Ever noticed how political transitions in Israel are reported in the corporate press? As though the change constitutes some kind of clear break with the past?
Take the replacement of defence minister Moshe Ya'alon by Avigdor Lieberman, for example:
"Israel's departing defence minister has denounced the 'extremist and dangerous elements' that 'have overrun Israel and the Likud party' as he left office." (Minister's parting shot at 'extremists', Telegraph/UK/The Sun-Herald, 22/5/16)
"Yaalon was one of the last moderate voices in Netanyahu's Likud party." (Israeli defence minister steps down, clearing way for hardliner, Associated Press, theguardian.com, 23/5/16)
You'd never guess that the 'anti-extremist/moderate' Ya'alon had once said that the goal of the Israeli occupation was "to sear deep into the consciousness of the Palestinians that they are a defeated people," and that "we have to consider killing [former Iranian president] Ahmadinejad."
Showing posts with label Moshe Ya'alon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moshe Ya'alon. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2016
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Paul Sheehan: Journalist Sans Frontieres
From Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan's obituary for Sabina Van Den Linden Wolanski (1927-2011):
"After creating a successful business importing elegant homeware from Europe and Japan, and astute investments in real estate, she became a woman of means. She then proceeded to give much of her wealth away. She supported a variety of causes which all had a common theme - to seek to increase tolerance between cultures.... She also funded a program for sending journalists to Israel, with no restrictions, so they could experience first-hand the complexities at the core of tensions in the Middle East." (Survivor used her loss to help unite world, 27/6/11)
Ah yes, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies Journalists Mission*. And don't you just love Sheehan's spin: with no restrictions. Does that mean that our fearless, crusading journalist ventured to the frontlines of the Israeli colonisation of the West Bank, dodging 'rubber' bullets and tear gas canisters with Palestinians protesting the loss of their land to the Apartheid Wall; or venturing out with Palestinian farmers who harvest their olives while under attack by armed settler gangs; or walking to class with Palestinian kids in Hebron as they're pelted with stones by the brainwashed brats of settler scum; or witnessing the latest settler burning of a Palestinian orchard; or reporting on the Israeli demolition of a yet another Palestinian home?
Of course not.
For Sheehan, it means sitting at the feet of Israeli "warrior-scholars" such as former IDF chief Moshe 'Boogie' Ya'alon, listening to House Arab and Jerusalem Post 'journalist' Khaled Abu Toameh, or getting the drum on just how anti-Semitic Arabs really are from settler Itamar Marcus, before returning to pen Israeli propaganda without disclosing who sponsored him. (See my posts His Master's Voice (27/11/08); and Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH (13/1/09 & 19/1/09)
[*On what I term rambamming, of which the NSWJBoD Journalists Mission is but one component, see my 30/3/09 post I've been to Israel too.]
"After creating a successful business importing elegant homeware from Europe and Japan, and astute investments in real estate, she became a woman of means. She then proceeded to give much of her wealth away. She supported a variety of causes which all had a common theme - to seek to increase tolerance between cultures.... She also funded a program for sending journalists to Israel, with no restrictions, so they could experience first-hand the complexities at the core of tensions in the Middle East." (Survivor used her loss to help unite world, 27/6/11)
Ah yes, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies Journalists Mission*. And don't you just love Sheehan's spin: with no restrictions. Does that mean that our fearless, crusading journalist ventured to the frontlines of the Israeli colonisation of the West Bank, dodging 'rubber' bullets and tear gas canisters with Palestinians protesting the loss of their land to the Apartheid Wall; or venturing out with Palestinian farmers who harvest their olives while under attack by armed settler gangs; or walking to class with Palestinian kids in Hebron as they're pelted with stones by the brainwashed brats of settler scum; or witnessing the latest settler burning of a Palestinian orchard; or reporting on the Israeli demolition of a yet another Palestinian home?
Of course not.
For Sheehan, it means sitting at the feet of Israeli "warrior-scholars" such as former IDF chief Moshe 'Boogie' Ya'alon, listening to House Arab and Jerusalem Post 'journalist' Khaled Abu Toameh, or getting the drum on just how anti-Semitic Arabs really are from settler Itamar Marcus, before returning to pen Israeli propaganda without disclosing who sponsored him. (See my posts His Master's Voice (27/11/08); and Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH (13/1/09 & 19/1/09)
[*On what I term rambamming, of which the NSWJBoD Journalists Mission is but one component, see my 30/3/09 post I've been to Israel too.]
Friday, April 9, 2010
High in the Sky Hopes
"The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before, Israel's interest in a peace process - other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo - has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon, is 'to sear deep into the consciousness of the Palestinians that they are a defeated people'." (The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam, Henry Siegman, LRB, 16/8/07)
This diplomatic scam of scams continues:
"Barack Obama is 'seriously considering' proposing a US peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to 2 top administration officials. 'Everyone knows the basic outlines of a peace deal', said one of the senior officials, citing the agreement that was nearly reached at Camp David in 2000. He said a US plan, if launched, would build upon past progress on such issues as borders, the 'right of return' for Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem. The second senior official said, '90% of the map would look the same' as what had been agreed in previous bargaining. The US peace plan would be linked with the issue of confronting Iran, Israel's top priority, explained the second senior official. He described the issues as 2 halves of a single strategic problem: 'We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000ft level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region' as well as the Israelis and Palestinians." (Obama's latest Middle East peace plan a case of back to the future, David Ignatius/Washington Post Writers Group, The Australian, 9/4/10)
Away from settlements and East Jerusalem, 30,000ft up in the air?
Yeah, right.
This diplomatic scam of scams continues:
"Barack Obama is 'seriously considering' proposing a US peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to 2 top administration officials. 'Everyone knows the basic outlines of a peace deal', said one of the senior officials, citing the agreement that was nearly reached at Camp David in 2000. He said a US plan, if launched, would build upon past progress on such issues as borders, the 'right of return' for Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem. The second senior official said, '90% of the map would look the same' as what had been agreed in previous bargaining. The US peace plan would be linked with the issue of confronting Iran, Israel's top priority, explained the second senior official. He described the issues as 2 halves of a single strategic problem: 'We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000ft level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region' as well as the Israelis and Palestinians." (Obama's latest Middle East peace plan a case of back to the future, David Ignatius/Washington Post Writers Group, The Australian, 9/4/10)
Away from settlements and East Jerusalem, 30,000ft up in the air?
Yeah, right.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
His Master's Voice
"Prepare for war. Last week I met the Boogie Man, the former head of the Israeli Defence [sic] Forces, General Moshe 'Boogie' Ya'alon, who is preparing the political groundwork for a military attack on Iran's key nuclear facilities," writes recently rambammed (see Rambam Alert!, 17/11/08) Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan (Israeli hawks ready to fly on Iran, 24/11/08).
Of course, you wouldn't know about Sheehan's rambamming because there's nothing anywhere in (or near) his propaganda - sorry - opinion piece to indicate that he's just been on a NSW Jewish Board of Deputies/Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs junket to Israel to meet the Boogie Man and other Israeli Strangeloves, or "warrior-scholars" as Sheehan prefers to call them.
Boogie's message is: "There is no way to stabilise the Middle East today without defeating the Iranian regime... We have to consider killing [Ahmadinejad]." So, this swaggering psychopath - sorry - warrior-scholar with the ridiculous moniker, who's aiming for a cabinet post should the right-wing Likud* come to power in next year's Israeli elections, asserts the untrammeled right of the Middle East's No. 1 Destabiliser to 'stabilise' the Middle East by rolling any other nation that dares lift its head and knocking off its leader. And Sheehan's role in all this Israeli sabre-rattling (accompanied by the absurd Mucci cartoon: a mushroom cloud cradling a missile), is to sell Israel's military madness to the Australian public. It is a mark of the Herald's precipitous decline into irrelevance as a source of informed and critical comment that, while the likes of Sheehan are kept on, real journalists such as Mike Carlton and (soon) Alan Ramsey are cut loose.
[*Sheehan has the nerve to refer to the Likud, ideological heir of revisionist Zionism and the pre-state terrorist Irgun, as "conservative."]
The Australian's opinion editor Rebecca Weisser (in need of no rambamming whatsoever when it comes to amplifying the party line), was also there in Jerusalem (Israeli general ups ante on Iran, 24/11/08) channeling the very same threats from Boogie.
I particularly enjoyed this little gem: "General Ya'alon said a two-pronged approach was necessary to defeat jihadism. 'From top down, using a big stick... From bottom up, using education'." You can add that to your file of pithy Zionist sound-bytes.
Even better, however, came in Weisser's potted bio of Boogie - a reference to the great man's "success in quelling the second Palestinian offensive launched in September 2000."
Offensive? You do remember the Great Palestinian Offensive of 2000, don't you? How the terrifying might of the Palestinian armed forces, with firepower the likes of which the world had never seen before, was unleashed on the hapless, helpless Israelis who were all but driven into the sea?
Until Boogie Boy turned up to give the Palestinians a bit of stick, that is.
Of course, you wouldn't know about Sheehan's rambamming because there's nothing anywhere in (or near) his propaganda - sorry - opinion piece to indicate that he's just been on a NSW Jewish Board of Deputies/Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs junket to Israel to meet the Boogie Man and other Israeli Strangeloves, or "warrior-scholars" as Sheehan prefers to call them.
Boogie's message is: "There is no way to stabilise the Middle East today without defeating the Iranian regime... We have to consider killing [Ahmadinejad]." So, this swaggering psychopath - sorry - warrior-scholar with the ridiculous moniker, who's aiming for a cabinet post should the right-wing Likud* come to power in next year's Israeli elections, asserts the untrammeled right of the Middle East's No. 1 Destabiliser to 'stabilise' the Middle East by rolling any other nation that dares lift its head and knocking off its leader. And Sheehan's role in all this Israeli sabre-rattling (accompanied by the absurd Mucci cartoon: a mushroom cloud cradling a missile), is to sell Israel's military madness to the Australian public. It is a mark of the Herald's precipitous decline into irrelevance as a source of informed and critical comment that, while the likes of Sheehan are kept on, real journalists such as Mike Carlton and (soon) Alan Ramsey are cut loose.
[*Sheehan has the nerve to refer to the Likud, ideological heir of revisionist Zionism and the pre-state terrorist Irgun, as "conservative."]
The Australian's opinion editor Rebecca Weisser (in need of no rambamming whatsoever when it comes to amplifying the party line), was also there in Jerusalem (Israeli general ups ante on Iran, 24/11/08) channeling the very same threats from Boogie.
I particularly enjoyed this little gem: "General Ya'alon said a two-pronged approach was necessary to defeat jihadism. 'From top down, using a big stick... From bottom up, using education'." You can add that to your file of pithy Zionist sound-bytes.
Even better, however, came in Weisser's potted bio of Boogie - a reference to the great man's "success in quelling the second Palestinian offensive launched in September 2000."
Offensive? You do remember the Great Palestinian Offensive of 2000, don't you? How the terrifying might of the Palestinian armed forces, with firepower the likes of which the world had never seen before, was unleashed on the hapless, helpless Israelis who were all but driven into the sea?
Until Boogie Boy turned up to give the Palestinians a bit of stick, that is.
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