Albanese? Class Warrior? 2

Even Nine Entertainment Co (formerly, Fairfax) is echoing Murdoch's 'Albanese the Red' propaganda line, albeit far more faintly:

"Accustomed to losing, the left will have one of its fiercest combatants in the top job... 'Every fantasy of an old-time left-winger is finally happening,' said one factional enthusiast. 'We've been speculating for decades about what it would look like.' Lest anyone start waving the red flag and singing L'Internationale... " (Is Albanese new light on the hill? Michael Koziol, Sydney Morning Herald, 25/5/19)

Lest You Forget...

As Fairfax Media is on the cusp of being swallowed up by Nine Entertainment Co.* and so turning into a shadow of its former self, we should not forget that its former self was hardly a paragon of fearless journalism on the subject of Palestine/Israel.

One of its myriad ways of misrepresenting the issue and misleading readers was by resorting to that form of self-censorship known as the doctrine of 'balance' - that is, falsely representing the struggle between colonised Palestinian Arabs and their settler-colonial Israeli Jewish masters as one between equals. Here, for example, in the dying days of the Fairfax press as we know it, is one of the most egregious examples I've ever come across of the application of this pernicious practice:

"The declarations [on the Register of Members' Interests by Australian politicians] also show Israeli and Palestinian groups regularly pay for politicians to visit but not all MPs declared this hospitality.

"In April 2017 Greens senator Janet Rice was hosted by the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network [APAN] but this was not noted on her register. The senator said she paid all expenses associated with the trip personally and had donated to APAN in the past, which is noted on the register.

"The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council sponsored Labor MPs with $10,000 each in 2017 for study tours and many Liberal MPs have also taken up offers to tour Israel." (190 bottles of wine, 21 cases of beer & a pineapple: gifts for MPs interests, Nigel Gladstone, Sydney Morning Herald, 21/11/18)

Seriously, where's the equivalence here between APAN and AIJAC? There is none! (See my 30/3/09 post I've been to Israel too on the subject of Zionist propaganda tours over the decades.)

(Needless to say, not one of the 87 'readers' who commented on the thread following Gladstone's article referred to the above section of his report, yet another another example of 'readers' frittering away their time venting their cynicism and airing their cliches while overlooking entirely the vast difference between bottles of wine and $10,000 propaganda tours which distort our foreign policy so grievously.)

[*See my 10/7/18 post Meet the Chairman of Nine Entertainment Co.]

Not Laughing, Groaning

Normally, if a newspaper intends to cover a crucial by-election in some depth, it'd send an experienced investigative reporter who has his/her head around the issues that matter in the seat concerned, right?

Since normal doesn't do these days, Fairfax's GoodWeekend chose "staff writer," Tim Elliott, who "has never been a political reporter," to do the job - possibly as the result of a conversation that went something like this:

 'Hey, guys, I've got a great idea! Let's send Tim out on the campaign trail to cover the Wentworth by-election.

'OK, but Tim knows nothing about politics...

'Precisely! And if he did, what he wrote'd be dead boring. Gotta keep our readers entertained.

'Yeah, you've got a point. I can see it now: bumbling political novice covers the nation's most important by-election. Should be a real hoot!

And so we have Tim's Show Time in the GoodWeekend of November 17, 2018. Any sentient being who actually took the trouble to read it would've groaned audibly at this precise point:

"It's after lunch. I'm hungry. I drive to the Bronte SLSC to see [Liberal candidate Dave] Sharma. When I get there, I find a crowd of heavily inebriated surfers in the courtyard... Guys are throwing beer over one another and simulating a variety of lewd acts. Sharma is upstairs, in the clubhouse, filming a clip for his campaign Facebook page. The barbecue is over, and he's looking a little wan, but up for a chat. We take a seat [but] I've expended so much mental energy trying to find Sharma that I now find myself unable to think of any particularly probing questions."

Meet the Chairman of Nine Entertainment Co.

So what are the implications for Palestine/Israel reportage of Channel 9's coming merger with Fairfax Media, given the latter's already grossly inadequate and problematic handling of the issue?

The architect of the 1980s cross-media ownership laws, former Labor PM Paul Keating, is of the view that Channel 9 "will run the editorial policy" of the Fairfax papers given that, "in terms of news management, Channel 9... has... the opportunism and ethics of an alley cat."

That could mean that the Fairfax papers will, if anything, become more ferociously pro-Israel in the manner of Murdoch's rags. Certainly, the fact that former Howard government treasurer Peter Costello is the chairman of Nine Entertainment Co. is cause for concern in this regard, as the following snippet from a 2001 biography of the man indicates:

"Support for the PLO was becoming an article of faith within the student left. Peter Costello, 17, never been kissed, a devout Baptist... was appalled... Costello recalled: 'Do I know better than all these people? Probably not. But what I do know is that my best friend is Jewish... and the student union is collecting money for the PLO'." (Peter Costello: The New Liberal, Shaun Carney, pp 45-6)

Of course the leaders of the Australian Union of Students leaders at the time (1975) knew infinitely more about the Palestine/Israel issue than this gormless innocent, having done their homework as he acknowledges, but, typical of the student conservatives of this time, the idea of actually learning from those who knew what they were talking about was anathema to him. Frankly, if your mind is closed at 17, what hope is there on this or any other matter?  Watch this space...

Fairfax's Puff Piece on Mark Regev

Fairfax hit a new low on the weekend with the publication of a full-page promo by Latika Bourke in The Sun-Herald (22/7/18) on Australia's second worst export after Rupert Murdoch, Mark Regev.

To say that not one hard question was asked and pursued is to misconstrue the nature of the piece.  The Aussie boy who's at home spruiking for Israel wanted only the words 'Advertisement Only'.

Some of Us Lose Our House Keys...

The New York Times' Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Isabel Kershner, is one of a long line of Israeli/pro-Israeli propagandists (Thomas Friedman, Steven Erlanger, Ethan Bronner, Jodi Rudoren).

Our problem is that, in the absence of Fairfax having their own, half-way decent Middle East correspondent, Fairfax readers are expected to put up with the rubbish dished out by Kershner & Co. Either that, or similarly skewed reporting from The Washington Post.

Here, for example, is Kershner' outrageous euphemism for Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by Israeli terror gangs in 1948:

"The organisers said [the Great Return March] was intended to raise international awareness of the long-standing blockade of the isolated and impoverished coastal enclave, imposed by Israel and Egypt, and to support the Palestinian demand to return to homes lost in 1948, in what is now Israel." (Israel 'did what had to be done', New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 3/4/18)

Some of us may lose our house keys, but the Palestinians are apparently the only people in history to have lost their houses.

Sydney Morning Herald Fails Again & Again

Off topic, but not really given the Sydney Morning Herald's USrael-friendly treatment of the Middle East...

Well said, Julian Burnside QC:

"What does it say about the state of our democracy when it falls upon everyday people to stop a billionaire building the largest coal mine in the southern hemisphere? And what does it say about our politicians that they will let Adani's mine proceed when the vast majority of Australians don't want it, and scientists are urging us to keep coal in the ground to avoid more dangerous climate change? This month, nine people... were collectively fined more than $70,000 for their efforts in January to keep Adani's coal in the ground." (Everyday heroes step up as leaders fail, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/3/18)

And what does it say about the state of Fairfax's SMH that the $70,000 fine imposed on those 9 anti-Adani protesters was, to my knowledge, nowhere reported in the SMH prior to Burnside's opinion piece?

And what does it say about the SMH that its Sunday equivalent of 25/3/18, the Sun-Herald, nowhere reported that just the day before thousands of people from every corner of NSW (the Nature Conservation Council has estimated 10,000) marched through the streets of Sydney in protest at the pillaging of the state by mining corporations?

A Fairfax Mystery: The PLO Uprising That Wasn't

WTF is going on at Fairfax?

Here's a two-sentence extract from a piece that appeared on the websites of both Fairfax papers (Age & SMH), Life in the shadows for Palestinians caught in Syria's conflict, by Marika Sosnowski:

"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by Israel in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat clashed with Jordan's Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, ended with thousands of Palestinians killed and the PLO leadership and militants expelled to Lebanon." (26/3/17)

Now here's how it appeared, in a less coherent form, and containing a marked anti-Palestinian tweak, in the print edition of the SMH on March 27 - I've boldened the changes:

"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by its Western neighbour Israel in wars in 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat staged an uprising against their Jordanian hosts, the Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, was violently quashed by the Jordanian Armed Forces. Thousands of Palestinians were killed and the PLO leadership and fighters were expelled to Lebanon."

Needless to say, anyone with a comprehensive knowledge of modern Palestinian history would know that there was no Palestinian "uprising" in Jordan in 1970. What there was was a bloody crackdown by King Hussein on the armed Palestinian resistance movement based there, and a heroic, but ultimately doomed, defence by the latter against the Jordanian army's vastly superior numbers and firepower.

So how do we account for the two versions? And which is Sosnowski's, who, according to her twitter account, is a Melbourne University-trained lawyer and "regular Middle East commentator"?

Mundine of Zion

As we know, the Israel lobby in Australia spares no effort to win friends and influence people it regards as useful. Hence the interminable planeloads of Australian politicians (federal, state, and even student) and journalists, travelling to the Upstart Nation and returning, like so many Marco Polos from the court of Kublai Khan, with tales of the marvels witnessed thereat, and the bringing together of assorted Jewish millionaires and billionaires at election fundraisers for Lib and Lab.

One of their neatest tricks is to cultivate links with certain high-flyers in Australia's Indigenous community. Two names, in particular, spring to mind in this regard - Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine. I assume that, by rubbing shoulders with them, the lobby hopes to succeed in fooling some of the people, some of the time, into thinking that Zionism is not only a progressive force, but also that a construct known to Zionists as 'the Jewish people' is as indigenous to Palestine/Israel as Aboriginal Australians are indigenous to Australia. And if this 'Jewish people' thingy is perceived as somehow indigenous to Palestine/Israel, then some people, some of the time, may just be fooled into thinking that Israel is something other than just another - God forbid! - colonial-settler state.

I am led to reflect on these matters because of an opinion piece, Jews are the first peoples of Israel - with a right to exist, under the byline Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO (Chairman & Managing Director of Nyunggai Black Group'), which recently (6/3/17) appeared in Fairfax's Australian Financial Review.

Perhaps the most curious thing about it was its title. Was Mundine about to discourse on who was what in prehistoric Palestine? And what does he mean by "first peoples"? And why would anyone bother writing an opinion piece on the subject of Jews having "a right to exist"? I mean, come on, is that really in dispute?

On examination, the piece really had nothing to say on such matters. Mundine's rant turned out to be essentially a call for the Palestinians to pull their fingers out, now, and recognise Israel as a Jewish state. That, and the usual Zionist agitprop.

Of course, I won't waste your time or mine with the Zioprop, but OMFG, the irony of an Indigenous Australian telling Indigenous Palestinians to drop their claim to their ancestral homeland, and declare, hand on heart, that they acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land of Palestine, the people of the Jewish nation, and pay their respects to its Elders past and present, namely, Herzl, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, Begin, Sharon and Netanyahu.

It's a batshit crazy world out there, and getting crazier by the day. We've just had Trump's Housing Secretary, Ben Carson, for example, a black, defy reality by referring to slaves brought from Africa to the US "in the bottom of slave ships" as "immigrants" with a "dream." And over here, in Little America, we've got Mundine, not only inverting reality by calling Palestinians "Arab colonisers" and Israeli Jews "first peoples," but demanding that the former acknowledge the inversion.

And another thing. What the hell possessed the AFR to publish this blatantly false and deeply offensive nonsense? Mundine's drivel should be chalked up as a new low in the sad, precipitous decline of the Fairfax press.

Israeli Apartheid... in The Sun-Herald!

When was the last time you saw journalism on Palestine/Israel like this in the normally don't-go-there Fairfax press?:

"This is the occupied West Bank, the putative Israeli-occupied Palestinian state as described by the 1967 war and contemplated in the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Israeli government and the PLO. Some souls live up here. Dotted hither and thither as the highway snakes eastward are Jewish settlements, invariably holding commanding hilltop positions. And lower down, perched awkwardly in the treeless gullies closer to the highway, there are Bedouins. Their ad hoc micro-settlements are untidy off-grid affairs. Illegal shanty towns of tin and tarps, marking out these itinerants as the most dispossessed of the 2.9 million Palestinians in the West Bank.

"In one such community, just 20 minutes from First World Jerusalem, a mud-brick school clings to a hillside. Its defiantly permanent adobe structures use solar panels for electricity, fake grass for play areas, and rely on donated equipment, most notably from Italy. But even that international recognition has not protected the tiny school from capricious treatment. A community leader displays a children's swing reduced to a useless frame after its parts were allegedly confiscated because the concrete footings had breached the rules - an example of the countless small ways in which officialdom makes life hard for non-Jewish persons in the hope they simply give up.

"Overlooking all this sits a gleaming white hamlet of Jewish settlers, replete with valuable water rights, extra security and private service roads - just some of the 600,000 state-subsidised outliers intent on expanding the Jewish state into the West Bank permanently per force of occupation." (Blind support for Israel does it no favours, Mark Kenny*, The Sun-Herald, 19/2/17)

Have you ever seen phrasing like this before in the normally black-is-white, Israel-is-a-democracy, up-is-down Fairfax press?:

"Israel is a... purportedly democratic nation..." (ibid)

When was the last time you read plain talk on Israeli apartheid like this in the normally afraid-of-its-own-shadow Fairfax press?:

"This... is conflict central. A place where rights are dependent on race and religion." (ibid)

Or this:

"The comprehensiveness of Israel's suppression of the local population is staggering. Yet it occasions little serious study from governments like Australia's, which has succumbed to the self-serving binary that there are only two critiques of Israel: unqualified support or anti-semitism." (ibid)

Or this:

"... it's not just Cold war-style partitioning to which much of the world has turned a blind eye, but now a new South Africa." (ibid)

[*"Mark Kenny is chief political correspondent. He travelled to Israel in 2014 courtesy of the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council and to the occupied territories in 2016 courtesy of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network." (ibid)]

From One No-Go Zone to Another

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, its editor Judith Whelan is jumping ship moving to the ABC, where she has been "appointed the Head of Spoken Content at ABC Radio and will oversee the capital city radio network, Radio National..." (Herald editor Judith Whelan moves on, 14/10/16)

Whelan was rambammed in 2012*, an experience which resulted in such penetrating 'insights' (delivered at her post rambam Jewish Board of Deputies debriefing) as a) "Israel is unique"; b) because "it is the holiest place for three religions... can we be surprised that it is constantly fought over?"; and c) Israelis have been living "under the threat of rockets, suicide bombers and terrorist attacks for too many years."

Any wonder then that the Herald has been a virtual no-go zone for real news on this subject for, like, forever? (Not to mention the proverbial day.)

Whelan should get on just fine with old Geraldine Doogue and Phillip Adams at Radio National, yet another no-go zone for real news on the same subject.

[*For details see my posts Innocents Abroad (8/12/12) and Israel Lobbyist Asks: Why do we bother? (19/11/12)]

The Great Peacefaker

A piece of unmitigated schmaltz on the late Shimon Peres, Peres' wisdom: 'Peace is not perfect', by Age political editor Michael Gordon, appeared in yesterday's Fairfax papers - in addition to a New York Times obituary!

So why the overkill? Well, frankly, how could our political editor possibly refuse? After all:

"'Relax! Sit down,' Israel's most beloved public figure commanded, gesturing with his hands for his guests to resume their seats and a long conversation about life and hopes and dreams. 'If your dreams exceed the number of your achievements, you're young,' said Shimon Peres, then 93, with the optimism and wide-eyed wonder of a child. It was July 27 and I was among a group of Australian journalists on the final stop of a week-long study tour."

Strictly rhetorical question: Did any of these rambammed Australian journalists mutter to themselves: 'Dreams? Achievements? Your dreams are the stuff of nightmares, and your only achievements are massacres, settlements, nukes and bullshit by the bucketload'?

Some more gems from Peres' wisdom:

"'Peace is not perfect,' he quipped. 'It's perfect when you compare it to war'."

As if the likes of Peres ever had a problem with war. Fact: peace is only perfect when it comes with justice. 

"Obama was one of the first to pay tribute, saying: 'There are few people who we share this world with who change the course of human history... because they expand our moral imagination and force us to expect more of ourselves. My friend Shimon was one of those people'."

Moral imagination? Obama? Don't make me laugh!

"Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council chairman Mark Leibler and executive director Dr Colin Rubenstein said in a joint statement: 'He was a true visionary, a giant of Israeli politics, the quintessential statesman on the world stage'."

Visionary? The only visionaries Zionism has ever produced are of the tunnel variety.

"The key to his longevity, said [he]... was to stay... focused on the future. 'The past doesn't have a future and the future doesn't need a past,' was how he expressed it."

That's funny, wasn't Peres a protege of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding PM, who told the 1937 Peel Commission in Palestine that "The Bible is our Mandate"?

"If he was deeply dismayed there was very little evidence of [a better world] happening on either side of the Israel-Palestine conflict, it did not show."

Deeply dismayed? You're kidding me! Of course he's not dismayed. Why would he be? With every square inch of Palestine under occupation.

"One of the final questions was how he liked to be remembered. He paused, repeated the question, and said: 'If I have saved the life of one child, that would be the greatest thing."

One Israeli Jewish child, that is.

Whatever happened to the cynical hard-bitten journalist of yore? Seems it's all just stenography these days.

Fairfax's Shame

"[Paul] Sheehan was reportedly one of the highest-earning journalists on the [Sydney Morning Herald]." (Paul Sheehan given redundancy package by Fairfax - but won't say if he was pushed, Amanda Meade, theguardian.com, 18/5/16)

Problem Solved

"Controversial Fairfax columnist Paul Sheehan will be one of the more high-profile casualties of the publisher's latest redundancy round, Diary can reveal. Sheehan disgraced The Sydney Morning Herald with an unsubstantiated story about an alleged gang rape in March. He was stood down indefinitely by SMH editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir who said at the time a review of the incident had found 'unacceptable breaches of fundamental journalistic practice.' Perhaps the writing was on the wall for Sheehan, although the redundancy program was still in its 'voluntary' stage as of last week. That could change, given Fairfax editorial director Sean Aylmer told staff on Friday the program had not yielded enough 'suitable' job cuts." (Sheehan facing the axe, The Diary, Media, The Australian, 9/5/16)

So what's next for Paul? Surely not the dreaded scrapheap?

Wait a minute... I've got an idea! Now that ex-Australian Mark Regev has become Israel's ambassador to the UK, Netanyahu will be looking for a new foreign media spokesman. Sheehan should slot in nicely. After all, he's got it all down pat. For example:

"Women [in Gaza], living under sharia law, are used primarily as breeding stock." (See my 13/1/09 post Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH.)

"Most of the constrictive actions Israel has taken in the Palestinian territories - the walls, roadblocks, security restrictions - has been in reaction to an intransigent Palestinian political culture." (See my 21/11/14 post Paul Sheehan: Toeing the Likud Line.)

Everybody Expects The Zionist Inquisition*

(* With apologies to Monty Python's Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition...)

Now here's an interesting Q&A from Australians for Palestine's 2016 Media Symposium.  

Stuart Rees is the former head of Sydney University's Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies. Maher Mughrabi is the foreign editor of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald:

Stuart Rees: I want to ask you about courage and cowardice. What is required by journalists not to be so intimidated by the Israel lobby? Because compliance with the Israel lobby always looks to me like a form of cowardice. IOW, how do you develop the courage to resist this compliance?

Maher Mughrabi: My experience in dealing with Australian journalists who wander into the Middle East area unawares... the nature of the complaints, the extremely amped up nature of the conflict, the references to World War 2, to the Bible, to genocide, for a common-and-garden journalist who's not a specialist on the Middle East, are extremely frightening and alarming. And what is usually required at that point is not so much courage as knowledge. The standard of knowledge in newsrooms in this country about Islam and about the history of the Middle East is still far too low, and usually, if one of these people come running to me with his hands in the air going 'Look at this complaint I received!' the most important thing I can say to them is 'It's fine, you haven't done anything wrong. That's if you've seen what they've done. The problem is if you don't see what they've done. When it comes out of left field... But what I would say in general is that the first thing that people need is to make sure they check their facts, to make sure they know about what they're talking about... and then the courage is only the courage of knowing your on solid ground. What happens with these people is they're frightened they've missed something because they feel their knowledge is inadequate and that's a deeper problem than the Israel/Palestine problem, that's a problem about the culture inside newsrooms when it comes to dealing with foreign affairs."

What may we deduce from Maher Mughrabi's testimony?

That our journalists know bugger all about the Middle East and about foreign affairs in general. Surely, a damning verdict on our representatives of the fourth estate.

But if only that were it.

Far, far worse is the fact that Israel's fifth columnists in the West appear to have our journos well and truly spooked, with news rooms in a blind funk lest The Zionist Inquisition burst through the door.

Has the 'fearless investigative reporter' been replaced by the spineless investigative reporter?

Why is Ruth Pollard Leaving Fairfax?

Sadly, it looks as though Fairfax Media's Middle East correspondent Ruth Pollard is bowing out. I haven't always been kind to her as some of my earlier posts on her reporting attest but I have to say that the quality of her reporting has only improved with time. Suffice it to say that when the AIJAC crowd start yapping about her 'negativity' towards Israel and her lack of 'balance'* you know she's doing something right.

In fact, one tweet I've read has even suggested that Fairfax will be closing its Jerusalem bureau - which could only mean that Fairfax papers from now on will carry only craportage on the Middle East from the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post. This, of course, would constitute yet another huge milestone in Fairfax's decline into irrelevance.

Given earlier ructions over the reporting of Ed O'Loughlin, Fairfax's ME correspondent until 2008, and the Sydney Morning Herald's treatment of its star columnist Mike Carlton following pressure from Israel lobbyists, one cannot help but wonder about the real reasons for Pollard's leaving her post.

I sincerely hope that Ruth finds the time to write a memoir of some kind, one which frankly tackles the subject of Israel lobby pressure on Fairfax Media in general, and the craven crew at the helm of the Herald in particular, and details what must have been for her an incredibly steep learning-curve in occupied Palestine.

[* The truth about the Gaza war (hint: it's not what Ruth Pollard tells you, aijac.org.au, 5/9/15]

Is There a Glass Wall at the 'Good Weekend' Too?

Thinking about the 'troubling narrowband view of Middle Eastern politics' displayed by the Good Weekend's deputy editor Greg Callaghan, I thought it might be useful to see where its editor, Ben Naparstek, stood on the subject.

Naparstek had, of course, previously edited (09-12) Morry Schwartz's The Monthly, a magazine so protective of Israel that one of its writers has spoken of the existence there of "a glass wall." 

The worst was confirmed, however, when I read a November 2011 interview with him. (The Monthly editor, Ben Naparstek, abc.net.au, 13/11/11) Here's the relevant bit:

Julia Baird: And [Jacqueline Rose] is a great critic of Zionism, isn't she?

BN: She is. And I must say I don't agree with most of her writings on Israel/Palestine. I think that her call for a boycott of Israel is incredibly unfortunate given what an intelligent and magnificent writer she is. [I see, so calling for a boycott of apartheid Israel is just plain dumb?] She's not talking about boycotting any of the other countries in the Middle East which are under the thumb of tyranny, in which they execute people on a daily basis. [So let me get this straight. Israeli occupation forces blaze away at anything that moves, as reported in today's Herald*, but that's not executing people? Or when they knocked off a 16-year-old after fucking him around at a West Bank checkpoint just the other day (25/4)**, that wasn't an execution? Or when they fired on and wounded 12 Palestinian civilians in the period from April 16 to April 22***, those weren't attempted executions? ]... I mean Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Why this intense focus on it by the left liberal intelligentsia? I think that's a form of madness. I really do. [Naparstek's obviously the 3 wise monkeys all rolled into one.]

JB: So you're not a supporter of the BDS here either then?

BN: Of course not. I'm a total opponent of it. And fortunately it hasn't gained much traction here. I think that it's outrageous that Bob Brown hasn't taken a stronger stance against Lee Rhiannon for calling for a boycott. Bob Brown, you know, if he's serious about leading a genuinely progressive party, should not allow those kinds of extremist elements to fester within it. And the fact that... Bob Brown might not be the leader in five years and that, heaven help us, Lee Rhiannon could be, is... a very terrifying thought. [This is an extraordinarily censorious outburst, given that elsewhere in the interview Naparstek accuses "the left" of being supportive of free speech only when it suits them and of trying to "silence" Andrew Bolt, "someone who had made statements that were deemed offensive to aboriginal people."]

Naparstek also said in the above interview that: "If I only published writing that reflected my personal beliefs and opinions, then The Monthly would be a very dull magazine indeed."

Nice disclaimer, but seriously, folks, have you ever read anything even remotely critical of Israel in the Good Weekend?

[*Soldiers tell of 'shoot to kill' orders, Ruth Pollard; **Ali Sa'id Abu Ghannam, 16, was shot dead east of Jerusalem after being harassed by Israeli troops on April 25 (See Palestinian teen killed by army fire in Jerusalem, imemc.org, 25/4/15); ***4 protestors, including 2 children were shot and wounded in Bil'in and Ni'lin weekly protests; 5 other protestors, including a child, were shot and wounded during other protests; and 3 Palestinian civilians, including a child were shot and wounded east of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip. Weekly Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, pchrgaza.org.]  

The Phenomenon of Waleed Aly

Reading Waleed Aly's opinion piece on Lebanon in today's Sydney Morning Herald (Nation with no real unity stuck as proxy for region's conflict) helps one understand the phenomenon of how an Australian of 'Middle Eastern appearance' and Arab name can find a prominent place in the mainstream Australian media - in Aly's case, the ABC (Radio National) and Fairfax press: offer plausible-sounding, but lame and simplistic, comment with little or no real historical context, and... shhhhh... no mention whatever of USrael.

His contention is that Lebanon has no 'real' national identity. He quotes Ataturk thus: "Nations which don't find their national identities are doomed to be the prey of other nations," concluding: "It's hard to imagine a more penetrating description of Lebanon."

Tellingly, however, he advances no historical reason for this state of affairs. The reader is left to presume that the Lebanese, unlike the Turks, simply don't have what it takes to create a genuine nation. The fact of the matter is that the modern state of Lebanon cannot be understood without clear reference to Anglo-French imperialist machinations prior to and during World War 1.

In 1916, after decades of interference in the Ottoman Turkish provinces of the Eastern Mediterranean region, Britain and France secretly decided, via the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement, that once the Turks had been ousted from the 'Greater Syria' area, they'd divide the spoils, with the French taking the northern, and the British the southern, part. The French then set about dividing the 'Mt Lebanon' area from its 'Syrian' hinterland, and enlarging it in the process, to create the highly artificial colonial construct known today as Lebanon. 

Why then, with French imperialism calling the shots in the area and laying the foundations for Lebanon's current 'confessional' democracy, is it any wonder that Lebanon lacks the kind of national identity referred to by Ataturk?

It is only at the very end of his piece that Aly refers vaguely to the Middle East being "crammed with countries whose national identities have never truly been resolved; whose borders have been horrifically drawn to capture almost nothing coherent." You'd almost think the Arabs had scored an own goal here.

Now look at this:

"[T]he Shiites - most actively represented by Hezbollah - take orders from Iran and the Assad regime in Syria, while Sunnis seek support from Saudi Arabia and embrace Syria's increasingly radical rebels."

So Lebanese Shiites are the mindless puppets of Iran and Syria, while Lebanese Sunnis, who are presumably capable of thinking for themselves, merely "seek support from Saudi Arabia"?

And this:

"The assassination [of "a former [Sunni] finance minister"] is most likely an order from Syria, reasserting Assad's will in Lebanon."

So "an order" from Israel is less likely? And Assad is secure enough in Syria to focus on "reasserting [his] will in Lebanon"? I guess the uncivil war in Syria must be all but over then.

Finally, there is also the assertion that Hezbollah's involvement in Syria "has merely encouraged the same international terrorist groups fighting Assad to start terrorising Lebanon, thereby exposing Hezbollah's claim to be 'resisting' foreign aggression on behalf of Lebanon as a sham..."

Why is there no acknowledgment here that LEBANESE Sunni jihadists were involving themselves in the war in Syria long before Hezbollah's intervention? And why is Hezbollah's highly successful role in RESISTING ISRAELI AGGRESSION in Lebanon from the 80s on written off merely as "Hezbollah's claim to be 'resisting' foreign aggression..."

Don't Hold Your Breath...

... for an opinion piece like the following (from the Los Angeles Times of 27/12/13) in the 'Independent. Always.' Fairfax press:

Why I voted for an academic boycott of Israel

By Carolyn Karcher (Professor Emerita of English at Temple University in Philadelphia)

"Michael S. Roth slams the American Studies Association (ASA) for 'unfairly singling out Israel' in its vote to boycott that nation's academic institutions; he calls the action an 'irresponsible attack on academic freedom.'

"As a 39-year member of the ASA and a Jewish American, I want to explain why Roth - whose Op-Ed was published by The Times Dec. 20 - is wrong and why I wholeheartedly support the organization's resolution.

"The resolution is far from an attack on academic freedom. In fact, it is a proper response to the routine denial of such scholarly freedom to Palestinian students. Having recently returned home from a trip to Israel and Palestine with Interfaith Peace-Builders, during which I was more profoundly shaken than I could ever have imagined by the brutality I saw toward Palestinians, I feel more strongly than ever the urgency of taking a stand in solidarity with Palestinians and their beleaguered Israeli allies.

"On our first day in Bethlehem, my husband and I met a young man who had received a scholarship from George Mason University in Virginia but was not granted an exit visa by the Israeli authorities. Instead of embarking on a promising journey in academia, this young Palestinian had to resign himself to a job selling souvenirs to tourists. We learned that Palestinian students of all ages endure harassment at military checkpoints, frequent school closures, unprovoked arrests, imprisonment and sometimes death at the hands of trigger-happy soldiers.

"Within Israel proper, schools are segregated and, following the model of the Jim Crow South, the government allocates significantly less funding to Palestinian schools, which are often overcrowded and understaffed. Palestinian university professors in Gaza rarely receive permission to travel abroad for conferences, those in the West Bank also face difficulties, and international faculty have been prevented from visiting Palestinian universities. These are the true assaults on academic freedom that the ASA resolution addresses.

"Here in the US, students and faculty who challenge the dominant view of Israel risk baseless accusations of anti-Semitism, arrest, blacklisting or denial of tenure, promotion or academic positions. There are dozens of known incidents and likely hundreds that go unreported.

"Last year, members of the New York City Council sent a letter to the president of Brooklyn College threatening to cut the school's public funding for refusing to cancel a panel on the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement. The incident put academic freedom in the national spotlight, with MSNBC host Chris Hayes warning that when politicians 'line up to attempt to force an academic institution to cancel an event particularly when some of those politicians... actually determine the budget of the institution. Think of the precedent being set here.'

"In 2011, the Orange County district attorney charged 11 students at UC Irvine and UC Riverside with 'conspiring to disrupt a meeting' for peacefully protesting a talk by Michael Oren, then the Israeli ambassador to the US. More than 100 UC Irvine professors stood up for the Irvine 11's right to protest. In a statement on the case, the ACLU of Southern California wrote: 'We are also troubled by the unprecedented nature of the case. We are unaware of any case where the OC DA pressed criminal charges over this type of non-violent student protest, even though similar disruptions have occurred with other speakers on the very same campus. This raises the question whether the DA may have acted because of the students' message, which would clearly violate the First Amendment.'

"Thus, far from curtailing academic freedom, the ASA has extended it in new directions by fostering an honest discussion about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the role of the US in enabling it. In a democratic process, the ASA National Council deliberated for a week, revised the final resolution in accordance with suggestions made during the discussion, and submitted it to the entire membership for ratification.

"Like most other academic associations, the ASA includes many Jewish members. Some helped draft the boycott resolution, others served on the National Council that unanimously endorsed it, a large number lobbied and voted in favor of it, and a comparable number lobbied and voted against it. It is disturbing that many critics of the resolution label it 'anti-Semitic', implying that either all Jewish people take the same position on this matter, which is false, or that some of us are anti-Semitic or self-hating Jews, a deeply troubling accusation.

"It is also problematic to claim that speaking out against Israeli government policies is synonymous with attacks on Jews in general. The ASA resolution does not target individuals on the basis of nationality, ethnic group or religion. The ASA resolution targets institutions that are complicit in the violation of Palestinian human rights. According to the boycott guidelines, individual Israeli scholars, students or cultural workers are able to participate in the ASA conference or to give public lectures at campuses, providing they are not expressly serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions or of the Israeli government.

"Opponents like Roth claim that the resolution singles out Israel while sparing countries with worse human rights records. They forget, however, that the US gives far more military aid to Israel than to any other country, but has also vetoed all UN resolutions in recent memory that condemn Israel's abuses of human rights. The ASA resolution specifically cites the 'significant role' the US plays in underwriting Israel's violations of international law.

"This resolution is thoroughly consistent with the ASA's past resolutions denouncing the war against Iraq and expressing solidarity with hotel workers and the Occupy movement. I have always been proud of the ASA's political principles, and I am prouder than ever of its historic vote for justice in Israel and Palestine and for free speech on this issue."

Try Switching to Fairfax, Rubes

Colin Rubenstein of the Australia-Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) recently experienced a rare, 'Not happy, Rupert!' moment when he noticed the Australian referring to occupied Palestinian territory as, well, 'occupied Palestinian territory'.

As he grumbled in a letter to the paper published on 16 August: "the territory on which [Israeli settlements] are situated is disputed, not occupied, land."

Specifically, Rubes was responding to an August 13 AFP report  - Israel approves further settlements on eve of peace talks.

Then, on August 15, the Australian ran another AFP report - Prisoners freed but talks hit a hurdle - which referred, yet again, to the "occupied West Bank."

Intolerable!

Only time will tell whether Rubes' epistolary intervention will be sufficient to get those subbies at the Australian to pull their fingers out and edit such offending reports.

In the meantime, might I suggest he switch to Fairfax instead?  It's way more Zio-friendly.

Just check it out:

August 13:  

Settlement push on eve of peace talks, Isabel Kershner, Sydney Morning Herald/New York Times: "contested area."

August 15:

Palestine joy as captives released before peace talks, Jonathan Ferziger, SMH/Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times: "land... seized during the 1967 war"

August 16:

Mediators meet in secret amid rising tensions, Isabel Kershner, SMH/New York Times: "disputed areas."

See what I mean?

Will old Rubes get his way? That's the question. Only future editions of the Australian will tell!

And rest assured, MERC will be there to keep you informed.