Murdoch Venom

Reading Murdoch's Australian is like watching a funnel web spider walking leisurely across your living room floor. You are so transfixed by the horror of it all that you just cannot look away.

By way of example, here are just two from the rag's letters page:

"Now that the Coalition has received a new mandate, Scott Morrison should follow up on the commitment he made at last year's Wentworth by-election to move Australia's embassy to Jerusalem. (Ari Hurwitz, Vaucluse, NSW, 27/5/19)

"I'm not buying Anthony Albanese's change of heart. A damascene conversion requires him to repent, and I suspect he still harbours the mortal sins of open borders, wealth redistribution, rampant taxation and class warfare deep in his breast. Belief in the discredited miracle of magic-pudding economics won't be sufficient to get him to the Pearly Gates of the Lodge." (Peter Raftery, Indoorroopilly, Qld, 27/5/19)

Albanese? Class Warrior?

Give me a break!

The  Murdoch press is replete with straw men and women. Anyone who dares not toe its line is painted in the most lurid of colours. Labor leader-in-waiting, Anthony Albanese, is no exception to the rule - except that, at this stage at least, the Murdoch press has hopes of grooming him as another Bob Hawke, or Tony Blair, if you will.

But first, the straw man:

Albo vows to end class war ran the banner headline on page one of Thursday's issue of The Australian. (For the uninitiated, Albo, a purported left-winger, looks set to succeed the hapless Bill Shorten as leader of the federal Australian Labor Party.)

All talk here of 'class war' is, of course, ludicrous. Whether it's Shorten or Albanese at the helm, the ALP wouldn't know what class war was if it hit it in the face. Still, such propaganda tropes are standard fare, deployed by the Murdoch press against any public figure it chooses to mount a crusade against..

The Australian's Peter van Onselen, now a professor of politics at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University, dishes out the following Murdochratic advice/ directive:

"He may well be, having shown a willingness over the years to crab-walk away from causes considered too radical for a mainstream politician... But to do so in more than an superficial way... Albanese will need to prove that he truly believes in the economic structures that support people's aspirations... " ('Tory fighter' should follow Hawke)

Although I'm not party to Albanese's past record of rhetorical flourishes, I seriously doubt he's ever resorted to expressions the Big End of Town, Us & Them, neoliberalism, privatisation, and other expressions of the social and political reality that oppress us all on a daily basis. For example, has he said anything about the $33bn stock market surge which followed Morrison's election win?

For the record, Friday's Australian trotted out a photograph of Albanese with UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, taken last year. Front page, of course. Here's the opening paragraph:

"Labor's leader in waiting Anthony Albanese will be forced to jettison the hard-left policies he has espoused for more than three decades... Mr Albanese has become close to far-left British Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn... " (From left field: Albanese, Corbyn and co, Andrew Burrell/ Andrew Clennell)

Further on in the same piece, there's a reference to his "decades-long history as a spear-thrower for Labor's hard left."

In the same issue, former Zionist lobbyist (and, quite incidentally, MP for Melbourne Ports) Michael Danby, has an opinion piece, headed Let's see if feisty Albo's made of Hawke's right stuff, in which we find yet more blather about Albo/Hawke, as well as this wonderful example of the psychological phenomenon known as projection: "... a ratbag such as Jeremy Corbyn."

I am familiar, however, with Albanese's utterly lame and gutless statements over the years on the subject of Palestine/Israel, the infallible test of principle and courage in today's world. For example:

2009: "I don't support the boycott of Israel, I support engagement... dialogue and discussion." (Q & A)

2011: Albanese accused the then Greens-dominated Marrickville Council of "simplistic sloganeering" when they bravely dared to adopt a pro-BDS policy, and lamely opined that "the inner west of Sydney is... a place where neighbours live in harmony regardless of religion or race."

2016: Albanese expressed "concern" about foreign policy funding, and said China, Israel and Taiwan were among the biggest spenders of sponsored travel and donations in Australia.

2018: Albanese warned about "Israel's actions... damaging the country's reputation."

Reading Brendan O'Neill

What happens when you just make it up as you go along? Well, chances are that what you write will end up looking something like an opinion piece by Brendan O'Neill - half-baked, propagandist. 

O'Neill, editor of Spiked, is often recycled in Murdoch's Australian, and it's easy to see why:

"[F]ocus too much on Islamist terrorism these days and you risk being accused of Islamophobia. 'Christians used to do this kind of thing,' they will say, inaccurately, to deflect attention from their own unwillingness to take a strong moral stance on Islamist extreme violence. Or they will point out that the US and Britain and other nations are still engaged in violent conflicts in the Middle East... even though they must know, somewhere inside their moral universe, that there is an immeasurable difference between America's military campaigns in the Middle East (which are wrong)... " (Islamist barbarism thrives on West's weak response, 26/4/19)

"Which are wrong"? Why the brackets, Brendan? Why the dropped voice? Why not say it loud and clear: AMERICA'S MILITARY CAMPAIGNS IN THE MIDDLE EAST ARE WRONG? And why not say why? Because Islamist terrorism has been the result of such campaigns - from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya and to Syria.

"... and the wilful slaughter of children queuing for sweets..."

Of course, our USraeli friends are never "wilful" when they slaughter children queuing for sweets:

"Witnesses to Sunday's incident said a missile that appeared to be a rocket hit an area just outside the gates of the Rafah Preparatory, a boys school where children were queuing to buy sweets and biscuits from stalls. The school had been providing shelter to more than 3,000 people - the same number that had been seeking refuge at a girls school in Jabaliya last Wednesday when it came under attack from a hail of Israeli shells. In contrast to that strike, which wrecked a classroom full of sleeping woman and children, the physical destruction this time appeared minimal: just a small but deep hole in the road where the missile had landed. But that clinical effect masked a devastating human cost. Pools of blood... were seen inside and outside the school, demonstrating how the blast's powerful impact had wished inside the grounds of what was supposed to be a safe haven." (Gaza school attacked as children queue for sweets, Robert Tait, telegraph.co.uk, 3/8/14)

Nothing personal there, of course, just good, clean collateral damage, right? Sorry about that, kids.

"Whether it is their accusations of Islamophobia or their morally relativistic comparison of today's new barbarism with the behaviour of Western armies, the liberal elites key aim seems to be to avoid having to take a strong position on this new, strange, spectacularly anti-human violence."

And, Brendan, what precisely do you mean by "liberal elites"? Do you mean someone like Obama's Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton? 

Was her position on "today's new barbarism" not "strong"? Didn't she propose defeating ISIS "on the battlefield" and working "with our allies to dismantle global terror networks"? (See Combating terrorism & keeping the homeland safe, hillaryclinton.com)

And yet you've already said, "America's military campaigns in the Middle East are wrong." So cut the crap and tell us what you mean by "a strong position."

The trouble with Clinton is that she doesn't seem at all interested in taking on certain regimes who inspire and stoke Islamist terrorism, and for obvious reasons:

"On the contributions given by state actors to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was US Secretary of State, Assange discusses one email in particular: 'There's an early 2014 email from Hilary Clinton... to her campaign manager, that states that ISIS is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.' He states, 'Actually, I think this is the most significant email in the whole collection, perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the place including into many media institutions. Analysts know, even the US government has mentioned, or agreed with, that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS, funding ISIS, but the dodge has always been that it's just some rogue princes using their cut of the oil money to do whatever they like but actually the government disapproves, but that email says that no, it's the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have been funding ISIS." (Never forget: the towering exposure of Hillary Clinton by Assange and WikiLeaks, Clinton Emerald, 21stcenturywire.com, 13/11/16)

Nor, for that matter, does the other side of the US coin, non-liberal, populist Donald Trump.

"A weak and morally disoriented West that will not strongly condemn the nihilistic ideology behind the slaughter of Christians in Sri Lanka..."

Now that "nihilistic ideology" wouldn't be Saudi Wahhabism, would it, Brendan?

 "... is a West that cannot feign surprise when such violence continues. It is no longer enough to say 'that's awful' and then move on; we need a serious reckoning with the war on Christians, the rise of seventh-century barbarism and the collapse of any semblance of moral restraint among the new terrorists."

And Brendan, isn't your phrase, "the rise of seventh-century barbarism," just a sneaky euphemism for Islam? Please explain why this isn't Islamophobia.

Bet you'd never conflate the barbarity of the Crusades with Christianity, or for that matter "America's military campaigns" - which you admit are ("wrong").

White Shite

You know in your bones that if a celebrity scholar gets an entire (broadsheet) page to strut his stuff, a thumbs-up editorial, and a glowing introductory article in Murdoch's Australian, that something's seriously amiss. I'm talking here about The Australian's new poster boy, Eric Kaufmann.

Just to fill you in, here's part of the glowing intro by Bernard Lane:

"The political Left is unlikely to succeed in its attempt after the Christchurch Muslim massacre to reimpose politically correct taboos on immigration debates, says an international expert on the rise of right-wing populism. In the war of words after Christchurch, Left activists and Muslim firebrands [!!] have attacked conservative politicians and media outlets for supposedly arming the Australian-born accused killer with bullets of xenophobia and hate speech... 'The Left is trying to use Christchurch to delegitimate the conversation [!!] about Muslim integration and immigration - this is no more intelligent than the Right using jihadist attacks like Charlie Hebdo (in Paris in 2015) to demonise Muslims,' London-based political analyst Eric Kaufmann told The Weekend Australian.

"In his book White Shift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities, he argues the success of the populist Right in the West is driven by rapid ethnic change and the white majority's fear for its identity, not by the economic misery of workers 'left behind'. He offers a surprising idea for taking the heat out of culture conflict in the West and easing polarisation in politics. Until recently, mainstream parties had followed the Left's 'anti-racist taboos' on criticising multiculturalism or immigration, thereby gifting votes to Donald Trump, Brexit and a host of parties such as One Nation, he said. With actual racism in decline [!!], the post-1960s Left had widened the definition of racism and demonised white majorities, unwittingly serving as 'a force multiplier' for the populist Right.

"Professor Kaufmann, from Birkbeck College, University of London, predicts immigration trends will see minorities outnumber whites in the US by 2050, with Australia going 'majority-minority' one or two decades later. He said it was not racist for whites, like any other ethnic group, to expect their interests to figure in the trade-offs of immigration policy. Parties such as One Nation actually made white terror attacks less likely because they served as a democratic safety valve for the angst of white majorities [!!], he said. He said there was a danger of more white terror if conservative white insecurity about immigration was forced back underground. But far-right attacks such as last month's massacre of Muslims in New Zealand were 'rare and not really on the rise'.' (Left losing migrant high ground, 6/4/19)

Not at all rare, however, are Western massacres of Muslims in the Middle East by white majority Western 'defence' forces, cheered on, or tacitly supported, by their white majority base at home, but these of course are nowhere mentioned in Kaufmann's calculus.

I'll have more to say about his thesis in my next post, but will leave you to ponder the following key extract from his book, as it appears in The Australian of April 6:

"Ethnic nationhood, which restricts citizenship to members of the majority, is clearly a non-starter. But things aren't so black and white. There is a third possibility - ethno-traditional nationhood, which values the ethnic majority as an important component of the nation alongside other groups. Ethno-traditional nationalists favour slower immigration to permit enough migrants to voluntarily assimilate into the ethnic majority, maintaining the white ethno-tradition. The point is not to assimilate all diversity but to strike a balance between vibrant minorities and an enduring white Christian tradition." (White Fright: It's not racist to be attached to one's own culture)

Jesus Christ!

To be continued...

The Way of The Greens

Only in Murdoch's Australian:

"Jewish groups [ie Zionist lobbyists] are furious over 'hatred-inciting' [ie factual] comments accusing Israel of 'genocide' made by the lead organiser of the Greens' campaign in Melbourne's most Jewish electorate."* (Greens face backlash over genocide claim, Elias Visontay, 2/4/19)

Oh dear!

"David Jeffery, a staffer for Greens candidate Steph Hodgins-May in the seat of Macnamara [formerly known as Melbourne Ports], said [correctly] deaths in the Gaza Strip were 'genocide', and used the hashtags '#F...kFascism' and '#noPrideInGenocide' in Facebook posts." (ibid)

Howls of outrage from readers of the The Australian: 'Booh! Hiss!' 'Off with his head!' 'To the stake!'

Enter Grand Inquisitor Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Hue and cry subside as he thunderously hurls the charge:

"Mr Jefferey's 'appalling comments represent the lowest form of activism. [They] betray a complete contempt for the sovereign rights of the Jewish people and an ignorance of fact and history - which can serve to incite hatred'." (ibid)

And then, smiling, almost in a whisper:

"[I urge Ms Hodgins-May] to consider whether she wishes to be associated with a person of Mr Jefferey's temperament and intellectual capacity'." (ibid)

Enter a shaken Steph Hodgins-May:

"Ms Hodgins-May told The Australian she would make arrangements for Mr Jeffery to spend time with the Jewish community in the seat 'to better learn why the language was harmful'." (ibid)

The accused is then dragged in to cries of 'Recant! Recant!' from readers. 

And then, in a still, small voice:

"Mr Jeffery told The Australian he was 'wrong to use a word like genocide... to describe the actions of the Israeli government, although I strongly oppose its conduct'." (ibid)

[*"The comments from last year, which have been seen by The Australian, have since been deleted." (ibid).]

Pre-Election Fundraising at the Pratt's 3

Sadly, some of us just don't get it:

"Bill Shorten and his colleagues constantly rail against 'the big end of town'. The billionaire, Anthony Pratt, was kind enough to throw a fundraiser for Labor. Probably the only thing that Malcolm Turnbull got right was Shorten's propensity for getting his knees under the dining tables at the top end of town." Letter of Annette James, Beauty Point, Tas, The Australian, 29/3/19)

Do you think, perhaps, our correspondent would get it if she read the following?

"In front of six billionaires and 450 of Australia's business and political elite, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday heralded a new era of closeness between Israel and Australia... Six billionaires - Gina Rinehart, Harry Triguboff, Solomon Lew, John Gandel, Jeanne Pratt and her daughter Fiona Geminder watched the leaders commit to closer relations between the two countries." (Colour me Aussie, leader tells the faithful, John Lyons, The Australian, 23/2/17) (See my 26/2/17 post 'A Sea of Billionaires & Millionaires'.)

Not, of course, that Murdoch's Australian has any interest in people 'getting it' - just the opposite - but is 'getting it' really that hard?

'A Brave Move'

The Australian's editorialist is yet to greet an USraeli manoeuvre, or aggression, with anything less than hearty approval. The latest example, A realistic decision on Golan:

"Donald Trump's historic proclamation announcing US acceptance of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights has much to do with the tough fight Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces in next month's election. But the President's reversal of decades of US policy on the highly strategic Golan is timely recognition of Middle Eastern reality [...] Mr Trump will be criticised for what is a brave move. But the Syrian civil war has radically changed strategic challenges in the region. It is no longer realistic for the Jewish state to be expected to go back to pre-!967 borders." (27/3/19)

One of the enduring mysteries behind such seals of approval is who writes them. Greg Sheridan? AIJAC?

Zionist Propaganda Fatigue

Yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald excelled itself, devoting half a page to Zionist propaganda.

"Spacecraft snaps epic selfie," reads the headline.

That was followed by this nauseous Zionist trumpeting:

"Organisers of a privately funded Israeli space mission released a striking photo on Tuesday, London time. It shows the spacecraft Beresheet, Hebrew for Genesis, orbiting some 37,500 kilometres away, with the entire Earth (including Australia) visible. A plaque includes the Hebrew inscription 'The People Of Israel Live'. It's scheduled to land on the moon on April 11."

And the "epic selfie" of the headline turns out to be a sticker (?), partly obscuring a distant planet Earth. It contains an Israeli flag and the words SMALL COUNTRY, BIG DREAMS - yes, in bold upper case letters.

Meanwhile, in yesterday's Australian, we find the screaming headline Israelis shoot Palestinians dead after car-ram attack.

When you read the report, however, the "car-ram attack" begins to look more like a road accident.

What appears to have happened is this:

1) Israeli troops were leaving a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank after a routine terrorising of its inhabitants.
2) Their vehicle broke down near a bend in the road.
3) Three young Palestinian men in a small car, travelling in the opposite direction, rounded the bend and accidentally collided with the stationary Israeli vehicle, injuring 2 soldiers in the process.
4) Trigger-happy troops opened fire, killing two of the Palestinians and wounding a third.
5) The wounded survivor was  forced to confess that he and his friends had intended to ram the troops and also that they had been driving around, "hurling firebombs."
6) Conveniently, the troops allegedly "found additional firebombs" in the Palestinians' car.

In short, the Israeli troops murdered two Palestinian civilians, spun their crime as a response to a terrorist attack, tortured a wounded Palestinian to extract a confession, and planted 'evidence' at the scene of the crime.

Mahmoud Habbash, "a Palestinian supreme [court] judge and adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas," quoted in the AFP report, makes the bleeding obvious point: "It is inconceivable that three young men carry out an operation to run over the occupation soldiers in a car. One driver would be enough."

As it happens, we've seen this scenario before - in the Israeli film Foxtrot (2018), where troops manning a checkpoint shoot up a Palestinian car, killing those inside, and bury the vehicle with the bodies still inside as a cover-up.

Electronic Intifada's Maureen Clare Murphy provides the following context in her report of the incident:

"The Israeli newspaper Haaretz also noted: 'Veteran security figures who have been keeping watch on the West Bank for years can't recall a case of using a car to deliberately ram into people when there was more than one person inside the vehicle.' The paper added: 'Car ramming attacks generally involve one person, who may have acted on momentary impulse.' Israeli forces have opened fire on Palestinian vehicles in which more than one person was traveling in what Israel said were alleged attacks over the past few years, killing a brother in a car with his sister and a teenager travelling with his fiancee. Last year, Israeli forces and armed civilians killed 15 Palestinian assailants or alleged assailants in the West Bank." (Two Palestinians killed in alleged attack, 4/3/19)

But those details would be a bridge too far for Murdoch's Australian.

Mike Carlton's 'On Air' 4

Great globs of bias and invention in the Murdoch gutter tradition...

"The Herald was getting twitchy. There was a snowstorm of letters to the editor from Jewish readers protesting furiously about the column, the headline and the Le Lievre cartoon. The cartoon drew the initial fire; a lot of people assumed I had drawn it, and written the headline as well. There were angry demands for me to be sacked. Dutifully, the editor published some of the more rational letters in the paper. Other people cancelled subscriptions. A number of Jewish-owned businesses withdrew their advertising... On the grapevine, I heard that directors on the Fairfax board were having their arms twisted and their ears bent, not least by the AIJAC. Many were receptive.

"On Monday, 4 August the editor-in-chief of the Herald, Darren Goodsir, publicly apologised for the cartoon. He also phoned to ask me to apologise to anyone I had offended. Reluctantly, I said I would consider it. The time bomb was ticking.

"Unsurprisingly, it exploded in the Murdoch press, led by the Australian and the Daily Telegraph. I had been on their notorious 'shit list' for years. The Australian had managed to get hold of the tweets and a lot of the emails I had sent to my attackers. The tweets were available for all to see, but the emails were not and obviously had been forwarded to the paper in a bunch. By whom? Your guess is as good as mine. The next day they were splashed in a long front-page story. It was heaven on a stick for the Murdochracy. There were two big birds to kill with one stone: the hated Fairfax press in general, and me in particular. Away they went. 'Fairfax Media is under pressure to sack columnist Mike Carlton, who has been ordered to apologise for using anti-Semitic and abusive language towards readers,' it began. On and on it went, a poisonous cocktail of a few facts heavily larded with great globs of bias and invention in the Murdoch gutter tradition. With malicious dishonesty, the paper mentioned not once the torrent of Jewish hatred which had prompted my response. There was not a syllable of the Nazi smear, the 'Hitler's bitch' stuff. The impression given - deliberately - was that I had exploded with rage at polite, reasoned criticism.

"I believe the Telegraph was even more vile in its attack on me. I never bothered to read what it ran - not then, not since - but I was told it splashed all over the shop as well. Somebody showed me the artwork they had confected. Against the background of a bombed and burning village, my head had been wrapped in a keffiyeh, the chequered Arab scarf, then photo-shopped onto the stooped and evidently fleeing body of a man in burned and tattered clothing. Carlton's a terrorist, geddit?" (pp 511-12)

To be continued...

Something for a Religious Freedom Commissioner to Chew On?

Scott Morrison's proposed legislation to 'protect' freedom of religion has The Australian's editorialist scratching his head:

"How would the new religious freedom commissioner (who must also defend those of no faith) deal with an arrogant, Richard Dawkins-like assault on Christianity? Could a Shia Muslim haul a Sunni before a tribunal for 'conciliation'? Would Scientology or Falun Gong qualify as religions? If a critic faults Islamism on political grounds, could a radical make a complaint of religious discrimination? Would a court ruling that a witness in a niqab or burka show her face come under challenge?" (Scott Morrison's big ideas and the problem of detail, 14/12/18)

These, of course, are all just hypotheticals. And yet, there on the front page of the same edition, The Australian featured a matter anything but hypothetical:

"Sending her three children to Leibler Yavneh College at Elsternwick, in Melbourne's southeast, is a form of 'life insurance' for Zoe Goodhardt. But this is an insurance policy like no other. It is the guarantee Ms Goodhardt says that her family's Jewish faith and way of life can continue untrammelled. So it is no surprise as rising secularism clashes with the beliefs and values of traditional faiths that Ms Goodhardt, 32, has rushed to support Scott Morrison's pledge to protect religious freedom... 'I think that it's our right, and the right of the school, to cultivate a community at the school in line with their ethos and values,' Ms Goodhardt says... At Yavneh College, that community is based around the modern orthodox school's mission to adhere to Jewish law (Halacha), ethical behaviour (Derech Eretz) and Zionist ideals." (Keeping religion alive lies at heart of family's values, Brad Norrington, The Australian, 14/12/18)

Since Zionism is the ideological driving force behind the settler-colonial, apartheid state of Israel, could this not be grounds for a Palestinian complaint to a future 'religious freedom commissioner' that the school's Zionist focus is aimed at producing students who, in one way or another, could conceivably go on to aid and abet, or even become directly involved in, the violation of Palestinian rights?

And if you think this is a stretch, keep in mind that "Modern Orthodox Jews form the core of the religious Zionist settlement movement in Israel." (See 5 key takeaways... from new survey of US Modern Orthodox Jews, Ben Sales, The Times of Israel, 30/9/17)

How typical of Murdoch's Australian to instance "Islamism", while ignoring political Zionism, with its blatant conflation of religion and politics, even when (on this rare occasion) it makes it to the front page.

(On this matter of Palestine/Israel in court, readers might like to trawl through my posts Sixteen Angry Men 1 (25/9/10), Sixteen Angry Men 2 (28/9/10), and Sixteen Angry Men 3 (29/9/10). These are well worth a re-read.)

Night Thoughts of a Western Civilisationist

Those baby boomers have a lot to answer for, it seems:

"Western civilisation is losing its pre-eminence because it threw it away in the 1960s. When the burgeoning demographic of Baby Boomers reached angry adolescence, they had found the truth in sex, drugs and rock and roll and making love not war. Being angry at the establishment was exciting. Many never learned another thing and, like Peter Pan, never grew up, especially those who taught humanities and social sciences in schools and universities. Their minds turned towards subjects where victimhood and identity politics determined intellectual content, and violence and intimidation became the medium of communication. These are the eternally young Philistines who are responsible for the Australian education system today. The Ramsay Centre is a wonderful antidote but it is fighting a war against a large barbarian enemy and will need more troops and a well-developed strategy to win. Rome fell because of the enemy at and within the gates - and the loss of civic virtue. The West faces China, Russia and militant Islam and this cancerous social disease of eternally young and stupid totalitarian toddlers inside. The new dark ages are a distinct possibility." (Letter of Jim Wilson, Beaumont, SA in The Australian, 29/5/18)

Only in the Murdoch press...

Circle the Wagons!

The 70th anniversary of the ill-conceived, apartheid state of Israel is looming, and Murdoch's Australian is literally salivating at the prospect.

On Thursday, we had a 6-page supplement -  INNOVATION NATION - "Seventy years ago on May 14, David Ben-Gurion read the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the state of Israel. In an arid landscape, the nation has succeeded through ingenuity in endeavours including agriculture and, more recently, hi-tech centred on Tel Aviv and its Silicon Wadi" (19/4/18) - and a lead article by Bruce Loudon, A miracle shaped from the desert, in which he amusingly confuses Israel's apartheid Law of Return with the Palestinians' international law-backed right of return:

"The 'right of return' has attracted migrants with a commitment to the future of Israel."

"And then there is the upsurge of violence in Gaza. Hamas terrorists are inciting impoverished Gazans into defiant protests under the banner of a 'Great March of Return' aimed at reclaiming Palestine, to coincide with Israel's 70th anniversary."

But for me the highlight of Loudon's leader was his resurrection of the hysterical words of Israel's first ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban (who, btw, once cynically quipped that "Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what one does not believe oneself"):

"Surrounded by hostile armies on all its land frontiers, subjected to savage and relentless hostility, exposed to penetration raids and assaults by day and by night, suffering a constant toll of life among its citizens, bombarded by threats of neighbouring governments to accomplish its extinction by armed force - embattled, blockaded, besieged, Israel alone among the nations faces a battle for its security anew with every approaching nightfall and every rising dawn."

An oldie but a goldie. Made my day.

Facepalm

"For a handful of settlers to take their laws, values, language, technology, medicine and civic institutions out of Europe and transplant them to largely underdeveloped lands across the other side of the planet in an age of no internet, no smartphones and no air travel is a miracle; a miracle that not only continues to benefit those whose ancestors set it in motion but those who joined the team later." (We should rescue these people from a failing system bent on revenge, Sherry Sufi*, The Australian, 20/3/18)

[*Chairman of the West Australian Liberal Party's policy committee.]

The Greatest Story Never Told

The Australian's currently on a 'Bring back the Bible!' binge.

Or, as columnist Angela Shanahan in today's edition, puts it: "To understand fully the beauty of Western culture, children need to know the Bible." (Greatest stories ever told bring a spark to young minds)

Opines Angela:

"Knowledge of the principal foundation documents of our own culture, found in the biblical texts, especially the Gospels, is necessary for understanding the evolution of the Christian world. The emergence of Christianity from the classical world, into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, has shaped our culture. Within their education, children need to know just the stories, which are beautiful, dramatic and exciting, like the foundation myths from Genesis, but to have the great themes of the Old Testament explained to them."

Notice how seamlessly, in Angela's telling, Christianity emerged from the classical world? Except that this was anything but a smooth transition. What ever happened to the Dark Ages (476-800)? An inconvenient truth for today's propagandists of 'Judeo-Christianity' apparently.

Here's a reminder:

"The evidence from surviving manuscripts is clear: at some point, a hundred or so years after Christianity comes to power, the transcription of the classical texts collapses. From AD 550 to 750 the numbers copied plummeted. This is not, to be clear, an absolute collapse in copying: monasteries are still producing reams and reams of religious books. Bible after Bible; copy after copy of Augustine is made. And these works are vast. This was not about an absolute shortage of parchment; it was about a lack of interest verging on outright disgust for the ideas of a now despised canon. The texts that suffer in this period are the texts of the wicked and sinful pagans. From the entirety of the sixth century, only 'scraps' of two manuscripts by the satirical Roman poet Juvenal survive and mere 'remnants' of two others, one by the Elder and one by the Younger Pliny. From the next century, there survives nothing save a single fragment of the poet Lucan. From the start of the next century: nothing at all.

"Far from mourning the loss, Christians delighted in it. As John Chrysostom crowed, the writings 'of the Greeks have all perished and are obliterated'. He warmed to the theme in another sermon: 'Where is Plato? Nowhere! Where is Paul? In the mouths of all!' The fifth century writer, Theodoret of Cyrrhus observed the decline of Greek literature with similar enthusiasm. 'Those elaborately decorated fables have been utterly banned,' he gloated. 'Who is today's head of the Stoic heresy? Who is safeguarding the teachings of the Peripatetics?' No one, evidently, for Theodoret concludes this homily with the observation that 'the whole earth under the sun has been filled with sermons'. Augustine contentedly observed the rapid decline of the atomist philosophy in the first century of Christian rule. By his time, he recorded, Epicurean and Stoic Philosophy had been 'suppressed' - the word is his. The opinions of such philosophers 'have been so completely eradicated and suppressed... that if any school of error now emerged against the truth, that is, against the Church of Christ, it would not dare to step forth for battle if it were not covered under the Christian name'.

"A slow but devastating edit of classical literature was taking place. It is true that the appalling loses of knowledge that followed were not usually the result of dramatic, discreet actions - the burning of this library, the fury of that particular abbot - though these played their part. Instead, what ensured the near total destruction of all Latin and Greek literature was a combination of ignorance, fear and idiocy. These weapons have less narrative heft, perhaps, but when left unchecked they can achieve a great deal.

"Much was preserved. Much, much more was destroyed. It has been estimated that less than ten percent of all classical literature has survived into the modern era. For Latin, the figure is even worse: it is estimated that only one hundredth of all Latin literature remains. If this was 'preservation' - as it is often claimed to be - then it was astonishing incompetent. If it were censorship, it was brilliantly effective.

"The ebullient, argumentative classical world was, quite literally, being erased." (The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, Catherine Nixey, 2017, pp 165-66)

Middle East 'Experts' 2

'Expert' alert!

"Experts have long believed Syria held back tonnes of precursors used to manufacture sarin when it gave up its stockpile in 2013 under a Russian-brokered deal. Its production facilities, however, were destroyed, robbing it of the ability to mix fresh sarin from the precursors." (Kim's hands on Assad gas attack, The Times/AFP/The Australian, 1/3/18)

Are these the same 'experts', I wonder, who 'analyse' the Syrian president in light of The Godfather? (See my 23/2/18 post Middle East 'Experts')

No need to wonder further. On the very same page (10) of The Australian, we find one of them, Shalom Lipner! Under a column headed Political winds blow Netanyahu's sinking ship to a rocky shore, comes this potted bio:

"Shalom Lipner, a former foreign policy adviser to the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, is a non-resident senior fellow at the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution."

But there's more! In today's Australian, two more of these 'experts' - Mark Dubowitz and Jonathan Schanzer - appear on the opinion page as authors of Australia must not be duped into softening its stance on Iran. Their bios:

"Mark Dubowitz is chief executive of the the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defence of Democracies where Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice-president."

Takes you back to the days of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, doesn't it?

Middle East 'Experts'

This tripe is passed off as "analysis" in Murdoch's The Times:

"Middle East experts used to wonder whether Bashar al-Assad was the Syrian equivalent of ruthless Michael Corleone, the savagely conflicted son of The Godfather, or his wimpy brother Fredo Corleone ('I can handle things! I'm smart!'). Seven years into a war that has left half a million corpses, 6 million Syrians internally displaced and more than 5 million as refugees abroad, Syria's President seems to be Don Corleone and Michael rolled into one." (Assad proves all Corleones are bad, no matter what the spin, Roger Boyes, The Times/The Australian, 22/02/18)

Seriously now, Roger, old chap, name one - just one! - credible "Middle East expert" that "used to wonder whether Bashar al-Assad was the Syrian equivalent of... Michael Corleone"?

Roger...?

Under the Heel

You can learn a lot from the Australian's editorials. (Fortunately, so in need are we of enlightenment in these dark times, their always industrious editorialist churns out around three per day.) As it happens I found two of today's particularly enlightening.

Spain confronts jihadi menace, for example, informed me that between 711 and 1492 "most of what is now Spain and Portugal was under the heel of Muslim Moors."

I got from this that Muslims had heels and that to find oneself under one of these was indeed most unfortunate.

As for the second, Patriots should close ranks informed me that "the defacement of statues of Captain Cook, Queen Victoria and Governor Macquarie in Sydney" was a huge NO-NO.

This got me wondering. Was I safe in concluding that the editorialist believed that, unlike your Muslim Moors, Christian Brits lacked this particular anatomical feature?

I believed I was - which led me to speculate:

Are heels an exclusively Muslim thing? Is this because of Islam? Is it in the Muslim DNA, so to speak, to grind non-Muslims underfoot?

Conversely, are Christians (and Jews for that matter), by virtue of their heel-lessness, therefore incapable of such dreadful behaviour?

Yes, that must be it! And so, with the editorialist's assistance, I could not but reflect on just how lucky Australia's first peoples were to make the acquaintance of James, Victoria, Lachlan and their ilk!

My God, if it'd been those bloody Muslims and their bloody heels, they'd have been in real trouble.

The Australian Reviews John Lyons

John Lyon's invaluable book, Balcony Over Jerusalem, was reviewed in today's Australian by one of its journalists, David Leser.

Unfortunately, Leser's seemingly irresistible urge to defend the indefensible - apartheid Israel - and indulge in special pleading for Palestine's colonisers and occupiers tells us far more about Leser than it does about Lyons' book.

Here we go then:

"... the Middle East is a hellishly complex place. Every aspect of history is contested. Every word is loaded."

Quite why Leser feels he has to reference the entire Middle East when dealing specifically with Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is anyone's guess. But I simply don't understand how he can seriously talk about contested history and loaded words without reference to the following passage which he earlier quotes from Lyons' book: "If the whole world could see the occupation up close, it would demand that it end tomorrow. Israel's treatment of the Palestinians would not pass muster in the West if the full details were known. The only reason Israel is getting away with this is because it has one of the most formidable public-relations machines ever seen..."

Without Israel's vast propaganda apparatus there'd be neither contestation nor loading.

"I've argued with family members over this issue, and lost Jewish friends in the process - all because I believe, like Lyons, that the occupation is a moral stain on both the Jewish State and the Jewish soul."

I don't get it. Why the arguments? Occupied river-to-sea Palestine belongs to neither Leser nor his family. Neither he nor his family nor his Jewish friends have a right to one centimetre of Palestinian soil. And not only is the occupation he refers to "a moral stain," the very existence of a "Jewish State" on Palestinian Arab land is a moral stain on all who conceived it, created it, and, today, continue to support it.

"My concern is that for all the rush of understandable anger [Lyons] directs at Israel, his book is mostly devoid of sympathy for the multiple internal problems and frailties that Israelis face, not to mention the wild diversity of the country's immigrant survivor population."

Does Leser seriously expect Lyons (or anyone else), who has, in Lyons' words, seen the occupation "up close," to sympathise with its perpetrators? Has Leser, in his 40-year-old career as a journalist, ever once felt sympathy for the people of any other occupying power? And, seriously, where is the "wild diversity" in a Jewish state?

"Throughout history Jews have been despised, displaced, vilified, persecuted and, ultimately exterminated for the fact of their Jewishness, and they have carried their collective trauma - this epigenetic inheritance - into a murderous neighbourhood where they are both a minority and majority at the same time. A tiny minority among hundreds of millions of (mostly) Arabs and a majority when it comes to the Palestinians."

And the Palestinian Arabs are responsible for that? Historical anti-Semitism in Europe trumps the right of Palestinians to their Palestinian homeland? What kind of sick morality is that? And who funneled European Jews into said "murderous neighbourhood"? I'll tell you who - the murderous Zionist movement, motivated by one hell of a murderous idea: Jews in, Palestinians out.

"That, along with countless wars and acts of terrorism over the past 70 years, is what has driven the psychopathology of victimhood and its inevitable - and terrible - consequence: oppression."

Yes, countless wars... initiated by the Israeli army. And countless acts of terrorism... initiated by the Israeli army and its pre-state predecessors, the Haganah, the Irgun and the Stern Gang.

But the biggest deception here is Leser's omission of any reference to the Zionist movement. The dark truth is that Israel is the product of a settler-colonial movement, riding roughshod, as these movements do, over the rights of the natives, not some pitiable creature whose past was so traumatic that it just can't help using the Palestinians as a collective punching bag.

John Lyons' Book Featured in Guardian

Some choice excerpts from Pro-Israel advocates in Australia targeted three journalists, new book claims (Amanda Meade, 29/7/17):

*Lyons, Sophie McNeill (ABC) and Peter Cave (ABC) "were subjected to consistent pressure from the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)." AIJAC "prepared dossiers on Cave and other ABC reporters 'and sent them to like-minded journalists and members of parliament'."

*Lyons "says the former editor of the Weekend Australian Nick Cater refused to publish [Lyon's] work and the pro-Israel lobby bombarded editors with criticism of his reports. 'I phoned Cater and he confirmed that he'd asked for my work to no longer appear in the Inquirer... I let [editor-in-chief Chris] Mitchell know that... the exclusion from the Inquirer was just the latest in a long series of disagreements with Nick Cater... he intervened and told Cater that excluding me from the Inquirer was not acceptable."

*"Lyons writes that an Israeli embassy official was invited by Cater to the Australian's head office in Canberra, and told editors that the embassy was not happy with them. 'To me the idea of an officer of a foreign government wandering the floor of my newsroom criticising me was outrageous'."

*"In 2015, AIJAC sent a file on McNeill to Jewish members of the ABC board, including the then chairman James Spigelman, and this file claimed among other things that she was unsuitable because she had said 'one of the saddest things I've seen in my whole life is spending time filming in a children's cancer ward in Gaza'." The then ABC managing director Mark Scott ordered a detailed response from corporate affairs, which he took to the board. 'I will not cower to the AIJAC,' Scott said, according to Lyons. Scott was also forced to defend McNeill from attacks at Senate estimates after the dossier was sent to key parliamentarians."

*"Lyons writes that AIJAC director Colin Rubenstein had unprecedented access to the Australian, speaking regularly to editors and even suggesting articles the paper should run... Mitchell, who was supportive of Lyons, later told him that Rubenstein would go behind his back and call Cater if he refused to take his call, Lyons writes."

*"Lyons argues that Australian journalists should not accept the trips to Israel organised by the lobby - 'During my time in Israel I would come to believe that Australia's uncritical support of Israel is both illogical and unhealthy,' he writes. 'For more than 20 years, Australians have read and heard pro-Israel positions from journalists, editors, politicians, trade union leaders, academics and students who have returned from the all-expenses-paid Israel lobby trips. In my opinion, no editors, journalists or others should take those trips: they grotesquely distort the reality and are dangerous in the sense that they allow people with a very small amount of knowledge to pollute Australian public opinion'."

Bob Carr Responds to Norrington:

"For the record, your feature article (Carr alarms pro-Israelis, 6/7) implies extreme language from me out of my recent speech making the case for recognition of Palestine and an end to the occupation.

"In my speech I was doing no more than advocating what every former head of Shin Bet and Mossad has advocated, although in more pungent language than mine. Paragraph 4 of the article has this dastardly Carr accusing Israel Israel of implementing a 'looting bill' and condoning 'war crimes'. Let's make it clear: this was Carr quoting Labor leader Isaac Herzog and Likud Knesset member Benny Begin. They were not Carr formulations. Two other Israeli prime ministers have used the word 'apartheid' - Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. The assassinated Yitzhak Rabin is reported to have used the same language.

"'Massacres' in 1948 was a conclusion of Benny Morris, an Israeli historian, who detailed this from Israeli army archives. As I said in an op-ed published in The Australian on November 8, 2014, Morris's revelations were a tribute to openness in Israeli society. And I began my speech by paying tribute to Jews who opposed the occupation - a number in attendance at the meeting - and said they were the best allies of the cause for Palestinian recognition. It would have been nice if that had been included." (Letter to The Australian, 7/7/17)

The irony here is that "Benny Morris' revelations," far from being "a tribute to openness in Israeli society," as Carr says, reveal only the extreme pressure brought to bear on any academic who departs from the Zionist narrative. Rather than stand and defend his revelations, let alone draw universal moral conclusions from them, Benny Morris long ago effectively reverted to the role of a shill for Israel. (My May 2008 posts on the subject make for harrowing reading, Bob. Just click on the Benny Morris label below.)

In today's Australian, there's more from Norrington on how Carr has been instrumental in "rolling" the NSW ALP's foreign affairs committee [dominated by Mike Kelly MP], which had recently assured Bill Shorten that the current "soft language" of its Palestine/Israel policy - "committing Labor in government only to 'discussing' recognition [of Palestine] with like-minded nations if there was no progress in peace talks," would be retained at the upcoming NSW Labor Conference. This Carr has done by coming up with an alternative policy, resolution 23 on the party's agenda, reportedly agreed to by shadow foreign minister Penny Wong, Jason Clare MP, and state secretary Karla Murnain, which the foreign affairs committee has to accept. "Carr's supporters," says Norrington, "wanted an even stronger resolution, but accept the revised Murnain wording," which they are "confident the federal conference will adopt next year." (How Carr turned ALP from Israel to Palestine)

Oh, and an op-ed by ALP political has-been-turned-defender-of-Israel, Peter Baldwin, in which, despite Zionism's age-old stranglehold over the ALP, he contends that "the Labor Party risks becoming a vehicle for sectional interests."