latest example, its editorial of November 11, targets former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr, a relatively recent, but quite blessedly public, defector from the ranks of those who can be relied on to toe the line on Israel at every turn.

More venomous than the taipan, more mendacious than Pinocchio, more furious than the proverbial woman scorned, a mere extract suffices:

"If this were only a random display of relevance deprivation syndrome by Mr Carr in his dotage it would be sad. But the one-time premier of NSW is a consummate operator with an eye for a headline and a nose for mischief. We cannot say what is in his heart, but his analysis is deeply flawed and deserves to be exposed. In some ways Mr Carr is falling into the Left's posture trap of late that has seen Labor MP Melissa Parke in lock step with the ratbags of the sorry boycott, divestment and sanctions cavalcade that lays the blame for the ills of the Middle East on Israel. On the other hand, of course, are the rabid Holocaust deniers. It's an ugly pincer movement that is trying to assault not just a vibrant democracy but the only functioning one in that troubled region. Far from being a polity of fanatics, Israel is a pluralist, if sometimes rowdy and passionate, state that does not discriminate against Palestinians; its laws are ethnically blind. An incendiary term such as apartheid does Mr Carr no credit, drawing a parallel between two systems, histories and struggles that are unrelated. Palestinians have lived well in Israel and have enjoyed all the rights of normal citizenship. Some have pointed to the dividing wall on the West Bank as an act of hostility, but Israel has an obligation to protect its children from the clear and present threat of attack. No one wants to see atrocities such as car bombs at school bus stops, but this is the grim reality for Israelis." (Bob Carr's ludicrous epiphany: Israel is a beacon for democracy in a hostile region)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am reminded of the Apartheid apologists old line: Africans are better off living in South Africa than anywhere else in Africa.

[I don't think they bothered to actually ask the Africans what they thought]

The Australian is all assertion and no facts. No doubt the dwindling readership of The Australian are comforted by these preposterous and oft repeated lies, because it saves them from the tedious ordeal of thinking for themselves.

However I notice that the editorial writer has departed from the usual script by refering to 'Palestinians' living in Israel instead of the usual generic term 'Arabs' living in Israel.

Still there is no point in actually asking the Palestinians what they think, it wouldn't be published anyway and the majotity have voted with their feet or have been "cleansed".

Anonymous said...

Your first line -
There is nothing wrong with a Black heart - its the White hot heart of hell that bothers me. Why not just call it what it is - a racist/Zionist/apartheid ( choose 1 or all above ) heart -