Monoculturalism Masquerading as Multiculturalism

Break out the champagne! The Australian Jewish News has just been awarded 'Best Image of the Year' in the that section of the 2015 Premier's Multicultural Media Awards.

The criteria for the category reads: "An image that makes a strong statement or commentary on multiculturalism." (crc.nsw.gov.au/awards)

The winning image, featured on the front page of the current issue of the AJN (An iconic image), shows a crowd of Zionists waving Australian and Israeli flags in a Dover Heights Park last August against a backdrop of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

At the time, you'll remember, Israel's death machine was busy 'mowing the grass' in the Gaza Ghetto, an exercise which involved the unleashing of 49,000 tank and artillery shells over a 48-day period on the captive population, and which led to the deaths of 2,251, the wounding of 11,231, the displacement of 100,000, the destruction of 18,000 homes, the partial destruction of 80,000, the flattening of entire neighbourhoods, and the crippling of Gaza's key infrastructure.

Precisely what the image had to do with multiculturalism is beyond me, depicting as it does a bunch of comfortable, privileged, white Australians who apparently had no qualms whatever about coming out in support of the mass slaughter of an impoverished, ghettoised, refugee population by the death machine of a war-mongering, ethnocratic, apartheid state.

And this under the bizarre delusion that Palestine/Israel is really theirs, a sort of exclusive, Jews-only Club Med based on Palestinian Arab dispossession and exile.

Said AJN national editor Zeddy Lawrence of the photo:

"We are tremendously proud of [photographer] Noel [Kessel]. His picture captured the spirit of the community during one of the most challenging episodes in its recent history. At a time when anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment were peaking, the image showed that we would not cower. Instead, we would stand up in public, as proud Jews, proud Zionists and proud Australians." ( The AJN's photo finish)

Words fail...