Tuesday, January 22, 2019

I Read the Herald Today, Oh Boy

I see that Nine Entertainment Co. rag The Sydney Morning Herald is crowing about polling that shows that its "readership has surged ahead of its News Corp rivals after the way digital and newspaper audiences are measured was changed to better take into account growing consumption on mobile devices." (Herald moves further ahead in readership, 21/1/19)

But what exactly are readers 'consuming'?

Among other things, chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies Vic Alhadeff''s account of his recent junket in Germany as a "guest of the German Foreign Ministry" (Confronting Germany's new generation of neo-Nazis, 19/1/19).

Parenthetically, just why the German government would be squandering its taxpayers' money on a Zionist shill from down under is anyone's guess.

After informing us that "German Jews - who include an estimated 30,000 Israelis - are overwhelmingly positive, while profoundly concerned at the emergence of the AfD [Alternative for Deutschland]" party, which includes "neo-Nazi elements," he proceeds to tell us that "3600 British Jews have applied for German citizenship in the event Jeremy Corbyn becomes that country's prime minister."

Now before you exclaim, 'the mind boggles', remember that what you're dealing with here is a typical propaganda trick: cherry-picked facts taken out of context.

Here's The Times report on the subject:

"Thousands of British Jews have applied for foreign passports since 2016, driven mainly by a desire to retain EU citizenship after Brexit but also by fears over rising antisemitism and the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn coming to power. New figures obtained by The Times show that more than 3,600 Britons have applied for German nationality under a 2015 scheme inviting the descendants of those driven out on religious, racial or political grounds by the Nazis to reclaim citizenship, with most applications from Jewish people." (British Jews apply for foreign passports as 'insurance policy', Kaya Burgess, 17/11/18)

"... driven mainly by a desire to retain EU citizenship after Brexit... " says it all.

9 comments:

Grappler said...

Not only British Jews:

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2014/10/11/next-year-in-berlin


And I doubt if these are experiences any antisemitism at home.

Over half a million Israelis are living outside Israel. That out of a population of 8.7M. I'm guessing but I suspect Jews would be disproportionately represented.

Anonymous said...

Because I refuse to pay for the shite that is printed in our daily rags, either hard copy or online (except when I need it for fire lighting), I would be interested in their 'coverage' of the IDF's latest bombing of Syria's Defense forces, any 'reportage' at all?

Grappler said...

I have only just discovered the following site:

https://skwawkbox.org/2018/09/10/orthodox-rabbis-statements-in-support-of-jeremy-corbyn/

and am still not sure how reliable it is, but is suggests that not all Jews in the UK support Sacks over his "anti-semitism" attack on Corbyn. I used Google to find the existence of the letter in the Jewish Chronicle - where it is portrayed as fake or at least suspect (they didn't know what they were signing). Only after turning to another search engine - Duck Duck Go in this instance - did I find the skwawkbox page above. Another article at swkawkbox suggests that the Jewish Chronicle is backpedalling on the "fake" claim.

https://skwawkbox.org/2018/09/13/jewish-chronicle-rows-quietly-back-from-claims-rabbis-corbyn-support-letter-is-fake/

Grappler said...

An answer to Anonymous, I - and many others - find South Front a good source of reports on Syria.

https://southfront.org/

Btw, the Israelis didn't attack Iranian targets as they said they did, they attacked Syrian air defence systems - not all that effectively apparently.

Another good source of information on Syria is

http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

This seriously checks claims by various sources and comes to a considered conclusion.



Grappler said...

O/T but look at this MERC:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/22/the-guardian-view-on-israels-democracy-killing-with-impunity-lying-without-consequence

The Guardian has an editorial that is seriously critical of Israel! And in the last few days Michelle Alexander wrote this op-ed in the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/opinion/sunday/martin-luther-king-palestine-israel.html

Perhaps we can hope for change.

MERC said...

Re the first, yes, it's highly critical but portrays Israel as a normal democracy and Netanyahu as some kind of deviation from that norm: "... the message from Mr Netanyahu is that democratic norms, those unwritten rules of toleration and restraint, are for the weak, not for the strong.Yet without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances are less mainstays of democracy than a mirage."

Israel may be a democracy for Israeli Jews, but it accords only second-class status to its Palestinian Arab minority, deprives occupied Palestinians of all rights, let alone the right to vote, and has consigned millions of diaspora Palestinian to a life of endless exile.

Netanyahu, moreover, is no aberration. Not one Israeli leader has ever displayed "toleration and restraint," each going as far as circumstances permitted at the time to get rid of as many Palestinians as possible from as much of Palestine as possible. IOW, Netanyahu is merely pursuing the historic goal of Zionism, a Jewish state from the River to the Sea, and any bits of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon it can snap up along the way. When the Guardian takes the issue of Israeli apartheid and the Palestinian right of return seriously then I'll really sit up and take notice.

Anonymous said...

I agree Merc.

Grappler said...

I'm totally in agreement MERC re Israel and democracy. Israel, by its very nature is not a democracy and never was. You can't ethnically cleanse a carefully calculated significant proportion of the population and then declare a democracy. It doesn't work like that.

A danger is that Netanhyahu might be replaced by someone more "liberal" and Guardian and NYT and all of my "liberal" friends would be happy and Israel could go on doing what it has always done with impunity. But of course he won't be replaced by anyone more "liberal". Rather, given the current state of Israeli politics, he will be replaced (if he is replaced) by someone even worse. These so-called liberal media cannot maintain their hypocrisy for ever. People are increasingly seeing through them. Support for Israel among younger Jews is declining significantly in the US. With the NYT I think that it might just be paying lip service to balance but - perhaps over-optimistically - I am hoping for a shift in the Guardian which is very sensitive to its readership numbers.

Zionism is becoming an electoral issue both in the UK and the US and that, for Zionism, is a disaster waiting to happen. It has always tried to avoid that.




MERC said...

We live in hope!