Julie Bishop: From Zero to Hero in Just 4 Years

Thus spake Tone's Suppository of all Wisdom, Greg Sheridan, in today's Australian:

"This is a big call. But surely Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has never in her political career, indeed in her life, had a finer public moment than in the short, crisp, devastating speech she made to the UN Security Council rebuking Moscow. The rebuke was delivered for Russia's veto against a resolution to establish an independent tribunal to prosecute those responsible for bringing down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine... With no disrespect to our fine professional diplomats [hers] does not sound like a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade speech." (Julie Bishop's devastating denunciation of Russia over its MH17 veto was her finest hour)

High praise indeed. Yet it seems only yesterday that Greg was writing:

"Julie Bishop... has produced not a single sentence of substance or originality while in the portfolio." (Bishop's errors of judgment compound the Coalition's woes, The Australian, 14/2/11)

Ouch!

So how did Jules do it? How did she manage to go from prose zero to hero in just 4 years? Greg only knows!

But it's not his uncommon praise for she who can't quite see what international law has to do with Israeli colonisation of the West Bank that interests me, it's his concluding aside on Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

"Surely the most magnificent speech ever delivered at the UN came from Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He was the US ambassador to the UN in 1975, when the General Assembly passed a resolution saying that Zionism equated to racism. Moynihan began his magnificent and justly celebrated address with these words: 'The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.' This fine speech contributed to the ultimate repeal of that notorious resolution. In the body of the speech, informed throughout by a white flame of moral outrage, Moynihan drew the implications of what the resolution meant for the UN: 'The abomination of anti-Semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty - and more - to the murderers of the six million European Jews. Evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realisation that now presses upon us - the realisation that if there were no General Assembly, this could never have happened.' There is a faint echo of this in Bishop's call to the Security Council to persist in prosecuting the case of the killers of MH17 even in the face of Moscow's veto. Bishop's speech is not quite in the Moynihan class, but it is as good, and as important, a speech as any Australian has delivered at the UN for a very long time."

Er... I hate to break it to you, Greg, but there are two mega problems here.

The first is that Zionism is actually worse than racism - it's apartheid.

And the second is that Moynihan didn't write that silly speech. To see who did, go to my 22/4/14 post The Grooming of Gareth Evans & Pat Moynihan.

Warning: You can expect a few more posts on Sheridan this month, inspired by his just-released autobiography, When We Were Young & Foolish.