What follows is a response, in full, by The Australian's Middle East correspondent, John Lyons, to the bizarre attack launched against him (and the ABC) in last weekend's edition by its foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, over Four Corner's expose of Israel's abuse of Palestinian children, Stone Cold Justice.
To be honest, I had feared a grovel. Happily, though, I was disappointed.
Lyon's piece is an absolute must-read for several reasons:
a) It's full of home-truths about the Israel lobby and Sheridan, its main mouthpiece in the corporate media;
b) It's a superb example of the gulf - yawning in this case - that must inevitably develop between a home-based, doctrinaire foreign editor, for whom support for Israel is an article of faith, and a relatively open-minded Middle East correspondent, exposed on a daily basis to the reality of life in a worse-than-apartheid state;
c) Incredibly, it's all happening in the pages of Rupert Murdoch's Australian flagship.
Savour:
"So a priest at a church Greg Sheridan attended in Melbourne said something possibly anti-Semitic, and somehow ABC1's Four Corners and I are responsible? It's not even certain the priest watched the Four Corners program on Israel's treatment of Palestinian children. But it sounds as if he didn't need anyone to stoke his anti-Semitism - Sheridan said he spoke as someone 'with 2000 years of Christian anti-Semitism behind him'. Sadly, this is the level to which discussion about Israel has sunk.
"Last Saturday, Sheridan said a program I reported for Four Corners was 'a crude piece of anti-Israel propaganda that revived some of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes'. Why can journalists put the Australian Army or federal police or US Army through the ringer, but if we investigate the most powerful army in the Middle East it's anti-Semitism?
"As a correspondent in Jerusalem my job is to report through Australian eyes. What the Israeli army does to Palestinian children systematically - such as taking a 12-year-old from his home at 2am and denying access to a lawyer or parent - would be illegal in Australia. Four Corners showed how Israel enforces two legal systems in the West Bank, one for Jews and one for Palestinians.
"For 'exhaustive rebuttals', Sheridan recommended the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council run by Colin Rubenstein, also based in Melbourne. AIJAC is not an elected body representing the Jewish community but a privately funded lobby group for a rebuttal of journalism. Bob Carr recently revealed that when he was foreign minister, AIJAC 'directed a furious effort at trying to block even routine criticism of settlements, as if this were more vital than advocating a two-state solution or opposing boycotts of Israel'. After reading Carr's comments, prominent Israeli Alon Liel wrote: 'Who are you 'Israeli lovers' of the Australia-Israel Council? Who authorised you to put pressure on the Australian government 'on my behalf'? Especially regarding a matter that affects my family's future? Why are you trying to ruin my country, pretending you are 'pro-Israeli'? Liel, a former Israeli Foreign Ministry chief, wrote: 'What would you do, dear Jew, if the risk of such isolation was hovering over the head of Australia, France or Canada, countries whose passports you hold?'
"He echoed Breaking the Silence, 950 current and former Israeli soldiers, who reported on Palestinian children, including one soldier saying a colleague put children against a wall and made them sing Israel's national anthem - if they didn't sing in time, he'd hit them. Another said his commander beat a child 'to a pulp' and put a gun in his mouth, saying, 'Don't annoy me'. When Melbourne Jewish leader Danny Lamm alleged 'crude propaganda', 15 former officers condemned 'Lamm's armchair Zionism, pontificating from afar while true Israelis put their lives on the line'.
"Sheridan repeated AIJAC's claim about settlements not growing - year after year AIJAC says this while construction booms, even outside existing settlements. US President Barack Obama this week referred to 'aggressive settlement construction'. Israeli statistics show settler housing more than doubled last year, and in the first half of 2011 grew 660%. Outposts are also surging - these are illegal under Israeli law, yet Israel tolerates them. Having visited the West Bank hundreds of times, I am astonished that Melbourne-based people such as Sheridan and Rubenstein portray themselves as experts yet ignore reality.
"Last week, Amnesy International said Israeli forces had displayed a 'callous disregard' by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, over 3 years with 'near total impunity'. Last year, Unicef said ill-treatment of Palestinian children appeared to be 'widespread, systematic and institutionalised', and 'children have been threatened with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault'. In 2012, a delegation of British lawyers led by former attorney-general Patricia Scotland, found Israel had breached 6 articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Geneva Conventions.
"There are also now big issues for Australia relating to the Geneva Conventions, under which Israel's settlements are widely considered illegal. Yet Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has cast doubt on whether Australia accepts the Geneva Conventions in that regard. Her new policy may have serious implications for Australian soldiers overseas - the conventions govern not only how civilians under occupation should be treated but captured soldiers. It was after two world wars with their collective death toll of about 80 million that postwar leaders signed up to the Fourth Geneva Convention. The danger of Bishop cherry-picking the Geneva Conventions could expose Australian soldiers who currently have protection.
"Sheridan ignores the fact Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor told Four Corners soldiers were not appropriately trained to detain children. AIJAC critises me for interviewing 'extremist' settler Daniella Weiss - if she is an extremist then so are key members of Israel's cabinet who share her views. Weiss planned settlements with Ariel Sharon to forestall a Palestinian state.
"Leaders of Australia's Jewish community visiting Israel often approach me for a coffee. One opposed the occupation, saying it was against Jewish teachings to rule over others. Another, from Sydney, wanted the occupation to end. When I asked why he never said that publicly, he replied: 'Are you serious? And have the Melbourne guys declare a fatwa against me? This denial - or fear - does not help Israel.
"The film The Gatekeepers, which interviewed 6 former chiefs of intelligence service Shin Bet, warned about Israel's future. Avraham Shalom said of the Israeli army: 'We have become cruel'. But one Melbourne Jewish leader told me the Shin Bet chiefs were 'all left-wing'.
"An insight into the attacks on journalists covering Israel comes from Clyde Haberman, an Orthodox-raised American Jew who has just retired after 37 years with The New York Times. For decades, he says, the paper has had correspondents who, no matter how different or good, were branded anti-Semitic or self-hating Jews. He says correspondents in Israel could expect 'to have your integrity hurled back in your face every single day'. But he thought of a solution: 'If I didn't want to be accused of hating Israel, I should start every story with: 'Fifty years after 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, Israel yesterday' did one thing or the other'.
"Obama told Israel their occupation was unfair. It is possible that Obama, Unicef, Amnesty International, 950 soldiers, Shin Bet chiefs and others are wrong and that Sheridan and Rubenstein are right. But I don't think so." (Distant 'experts' choose to ignore Israeli realities, 8/3/14)
Stay tuned...
Showing posts with label Stone Cold Justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stone Cold Justice. Show all posts
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Ground Control to Major Greg
Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan's column in last Saturday's Australian was surely the mother-of-all Zionist temper tantrums:
"We are living in a time of infamous lies against the state of Israel and the Jewish people." (Evil & deeply untrue, 1/3/14)
Note the deliberate conflation: Israel = Jews.
"We are witnessing, even in Australia, a recrudescence of some of the oldest types of anti-Semitism."
So Adolf and his hordes have suddenly erupted, zombie fashion, onto the Australian scene?
Er... no, not quite:
"One of the worst recent examples of anti-Israel propaganda that led to anti-Semitic outbursts was the Four Corners episode Stone Cold Justice, purporting to be about treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank."
So, after watching Four Corners on that fateful Monday night, viewers exchanged their thongs for jackboots, and made for synagogues and Jewish-owned shops with consequences so dire that they didn't even surface in the Murdoch press the next day?
"The program featured as a guest reporter John Lyons, of this newspaper. I have the greatest respect for John. He has produced some outstanding journalism in his time."
However:
"In the aerolite he wrote for this newspaper on February 8..."
FYI, an aerolite is a meteorite. A meteorite FFS! Ground control to Major Greg. Ground control to Major Greg.
"... he made some of the same allegations at best unproved and generally unconvincing."
Unproved and unconvincing? Jeez, John, you got off lightly, but watch your back, OK?
But wait, what's this? The Curse of Zion!
"However, the Four Corners program was a disgrace, a crude piece of anti-Israel propaganda that revived some of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes."
Sweet Jesus, will Lyons ever be the same again?
"In the year 2014, are we really going to allege again, on the basis of the flimsiest non-evidence you could imagine, that Jewish soldiers systematically physically crucify innocent children? Is there a school of anti-Semitism 101 operating out there? Do you not think that before you would air an allegation like that, if you had any real sense of editorial responsibility, you would be 100% sure that it was true; you would track down the people alleged to have done it and get their testimony?"
What is this tosser on about?
This, it seems:
"Fathi Mahfouz: Because I didn't confess, he sent me to a room that has a cross in it and hung me on it. I was standing on the tips of my toes, and all my weight was on the handcuffs and my toes. I was hung and he kept hitting me." (Transcript: Stone Cold Justice)
There you have it! This Palestinian Imp of Satan is talking CRUCIFIXION no less!
Well, only in the mind of our cut-rate Torquemada, because Fathi Mahfouz's testimony is entirely consistent with Israeli practice:
"The interrogee is forced to stand with their back to the wall, knees bent either at 90 or 45 degrees, sometimes while standing on the toes rather than on the feet. In this position, we have reports of the use of blows, slaps and punches." (Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel (2011), ed. Abeer Baker & Anat Matar, p 119)
Hey, but you wouldn't expect Greg to have that one on his shelf.
Sheridan, of course, goes on to spin the IDF ("My net judgment is Israel's army behaves with as much consideration for human rights as any modern Western army - US, Australian or European - would do in similar circumstances.") and Israeli settlers ("[P]erhaps 1% or less are genuinely extremist and some of them genuinely violent."), but I won't burden you with that.
There is one other thing though. At the conclusion of his tirade, there's a box which reads: "TALKING POINT NEXT WEEK: JOHN LYONS REPLIES."
It doesn't get much more bizarre than that - a newspaper's Middle East correspondent responding to a bagging by its foreign editor.
"We are living in a time of infamous lies against the state of Israel and the Jewish people." (Evil & deeply untrue, 1/3/14)
Note the deliberate conflation: Israel = Jews.
"We are witnessing, even in Australia, a recrudescence of some of the oldest types of anti-Semitism."
So Adolf and his hordes have suddenly erupted, zombie fashion, onto the Australian scene?
Er... no, not quite:
"One of the worst recent examples of anti-Israel propaganda that led to anti-Semitic outbursts was the Four Corners episode Stone Cold Justice, purporting to be about treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank."
So, after watching Four Corners on that fateful Monday night, viewers exchanged their thongs for jackboots, and made for synagogues and Jewish-owned shops with consequences so dire that they didn't even surface in the Murdoch press the next day?
"The program featured as a guest reporter John Lyons, of this newspaper. I have the greatest respect for John. He has produced some outstanding journalism in his time."
However:
"In the aerolite he wrote for this newspaper on February 8..."
FYI, an aerolite is a meteorite. A meteorite FFS! Ground control to Major Greg. Ground control to Major Greg.
"... he made some of the same allegations at best unproved and generally unconvincing."
Unproved and unconvincing? Jeez, John, you got off lightly, but watch your back, OK?
But wait, what's this? The Curse of Zion!
"However, the Four Corners program was a disgrace, a crude piece of anti-Israel propaganda that revived some of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes."
Sweet Jesus, will Lyons ever be the same again?
"In the year 2014, are we really going to allege again, on the basis of the flimsiest non-evidence you could imagine, that Jewish soldiers systematically physically crucify innocent children? Is there a school of anti-Semitism 101 operating out there? Do you not think that before you would air an allegation like that, if you had any real sense of editorial responsibility, you would be 100% sure that it was true; you would track down the people alleged to have done it and get their testimony?"
What is this tosser on about?
This, it seems:
"Fathi Mahfouz: Because I didn't confess, he sent me to a room that has a cross in it and hung me on it. I was standing on the tips of my toes, and all my weight was on the handcuffs and my toes. I was hung and he kept hitting me." (Transcript: Stone Cold Justice)
There you have it! This Palestinian Imp of Satan is talking CRUCIFIXION no less!
Well, only in the mind of our cut-rate Torquemada, because Fathi Mahfouz's testimony is entirely consistent with Israeli practice:
"The interrogee is forced to stand with their back to the wall, knees bent either at 90 or 45 degrees, sometimes while standing on the toes rather than on the feet. In this position, we have reports of the use of blows, slaps and punches." (Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel (2011), ed. Abeer Baker & Anat Matar, p 119)
Hey, but you wouldn't expect Greg to have that one on his shelf.
Sheridan, of course, goes on to spin the IDF ("My net judgment is Israel's army behaves with as much consideration for human rights as any modern Western army - US, Australian or European - would do in similar circumstances.") and Israeli settlers ("[P]erhaps 1% or less are genuinely extremist and some of them genuinely violent."), but I won't burden you with that.
There is one other thing though. At the conclusion of his tirade, there's a box which reads: "TALKING POINT NEXT WEEK: JOHN LYONS REPLIES."
It doesn't get much more bizarre than that - a newspaper's Middle East correspondent responding to a bagging by its foreign editor.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
From Diversionary Programs to Diversionary Propaganda
In its never-ending quest to defend the indefensible, The Australian Jewish News, in its February 14 issue, launched no less than 5 attacks (+ editorial & front page) on Four Corners' recent exposure of Israel's mistreatment of Palestinian children, Stone Cold Justice. (See my 10/2/14 post Murdoch Beds Aunty.)
The grubbiest, for me at least, was that by lawyer George Newhouse. Billed as "the head of Shine Lawyers social justice department" and one-off "advocate for Aboriginal youth in detention in WA (Wilson v Francis [2013] WASC 157)," his was a cynical attempt to use an entirely unrelated issue - Aboriginal detention rates in Western Australia and the Northern Territory - in order to divert attention from Israel's "systematic abuse and torture"* of Palestinian youths:
"The Four Corners program highlighted the disgraceful treatment of Palestinian youth in the Israeli military youth justice system but they also reported the news that the Israeli government and its military has accepted that reform is required and will take steps to improve military youth justice and detention. That's more than can be said for the governments of Western Australia and the Northern Territory who refuse to address the problem. Things are so bad that the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Chairperson Warren Mundine called for a national summit on Aboriginal justice issues and the soaring incarceration levels... It's time for UNICEF and Four Corners to investigate the treatment of Aboriginal children in youth detention in WA. Until then one might take a jaundiced view about the ABC's internationalist position on this vital issue." (We need to look in our own backyard)
So that's it then. The trigger-happy lads of the WADF (Western Australia Defence Force) are running amok in Aboriginal communities, ripping kids from their beds in the dead of night and secreting them in detention centres, where they're subjected to abuse and torture designed to elicit false confessions of stone-throwing and/or agreement to act as spies and informers.
Well, no.
Since Warren Mundine is Newhouse's cited authority here, let's explore what Mundine has to say about the issue of Aboriginal youth in detention.
The following text, from ABC Radio National's The World Today (Jobs not jail for troubled Indigenous youths: Mundine, 9/1/13) appears to be the source for Newhouse's reference to Mundine but, as you'll see, beyond Newhouse's cherry-picked reference to "soaring incarceration levels," it has little or nothing to do with the content of the Four Corners program:
Samantha Donovan: One of Australia's most prominent Indigenous leaders is calling for a national summit on Aboriginal justice issues to reverse soaring incarceration levels...
Emily Bourke: What's driving this increase?
Warren Mundine: I'm critical of all governments over the years and critical of the Aboriginal leadership... We are looking at the wrong end. We're looking at the jail end of it... We are trying to make culturally appropriate prisons, you know... where people get in trouble, they go on the culture camps. What we should be doing is the complete opposite. We need to be putting diversionary programs in that focus on keeping kids in the classroom and getting into jobs.
Emily Bourke: Warren Mundine says going to jail is a badge of honour for some young Aboriginal men and he also concedes some find it easier and even more appealing to go to jail... Warren Mundine says police and magistrates are hamstrung.
Warren Mundine: I do feel for the legal and also for the policing end because there are not options or supports for them to actually do these diversionary programs. We've got these silly ideas of black prisons and culturally appropriate prisons... We've got to get away from that and we've got to say let's have black classrooms... black jobs... and lets have commercial activity happening in Aboriginal communities rather than the jails.
Clearly, this business resembles Israel's abuse of Palestinian kids about as much as the proverbial chalk resembles the proverbial cheese.
More recently, Mundine is quoted in The Australian as saying:
"What I discovered when I headed Generation One was that there's about 40-50,000 people not in the Centrelink system or in employment so what they're doing is they're living off their families and humbugging... They get into criminal situations. We don't just say 'no dole', we've got to put in place processes to make sure they don't go into criminal activity'." (Youth missing from system, says Warren Mundine, Patricia Karvelas, 15/2/14)
Nor, it seems, does Mundine have any issue with the West Australian government:
"Mr Mundine said he had secured the support of the West Australian Corrective Services Commissioner... and the state government to try out the diversionary plan to tackle the incarceration rate. 'Everyone supported it'... he said."
The lengths Zionists will go to shield the object of their devotion from justified criticism is quite extraordinary. This includes, as we see here, the cynical manipulation of one indigenous issue in order to distract us from paying attention to another.
[*See my 18/4/13 post The UN Goes to Water.]
The grubbiest, for me at least, was that by lawyer George Newhouse. Billed as "the head of Shine Lawyers social justice department" and one-off "advocate for Aboriginal youth in detention in WA (Wilson v Francis [2013] WASC 157)," his was a cynical attempt to use an entirely unrelated issue - Aboriginal detention rates in Western Australia and the Northern Territory - in order to divert attention from Israel's "systematic abuse and torture"* of Palestinian youths:
"The Four Corners program highlighted the disgraceful treatment of Palestinian youth in the Israeli military youth justice system but they also reported the news that the Israeli government and its military has accepted that reform is required and will take steps to improve military youth justice and detention. That's more than can be said for the governments of Western Australia and the Northern Territory who refuse to address the problem. Things are so bad that the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Chairperson Warren Mundine called for a national summit on Aboriginal justice issues and the soaring incarceration levels... It's time for UNICEF and Four Corners to investigate the treatment of Aboriginal children in youth detention in WA. Until then one might take a jaundiced view about the ABC's internationalist position on this vital issue." (We need to look in our own backyard)
So that's it then. The trigger-happy lads of the WADF (Western Australia Defence Force) are running amok in Aboriginal communities, ripping kids from their beds in the dead of night and secreting them in detention centres, where they're subjected to abuse and torture designed to elicit false confessions of stone-throwing and/or agreement to act as spies and informers.
Well, no.
Since Warren Mundine is Newhouse's cited authority here, let's explore what Mundine has to say about the issue of Aboriginal youth in detention.
The following text, from ABC Radio National's The World Today (Jobs not jail for troubled Indigenous youths: Mundine, 9/1/13) appears to be the source for Newhouse's reference to Mundine but, as you'll see, beyond Newhouse's cherry-picked reference to "soaring incarceration levels," it has little or nothing to do with the content of the Four Corners program:
Samantha Donovan: One of Australia's most prominent Indigenous leaders is calling for a national summit on Aboriginal justice issues to reverse soaring incarceration levels...
Emily Bourke: What's driving this increase?
Warren Mundine: I'm critical of all governments over the years and critical of the Aboriginal leadership... We are looking at the wrong end. We're looking at the jail end of it... We are trying to make culturally appropriate prisons, you know... where people get in trouble, they go on the culture camps. What we should be doing is the complete opposite. We need to be putting diversionary programs in that focus on keeping kids in the classroom and getting into jobs.
Emily Bourke: Warren Mundine says going to jail is a badge of honour for some young Aboriginal men and he also concedes some find it easier and even more appealing to go to jail... Warren Mundine says police and magistrates are hamstrung.
Warren Mundine: I do feel for the legal and also for the policing end because there are not options or supports for them to actually do these diversionary programs. We've got these silly ideas of black prisons and culturally appropriate prisons... We've got to get away from that and we've got to say let's have black classrooms... black jobs... and lets have commercial activity happening in Aboriginal communities rather than the jails.
Clearly, this business resembles Israel's abuse of Palestinian kids about as much as the proverbial chalk resembles the proverbial cheese.
More recently, Mundine is quoted in The Australian as saying:
"What I discovered when I headed Generation One was that there's about 40-50,000 people not in the Centrelink system or in employment so what they're doing is they're living off their families and humbugging... They get into criminal situations. We don't just say 'no dole', we've got to put in place processes to make sure they don't go into criminal activity'." (Youth missing from system, says Warren Mundine, Patricia Karvelas, 15/2/14)
Nor, it seems, does Mundine have any issue with the West Australian government:
"Mr Mundine said he had secured the support of the West Australian Corrective Services Commissioner... and the state government to try out the diversionary plan to tackle the incarceration rate. 'Everyone supported it'... he said."
The lengths Zionists will go to shield the object of their devotion from justified criticism is quite extraordinary. This includes, as we see here, the cynical manipulation of one indigenous issue in order to distract us from paying attention to another.
[*See my 18/4/13 post The UN Goes to Water.]
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
The Mistreatment of Children is Intolerable But...
... "to understand the problem in context, it needs to be acknowledged that the Israeli army faces constant and often dangerous provocation in the area, with children in the vanguard of stone-throwing and violence... [It] was an excessive response to an ongoing, simmering conflict and not the product of state-sanctioned racism... Israel's enemies will undoubtedly seize upon the West Bank revelations to falsely depict [the Middle East's only functioning democracy] as being innately racist. It's not and never was." (Editorial: Israel moves on child justice, The Australian, 11/2/14)
A mere overreaction, nothing more, nothing less.
Typically, The Australian's editorial line here is seriously out of whack with its Middle East correspondent John Lyons' clear and unambiguous recognition, in his weekend feature on the subject, that the problem is entirely of Israel's own making:
"While Israel is under pressure over the issue, at its heart is the occupation... Central to the conflict is that the Palestinians wake up each day under an occupation they do not want." (Palestinian children pawns in an unjust system, 8/2/14)
The question arises: does the editor (Sheridan?) even bother reading what his own correspondent writes?
A mere overreaction, nothing more, nothing less.
Typically, The Australian's editorial line here is seriously out of whack with its Middle East correspondent John Lyons' clear and unambiguous recognition, in his weekend feature on the subject, that the problem is entirely of Israel's own making:
"While Israel is under pressure over the issue, at its heart is the occupation... Central to the conflict is that the Palestinians wake up each day under an occupation they do not want." (Palestinian children pawns in an unjust system, 8/2/14)
The question arises: does the editor (Sheridan?) even bother reading what his own correspondent writes?
Monday, February 10, 2014
Murdoch Beds Aunty
Whoopee doo:
"Israel has foreshadowed a dramatic overhaul of its military justice system in the occupied West Bank, following several years of international criticism of its treatment of Palestinian children." (Israel in U-turn on child justice, John Lyons, The Australian, 8/2/14)
Yeah, adult prisons; cages out in the snow; solitary confinement; 'A lawyer? You must be joking'; and 'If you don't cooperate, we're gonna hurt you and/or your daddy real bad, terrorist spawn' - definitely not a good look for Godzone.
Still, a nip here and a tuck there, and hey, no more bad PR (at least on that front).
But check this out:
"The announcement of the need to change has come during a joint investigation of the system by The Weekend Australian and the ABC's Four Corners to be broadcast on Monday night."
That's right, folks, the ferociously Zioconservative, BDS-bashing, ABC-hating Murdoch press in bed with one of the many objects of its fear and loathing! What gives? Is Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan losing his grip?
Something to do with The Australian's Middle East correspondent John Lyons it seems. Maybe he's just big on fatherhood. (For the investigation's genesis see my 18/4/13 post The UN Goes to Water.)
For the time being I'll confine my comments to Lyons' accompanying feature, Palestinian children pawns in an unjust system, in The Weekend Australian.
As you'll appreciate, not many features on the subject of Israel begin thus in Murdoch's Australian flagship:
"Sitting in the heavily fortified headquarters of the Israeli army in Tel Aviv a few months ago, we were surrounded by some of the world's most advanced military technology. Yet it was not the equipment of the most powerful military in the Middle East that went off but my early warning bulldust detector."
Now bulldust detectors are not what you'd normally expect a journalist who reports for Australia's equivalent of The Jerusalem Post, but we press on:
"The subject of discussion was the military's treatment of Palestinian children... It was all going well until one officer made an absurd comment. Every so often in journalism you hear something that makes you wonder about everything else that person has said."
Stone the crows, is this the very first time Lyons' bulldust detector has gone off in all those years of listening to and parroting Israeli officials? But I digress:
"My question had been simple: how many Palestinian children go through Israel's military court each year? 'Unfortunately our computer software cannot distinguish between children and adults,' the officer said. 'Maybe 200.' The answer was ridiculous: Israel's army and intelligence service know every kilometre of the West Bank. My assessment, based on reliable sources, is that Israel has as many as 20,000 paid Palestinian informants in the West Bank. Israel is also a leader in technology; the notion that its computers were unable to distinguished between detained minors and adults was absurd. I replied that UNICEF estimated it was about 700 children a year. 'That would be right,' he agreed instantly."
Lyons outlines UNICEF's findings on the matter before writing that:
"At the heart of the issue is that Israel enforces two legal systems in the West Bank, one for Jews and one for Palestinians... Palestinian children appear before the military court, while Jewish children face a civil court with full legal protection."
Yes, it's called apartheid, John.* And here's where my own bulldust detector began humming a merry tune:
"Typically, a Palestinian child is taken by the army in the middle of the night and blindfolded, handcuffed and transported to an unknown location. Unlike Jewish children, they are not allowed to have a parent or a lawyer present; often their parents do not know their whereabouts for weeks. Palestinian children from the age of 12 are often sentenced to 3 months' imprisonment while a Jewish child cannot go to prison until 14 and jail for them is rare."
Jewish children? What Jewish children? Find me one - just ONE - instance of any of those settler darlings EVER ending up in an Israeli court!
Still, credit where credit's due. I guarantee that there are more instances of the 'O' word in the following Lyons' paragraph than in all editions of The Australian stretching back decades:
"While Israel is under pressure over the issue, at its heart is the occupation. When it began occupying the West Bank, there were about a million Palestinians there. Now there are 2.5 million. Central to the conflict is that the Palestinians wake up each day under an occupation they do not want."
That has to be worth something.
[*The 'A' word actually appeared in a Lyons' headline back in 2012, occasioning much wailing and gnashing of teeth at The Australian. For which, see my posts Consensus at Last (7/5/12) and Down the Memory Hole (10/5/12).]
"Israel has foreshadowed a dramatic overhaul of its military justice system in the occupied West Bank, following several years of international criticism of its treatment of Palestinian children." (Israel in U-turn on child justice, John Lyons, The Australian, 8/2/14)
Yeah, adult prisons; cages out in the snow; solitary confinement; 'A lawyer? You must be joking'; and 'If you don't cooperate, we're gonna hurt you and/or your daddy real bad, terrorist spawn' - definitely not a good look for Godzone.
Still, a nip here and a tuck there, and hey, no more bad PR (at least on that front).
But check this out:
"The announcement of the need to change has come during a joint investigation of the system by The Weekend Australian and the ABC's Four Corners to be broadcast on Monday night."
That's right, folks, the ferociously Zioconservative, BDS-bashing, ABC-hating Murdoch press in bed with one of the many objects of its fear and loathing! What gives? Is Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan losing his grip?
Something to do with The Australian's Middle East correspondent John Lyons it seems. Maybe he's just big on fatherhood. (For the investigation's genesis see my 18/4/13 post The UN Goes to Water.)
For the time being I'll confine my comments to Lyons' accompanying feature, Palestinian children pawns in an unjust system, in The Weekend Australian.
As you'll appreciate, not many features on the subject of Israel begin thus in Murdoch's Australian flagship:
"Sitting in the heavily fortified headquarters of the Israeli army in Tel Aviv a few months ago, we were surrounded by some of the world's most advanced military technology. Yet it was not the equipment of the most powerful military in the Middle East that went off but my early warning bulldust detector."
Now bulldust detectors are not what you'd normally expect a journalist who reports for Australia's equivalent of The Jerusalem Post, but we press on:
"The subject of discussion was the military's treatment of Palestinian children... It was all going well until one officer made an absurd comment. Every so often in journalism you hear something that makes you wonder about everything else that person has said."
Stone the crows, is this the very first time Lyons' bulldust detector has gone off in all those years of listening to and parroting Israeli officials? But I digress:
"My question had been simple: how many Palestinian children go through Israel's military court each year? 'Unfortunately our computer software cannot distinguish between children and adults,' the officer said. 'Maybe 200.' The answer was ridiculous: Israel's army and intelligence service know every kilometre of the West Bank. My assessment, based on reliable sources, is that Israel has as many as 20,000 paid Palestinian informants in the West Bank. Israel is also a leader in technology; the notion that its computers were unable to distinguished between detained minors and adults was absurd. I replied that UNICEF estimated it was about 700 children a year. 'That would be right,' he agreed instantly."
Lyons outlines UNICEF's findings on the matter before writing that:
"At the heart of the issue is that Israel enforces two legal systems in the West Bank, one for Jews and one for Palestinians... Palestinian children appear before the military court, while Jewish children face a civil court with full legal protection."
Yes, it's called apartheid, John.* And here's where my own bulldust detector began humming a merry tune:
"Typically, a Palestinian child is taken by the army in the middle of the night and blindfolded, handcuffed and transported to an unknown location. Unlike Jewish children, they are not allowed to have a parent or a lawyer present; often their parents do not know their whereabouts for weeks. Palestinian children from the age of 12 are often sentenced to 3 months' imprisonment while a Jewish child cannot go to prison until 14 and jail for them is rare."
Jewish children? What Jewish children? Find me one - just ONE - instance of any of those settler darlings EVER ending up in an Israeli court!
Still, credit where credit's due. I guarantee that there are more instances of the 'O' word in the following Lyons' paragraph than in all editions of The Australian stretching back decades:
"While Israel is under pressure over the issue, at its heart is the occupation. When it began occupying the West Bank, there were about a million Palestinians there. Now there are 2.5 million. Central to the conflict is that the Palestinians wake up each day under an occupation they do not want."
That has to be worth something.
[*The 'A' word actually appeared in a Lyons' headline back in 2012, occasioning much wailing and gnashing of teeth at The Australian. For which, see my posts Consensus at Last (7/5/12) and Down the Memory Hole (10/5/12).]
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