Classic Greg Sheridan

They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

Philip Larkin

***

For you who do not know him - him being Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of Murdoch's Australian - this is really all you need to know:

"Israel is a small, clever, tough, extraordinary nation - a land of limitless impossibilities, as they say. And it has had giants among its leaders: David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, legends of diplomacy like Abba Eban or Shimon Peres, and legendary military heroes like Moshe Dayan. Netanyahu stands shoulder to shoulder with them At a time when Western politics in many nations is falling apart, he has been the seemingly indispensable national leader for a decade, winning four elections. He is known for his national security policies but he has also presided over the birth and development of the so-called Start-up nation, the progenitor of Nasdaq listings and patents and hi-tech everything." (Closing act in the age of Netanyahu may lie ahead, 16/2/19)

Now Greg's suffered from Exodus syndrome, like, FOREVER, and it's his Dad and Auntie Poppy who are largely to blame for setting his juvenile brain in this form of adamantine concrete at a tender age.

As he explains in his autobiography, appropriately titled When We Were YOUNG & FOOLISH: A Memoir of My MISGUIDED Youth" (2015): "My family was always pro-Jewish and pro-Israel. Dad often told me that if Christ was the saviour, the Catholic religion was true, and if he wasn't the saviour, then the Jewish religion was true... Auntie Poppy always told me I must never forget that the Jews were God's chosen people... Dad and Auntie Poppy were always pro-Jewish and pro-Israel." (p 22)