Look Who's Not Coming to Dinner

Murdoch columnist Janet Albrechtsen has hit on a new form of anti-Semitism - declining to attend "Shabbat dinners" organised by Vic Alhadaff of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (aka "the Jewish community").

Under the rubric of "building tolerance and respect," anyone who's anything in the political arena has apparently flocked to feed. All except one nefarious group that is. But I'll let Planet Janet take it from here: 

"There was a Shabbat dinner for Liberal Party leaders and members... There was a dinner the year before for Labor politicians, members of Young Labor and union leaders. Another one included many members of the Chinese community and other civic groups. Yet another dinner involved people and groups who help settle new immigrants. You get the picture You would be hard-pressed to find more genuinely inclusive events. These are non-political. Yet still the Greens have, for years, refused to be part of these dinners." (Greens have two faces and one is the ugliest of bigots, The Australian, 13/2/19)

You get the picture.

And this is supposedly because "the Greens have a history of out-and-out organisational bigotry towards the Jewish community," and "that is anti-Semitism." (ibid)

Oh dear! But there's one little matter Planet Janet's not letting her readers in on here. While she accuses the NSW Greens of having two faces, she ignores the fact that Vic Alhadeff wears two hats, functioning on the one hand as the representative of a Jewish community organisation in an open, multicultural society, while on the other as an unabashed lobbyist for the apartheid state of Israel.

This obvious conflict of interest came to the fore when the former NSW Liberal premier Barry O'Farrell controversially appointed him Community Relations Commissioner in 2013, an appointment which soon came undone the following year when, at the height of that year's Israeli killing spree in Gaza (aka Operation Protective Edge), Alhadeff sent an incendiary, pro-Israel email to Australia's Jewish community, which, in the understated words of a Sydney Morning Herald editorial at the time, "betrayed the sensitivity of his role as CRC chairman." (See my 28/7/14 post Vic Alhadeff: Multicultural in NSW, Monocultural in Israel.)

Thankfully, the NSW Greens at least, know a soft propaganda exercise when they see one, and have the courage to give it a miss.

Planet Janet Transmitting:

"Just imagine if any Arab leader with genuine vision for his region said: 'Enough. We must settle this centuries-old conflict that dates back to AD632 fought in the name of Mohammed over his rightful heir. We must resolve the violent schism between Sunni and Shia that has seen Muslims killing Muslims for thousands of years. We must settle, once and for all, the proxy war being fought in Syria as part of a wider battle for the heart and soul of Islam and geopolitical power across the Middle East. For the sake of Arab people, solving the conflict in Syria is our responsibility. As part of this resolution we call on Iran, we call on Hezbollah and Hamas to recognise Israel as the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people. Existential threats against all peoples must be condemned as the necessary step to an enduring peace in our own homelands'." (Islam's local derby is for them to resolve, Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian, 12/4/17)

Wherein the thriving business of knowing nothing, but saying it anyway is taken to new, stratospheric, heights.

Janet de'Arc

And now for a word from Janet Albrechtsen (rambammed: 2008):

"We cannot wait for imams to lead this debate. So what of our own leaders...? As David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, a global advocacy organisation, told me last year during a wide-ranging discussion about Islamic terrorism, 'Every generation needs a Winston Churchill - a leader who sees events with absolute clarity and courage, who spots the seemingly disparate pieces and the links among them, and who mobilises the tools of language to awaken an often sleeping world and rouse it to resolute action." (Debate Islam's place in the West now, The Australian, 21/1/15)

But Janet, we already have this generations's Winston Churchill. Name's Col. Lives in Port Macquarie. In case you haven't noticed, see my 17/1/15 post Australia's Answer to Winston Churchill.

But here's the thing, while it may have been good enough back in 39-45 to make do with just a Winston Churchill, surely we've moved on since then?

I mean, we have male and female newsreaders, don't we? So why not male and female worldleaders? Shouldn't Col of Port Macquarie be accompanied by a woman of like calibre, this generation's Jeanne d'Arc?

Janet, isn't it time you stopped talking the talk and started walking the walk?

'Improving the Lives of All Israelis, Jewish or Not'

"While not without fault, Israel has proven its long-term commitment to democracy and liberty and to improving the lives of all Israelis, whether Jewish or not." (Janet Albrechtsen, It is time for Middle East to police its own region, The Australian, 29/1/14)

Not!

Clearly, Planet Janet hasn't read Max Blumenthal's must-read Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel (2013):

"In the eyes of Palestinians, there are few symbols of Israel's occupation more recognizable than the Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. Custom-fitted with explosive-resistant armor, the 49-ton tractor was the instrument responsible for Rachel Corrie's death and the demolition of more than 1500 civilian homes in Rafah between the years 2000 and 2005. Since the dawn of the occupation in 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), the State of Israel has destroyed well over 26,000 Palestinian homes. Most of these demolitions occurred in and around occupied East Jerusalem and in the Gaza Strip, but also in places such as the Jenin Refugee Camp, where a drunken bulldozer pilot nicknamed 'Kurdi Bear' reduced densely populated neighborhoods to a canyon of doom, boasting that he 'left [Jenin's] residents with a football stadium so they could play.'

"As the state stepped up its campaign of 'Judaization' under the watch of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian neighborhoods in mixed Israeli cities were becoming acquainted with the US-manufactured Caterpillar-D9 as well. Fifteen minutes east of Tel Aviv, in the Lod Ghetto, where Palestinian citizens lived surrounded by lower-class Jewish communities, I visited a de facto refugee camp filled with the residents of an entire neighborhood that had been leveled to the ground the night before.

"On December 13, 2010, 17-year-old Hamza Abu Eid was taken out of class at his high school in Lod and summoned to the principal's office. 'The Israelis are destroying your house right now,' the principal told him. 'It is best that you remain here. The last thing we want is for you to have a confrontation with a police officer.'

"But Abu Eid could not stay. He rushed to his family's house, hoping to salvage whatever belongings he could before the bulldozers from the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) rumbled through. When he arrived it was too late. The bulldozers had destroyed virtually everything - all seven homes belonging to the Abu Eid family were reduced to rubble. A black-masked Israeli riot police officer grabbed Hamza, restraining him while the bulldozers finished their work and preventing him from attempting to save his belongings. Three refrigerators and a TV set were among the appliances that Hamza's family lost in the destruction.

"In the end, 74 people were left homeless - including 54 children - and were forced to sleep under the open sky during the coldest period of the year. No government social worker arrived with assistance, nor did the state offer any temporary aid. The families gathered whatever belongings they could, pitching tents like so many Palestinian refugees have done in the past, and placing a sign over their land plot. It read, 'Abu Eid Refugee Camp.'

"When I arrived at the encampment, the area looked like Rafah after Israeli operations during the Second Intifada, or the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza after Operation Cast Lead. Unlike these occupied areas, however, the Abu Eid camp was located only 15 kilometers from Tel Aviv in the Abu Toq neighborhood of Lod. All of Lod's Palestinian residents are citizens of Israel, but they are treated by the state like foreign aliens, or worse, as an existential threat to the survival of Zionism.

"For years, the Abu Eid family applied for permits to allow them to renovate their homes to accommodate their growing family. But the state zoned their neighborhood as agricultural land and refused their requests (applications for renovation and building permits are almost always denied to the Arabs inside Israel). Finally, the state ordered them to seek residency elsewhere because their homes were slated for demolition.

"Directly beside the Abu Eid refugee camp, building has begun on a yeshiva directed by an Orthodox rabbi from the United States named Yaakov Saban. And plans were authorized to build a road directly through the center of the neighborhood. Pressure on the Palestinian Israelis of Lod to leave intensified day by day, thanks to the far-right takeover of the city.

"Widespread corruption had prompted the collapse of the elected municipality, enabling the Israeli Ministry of the Interior to install an emergency government consisting of hand-picked military officials. With the Ministry of the Interior under the control of Eli Yishai, who led the right-wing religious Shas Party, the new municipality became a means for meting out the wrath of anti-Arab populists against the local Arab population. 'They are poor in culture, poor in behavior. No ambition,' the mayor of Ramle, a neighboring city, said of the Palestinians of Lod.

"By the time the Abu Eid family's homes were demolished, as many as 30 demolition orders hovered over the Arab residents of Lod. The Arabs of Lod were not only denied the right to renovate their own houses, they also claimed they were forbidden as Arabs from living in a giant, new public housing complex built in the heart of the city. Thus they were confined to an overcrowded ghetto doomed by state plans that prioritized Judaization.

"I arrived at the Abu Eid camp on January 25, 2010, to observe a protest by Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity, a national movement that grew out of the protests against East Jerusalem evictions of Palestinian families, and which was establishing a presence in mixed cities around Israel, as well as in the most threatened areas of the West Bank. Amiel Vardi, a veteran activist, explained to me, 'For years I've been trying to say, 'Don't think the occupation will stop at the Green Line.' Now we see it's not stopping. They're using the same methods with the settlements, with the courts, and with the Shabak [Shin Bet] on both sides of the Green Line. Go to the Abu Eid camp in Lod or to Al-Arakib [a repeatedly demolished Bedouin village in the Negev], and there's absolutely no difference from what I see in the Hebron Hills.'

"I entered the remains of the Abu Eid family dwellings at the end of Lod's Helen Keller Boulevard, finding small groups of grizzled men seated around open fires and sipping tea, while small children clambered in and out of tents erected beside piles of rubble, debris, and shattered home appliances. A forlorn-looking middle-aged man named Riyadh Abu Eid met me at the entrance and took me into the makeshift camp.

"'This place was here before 1948,' he said. 'They destroyed it because they said we had no permit. But we can't get permits because we are '48 Arabs. We asked many times and were denied every time. They say we are terrorists. But look around - this is the real terror. Throwing children into the street on the coldest day of the year - that is terror.'

"According to Riyadh Abu Eid, many children from camp were unable to attend school because they could not concentrate. A 9-year-old girl who was especially traumatized had refused to leave her bed for days. Riyadh did not try to conceal his desperation. 'We do not feel safe here,' he said. 'We want to ask the United nations and Obama for international protection from a fascist government that has proven capable of massacring the unarmed.' He added, 'The days of 1948 have come again'." (pp 165-67)

She's Baaack

Whaddya know, Planet Janet's back on The Australian's opinion page with more of her all-leather chutzpah after an unnoticed and unmissed absence of...?

And blow me down if she hasn't "humbly draft[ed] a speech for President Obama after spending the last few weeks in the US where newspapers have been busily reporting continuing crises in the Middle East, and failed peace talks, because Sunni and Shia, the two main branches of Islam are once again pitted against one another." (It is time for Middle East to police its own region, Janet Albrechtsen, 29/1/14)

That just about says it all really.

You see, in the beginning was the word, and the word was Sunni-Shia Divide (S-SD), the latest USraeli propaganda construct designed to deflect attention away from the actual roots of violence in the Middle East - 'good' old-fashioned imperialism and colonialism. In the scribblings of USraeli propagandists these days everything that moves or stirs in the Middle East is a manifestation of the dreaded S-SD.

And Planet Janet's Obama has had a gutful:

"It is a speech I must give because, to be frank, America is sick of its role as the international policeman of first resort... America - and I am sure our great allies abroad - has grown tired of being called upon to solve these conflicts."

Poor old Barack! He's like: 'OMG, these never-ending interventions are such a drag! I mean, America's had it up to here being dragged kicking and screaming into conflict after conflict in the flogging Middle East. Enough already! She is so fucking droned you wouldn't believe.'

After all:

"In the name of human decency and liberty, we helped free the Iraqi people from a government that gassed and slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens. We helped liberate the Afghan people from the brutal yoke of the Taliban. We then provided support to put an end to the murderous regime in Libya."

It hardly matters for Planet Janet, of course, that Iraq only had an attack of the S-SD after the Yanks waded in in 2003. Or that the Yanks paved the way for the Taliban by backing its 'Holy Warrior' forbears against a secular, Russian-backed Afghan regime from 1979 to 1992. Or that, in the case of Libya, the Shia half of the equation has been conspicuous by its complete and unremitting absence since the year dot.

Planet Janet's Obama, of course, has only one thing on his mind:

"The world cannot wait for Sunnis and Shia to continue to slaughter each other in the name of Mohammed and a centuries old conflict about his rightful heir."

Thankfully, on the Syrian front of the S-SD, our sock-puppet Prez has the advantage of the foreign policy expertise and wisdom of the world's leading statesman:

"The Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, best described the conflict in Syria as one between bad guys and bad guys. He is right. We need more of this frankness."

That the conflict in Syria has bugger all to do with the S-SD, and everything to do with the sectarian genie unleashed in Iraq by those wonderfully 'decent, liberty-loving' folk, Bush, Blair and Howard, a genie which has slipped across the border into a secular Syria, bristling with CIA-supplied arms and wallets stuffed with Gulf petrodollars, is of course neither here nor there to Planet Janet.

Then there's that other unfinished business in the Middle East, which has bugger all to do with the S-SD - the unresolved issue of Zionist ethnic cleansing and colonization in Palestine (1948-2014):

"Finally, as part of the resolution of this conflict in the Middle East, I call on Hezbollah and Hamas, and all Arab governments which haven't yet done so, immediately to recognise Israel as the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people. Until that happens there will be no enduring settlement of outstanding issues in the Middle East, whether they are conflicts over land or religion. While not without fault, Israel has proven its long-term commitment to democracy and liberty and to improving the lives of all Israelis, whether Jewish or not."

Planet Janet, of course, neglects to mention that Shia Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas are on the same side here, and also that Jewish Israel is the mother of all sectarian entities in the Middle East.

And quite how the Palestinians are expected to get an "enduring settlement" out of giving the thumbs up to Israel's wholesale theft of their country is anyone's guess, but face it - what else would you expect one of the rambammed (2008) to say?

Notice here that, with respect to the Zionist entity, Planet Janet covers her svelte, leather-clad arse with the lawyerly formulation, "while not without fault." Typically, such faults are never spelt out by the likes of Planet Janet (too long a list maybe?), just glossed over with tripe about Israel "improving the lives of all Israelis... Jewish or not," about which matter I'll be returning in my very next post.

And isn't it amazing that not even the spectacle of Planet Janet putting her tongue in Barack Obama's mouth does it for certain old grumps:

"Nothing can save Barack Obama from ignominy, not even Janet Albrechtsen's formidable skills as a speech-writer." George Fishman, Vaucluse, NSW (The Australian, 30/1/14)

The Offended

Christian Kerr's at it again. No, not Lee Rhiannon this time. You can only flog a topic so many times without tedium setting in. This time it's The Promise:

"SBS screened the controversial drama The Promise in the knowledge it would offend the Jewish community, Liberal senators have claimed." (SBS knew Israel drama would offend Jews, Lib senators insist, The Australian, 16/2/12)

Got the buzz word? The Promise is controversial.

Controversial is a code word at The Australian. Its special application there might be explained by one of its operatives thus: 'Whoever (or whatever) deviates from the Zionist party line is anathema to us here at The Australian, and one of our resident witch-finders - Kerr, Saluszinsky, Neighbour - will be given the task of beating him/her/it up in article after article, thus allowing us to slap on the warning label, controversial, designed specifically to distance the reader from the abhorred deviation and its perpetrator. Works wonders!'

Now you'll notice that not only did SBS dare to screen something controversial, but it knew that in doing so "the Jewish community" would be offended! That of course means the Jewish community in its entirety, not just the Zionist ideologues and propagandists of the Israel lobby for whom toeing, defending, and promoting the party line on Israel is the alpha and omega of their existence, and for whom The Australian is their mouthpiece of choice.

"Under questioning from Victorian Liberal senator Helen Kroger in estimates..."

Ah, Helen Kroger, rambammed into service back in 2007 (See my 30/3/09 post I've been to Israel too).

"... SBS managing director Michael Edeid [sic: Ebeid] said the broadcaster entered into a pre-sale deal with the producers of The Promise knowing the subject matter would be controversial." (ibid)

So here we go from the fantastic allegation that SBS deliberately set out to stick it to the entire Jewish community to SBS simply knowing, both from the hue and cry which accompanied The Promise's screening in the UK, and decades of Zionist pressure to bend SBS to its will, that any film on Palestine that flouts the Zionist party line is ipso facto controversial, let alone one which dares to shine the light on the bloody Zionist takeover of Palestine in 1948.

Senator Kroger opined that "SBS appears to have put a business decision ahead of independent assessments, which determined that it was offensive to the Jewish community." (ibid)

Independent assessments... determined that The Promise was offensive to the Jewish community? Rich comedy indeed! The extraordinary premise here is that media outlets should refer all items pertaining to Palestine/Israel to one or other branch of the Israel lobby (the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in this instance) for an independent (!) assessment of the item's offensiveness to the Jewish community (!) before they are published or broadcast. Or, IOW, the Israel lobby decides what we read and see.

Thank God SBS's Ebeid had the gumption to say to Kroger, "SBS accepts that it will, from time to time, broadcast programs that offend some individuals or groups." (ibid)

How I'd love to see a debate between the rambammed Kroger and The Australian's also-rambammed (2008) columnist Janet Albrechtsen, who once wrote a column called The freedom to be offensive (20/4/09). In that essay, Planet Janet pronounced that: "You are either for free speech - whoever exercises it - or not. Freedom of expression is simply meaningless if it does not include a right to be wrong and a right to be offensive." Maybe Christian Kerr could chair the debate.

You Can't Say That!

"The ugly cry of anti-Semitism is the bludgeon used by the Zionists to bully non-Jews into accepting the Zionist view of world events, or to keep silent." Harold R. Piety

The Centre for Independent Studies (self-described as "Australia's leading independent policy think tank") held their 2011 "Big Ideas Forum" on August 1. Dubbed You Can't Say That: Freedom of Speech and the Invisible Muzzle (the muzzle being political correctness), the forum, or at least 3 of its 4 speakers, raised the issue of Islam and/or Islamophobia, which they felt was a terribly pc word primarily wielded to shut down what they characterised as legitimate 'debate' on Islam and Muslim immigration. Curiously, 2 of the 3 with Muslims on their minds had nothing to say about another term so often wielded to silence debate on Israel and its crimes: anti-Semitism. The third, however, was not quite so circumspect. Of him, later.

The first speaker, James Allan, a law professor from the University of Queensland, grew most animated on the subject of the infamous Danish cartoons (See my 21/2/08 post A Thorn Among Roses):

"The second factor [in promoting pc] is fear and a good example of that is the Danish cartoons about Muhammad and the absolutely spineless response that was exhibited by the press around the world. They knew that a very small slice of Muslim extremists deliver on their threats... they do actually create murderous mayhem. So in response to these Danish cartoons these newspapers took the path of least resistance. My view... is that there's one proper response to bullying. It's when you stand up [to them, even if] you go down fighting. You make the stakes so high you're going to do nothing else but look the person in the face. You might lose but you go down fighting. It's the only response to bullying. I think that every newspaper in the world should have put the cartoons on the front page."

While Allan didn't mention the word Islamophobia, one can perhaps infer his attitude towards the term. Certainly, the uses and abuses of its counterpart, anti-Semitism, went unremarked. Which, I suppose, is not all that surprising from someone who took the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) to task in the May 2011 issue of Quadrant for its "single-minded focus" on Israel.

The second speaker, columnist for The Australian Janet Albrechtsen, was terribly hurt because "[i]n the last few weeks some on the left claim that those who have raised questions about multiculturalism, immigration and the relationship between Islam and modernity have blood on our hands. I say 'our hands' because I've been named as someone who bears responsibility for what happened in Oslo."

This was "murder used as a muzzle," she wailed, "to close down free speech or even worse, to stifle general inquiry or independent thinking."

Albrechtsen then went on to lament those who played "the victim game":

"It's been fueled by 2 recent developments," she said. "We now live in an age when feelings are treated as a measure of moral values so that you measure feelings against those of another to determine morality. Hence we live in what author Monica Ali calls 'the market place of outrage' where groups vie for victimhood status, each claiming their feelings have been hurt more than others."

Not a whisper of course about what author Tova Reich (If Albrechtsen can trot them out, why can't I?) referred to in her brilliant satirical, highly politically incorrect novel My Holocaust as "the pioneering work of the Jewish people in the creative and conceptual uses of victimhood and survivorship and Holocausts, a stellar acheivement, truly - memorials and museums across the globe as a reward for your persecution, reparations and restitution, and finally, the greatest prize of all, a country of your own." (2007, p 247)

But the climax of Albrechtsen's speech was her truly hilarious use of the opera metaphor to expose the heavy weapon deployed by the Muslim hordes as they cut their swathe through the late, great continent of Europe - Islamophobia:

"Now over the last few years we've witnessed what has been a familiar opera of Muslim oppression used to shut down debate on this front. The 1st act starts with something simple, perhaps it's a book called Satanic Verses or a silly Danish cartoon or a film called Submission... Then comes the libretto. Muslims... scream about hurt feelings. The drama builds in this 2nd act. Death threats are issued, flags and a few effigies are burnt, and maybe even a few boycotts imposed, and then we hear that great aria of all accusations, Islamophobia. The 3rd act is of course the most depressing. The west capitulates, preferring the path of least resistance to launching a staunch defence of freedom of expression..."

Now if I'd been part of the Q&A which followed the speeches, my question to Planet Janet could only have been: 'Janet, mein Liebling walkure, a question about opera if I may. If ze libretto comes between ze first and ze second acts, what, pray, comes between ze second and ze third acts?'

Of course, Planet Janet, whose bread is buttered daily by Rupert Murdoch and whose 2008 trip to Israel, courtesy of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, knocked her in the aisles, would never dream of characterising the false accusation of anti-Semitism as "that great aria of all accusations." Nor, I'm sure, could she bring herself to agree with former Knesset speaker and World Zionist Organisation head Avraham Burg that there's really no business like Shoah business:

"We have pulled the Shoah out of its historical context and turned it into a plea and generator for every deed. All is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed by the Shoah, and therefore all is allowed - be it fences, sieges... curfews, food and water deprivation or unexplained killings. All is permitted because we have been through the Shoah and you will not tell us how to behave." (The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise from Its Ashes, 2008)

The third speaker, Thilo Sarrazin, former Bundesbanker, senior member of Germany's Social Democratic Party, and author (Germany Abolishes Itself), had, he said, isolated "13 themes which constitute the main body of pc in Germany." "Islam is a religion of peace," was number 6 on his (hit) list. "Those who see any problems with immigration from Islamic countries are guilty of Islamophobia," he explained.

Thus far, the forum had gone according to plan. Muslim-bashing, under the rubric of free speech, is par for the course for right-wing think-tankers who fancy Israel as some sort of bastion of Western values valiantly holding out against a supposed rising tide of Musim fanaticism from the East.

But then Sarrazin threw caution to the winds, venturing where neither Allan nor Albrechtsen before him had gone: "This is nearly as bad as anti-Semitism."

He said, Whaaat?

Can you imagine the collective gasp of disbelief, the mighty swivelling of eyeballs, and the Did he just say what I thought he said? whisperings?

All present, however, kept their cool. Planet Janet, seated next to old loose lips, made no lunge with a chloroform-soaked cloth, and no one in the audience raised the matter in the Q&A session which followed. In fact, PJ had been exceedingly protective of Thilo in her address, having railed that "[t]he other tactic [used to bludgeon free speech] is to quietly exclude certain people from national discourse. We've seen that in Australia just in the last few days with Thilo, so perhaps it's appropriate that I quote a German word, toshwiktaktik (?), and to be toshed is to be subjected to death by silence. Books, ideas and people who challenge the status quo are simply ignored. No, the ABC has not interviewed Thilo. Nor has the Sydney Morning Herald or any of the Fairfax newspapers."

Nor, PJ, has your very own paper, The Australian. Is it too muzzling poor old Thilo?

Notice that PJ is mum on why Sarrazin's's being toshed? Has she too been muzzled? Is she muzzling herself?

Of course, Sarrazin's toshing stems from an interview he gave last year in which he said that "Jews carry a 'particular gene' that sets them apart from all other nations." (German banker: I'm a man of numbers, not anti-Semite, ynetnews.com, 30/8/10)

This caused quite a stir in Germany, with the German government eventually removing him from the Bundesbank and the SPD agreeing to keep him on only after an apology.

But the interesting thing here was not Sarrazin's tosh about genetics but, as Israel's ynet news put it:

"Central Bank executive Thilo Sarrazin spreads anti-Muslim messages on every stage, but only when he speaks against Jews does political establishment unite against him." (ibid)

Not that, given the all-pervasive racism of Israeli society, Sarrazin's statement about Jews upset too many Israelis - as a number of the comments from Israeli Jews in the thread following the ynet report attest:

"Sarrazin has previously said many favorable things about Jews, and this particular statement appears to be correct. He is also spot-on re the Muslim immigration in Germany." Tahl, Ashdod

"Sorry, but the German Banker didn't say anything wrong... The fact is that we, Jews, are the Chosen Nation of G-d and are meant to be different..." Shalom

"Sarrazin is right!!! What is the big deal???... We Jews do have genes in common which set us apart... Kohanim have even more genetics in common. I think the head of the Jewish community blew this out of all proportion." Chaya, Tel Aviv

No, the invisible muzzle which Albrechtsen and her CIS friends (including Sarrazin) refuse to acknowledge is not Islamophobia but the bludgeon of anti-Semitism wielded against legitimate and necessary criticism of apartheid Israel. The CIS couldn't have chosen a better title than You Can't Say That.

Whose Conclusions?

In my 17/11/08 post Rambam Alert, I drew attention to the imminent rambamming of a group of 4 Australian journalists, including Paul Sheehan of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian's Janet Albrechtsen. Both Sheehan and Albrechtsen duly sang for their supper in their respective rags. (See my posts Janet's Dream, 28/11/08, & Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH, 13/1/09, & OFMIPR 2, 19/1/09)

I note, however, that in today's Australian Jewish News, there were actually 8 journalists on "the Jewish community study mission to Israel," 4 sponsored by the Jewish Board of Deputies (JBD), and 4 by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC). The JBD group, in addition to Sheehan and Albrechtsen, also included Peter Charley, EP of SBS TV's Dateline and Jacinta Tynan of Sky News. The AIJAC group was made up of Margaret Easterbrook (The Age), Alan Kirk (foreign editor, The West Australian), John Roskam (ED Institute of Public Affairs Australia), and Rebecca Weisser (The Australian).

Sheehan is quoted as reporting back to a JBD plenum on 17/2/09: "The highlight of the trip 'was the quality and lucidity of so many of the experts. You simply can't replicate this intensity of experience second hand'." So intense were they that, as the AJN informs us, "Sheehan later wrote in one of his... columns that Israel has a 'plethora of warrior-scholars', people who were once in elite military units and are now members of elite academic institutions." (Journalists delve deeper into Israel on study tour)

Planet Janet confided at same that she was hot to trot for more: "[T]he trip had left her 'brimming with ideas and a deeper understanding of the problems facing Israelis, Palestinians and the complicated patchwork of conflicts that is mistakenly - and with a degree of laziness - described as the Arab-Israeli conflict. As soon as I left, I wanted to return to learn more'."

AIJAC ED Colin Rubenstein told the AJN: "[T]he group 'saw the geographical and strategic dimensions of the country and we exposed them to as many people as we could. You try to convey the reality and the complexity of the situation and they draw their own conclusions."

Pull the other!

A Blight Unto the Nations

Everyone (who reads The Australian that is) knows that wild-eyed Palestinian kids are indoctrinated by the Palestinian Authority to hate their doe-eyed Israeli occupiers. And everyone knows that without such incitement to hate the cuddly Israeli troops who kick in their doors, and beat, arrest, imprison and torture their nearest and dearest (aka 'terrorists') Palestinian kids would be raining flowers on these beautiful souls in uniform (see my 28/11/08 post Janet's Dream).

However, once these warm & fuzzy Israelis are out of uniform, and out of the country, strange things happen*:-

"Sa Pa is a beautiful place in northern Vietnam. A peaceful market town nestled between green mountains, streams and rice terraces. Colorful birds fly around in the misty air, and several pigs and a stubborn water buffalo can be spotted in the distance. For the Israeli tourist, the place hosts a different animal - the local women of the Hmong tribe, dressed in black, who have learned to recite a children's song in Hebrew, and sing it repeatedly in the hope that the visiting overlord might agree to buy a handicraft from them for several pennies. If you continue the trek a little further, you can encounter the women of the Dao tribe, who have learned to say 'Come and fuck me' in Hebrew. Yes, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was right - these women's teachers were asses. No, actually why insult the asses? Their teachers were plain Israelis like me and you. The global traveling season is now at its peak. Hordes of tourists are storming Thailand and Laos, South America and Kenya. And the battle has already been decided. The Israeli, any Israeli, has become an icon of evilness, ugliness, corruption and exploitation. There is no use searching for ways to change the behavior of Israelis abroad. This is a lost cause.

"Travel Independent is the online Mecca for tourists worldwide. The website offers accurate, concise and helpful reviews on any destination in the world. And this is what the site has to say about us in its summary on India: 'Aside from Indians you will find travelers from all over Europe, USA and Australia/NZ, including as in Nepal/Thailand and South America a large number of Israelis many of whom are fresh out of the army and seem to do everything they can to further worsen their reputation with locals and foreigners alike'. Travel Independent isn't anti-Semitic. As a travel destination it gives Israel very warm recommendations. The Hmong women aren't anti-Semitic either, and neither are the people of Japan, Peru or Tanzania, or most of the western travelers who witness this humiliation. A new form of hatred towards Israelis is developing among people who don't even have a clue where the country is. An 'anti-Semitism' that has nothing to do with God or Judaism.

"For his part, the Israeli traveler goes out of his way not to be identified as an Israeli, not due to security concerns but simply for fear he will not be welcome. And he makes great efforts not to go where other Israelis go, not for the sake of exclusiveness, but simply because he knows that his countrymen will be the first ones to screw him over. The Israeli pig is the product of years-long and ongoing cultural corruption. He will force the locals to watch episodes from the reality show Big Brother and give them Israeli nick-names just for laughs. His language is poor, and he is utterly uninterested in broadening his horizons. He is hostile towards Arabs and hostile towards foreigners in general and feels obligated to cheat them whenever he can (empty the buffet; sneak 6 people into a double room at night so as not to come out 'a sucker'.) He takes over drug and women trafficking hubs just for the sense of power and bullying. And this image can no longer be altered. Look at them and see us: a violent horde that treats the world as yet another policing mission, a destination that needs to be conquered and subdued. No wonder that in Hebrew the verb 'to do' refers both to the act of sexual conquest and to the completion of the Israeli traveler's tough, military-style trip abroad: 'I did Bolivia'." (Our reputation-our fault, Yehuda Nuriel, ynetnews.com)

As the late Julius Sumner Miller would have said: Why is it so? Janet?

[*See also my 4/12/08 post Zionist S & M.]

Zionist S & M

The capacity of hack Australian journalists such as Janet Albrechtsen, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan and Paul Sheehan to dodge the bleeding obvious whenever they write about the Middle East never ceases to amaze. Two posts ago, I had to introduce The Australian's Janet Albrechtsen to the bleeding obvious in the form of the 'O' word - occupation (Janet's Dream). The bleeding obvious tells us that occupation, any occupation, is always a crime against humanity, and that it's not only bad for the occupied (the 'bleeding' bit, if you will), but for the occupiers themselves, the ones Janet & Greg & Paul really care for:-

"Israeli men are very emasculated and their identity is based on proving how masculine they are, being on top and squashing everyone below them. They need a release from that, which is why professional dominatrixes are in such high demand here. Israeli men would probably be better off if they knew where their sexual hang ups and fetishes came from. When they seek to be humiliated, belittled, made irresponsible and, ultimately, punished, it shows that they carry a lot of guilt. As an outsider, I can see that a lot of it comes from having been in positions of power in the military over a civilian population. They want to act out being in the position of being a Palestinian. It might mean recreating the exact position that a Palestinian was tied up in. A lot of them have urine fetishes... I think because it's an ultimate symbol of humiliation and it's also something that's done to Palestinians. Getting slapped in the face, being blindfolded, getting yelled at and being penetrated in the ass - that's a really big one because it's a potent symbol of humiliation. Also, having any sort of sharp items pointed against them. You have the connotation of the gun as a phallic object but it can be anything serving as that object whether it's a dildo, their own gun that they brought with them from military service, or the heel of a shoe or a riding crop." (Liad Kantorowicz, Israeli dominatrix, quoted in Arthur Neslen, Occupied Minds: A Journey Through the Israeli Psyche, 2006, p 164)

"These descriptions [by Israeli sex tourists in Thailand] ignore the pain and the humiliation that define prostitution, like the physical and psychological violence prostitutes endure. Pattaya sees a very high incidence of murder and violence, Brucker said. Some of the interviewees even told him about bullying the women as though it were a natural part of the relationship between a tourist and a prostitute. 'You feel that you can do anything', said Eli. 'You come and you do everything, all the things you don't do with your wife out of respect, you let yourself do here. Because here they are like a rag for you. If one doesn't want to do something she can go home. There will be another one within seconds, so you can do whatever you want'. 'We are our head, we have fantasy', said David. 'We want to realise our fantasies, and we can't make them happen at home. With the Thai women you can do anything. You can bang her in the ass, she sucks you off, you can put your penis in her ear, her mouth, her nostril. You can do everything'... Another interviewee... explained to Brucker about the ideological messages he insists on relaying to the prostitutes. 'I give them a lot of Zionism, lots of Zionism. I talk about Israel constantly, about the army, how much I don't like Arabs and that they shouldn't go with Arabs. I tell them I was a paratrooper and that I fought the Arabs who killed my commander. I tell them that in Israel, radical Muslims carry out terror attacks. Somehow it isn't easy to explain it to them, but I try'. Brucker surmises that Israeli sex tourism, like domestic violence and sexist attitudes towards women, is directly connected to service in the IDF... 'You see how we have a culture of personal glorification, of saying that who you are is related to the occupation of the other. This is how people grow, through the subjugation of others. It's possible to see this in the way we don't acknowledge what is happening in Gaza or the failures of the Second Lebanon War. We see these as the result of not finishing the job, because the resistance of the prostitute was too strong. She said there was a limit to how much you can trample on her'." (What do Israeli sex tourists in Thailand really think? Yotam Feldman, Haaretz, 30/11/08)

There you have it: in occupied Palestine, the Palestinians resist being screwed by their Israeli occupiers. How frustrating that must be. Thank God for Thai women...

Janet's Dream

Janet, this is the Spirit of Investigative Journalism, come to you in a dream. Truly, this latest column of yours (Hostages to fear & systematic loathing in Israel, The Australian, 26/11/08) is a truly woeful effort, a mere conduit for propaganda fed to you during the course of your recent Jewish Board of Deputies/Israeli Foreign Ministry rambamming (the definition of this term may be found in this site's 17/11/08 post Rambam Alert!) in Israel. How many times have I reminded you of the importance of doing your homework, reading widely, and thinking critically before putting pen to paper? Perhaps I'm being naive here. After all, the whole point of the rambamming process is to recruit journalists such as yourself, and others, to act as uncritical diseminators of Israeli propaganda. Then, of course, there's your job. We all know that Rupert wouldn't have it any other way. Still, I'm disturbed at the tendency of so many of you in the media these days to succumb so easily to the blandishments of Israel lobbyists whenever a rambamming junket is dangled before you. Sadly, it seems that journalistic ethics are now a thing of the past. And please don't think it's enough to append a disclaimer as you've done (although it's certainly more than that dreadful Paul Sheehan did in his paean to Israeli "warrior-scholars" - see the previous post, His Master's Voice) or to gesture half-heartedly to "the Israeli settlements that poison relations and stymie solutions, the Israeli blockade of Gaza" and so on to provide a veneer of objectivity. The reader is not fooled, Janet. He knows where you're coming from. Your column fairly oozes Israel advocacy.

You refer in your introduction to the Clayton's ceasefire entered into by Israel and Hamas in June, and hint darkly about "yet another culprit killing the prospect of peace." I'm sure you didn't have the Israeli military in mind when you wrote this. But were you not aware that UN records show that of the 8 violations in its first week alone, 7 were by the IDF? (UN: Israel violated truce 7 times in one week, ynetnews.com, 27/6/08).

Predictably, you were taken to the Israeli pilgrimage site of Sderot. But did it ever enter your mind to ask why you (and your fellower Australian rambammers), and David Miliband before you, and every other man and his dog undergoing a rambamming, have for years now been whisked off to rocket-ravaged Sderot? Did it ever occur to you that Sderot and its rockets are simply too precious a propaganda tool for the Israeli government to warrant the hammering out of a genuine ceasefire and a real peace with the Gazans, that the inhabitants of Sderot might be simply hostage to the requirements of Israeli power politics? While you were told that Sderot had "endured thousands of rocket attacks in recent years," you were, of course, kept completely in the dark as to the number of rockets, missiles, shells, and bullets rained down on the length and breadth of Gaza for as long as I can remember. Did you ask about that? Did you ask to visit Gaza?

As for that unfortunate "young Ethiopian woman, who has lost relatives to the rocket attacks from Gaza?" Did it not seem odd to you that she hadn't been relocated out of harm's way? Further, did you wonder what an Ethiopian was doing there, in Israel, in the first place, considering how successive Israeli governments have kept millions of Palestinian refugees in political limbo now for over 60 years, denying their right to return to their homes and lands in what, until 1948, had been Palestine? A stark illustration of this bizarre species of discrimination practised routinely by the Jewish State came with the news in August that a group of 1948 Palestinian refugees, "stranded for the last 2 years in a makeshift camp in the desert on the Iraq-Syria border," part of the refugee exodus of your vaunted Operation Iraqi Freedom, had been taken in by - wait for it - Iceland! (Resettlement to Iceland rescues Palestinians from border camp limbo, unhcr.org, 4/8/08)

You mention that "40% of all Palestinians" live in the Gaza Strip. Given this territory's rather arid nature, did you not ask yourself why almost half of all Palestinians not exiled in surrounding Arab countries are cooped up in the Strip in squalid and sprawling refugee camps? The answer's simple, Janet. They're the descendents of Palestinians ethnically cleansed from southern Palestine by Israeli forces under cover of war in 1948 and denied the right of return to their homes and lands in what is today Israel.

On a more prosaic level, who told you that "if elections were held in the West Bank today, predictions are that Hamas would win there, putting an end to the cooperation that has stopped the terrorism emanating from that enclave." In fact, according to the latest poll on Palestinians' voting intentions by An-Najah University, Fatah would take 31.4% of the vote in parliamentary elections against 14.4% for Hamas (Fatah would win Palestinian elections: opinion poll, news.yahoo.com, 26/11/08).

Now we come to your argument: that peace between Israelis and Palestinians is generations away because "an entire generation of Palestinian children is being raised on a full diet of hate education, on jihad and anti-Semitism." Your one and only source is "Palestinian Media Watch... where analysts have long tracked what the Palestinian leadership under Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is doing." What do you really know about this organization? Just how objective do you think it is? I assume you met its director, Itamar Marcus? What do you know about him? Would the fact that he was a Netanyahu appointee in the 90s give you pause for thought? The fact that he is "an Israeli political activist of the West Bank settlement of Efrat who previously lobbied to keep West Bank aquifers under Israeli control?" (Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine, Nathan J Brown, 2003, p 296). For Marcus' earlier 'work', motivated by allegations of 'incitement' in Palestinian textbooks, I refer you to Professor Brown's critique, The Incitement Charge (pp 235-243), in the above book. It does not leave Mr Marcus looking terribly good. Consider it homework, Janet. Ditto for studies by Dr Ruth Firer, Matti Steinberg, the European Union, and Jennifer Miller. A useful point of departure for you might be the 2005 Council for the National Interest study by Reema Hijazi: Unwarranted Controversy: American Politicians, Israeli Critics, & Palestinian Textbooks, cnionline.org.

You write of Palestinian geography books "that encourage children to see no Israel, books that feature maps of Israel in the colours of the Palestinian flag, and described as Palestine." Have you ever asked yourself where exactly are Israel's borders? After all, as Israeli scholar Idith Zertal has pointed out: "At no stage has the State of Israel defined its own borders - optimal, official, secured - nor acted to constitute these borders and win international recognition for them." (Israel's Holocaust & the Politics of Nationhood, 2005, p 184) Should they be the borders of 1947? That is, 54% of historical Palestine? 1949? 78% of historical Palestine? The West Bank minus land alienated from Palestinian ownership by Israel's West Bank Wall? The West Bank minus Israel's settlement blocs? An assortment of non-contiguous bits and pieces which Israeli settlers and/or the Israeli army haven't yet got around to snapping up?

Did you ask to be taken to the occupied West Bank? If you had spent any time there, you would surely have seen evidence of the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements, roads, security zones etc. You would have seen the little that is left of Arab Palestine being wiped off the map with no regard whatever for the 1949-67 Green Line, now a quaint relic of history, which used to demarcate the Israeli border. Even if, as you claim, Palestinian textbooks contain maps of Israel in the colours of the Palestinian flag, it is Israelis, backed by a succession of complicit governments and protected by the IDF, who are busily engaged in painting the actual land, if you like (& I've little doubt you do), in the colors of the Israeli flag. Oh, and did you check out any Israeli textbooks when you were there? Or some of the critical studies on them by the likes of Professor Eli Podeh, or Professor Daniel Bar-Tal? More homework, Janet.

As for soccer matches and summer camps for Palestinian youth "in honour of terrorists," did it ever occur to you to ask about, say, the Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, or the Memorial to David Ben Gurion, or the Ariel Sharon Memorial Park, or the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial, all of whom have presided either directly or indirectly over the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, not to mention guided the ongoing Zionist project of wiping Palestine off the map. And those quizzes "identifying Israeli landmarks, towns and ports such as Haifa, Ashdod and Eilat as Palestinian." Are you aware that these were once Palestinian "landmarks, towns and ports," stolen from the refugees of 1948? Allow me to draw your attention to some Israeli straight talk, for a change - Moshe Dayan's famous speech before students at the Israel Institute of Technology (Techniyon) in 1969: "We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, Jewish state. In a considerable portion of localities we purchased the land from the Arabs. Instead of the Arab villages Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of these villages and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only the books, but also the villages no longer exist. Nahalal was established in the place of Mahalul, Gevat in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Hanifas and Kefar Yehoshu'a in the place of Tel Shamam. There is not a single settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village." (Quoted in Haaretz, 4/4/69) If you care to read about Palestinian Haifa, Janet, see the 7/5/08 post on this site, Bend It like Benny. Many of the families of the children you describe as receiving "hate education" were actually driven out of such places in 1948. This is history, not "hate education."

You ask whether the Australian foreign minister knows how your 'aid' dollar and mine is being used by the Palestinian Authority, whether perhaps it's paying for books showing maps of Israel/Palestine in red, green, white and black. Rest assured, Janet, our hard-earned money is being put to a use I'm sure you'd approve of - "enabling a Vichy-style PA to police Israeli-occupied West Bank Palestinians on behalf of their occupier" - as has been described in this site's 4/11/08 post The Bigger Picture.

And speaking of the bigger picture, Janet, if you want to know what is really shaping the minds of Palestinian children, you need look no further than the Israeli occupation. Here's how the individual is taught to hate by the teachers of the IDF: "I was shocked at the destruction and devastation. I was hysterical and began to cry and scream. I ran all around, but nobody was in the area. I went to where my wife and children were to make sure they were all right, but nobody was in the house. I returned to the ruins of my house and sat on a pile of stones and dirt and started to cry again. People came to comfort me. My neighbors were also in shock. The women screamed and tried in vain to remove possessions from under the piles of stone. The sun was coming up. Thousands of residents, and also journalists, came to the site. My wife and children came home and saw that the house had turned into a pile of stones. My wife fainted, and the neighbours took her to the hospital. The children started to cry. I was still in shock and couldn't do anything, not even go to the hospital to be with my wife. My wife was treated and returned to the site about 3 hours later. My children, who had been wandering around among the thousands of people, came to sit with us on the pile of stones, and we all cried until one o'clock in the afternoon. Some neighbours felt bad about what had happened to us and brought us food. We ate while sitting on the pile of stones. We slept at a relative's house. We all stayed in one room and spent the whole night there. The next day, we returned to the ruins of our house and stayed there all day. For two days, the children did not go to school because all their books and notebooks were buried among the ruins. On Thursday afternoon [12 April], the Red Cross began to distribute tents and blankets to the residents. We received a tent and ten blankets. We put the tent on the stone pile. We sat in the tent throughout the day and at night went to sleep with my relative because we were afraid that the army would fire at the tent to prevent us from returning to live on the site. The next day, some good people came and gave every schoolchild a small bag with notebooks, coloured pens, and a game. On Sunday, the Palestinian Ministry of Education gave all the children whose houses were destroyed a bag and fifty dollars. My children went to school, but their behavior changed. They wet the beds at the relative's house, and screamed in their sleep because of their nightmares." (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Saree Makdisi, 2008, pp 108-109)

And if you really want to know about Palestinian education, check out this appalling set of numbers:

Number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli army, 2000-2007: 854

Percentage of Palestinian children living in fear, according to 2003 USAID study: 93

Percentage who have personally experienced violence: 48

Percentage displaced from home due to violence: 21

Percentage who feel their parents can't protect them: 52

Percentage who value their education as a means of improvement: 96

Number of Palestinian schools closed due to Israeli curfews and closures, 2002: 580

Number of Palestinian schoolchildren affected: 226, 000

Number of Israeli assaults on Palestinian schools, 2003-5: 180

Number of students and teachers killed as a result: 181

Schooldays lost due to Israeli closures in West Bank and Gaza, 2003-5: 1,525

Number of university-age people in Gaza: 400,000

Capacity of Gaza's university system: 70,000

Percentage of university-age Gazans denied the right to an education: 75

Number of Gazan students attending Birzeit University in West Bank, 2000: 350

Number in 2005: 35

Number in 2007: 15

Number of those who are there with permits from Israel: 0

Number who can visit their families and then return to university: 0

Number who can freely move around the West Bank: 0

Number of registered physically disabled people in Gaza: 24,000

Number of educational courses addressing physical rehabilitation in Gaza: 0

Percentage of disabled Gazans barred by Israel from studying in West Bank: 100

Length of closure imposed on Hebron universities by Israeli army, 2002-3: 8 months

(ibid, pp 196-197)

It's really quite simple, Janet: if hate there be, it's the occupation that incites it.

Bummer of Baghdad

The Awfulisers

Every night and every day
The awfulisers work away
Awfulising public places,
Favorite things & little graces
Awfulising lovely treasures
Common joys & simple pleasures.
Awfulising far & near
The parts of life we held so dear.
Democratic, clean & lawful
Awful, awful, awful, awful.

Michael Leunig

The unmitigated awfulness of the Howard years (1996-2007) should never be forgotten:-

"Then there is Iraq. Australia's involvement may have divided the nation, but [former foreign minister Alexander] Downer is unrepentant that it was and remains the right move. Downer's passion for foreign affairs is far from over. He is about to become the fix-it man in the Mediterranean. The official title is the Secretary-General of the UN Special Envoy for Cyprus. Not a bad gig for a man who had his fair share of disagreements with the UN." Janet Albrechtsen*, Warrior Statesman, The Australian, 1/7/08

"Several years ago, with controversy over the invasion of Iraq swirling, Alexander Downer saw a chance to score a point against one of the most credible critics of the government's policy. The then foreign minister was at Melbourne Airport walking towards the gate to catch his flight when he saw walking adead of him, Dick Woolcott. Woolcott was a career diplomat, former secretary of the department of foreign affairs and trade. Although he had retired by the time the Howard government took power, the new government had asked him to perform some delicate diplomatic missions... But the invasion of Iraq changed all that. Woolcott emerged as a critic. Now seizing the moment in Melbourne Airport, did the foreign minister confront Woolcott? Did he argue the merits of the policy? Did he try to change his mind? Or did he tell him what he thought of him? None of these. Yelling above the heads of the other travellers, Downer called out to the back of Woolcott's head, 'Loser!' he told me later. 'Then I ducked down quickly in case he turned around and saw me'. In recounting the story, Downer seemed to think it a very funny thing to do. This was the man who, for nearly a dozen years, represented Australia in the high councils of the world. As this anecdote reveals, Downer can be petty and puerile. He plays a mean-spirited, personal, scratchy game of partisan politics. He can be breathtakingly immature." Peter Hartcher, Vale, Alexander the not-so-great, Sydney Morning Herald, 4/7/08

"Australia must set an example in the West by its continued refusal to appease Israel's enemies, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told a Jewish audience in Melbourne last week... 'We are always being told the best thing for diplomacy is to... abstain... And I say, 'Let's vote against it because it is wrong. The more we and other countries stand up to this sort of behaviour, the more we stand a chance of success; the more we try to appease, the more [anti-Israel resolutions] we will encourage'." (Downer: appeasement fuels anti-Israel fire, The Australian Jewish News, 17/11/06)

Awful.

PS: I'm always fascinated to know what our movers & shakers in politics & the media know, I mean really know, about their subject. In Downer's case, of course, that's international affairs. Listen, for example, to The Australian's Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan* on Downer's reading matter: "Downer is a pretty avid reader of classic literature, history and biography. The book he has most recently read is 'The Return of History & the End of Dreams' by American foreign policy neo-conservative Robert Kagan. He has just started a book on the Sandakan death march... He is a good friend of British historian Andrew Roberts." (Regrets at giant's passing, 5/7/08) Says it all.

And from where does this "giant" derive his views on the rightness of Israel and all her works? Wide reading? Thorough research? No, Judy's cousin, of course. Y'all know Judy, donya? No? Allow the AJN to explain: "Foreign Minister Alexander Downer waxed personal and nostalgic in his admirably pro-Jewish speech at the dedication of the Ohel Devorah synagogue in Melbourne this week. 'I'm not Jewish, as you probably know; I'm a Christian', he started out, recounting the many Jewish friends he had met while at university in England, especially his roomie, Judy, with whom - he made clear - he had a 'platonic relationship'. Downer recounted a visit from Judy's Israeli cousin who stayed with them during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, whose 'agony', he said, 'had an enormous impact on me'." (Downer's Judy, 17/11/06)

* Warrior Statesman, Giant: By their journalists ye shall know them.