Pirates of the Mediterranean

"On Sunday, Israeli forces seized a boat carrying nearly two dozen activists and journalists aiming to break Israel's maritime blockade on Gaza. Flotilla organizers discounted Israel's claims that its forces had intercepted and 'redirected' their vessel to Israel 'without incident.' 'According to first-hand evidence that we have been given, the Israeli occupation forces violently attacked our Norwegian-flagged boat Al Auda (Return) as she was in international waters,' the Freedom Coalition said Tuesday. 'Prior to all of our electronic communications being cut to and from our boat, at least 4 warships had appeared,' the organizers added. 'Following some unlawful radio directives to our captain and our insistence that we had a right of innocent passage in international waters, armed, masked soldiers boarded Al Awda without permission.' Israeli soldiers beat passengers and used tasers against them, organisers said. One of the passengers assaulted was Dr Swee Chai Ang, a founder of the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. Dr Ang was a witness to the 1982 massacres of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon.* According to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, two Israeli passengers and two Al Jazeera journalists aboard the boat were released by Israeli authorities. But by Tuesday, 18 others had spent a second night 'unlawfully detained in Givon Prison'." (Israel abducts flotilla boat, Ali Abunimah, electronicintifada.net, 31/7/18)

[*Click on the label below to read about this amazing woman.]

First the Massacre, Then the Lies

"Initial autopsy findings showed a Palestinian boy [Mohammed Khadeir] found dead after being kidnapped in East Jerusalem was burned alive... Mohammed's cousin Tariq Khadeir... was savagely beaten on Thursday by what human rights groups said were undercover Israeli officers... Spokesman for the Israel police Micky Rosenfeld said a video circulated by the rights group was 'edited and biased'... he said Tariq was one of 6 Palestinians arrested - three of them carrying knives - after a clash in which 15 officers were injured when 'hundreds of rioters, many of them masked, hurled at the forces pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, fireworks and stones'." (Palestinian boy was burned alive, autopsy suggests, Jodi Rudoren, New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 6/7/14)

Alert readers will find Rosenfeld's lies here familiar.

That's because they come from the same Israeli lie machine wheeled out when another group of uniformed Israeli thugs swung into action on the night of May 30, 2010, shooting up those on board the Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship Mavi Marmara.

Some extracts from Max Blumenthal's account of how the Israelis spun that massacre, from his must-read book Goliath: Fear & Loathing in Greater Israel (2013):

"As soon as the Israelis gained control of the Marmara, they rushed to the ship's kitchen and gathered all the knives they could find. Then they laid them out beside keffiyehs, Qurans, and any object that might convince the average Western news consumer that the flotilla was in fact a covert terrorist convoy...

"Having stockaded the flotilla activists, the Israelis proceeded to the next phase of their mission, robbing passengers - including credentialed journalists - of their cameras, laptops, and recording equipment... The Israelis intended to exploit the footage they had seized in order to establish a narrative that portrayed themselves as the true victims. SD cards and videotapes containing footage shot by passengers... were thrown in a giant junk heap, ensuring that the most damning and disturbing records of the attack would never see the light of day... The 5-second clip of what Israelis came to refer to simply as 'The Lynch' was culled from the trove of footage the IDF had stolen from the flotilla activists and journalists. Heavily edited over the course of 2 days, the clip was the only piece of footage that seemed to support the army's line. It was broadcast around the clock on the country's 3 main news channels, branding into the Israeli public's mind a sense that the commandos who stormed the MM had been unfairly and savagely abused by a band of terrorists and were forced to open fire just to survive.

"To complement this clip, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit pumped out buckshot of unsourced press releases to the national press corps insinuating that the flotilla was in fact an al-Qaeda-linked armada captained by anti-Semites. In almost every case, reputable military correspondents and network anchors diligently reproduced the press releases as news with only the most minor alterations...

"Two days later, the Spokesperson's Unit released an audio clip purporting to consist of transmissions between the MM and a naval warship. 'Go back to Auschwitz!' a Marmara passenger shouted to the Israeli naval captain, according to the IDF. YNet and Haaretz reported on and reproduced the audio clip without investigating its authenticity. Not only did the anti-Semitic slur sound like a mentally disturbed teenager making a prank call, but had reporters performed a cursory search of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit website they would have found a longer clip released on May 31 that featured a dramatically different exchange between the Israeli Navy and the MM with no mention of Auschwitz. Further, the voice of flotilla organizer Huwaida Arraf was featured in the 'Auschwitz' clip, yet Arraf was not aboard the Marmara... It seemed the army had fabricated the clip in order to inject the Holocaust into coverage of the flotilla raid, thereby inflaming the Israeli public with the notion that the whole world was indeed against them - and through no fault of their government.

"On my blog, I pointed out the discrepancies in the IDF's footage and raised the question of doctoring. The next day, the IDF conceded that it had, in fact, doctored the footage, releasing a 'clarification' and a new clip claiming to consist of the 'full' exchange between the navy and the flotilla..." (pp 105-10)

There's more in Goliathon the above, but I'm sure you've got the idea. (I might add, while I'm at it, that if you're interested in the psychopathology behind Mohammed Khadeir's immolation while still alive, and the radical re-arranging of his cousin Tariq's face, then Goliath's the book for you.)

Good Turks, Bad Turks

How anyone can take Murdoch's Australian seriously is beyond me.

Take today's editorial, Syrian crisis spills into Turkey, for example:

According to the editorialist, if in response to 5 Turks being killed by a (stray?) mortar shell that may or may not have been fired by the Syrian army, the Turks "launched a series of counter attacks" against the Syrian army, then "the international community, especially NATO, should not shy away from pledging solid support for Turkey in its cross border confrontation with the murderous Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus."

If, on the other hand, in response to the cold-blooded murder of 9 Turks aboard the Gaza-bound aid ship Marvi Marmara by Israeli pirates operating in international waters in 2010, Turkey "expelled Israel's ambassador," then Turkey did not "act in the best interests of its NATO allies" and was "misguided."

The Israeli Traffic Cop

Greece, stop!

"In his speech Thursday night for the Israel Air Force Flight School graduation ceremony, Netanyahu discussed diplomatic efforts being made to prevent the Gaza flotilla from setting sail. The only leader that Netanyahu mentioned by name in his address was Greece's George Papendreou. Just a day earlier, the prime minister spoke with his Greek counterpart, imploring him to issue an order preventing ships from disembarking from Greece toward the Gaza Strip. Unlike in the past, Papendreou responded positively, and a top Israeli official involved in the talks between the Greek prime minister and Netanyahu said that Israel knew as early as Thursday afternoon that Greece was planning to block ships from leaving its ports toward the strip.

"The romance between Netantahu and Papendreou began in February of 2010, when the two met coincidentally at the 'Pushkin' restaurant in Moscow. Netanyahu took advantage of their chance encounter to speak with the Greek prime minister about Turkish extremism against Israel and the two quickly became friends. The Israeli and Greek leaders have spoken to each other at least once a week ever since they met in Moscow. The Turkish flotilla to Gaza in May of 2010 led to serious concern among the intelligence and military ranks in Greece, who began pressuring the government to strengthen diplomatic ties with Israel. Papendreou did not need much convincing. In July of 2010 he arrived in Jerusalem, the first official visit of a Greek prime minister to Israel in 30 years. A few weeks later Netanyahu travelled to Athens, spending a whole day with Papendreou and other officials on a nearby island. Israeli diplomats can attest that the budding friendship between the two countries over the course of the past year-and-a-half has been nothing short of dramatic. Intelligence communication has increased, the IAF has conducted a number of joint exercises with Greece's air force and Netanyahu has requested Papendreou's assistance in passing on several messages to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Many of Netanyahu and Papendreou's talks in the past few months have revolved around the severe financial crisis Greece is currently suffering. Netanyahu recently decided to come to the aid of his newfound friend in a meeting of foreign ministers and European leaders, imploring them to provide Greece with financial aid. 'Netanyahu has become Greece's lobbyist to the European Union', an Israeli diplomat said. In recent weeks, as efforts to stop the impending pro-Palestinian flotilla to Gaza came to a head, Netanyahu reaped the benefits of his investment in Israel-Greece ties and his gamble on the country paid off." (Netanyahu's big fat Greek Wedding, Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 1/7/11)

Foreign airlines, stop!

"Israel has instructed foreign airlines to prevent 300 pro-Palestinian activists from boarding flights to Israel over the weekend, after Israeli security forces handed them the names of 300 people who they had blacklisted. The Transportation Ministry requested that foreign airlines report to Israeli authorities if any of the blacklisted passengers appear on their flights to Israel in the next 24 hours, stressing that these people will not be granted entry into Israel... Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists were expected to arrive in Israel for a mass protest over the weekend, as a counterpart to the Gaza-bound flotilla which had encountered numerous setbacks. Thus far, no activists were known to be prevented from boarding flights abroad, but most of the flights are only expected to depart on Thursday night." (Israel instructs foreign airlines to prevent departure of 300 pro-Palestinian activists, Zohar Blumenkrantz, Haaretz, 7/7/11)

Germany, proceed.

"The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is facing growing criticism after news of a multibillion-dollar deal for the secret sale of 200 tanks to Saudi Arabia leaked from the national security council that approved it... Members of Dr Merkel's own party have criticised the sale on human rights grounds. The deal reveals the shifting Israeli attitude towards the Saudis. Israel has notably not complained about the arms deal, and government sources said it was cleared with the Americans and the Israelis." (Merkel under fire over secret Saudi tank deal, Nicholas Kulish, New York Times/SMH, 8/7/11)

Mugged by the Analogy

As the Freedom Flotilla 2 prepares to sail for Gaza, in addition to a range of pre-emptive Israeli dirty tricks - threats to ban participating journalists from entering Israel, the dissemination of false stories about violent extremists infiltrating the ranks of the flotilla activists, and sabotage of vessels moored in Greek and Turkish ports - the ms media will be flooded with Israeli propaganda tropes such as this from Netanyahu flak Mark Regev: "Israel cannot allow unfettered naval access to the Gaza Strip because if we did you would see Iranian missiles reaching Hamas." (Gaza ships hit by Israeli attack, Mark Weiss, Telegraph/SMH, 2/7/11)

The aim of this and all the other variations on the theme to come, will of course be to divert world attention from Israel's Nazi-style blockade of Gaza.

OMG, did I just use the 'N' word? I did! Now I'll be in big trouble because I've just crossed one of those red lines Zionists keep on declaring in a futile effort to ward off legitimate criticism of Zionist criminality, namely the drawing of analogies between Israeli and Nazi behaviour, which apparently makes one guilty of something called 'the new anti-Semitism', which is really, so Zionist logic goes, just the old anti-Semitism in new clothes. Why use the analogy then? Well, after reading the following, I was quite literally mugged by it:

"The closed [Warsaw] ghetto greatly complicated the problem of obtaining food. The legal food ration established by the German authorities guaranteed death by starvation. The average legal calorie allotment in 1941 was 2,613 for Germans, 699 for Poles, and 184 for Jews. All food shipments, like all other imports and exports to and from the ghetto, had to pass through the German-controlled Transferstelle on the corner of Stawki and Dzika streets. It quickly became apparent that if the ghetto was going to survive, the Jews would have to forget about 'legality' and smuggle in as much food as they could. More than 80% of all food consumed in the ghetto would be smuggled in." (Who Will Write Our History?: Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, & the Oyneg Shabes Archive, Samuel Kassow, 2007, pp 107-108)

That reminded me of this:

"Documents, whose existence were denied by the Israeli government for over a year, have been released after a legal battle led by Israeli human rights group, Gisha. The documents reveal a deliberate policy by the Israeli government in which the dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level. This documents the statement made by... Dov Weisglass, adviser to then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: 'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger'." (Israeli government documents show deliberate policy to keep Gazans at near-starvation levels, Saed Bannoura, imemc.org, 6/11/10)

How, other than 'Nazi-style blockade', would you describe a deliberate policy of ghettoisation and enforced malnourishment reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto?

[See also 'Put the Palestinians on a diet' - media bury documents revealing Israel's deliberate policy of near-starvation for Gaza, medialens.org, 17/11/10.]

Everyone Loves Rowan 3

If I had to select an example of what is wrong with the opinion page of the Sydney Morning Herald, a nail in the coffin, as it were, of the paper's precipitous decline into journalistic irrelevence, it'd be Rowan Dean's mendacious and slanderous Fame, not freedom, is the goal of the latest flotilla bound for Gaza (22/6/11).

To begin with, the very reason for its appearance - as a response to a piece by former Greens' MLC Sylvia Hale on why she was joining the second Freedom Flotilla to Gaza - constitutes an enduring outrage, the Herald having long ago adopted the perfectly idiotic and utterly servile position that any opinion piece considered in any way critical of Israel (rare enough in any event) simply cannot be allowed a life of its own on the opinion page without an accompanying right of response, on the very day of its publication, or soon thereafter, by one of the usual suspects from the Israel lobby or one of its useful fools. No other issue gets this kind of treatment.

By what mysterious route, I wonder, does such a response surface in the Herald?

This is how I imagine the process: author sends piece critical of Israel to Herald for publication; alarm bells go off; opinion editor alerts higher up; Herald finally contacts lobby representative; informs him/her that it intends to publish piece in X days time, and presents them with copy; lobby whips up its own or commissions a response; which, often as not, appears on the very same day and page as offending piece.

If I've got the process more or less right, and I'm always open to correction here, I'd still like to know whether the lobby's response is ever subjected to any kind of quality control. Or is it just a matter of gritted teeth and a meek, shamefaced thankyou? Or, even, heaven forbid: Yes, a fine piece indeed! We'd love to publish it.

Actually, I seriously doubt that quality control gets a look in here. After all, why would any halfway serious broadsheet accept a response on this issue from a creature of the advertising industry? I'm talking about the kind of individual who has no problem with inflicting on us all one of the most intensely annoying features of modern life, the televisual variety of which, with its goofy imagery, dumb messages and obscene cacophony, amounting to animated graffiti right there in the privacy of our lounge rooms, drives even those of us with half a brain to lunge for the mute. The kind of individual whose idea of an honest living is to package and perfume the often toxic turds of consumer capitalism. The kind of individual whose bread and butter comes from spinning the often elaborate webs of deception necessary to ensure a purchase. And, yes, the kind of individual who has the chutzpah to accuse others of perpetrating a scam:

"If you want to win lots of international awards and make a name for yourself in the advertising world, there's nothing better than knocking out a quick 'scam ad'. Scam ads are ads designed to be highly provocative*, to whip up controversy and to make the authors famous. The problem is, they are also fakes. Trendy inner-city lefties and Greens have now cottoned on to the scam ad trick. Deprived of anything serious to protest about, three frustrated Australian 'peace' activists have come up with a brilliant scam ad of their own: joining the Freedom Flotilla 2 for Gaza."

[* This from a guy who calls his website 'Rowan Dean Provocations'.]

Yes, just the kind of individual to suggest that the problem here lies not with Israel's genocidal behaviour and apartheid policies but with any manifestation of resistance, however peaceful, to same:

"This protest is a scam because it has no logical or intellectual underpinnings. It is designed solely for the purpose of attempting to recreate the outrage that occurred when last year's flotilla was intercepted by the Israelis and, in the presence of reporters including Paul McGeough, a firefight was provoked that resulted in the tragic, awful and pointless death of 9 activists. So, hey, let's do it again and see what happens!"

The real scam, of course, is Dean's: the vile suggestion that the victims of the Mavi Marmara massacre were responsible for their own deaths because they so provoked the peaceful Israelis falling out of the sky with guns that the poor dears had no option but to shoot them, point blank.

And that supposed responsibility comes by Dean quietly slipping in the word "firefight," feeding the unsuspecting reader the lie that the Turks also had guns and were giving as good as they got. In fact, neither Israel's own sham report into the events nor the UN's report supports this fiction of a firefight.

While Israel's Turkel Committee report on the subject "found that the IHH activists employed firearms against the IDF soldiers in order to prevent the IDF's takeover of the ship," even it wasn't prepared to venture further: "It should be mentioned that the Commission was not able to reach a definitive finding regarding whether the IHH activists brought firearms with them aboard the Mavi Marmara." Presumably then, assuming they even existed, these were weapons wrested from the invading Israeli pirates.

The UN's Fact-finding Mission on the massacre "found no evidence to suggest that any of the passengers used firearms or that any firearms were taken on board the ship. Despite requests, the Mission has not received any medical records or other substantiated information from the Israeli authorities regarding any firearm injuries sustained by soldiers participating in the raid. Doctors examined the three soldiers taken below decks and no firearm injuries were noted. Further, the Mission finds the Israeli accounts so inconsistent and contradictory with regard to evidence of alleged firearms injuries to Israeli soldiers that it has to reject it." (para 116)

But rewriting history is not all Dean does. He also runs a fine line in smears:

"The purpose of this venture is a dangerous attempt to drum up notoriety for the individuals involved, whip up emotions, and pursue the popular Marrickville pastime known as Jew-baiting (sorry, I mean 'protesting against Israeli aggression and Zionist expansion'."

Concludes Dean, "The awful truth about the Freedom Flotilla 2 is that it's only worthwhile if it makes international headlines, and it will only make headlines if and when people get hurt."

Alas, the really awful truth about the Sydney Morning Herald is that, in publishing Dean's latest 'provocation', it's prepared to take on board much the same toxic sludge as the Murdoch press and Quadrant.

Once a Sow's Ear...

... always a sow's ear.

My last post touched on the subject of Israel's attempts at rebranding itself. Such attempts are doomed to fail. Even The New York Times' Israel-friendly Jerusalem correspondent, Ethan Bronner, admits as much:

"'There aren't many other places in the world where white people with guns tell brown people what to do', said Ethan Bronner, The New York Times correspondent in Israel, today as he tried to explain Israel's image problem in the international press. Bronner was on a panel discussion on the subject of Israeli Hasbara at the Eilat Journalism Conference. He said that even if in Israeli eyes [my italics] the state of Israel is not colonialist, for foreigners its actions are very similar to colonialism. Therefore, said Bronner, especially in Europe, which went through a comprehensive de-colonization process over the past century, but also in the US, there is a principled [my italics] problem with Israel's image. Bronner also pointed to a specific example: International coverage of the IDF takeover of the Turkish [sic] flotilla to Gaza: 'You're starting from an inferior position', he said, 'because most people don't understand why you're trying to prevent the equipment from reaching Gaza. It's clear why you're trying to prevent weapons from getting there, but unclear why other equipment is banned. And when you try to stop it, 9 people are killed. It's not good. It doesn't look good. You have a lot of catching up to do if you want to argue that some of the people on the boat were really nasty'. Lilach Sigan, editor of Globes daily magazine, asked Bronner why the international media only dealt with Israel's actions around the Turkish [sic] flotilla and did not devote sufficient coverage to the Turkish and IHH connection. 'We're not perfect', she pointed out, [but] 'the problem is that the focus is only on Israel's mistakes [my italics] and not on the mistakes of Hamas and the suffering they inflict on the Palestinians'. After Sigan's statement elicited applause from the audience, Bronner replied: 'Nine people died. Who shot the 9? Not Turkey. That's the story. If no one had been killed on the flotilla, nobody would have cared about it. Nine died. That's the main thing. Those are the first 15 paragraphs'." (Translated from the Hebrw as How to wink in English, Oren Persico, The 7th Eye, 21/11/10 - found at Yes, NYT's Ethan Bronner actually said this on-record, Didi Remez, 972mag.com, 22/11/10)

Nevertheless, as if the current flood of Zionist bullshit swamping the ms media and the internet isn't enough, Israel is about to launch yet another propaganda offensive - in Europe:

"The Foreign Minister is planning to initiate a new public relations campaign in a number of European capitals [London, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Paris, The Hague, Oslo, & Copenhagen] early next year. The campaign, which will make extensive use of professional advocacy and public relations experts by Israeli embassies in Europe, aims to also use as many as a thousand people in each country, who will be willing to volunteer to spread Israel's message... Each ambassador was instructed to prepare... a list of at least 1,000 'allies', who will be routinely briefed by the embassy for advocacy and public relations. These 'allies' will have to be willing to take action on behalf of Israel, through support demonstrations and rallies, in publishing articles in the press, etc. Among the types of persons that will be sought to assist in the campaign will be members of the local Jewish community, activists in Christian organizations, journalists, politicians, intellectuals, academics and activists in student organizations. The novelty of this campaign is that it will not rely on the work only of Israeli diplomats and volunteer supporters, but on professional lobbying and public and public relations companies hired by the embassies... The professional lobbyists and PR agents will be provided with materials from the embassies, which will be produced by a special team at the Foreign Ministry. The Foreign Ministry team will produce 3 types of materials: political messages on the peace process, the settlements, etc will be encapsulated; 'branding' messages which will position Israel in specific areas of activity, such as technology, economy, tourism, etc; and messages about problematic developments in the Middle East which are not directly related to Israel, such as human rights in Iran or Syria, Hezbollah's takeover in Lebanon, etc. The ministry has also instructed the ambassadors in those 9 capitals to focus their activities on organizing groups of influential persons from those countries to visit Israel. The ambassadors were also instructed to hold, at least once a month, a high profile public event." (Liebermann urges Europe embassies to use 'allies' in PR efforts, Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 28/11/10)

Words Behind Words

Read the following exchange between Senator Ludlam of The Greens and Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC at a Senate Estimates hearing on 27 October. It's classic fan dancing - on both sides. In the spirit of keeping it real, I've added the words behind the words, those that must have come to mind but never quite made it to the tongue, and those that never even got that far, in square brackets bold:

Senator Ludlam: Can you provide us with an update of whether the ABC has reconsidered its position [not to screen the Australian doco, Hope in a Slingshot,] and how you have gone about finding some other points of view to balance out the point of view in that documentary?

Mr Scott: We reviewed it and will not be showing it. I think when we first reviewed it there were questions as to the plurality of viewpoints, whether in fact it took a certain perspective [dared to portray Palestinians as human beings] and how under our editorial policies we would look to balance that [to nobble that] ... But it has been reviewed by our television division... I think finally the television division came to the view that it was not to the standard that they would want to acquire... They did not feel it was particularly compelling for the kinds of audiences that we would be seeking on ABC 1 [for the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) crowd], and that was the final judgment on it.

Senator Ludlam: But it was initially accepted. You said the issue was quality, so it was nothing to do with the political view? [nothing to do with portraying the Palestinians as human beings?]

Mr Scott:... I think finally they came to that view irrespective of editorial policy issues. That was not finally the driving force in their decision. They finally came to a view that they just did not think it was a particularly compelling film. [They finally came to a view that they couldn't afford to upset AIJAC.]

Senator Ludlam: Are you aware that the producers have updated and edited the film to address the interpretation that they believe have been placed on it?

Mr Scott: I am not sure which edit they have seen, but I understood that they did review the film again... and tried to look at it with a fresh set of eyes. We have some new people in key roles in our television division [people who know who must be appeased, and who can safely be ignored] - a new head of factual, a new controller of ABC1 and ABC2. I am not quite sure whether the final sign-off has come, but they have decided to pass...

Senator Ludlam: [But] this one caught our interest in particular because it was [initially] accepted.

Mr Scott: I understand that.

Senator Ludlam:... Step us through how you balance this out. You commission or acquire what you call opinion content, which does express a certain point of view.

Mr Scott: Yes, and we do run them. We have run Richard Dawkins... Dick Smith. I will explain what we often do, though, if it is contentious and opinionated - and there is a place for opinion on the ABC. It is allowed. It is in our editorial policies. You want to have some debate. So what you often do... is have a discussion afterwards... [However,] I think the feeling was that this film was not up to the standard for that kind of treatment. [I think the feeling was that, with this film, we would only be throwing fuel on the fire if we followed it with a discussion. I mean, take that bloody Israeli propaganda piece Murder on the Med (or Collision Course as we called it), the Foreign Correspondent website was deluged with anti-Israel comments for days afterwards. A discussion after Hope in a Slingshot would've gone the same way. We simply weren't prepared to risk it. Anything for a quiet life as they say.]

Senator Ludlam: Can you advise, then, how the program Death in the Med - or Collision Course, I think it is also called - satisfied your editorial policies?

Mr Scott: Which one, sorry? [Death in the Med? What Death in the Med?]

Senator Ludlam: Death in the Med... Was there a forum that followed that one?

Mr Scott: I am not sure - what was that one about? [Nothing. I know nothing.]

Senator Ludlam: I believe they rioted in the UK when it was screened because it was seen to be...

Mr Scott: We did have some complaints around that program. [Oh, that Death in the Med!]

Senator Ludlam: Was there a forum after that one?

Mr Scott: No, there was no forum after that.

Senator Ludlam: I struggle to understand how on the one hand you can run opinion content... and on the other you have got an impartiality requirement...

Mr Scott: [It's all coming back to me now.] That was the one that we received 90 alleged complaints of pro-Israel bias. Yes, now I remember.

Senator Ludlam: [What the f... !] Were they complaints, or alleged complaints?

Mr Scott: They were alleged complaints. [Look, tree hugger, it's really very simple. If the complaint is about Israeli propaganda, it's not really a complaint, just an alleged complaint... Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.] But the program was viewed by audience consumer affairs, who advised that the program was balanced and that they believed those complaints were without basis... I think if we had come to an editorial judgment about that program, or our television or news division which is responsible for Foreign Correspondent had come to a view that this was opinion, rather than a topical and factual program or news program, then it would have needed a different treatment. That was not the judgment they came to about that program. It might be that some people who watched it have a different view, but that is the judgment of our television team and news team have had to make.

Smell the Fear

To anyone familiar with the history and modus operandi of Zionist war criminality, the following will not have come as a shock:

"The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and 5 Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos. The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot, and that he was shot at point blank range while lying on the ground. The report says Dogan had apparently been 'lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious state for some time before being shot in his face'... Based on both 'forensic and firearm evidence', the fact-finding panel concluded that Dogan's killing and that of 5 Turkish citizens by the Israeli troops on the Mavi Marmara, May 31, 'can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions'." (UN fact-finding mission says Israelis 'executed' US citizen Furkan Dogan, Gareth Porter, truth-out.org, 27/9/10)

What I do find shocking, however, is Porter's revelation of the omerta-style silence of the US administration and corporate media with regard to the report's findings. Reading the following paragraphs from his article, you can literally smell the fear of the US imperial state when confronted with yet another example of its supposed vassal's barbarous conduct, and one, moreover, involving one of its own citizens. Further confirmation, if it were needed, of just who controls who:

"The report confirmed what the Obama administration already knew from the autopsy report on Dogan, but the administration has remained silent about his killing, which could be an extremely difficult political problem for the administration in its relations with Israel. The Turkish government gave the autopsy report on Dogan to the US Embassy in July and it was then passed on to the Department of Justice, according to a US government source who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the administration's policy of silence on the matter. The source said the purpose of obtaining the report was to determine whether an investigation of the killing by the Justice Department (DOJ) was appropriate. Asked by this writer whether the DOJ had received the autopsy report on Dogan, DOJ spokesperson Laura Sweeney refused to comment. The administration has not volunteered any comment on the fact-finding mission's report and was not asked to do so by any news organization. In response to an enquiry from Truthout, a State Department official, who could not speak on the record, read a statement that did not explicitly acknowledge the report's conclusion about the Israeli executions... Although the report's revelations and conclusions about the killing of Dogan and the 5 other victims were widely reported in the Turkish media last week, not a single story on the report has appeared in US news media. The administration has made it clear through its inaction and its explicit public posture that it has no intention of pressing the issue of the murder of a US citizen in cold blood by Israeli commandos." (ibid)

Israel lobby? What Israel lobby?

The ABC Shoots Itself in the Foot

In July, ABC TV refused to screen the Australian doco Hope in a Slingshot, about the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, because, in the words of its head of television to the film's distributor, it is an "opinion program" and deals with a "contentious subject."

Incredibly, however, the same ABC TV had no such qualms about airing the BBC's Panorama 'investigation' of the Mavi Marmara massacre Death in the Med (rebadged Collision Course) last night on Foreign Correspondent - one of the most blatant Israeli propaganda pieces ever to darken our screens.

We were treated to the spectacle of embedded presenter Jane Corbin exulting in her "unique access" to the "top secret unit Naval Commando 13," which had "never been filmed by the media before." And, boy, did she do them proud. These young braves were pitted against the sinister and shadowy Turkish IHH, which, intoned Jane darkly, "isn't just known for their humanitarian work," seeing as "Western authorities" - Western authorities?!?! - "have accused them of having links to terrorist organisations." Oh, and, "They strongly deny this."

Well, they would now, wouldn't they, Jane? Cut to terrorist, sorry IHH, leader telling his troops, sorry aid activists - see what happens when you drop the 't' word, Jane? - that if our Israeli heroes attempt to board the ship, they will be resisted. Shiver me timbers, hearties, the 'r' word! Gee, don't these dumb Turks understand that if the pirates are Israelis, they're not supposed to defend their ship? If they're Somalis, OK, but if they're Israelis, you bring out the tea cups and serviettes, right? And besides, as the rest of us know, Israel has long cornered the market on self-defence.

What occurred on the Mavi Marmara 0n 31 May was nothing more nor less than the bloody murder of unarmed aid workers by highly-trained and armed thugs, so, if you're doing PR for the latter, the sting has to be taken out of the 'm' word. Adhering to the strategy of 'sow doubt and the viewer will hopefully consign the matter to the too-hard basket', Jane says authoritatively: "The question of who shot first remains disputed and unresolved."

However, she scrupulously ignores the growing volume of data which fingers Israeli war criminality. Data such as:

a) Three days before the raid, Israeli military officials declared publicly in the Israeli press, "If the people aboard the boats will not agree to turn around, the operation [named Operation Sky Winds* BTW] will transfer to the stage of force."(1)

b) "Several of the victims of the Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla were shot in the head from above, presumably from a helicopter, according to the forensics report released Monday..." (2)

c) "Autopsy results on the bodies of those killed during the assault on the Gaza aid flotilla reveal they were peppered [euphemism alert: riddled] with 9 millimetre bullets, many fired at close range and into victims' backs." (3)

d) "Although Israel successfully controlled news of its deadly commando raid on the Free Gaza flotilla during the first crucial 48 hours of media coverage, emerging evidence from witnesses and survivors is challenging the Israeli government's version of the events. These include claims of medical treatment being withheld; beatings and abuse of passengers who never resisted; and the IDF doctoring audio and selectively editing videos." (4)

e) "Israeli Navy officers have attacked their government's version of events related to last week's capture of flotilla ships in international waters... 'First and foremost, we protest the fact that responsibility for the tragic results was immediately thrust onto the organizers of the flotilla', wrote the reserve officers who served as commanders of Navy ships. 'This demonstrates contempt for the responsibility that belongs principally to the hierarchy of commanders and those who approved the mission. This shows contempt for the value of professionalism, the purity of weapons and for human lives'." (5)

Of course, there's heaps more to deal with in Corbin's hatchet job on the Mavi Marmara victims, but rather than reinvent the wheel, I'll refer you to the excellent critique Corbin on the Mavi Marmara: a BBC-hasbara production at johnhilley.blogspot.com.

To state the bleeding obvious, no one should have any illusions about establishment outfits like the BBC or our own version, the ABC. When, for example, was the last time ABC TV ever screened a worthwhile doco on Palestine?

Now I don't know whether the ABC's treatment of the Iraq War has ever been subjected to scrutiny, but if it were I wouldn't expect it to be all that different to the following assessment of the BBC:

"More recently, a 2003 Cardiff University report found that the BBC 'displayed the most 'pro-war' agenda of any broadcaster' on the Iraq invasion. Over the 3 weeks of the initial conflict, 11% of the sources quoted by the BBC were of coalition government or military origin, the highest proportion of all the main television broadcasters. The BBC was less likely than Sky, ITV or Channel 4 news to use independent sources, who tended to be the most sceptical. The BBC also placed least emphasis on Iraqi casualties... and it was least likely to report on Iraqi opposition to the invasion. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Andrew Bergin, the press officer for the Stop the War Coalition, told Media Lens: 'Representatives of the coalition have been invited to appear on every TV channel except the BBC. The BBC have taken a conscious decision to actively exclude Stop the War Coalition people from their programmes'... In a speech at New York's Columbia University, John Pilger commented: 'We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by MI6, the secret intelligence service. In what was called 'Operation Mass Appeal', MI6 agents planted stories about Saddam Hussein's WMDs - such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All these stories were fake'." (Newspeak in the 21st Century, Edwards & Cromwell, 2009, pp 28-29)

And how about this, on Gaza?:

"Despite this carnage [following Israel's 2008/2009 22-day turkey shoot in Gaza], and despite the fact that 89% of Gaza's 1.5 million residents had received no humanitarian aid since Israel began its assault, the BBC refused to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella organisation for 13 aid charities. By refusing to give free airtime to the appeal, the BBC made a rare decision to breach an agreement dating back to 1963... A January 22 BBC website article defended the BBC's refusal: 'The BBC decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story'." (ibid, pp 41-42)

The Beeb's impartiality! How cute.

I leave the last word to ex-marine Ken O'Keefe who was on the Mavi Marmara and featured in Corbin's 'story'. O'Keefe's restrained but devastating Open Letter to BBC Panorama's Jane Corbin says it all:

"Aloha Jane, As you know Panorama aired Death in the Med this week. Well Jane, I have been in the media game long enough to know that moral depravity and lack of integrity are qualities that are rewarded rather than discouraged in your field of work. With such experience it is impossible for me to take commitments from someone like yourself seriously, and that is why I recorded our conversation clandestinely, a conversation in which you confirmed the agreement that was made between the BBC and myself, with yourself and Alys as BBC representatives. In that agreement it was clear that I would agree to the interview only if you included the fact that we let the commandos go. Knowing that was the agreement, and anticipating that I was going to confirm it once more after the interview, you said: 'Well, it's the point about we didn't kill the commandos, we had them in... that will be in there don't worry. (laughing) That's, that is important for us because obviously they would say they felt their lives were in danger but we let them go. I think that's a very strong point'.

"So, instead of your team honouring its commitment to me, you instead aired a farcical report with multitudes of half-truths, lies, omissions, and importantly, Israeli commandos who escaped rather than being set free. Let us be frank, Jane, the reason for that is because it is impossible to square the whole angle that we are 'terrorists' and 'extremists' and 'killers' if we let them go. It just doesn't fit. So for the BBC in this case, when the facts do not work, you lie. In an attempt to justify this, the BBC has written an insulting letter in defence of your fallacious fairytale; this is due to the torrent of complaints that have resulted from Death in the Med.

"I mean what I say here, Jane. I feel sorry for you. From what I can tell you do pretty well for yourself financially. The BBC lauded you as one of its top journalists, and no doubt you have the respect of many influential people, but when you get right down to it, you have become nothing but a propagandist. I would be willing to bet it didn't start that way. I am sure that when you were starting off the idea of selling your soul for the purpose of justifying murder with Orwellian skill was not in the plans. But somehow you have reached this point, and unless you decide to commit career suicide and admit your true role and the pressures that made you what you are today, you will die with the accolades from the powers that be, but your integrity will have died long before. I mean it, Jane. I feel for you and hope you find the strength to do the right thing.

"I do not expect a response from you, any more than I expected you to honour your commitment to me, or more importantly, honour the tenets of the profession we call journalism. But if you can speak the truth, I would be happy to get a response from you.

"In parting, Jane, 9 people were murdered on that ship. Eight of them were fathers. The youngest was aiming to become a doctor. They were on that ship for the same reason I was, to help the people of Gaza, people that include over 800,000 children, innocent children. The world largely sees them as bright lights and humanitarians and your program will have done nothing to erase that. Instead, you have tarnished yourself and the BBC all the more. Deep down, Jane, this is the truth. Programs like yours give the insanity of blockading and bombing and otherwise terrorising innocent people more time. What you are doing in literal effect is aiding and abetting mass-murder. I could not say that but for the fact that you know as well as I that you and your Israeli producer, Israel Goldvicht, went out of your way to produce some first class propaganda for the Zionist project known as Israel. To be blunt, I hope what is left of your conscience pains you to such a degree that the only way to relieve the pressure is to come clean. Not only will you benefit in ways that money can never provide, but you will do a service to the innocent people you currently condemn to futher outrage.

"It is up to you, Jane. Make no mistake, there are BBC insiders who are so disgusted with what you have done, they are making their moves from within the organisation because the benefits of prostituting themselves has finally reached its breaking point. Think about where you stand, think about the world your children will inherit, think about your legacy, and then act with your heart. That is my advice to you. Either way I wish you the best, Jane. I am sorry that I lied by recording you without your knowledge; I do not like doing such things. Truth*Justice*Peace Ken O'Keefe, Aloha Palestine - Managing Director"

[* OMG, how poetic! And when the Israeli military starts assigning poetic names to operations, you know you're in trouble and it's time to head for the hills.]

(1) The flotilla raid was not 'bungled'. The IDF detailed its violent strategy in advance, maxblumenthal.com, 3/6/10
(2) Flotilla victims 'shot' from Israeli chopper, Turkish report shows, hurriyetdailynews.com, 29/6/10
(3) Flotilla dead shot at close range: autopsies, Robert Booth, Guardian/The Age, 6/6/10
(4) IDF beatings, abuse, doctored evidence emerge, Mel Frykberg, original.antiwar.com, 7/6/10
(5) Israel Naval officers say flotilla organisers not to blame, story.birminghamstar.com, 7/6/10

Koutsoukis Recycles Israeli Propaganda

In the context of reporting Israel's judicial inquiry into the handling of its raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel Mavi Marmara on 31/5/10, Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, writes that: "Things began to go wrong after several of the commandos who were lowered on to the deck of the... Mavi Marmara, were attacked by a number of passengers. Other commandos were sent aboard the Mavi Marmara with orders to save the lives of their comrades, shooting dead 9 passengers and injuring more than 30 others." (Netanyahu to shift blame over deadly raid on Gaza flotilla, Sydney Morning Herald, 9/8/10)

And here's the official Israeli line: "During the boarding of the Mavi Marmara, the demonstrators on board attacked the IDF naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs." (IDF forces met with pre-planned violence when attempting to board flotilla, mfa.gov.il, 31/5/10, updated 21/6/10)

In both accounts the aid activists are the attackers. Koutsoukis fails only to mention their 'weapons'.

Even Murdoch's Middle East correspondent, John Lyons, manages a little more objectivity: "Turkey has called the raid 'state-sponsored terrorism' while Israel has said its commandos were attacked as they attempted to board one of the boats and were acting in self-defence." (Israeli PM defends action on Gaza, The Australian, 10/8/10)

To set the record straight, here's what really happened from the first book-length treatment of the massacre to emerge:

"At around 4:25am on May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos attacked the Mavi Marmara while the boat was in international waters. They had been trailing the convoy for hours and harassing them for about 90 minutes prior to this by circling the ship with Zodiac dinghies full of Israeli commandos. Immediately following the morning prayer, the Zodiacs moved quickly along side the Mavi Marmara. They shot at the ship with paintball rifles and attempted to board. The ship then turned, heading away from Gaza at full speed. Israeli helicopters then descended minutes later, and the commandos began firing smoke and percussion grenades on the ship, followed almost immediately by rubber bullets and live ammunition. Meanwhile, those on the ship were not about to be boarded in international waters, and they resisted the attack with slingshots, bare hands, water hoses, and various objects from the ship. Three Israeli commandos who had dropped from helicopters were overpowered, their weapons disabled, and were taken below the fifth deck, where they were searched and then provided with basic first aid. The other commandos continued to fire live ammunition rounds, shooting dozens of unarmed civilians, including an Indonesian doctor.

"By the time the attack was over, nine people - eight Turkish citizens and a dual American-Turkish citizen - were dead. Autopsy results later revealed that those killed in the attack were shot a total of thirty times. The Guardian reported that 61-year-old Ibrahim Bilgen, 'was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back', and that 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, 'was shot five times from less than 45 cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back'. Footage released by Iara Lee and analyzed by Ali Abunimah shows that the Israelis fired indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed people huddling behind a cabin door, disproving the claim that the commandos were merely defending themselves against an onslaught." (Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla & How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict, ed by Moustafa Bayoumi, 2010, p 3)

Brains Overboard: The Tribal Mentality

"Several of the victims of an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla were shot in the head from above, presumably from a helicopter, according to the forensics report released Monday by a human rights group." (Flotilla victims shot from Israeli chopper, Turkish report shows, hurriyetdailynews.com, 29/6/10)

"All but two of the 9 Turks killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot more than once, and 5 died from bullet wounds to the head, according to forensic reports... The 9 volunteers were shot a total of 31 times, according to the documents." (Forensics: Turks shot multiple times on Gaza-bound ship, ynetnews.com, 29/6/10)

"Activists on board a six-ship flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip tried to lynch the the Israel Navy commandos who boarded their Turkish-flagged boat early Monday, Israel Defense Forces sources told Haaretz on Monday afternoon. At least 9 people were killed and several more were wounded in the fighting that erupted aboard one of the ships." (Israel Navy commandos: Gaza flotilla activists tried to lynch us, Amos Harel, Haaretz, 31/5/10)

Israeli talking points aside, how to explain the disparity between the data revealed in the Turkish forensic report on the Gaza flotilla massacre victims and the earlier Israeli story?

Glenn Greenwald's must-read The Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression & tribalism (salon.com, 3/6/10) is as good an explanation as any. Some excerpts:

"How could anyone with the slightest intellectual honesty claim... that armed Israeli commandos were the victims of unarmed civilian passengers; or, more generally, that a nuclear-armed Israel with the most powerful military by far in the Middle East and the world's greatest superpower acting as Protector is the persecuted victim of a wretched, deprived, imprisoned, stateless population devastated by 40 years of brutal Israeli occupation and, just a year ago, an unbelievably destructive invasion and bombing campaign? The casting of 'victim' and 'aggressor' is blatantly reversed with such claims - which is exactly the central premise that has been driving, and continues to drive, US foreign policy as well. In Imperial Ambitions, Noam Chomsky - talking about America's post-9/11 policies - described the central mental deception that is at the heart of all nations which dominate others with force: 'In one of his many speeches, to US troops in Vietnam, [President Lyndon] Johnson said plaintively, 'There are 3 billion people in the world and we have only 200 million of them. We are outnumbered 15 to 1. If might did make right, they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want'. That is a constant refrain of imperialism. You have your jackboot on someone's neck and they're about to destroy you. The same is true with any form of oppression. And it's psychologically understandable. If you're crushing and destroying someone, you have to have a reason for it, and it can't be, 'I'm a murderous monster'. It has to be self-defense. 'I'm protecting myself against them. Look what they're doing to me'. Oppression gets psychologically inverted; the oppressor is the victim who is defending himself.'

"Thus nuclear-armed Israel is bullied and victimized by starving Gazans with stones. The Israel Navy is threatened by a flotilla filled with wheelchairs and medicine. And the greatest superpower the Earth has ever known faces a grave and existential threat from a handful of religious fanatics hiding in caves. An American condemnation of Israel, as welcome as it would have been, would be an act of senseless insincerity, because the two countries (along with many others) operate with this 'we-are-the-victim' mindset.

"A prime cause of this inversion is the distortion in perception brought about by rank tribalism. Those whose worldview is shaped by their identification as members of a particular religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group invariably over-value the wrongs done to them and greatly under-value the wrongs their group perpetrates. Those whose worldview is shaped by tribalism are typically plagued by extreme persecution complex (the whole world is against us!!!; everyone who criticizes us is hateful and biased!!!) Haaretz today reports that 'Jewish Republicans and Democrats in the US gave a rare demonstration of unity on Wednesday when they backed Israel's raid of a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla'. Gee, whatever could account for that 'rare demonstration of unity' between these left-wing Jewish progressives and hard-core, Jewish right-wing war cheerleaders who agree on virtually nothing else? My, it's such a mystery. I can't express how many emails I've received over the last week, from self-identified Jewish readers (almost exclusively), along the lines of: 'I'm a true progressive, agree with you on virtually every issue, but hate your views on Israel'... On this one issue, they magically abandon their opposition to military attacks on civilians, their defense of weaker groups being bullied and occupied by far stronger factions, their belief that unilateral military attacks are unjustified, and suddenly find common cause with Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, and the Bush administration in justifying even the most heinous Israeli crimes of aggression.

"It will never cease to be mystifying (at least to me) that they never question why they suddenly view the world so differently when it comes to Israel. They never wonder to themselves: I had it continuously drummed into my head from the time I was a small child, from every direction, that Israel was special and was to be cherished, that it's fundamentally good but persecuted and victimized by Evil Arab forces surrounding it, that I am a part of that group and should see the world accordingly. Is this tribal identity, which was pummeled into me from childhood - rather than some independent, dispassionate analysis - the reason I find myself perpetually sympathizing with and defending Israel?

"Doesn't the most minimal level of intellectual awareness - indeed, the concept of adulthood itself - require that analysis? And, of course, the 'self-hating' epithet - with which I've naturally been bombarded relentlessly over the last week - is explicitly grounded in the premise that one should automatically defend one's 'own group' rather than endeavour to objectively assess facts and determine what is right and true. This tribalism is hardly unique to Israel and Jews; it's instead universal. As the Bush years illustrated, there is no shortage of Americans who 'reason' the same way."

Who Let the Dog Out?

"You cannot hope to bribe or twist/ Thank God! The British journalist./ But, seeing what the man will do/ Un-bribed, there's no occasion to." Humbert Wolfe

"It inflames their brains, they have spasms of involuntary behaviour, eventually go mad, froth at the mouth, and will bite the hand that feeds them." (Turkey may no longer be a friend of ours, 14/6/10)

Eretz - Let's Do the Mad Dog Again - Israel?

No. "Gaza has rabies."

Welcome to the howling nonsense of the Herald Sun's Alan Howe.

"Well, sort of. Actually, its disease is an infestation of self-loathing, ungrateful Islamists. But the symptoms and the prognosis are much the same."

Ungrateful Islamists? Hm... what the hell is he talking about?

"Right now, in a change that might yet develop into the greatest threat to those of us who choose to remain civilised, it seems Turkey may be incubating the disease. If Turkey, a full member of the world's most important security club, NATO, falls under the influence of the Islamists, we are all in trouble."

I see. Turkish activists join an aid flotilla to Gaza and are murdered by Israeli thugs and, hey presto, Turkey's the problem? And moving right along, the US encircles Iran with bases, and Israel threatens to nuke it every other day, and Iran's an even bigger problem?

"The United Nations last week voted in new sanctions against Iran, aimed at punishing the country whose nuclear program could easily be used to destroy Israel - and that's top of their agenda - before having a crack at any other democracies within rocket fire range."

Yes, Alan, but could Iran's democracy-destroying nukes be activated within 45' like Saddam's? And isn't it funny how Iran comes in at 104/149 in the 2010 Global Peace Index (see previous post) - 40 points more peaceful than the Middle East's only democracy?

"The lying tyrant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who stole last year's 'elections' in Iran, does not believe Israel, or any of its allies, should exist, and hopes to kill us all. Ahmadinejad was scraped like a piece of scum on to this earth in late 1956, and is embarked on a straight line to Hell, his only distraction being the slaughter of as many innocents as he can rack up in between. By his standards he's doing well. His agents are raping and killing their way through those Iranian kids brave enough to protest at last year's illegal election farce. Public executions, where innocents are slowly and agonisingly strangled, not hanged, from mobile cranes are a specialty. Don't think for a moment Australians aren't in his sights. Anyone who recognises Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury', he once spat out, a dribble of saliva suggesting he is more than unwell."

OK Alan, I give up. I've scoured the latest (9/6/10) Amnesty International report, From Protest to Prison: Iran One Year After the Revolution, and all I've managed to find is: "Some [protesters] have been detained in conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Many have been tortured, including by beatings, rape and solitary confinement in small spaces for long periods."

Bad enough to be sure. But where are the mobile cranes used as makeshift gallows for Iranian protesters? Yes, mobile (is there any other kind?) cranes have been used to hang people in Iran. After a bit of googling, I managed to find the case of a teenage girl executed "for crimes against chastity." (It was actually the subject of a Four Corners doco screened on 7/8/06.) But that was in August 2004 before Ahmadinejad's presidency and years before the Green Revolution protests hit the streets of Tehran. Another instance involved two men convicted of murder (Iranian hangings 'hit new record', bbc.co.uk, 11/2/08).

Now Alan, if you have data on cases of the Ahmadinejad government hanging protesters, you need to contact AI at once so they can include them in their next report. Not that you have a problem with capital punishment though. I mean, didn't you comment just recently, May 3 to be exact: "Would we, as a community, be willing to invest in our judicial system the power for a judge to call for the end to a life? I find myself leaning that way sometimes." (Some crims are fit to kill)

OK - back to the Turks:

"Notwithstanding the extraordinary and shared experience at Gallipoli, and the strong bonds between Australia and Turkey that have grown from them, when it comes to the centenary of that campaign - less than 5 years from now - it is very possible we will be enemies once more. This time the stakes are much higher. We lost against the Turks in 1915. We cannot afford them to win in 2010."

Let me get this straight, Alan, we had an extraordinary and shared experience at Gallipoli in 1915, right? Best thing that ever happened to us, right? Made men of us, right? Even put balls on the sheilas, right? So why wouldn't we want a rerun? Surely you'd agree that our feckless youth need something a bit more spine-infusing than mowing down women and kids in Afghanistan? So what's the problem, mate? Bring it on! The sooner the better! And, if we want to make the most of our second extraordinary and shared experience, shouldn't we hope and pray Johny Turk whips our asses good like before, dig?

But I digress. There's that other, closet Ahmadinejad, that Trojan Horse, Recep Erdogan, lying in wait, ready to pounce:

"The Turks own the story of Troy. You think they'd know a Trojan horse when they saw one [Er, Alan, you're not suggesting he's actually a Greek agent, are you?]... No matter what colours [Erdogan] has tried to show since gaining power, his true ambitions became clear when he supported last month's so-called Freedom Flotilla of boats carrying what they claimed was aid to the people of Gaza. In a stunt organisers knew would end in tears, 6 vessels carrying 663 deluded 'friends' of Gaza attempted to sail there without authority to deliver 'aid'. Gaza, which is in the grip of the terror movement Hamas, is rightly blockaded by both Israel and Egypt, the most influential Islamic nation in the region, because its aim is to export radical Islamic revolution to those countries that might be susceptible - and to destroy those that aren't. The almost non-stop rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel are all the evidence you need."

In the grip? Yeah, as in Australia is in the grip of the Rudd government.

Rightly blockaded or illegally blockaded?

"Interestingly, the Turkish Muslim men on board - their subservient women presumably behind burkas at home where they belong - had not just prepared themselves to become 'martyrs', they appear to have had some combat training, not blinking at the grenades that would have you and me shocked and seeking cover. In any case, they were hardly seeking to become martyrs in the noble Christian sense of persecuted believers being killed for daring to keep faith in Christ while being taunted for their religion; these are angry, murderous blokes hell-bent on provoking a response from a democracy - just like Australia's - obliged to protect its borders and people... Three of the four Turks killed in the encounter sought martydom, according to their relatives and friends. Apparently they had prayed to Allah to grant them their wish. In the end, Allah seems to have done rather less than the Israeli Defence Forces, which took on most of the heavy lifting to dispatch these fellows to the hereafter."

Presumably, Alan? Why presumably? It's because they're Muslims and everyone knows how dreadfully Muslim men treat their women, right? If only they could learn to respect their women as much as Aussie men respect theirs: "Some of our most exploited women are top athletes, a painful example being those playing beach volleyball at the Olympic level. Organisations that should be devoted to promoting, policing and protecting the sport instead insist the women players must dress, well barely, to titillate male television audiences." (Women lose their roar, Alan Howe, Herald Sun, 14/3/10)

Only 4 Turks killed, Alan? And here's me thinking it was 9! But then Alan's a quality journalist and I'm just a niggling blogger, so what would I know?

And gee, some Turkish activists prepared themselves for martyrdom. Really? Martyrdom? As in "somebody who suffers persecution and death for the people, a country or an organisation..." (wikipedia). OMG! They knew they were messing with the Israelis - the Israelis for God's sake! - and the thought actually crossed their minds that they might be returning in a body bag? How paranoid can you get?

But seriously, Alan, that bit about praying to Allah to grant them martyrdom, that's not really in the Guardian report (Flotilla raid: Turkish jihadis bent on violence Israel claims, 2/6/10) you got this martyrdom stuff from, now is it? Let's see what was actually said: One activist said he'd "dreamed" he was going to be a martyr. Not in the sense of wanting to be a martyr, Alan, but, ominously, going to be a martyr. The brother-in-law of another said, Allah gave him a death he desired. Couldn't that perhaps be Turkish for something as simple as, If I'm going to die (and aren't we all) I'd prefer it to be in a good cause? And the third had "dreamt of becoming a martyr." As in had a dream about his fate? Or as in dreamt of winning Lotto? Who knows? Certainly not you, Alan. One thing's for sure though, whatever these martyrs thought of martydom, there's not a jot of evidence for your prattle about praying to Allah to grant them martyrdom.

Finally, Alan reminds us of the Awesome Evil that this "flotilla of fools" was out to aid and abet:

"[F]our Kassam rockets were launched into the Israeli towns of Sderot and Ashkelon. No one was killed, but that wasn't the plan. For Hamas, and the possibly reluctant recruits it has exploited in the blighted region it intends to restore to the Stone Age, it was business as usual."

But Alan, didn't your News Limited colleague over at The Australian, John Lyons, write on June 12: "It's generally accepted now - even by Israel - that Hamas has halted rockets. The war of last year wrought such terrible consequences for Gaza and its 1.5 million people that more retaliation is the last thing Hamas wants now. 'We have declared a unilateral ceasefire', senior Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef tells Inquirer in an interview in his office. 'The priority now is how to take care of our people after the war'?" (Running the Gaza blockade)

Shared Values?

"We share a unique relationship based on Australia's historical support for Israel and our shared commitment to freedom, security and democracy. Our friendship will remain strong because our values are shared." (Foreign Minister Stephen Smith speaking at an Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) lunch, 19/5/09)

The 2010 Global Peace Index (visionofhumanity.org) was recently released. 149 countries were ranked according to a range of 'Peace Indicators'. In light of our government's facile rhetoric about shared values, I thought it might be instructive to compare the results for Australia and Israel, with the United States thrown in for good measure. (NB: The higher the score, the more of a problem we have.)

Australia ranked 19/149; Israel 144/149; US 84/149

Looking at some of the key Peace Indicators, we get the following results:

Relations with neighbouring countries:
AUS 1/5; Israel 4/5; US 2/5

Level of respect for human rights:
AUS 1/5; Israel 5/5; US 3/5

Military expenditure as a % of GDP:
AUS 1.5; Israel 3/5; US 2/5

Number of armed services personnel per 100,000 people:
AUS 1/5; Israel 5/5; US 1/5

Exports of major conventional weapons per 1000,000 people:
AUS 1/5; Israel 5/5; US 2.5/5

Imports of major conventional weapons per 1000,000 people:
AUS 1.5/5; Israel 5/5; US 1/5

Aggregate weighted number of heavy weapons per 100,000 people:
AUS 1.5/5; Israel 5/5; US 2.5/5

Allow the courageous, clear-thinking (and now self-exiled) Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe to draw the obvious conclusion: "My quest for an authentic history of events in the Middle East required a personal de-militarisation of the mind. Even now, in 2010, Israel is in many ways a settler Prussian state: a combination of colonialist policies with a high level of militarisation in all aspects of life... It is manifested in the dominance of the army over political, cultural and economic life within Israel. Defence Minister Ehud Barak was the commanding officer of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, in a military unit similar to the one that assaulted the flotilla. The background was profoundly significant in terms of the State's Zionist response to what they and all the commando officers perceived as the most formidable and dangerous enemy. You probably have to be born in Israel, as I was, and go through the whole process of socialisation and education - including serving in the army - to grasp the power of this militarist mentality and its dire consequences. And you need such a background to understand why the whole premise on which the international community's approach to the Middle East is based, is utterly and disastrously wrong." (What drives Israel?, heraldscotland.com, 6/6/10)

Shared values?

Cannon Fodder for Zion: Exodus 1947

It's become something of a cliche to liken the Gaza flotilla, and Israel's massacre of its activists, to events surrounding the attempt in 1947 by the Jewish refugee vessel, Exodus, to challenge Britain's postwar blockade of Jewish refugees seeking entry into Palestine. Here, for example, is soft Zionist Uri Avnery's spin on that story:

"On the high seas, outside territorial waters, the ship was stopped by the navy. The commandos stormed it. Hundreds of people on the deck resisted; the soldiers used force. Some of the passengers were killed, scores injured. The ship was brought into harbour; the passengers were taken off by force. The world saw them walking on the quay, men and women, young and old, all of them worn out, one after another, each being marched between two soldiers... The ship was called Exodus 1947. It left France in the hope of breaking the British blockade, which was imposed to prevent ships loaded with Holocaust survivors from reaching the shores of Palestine. If it had been allowed to reach the country, the illegal immigrants would have come ashore and the British would have sent them to detention camps in Cyprus, as they had done before. Nobody would have taken any notice of the episode for more than two days. But the person in charge was Ernest Bevin, a Labor Party leader, an arrogant, rude, and power-loving British minister. He was not about to let a bunch of Jews dictate to him. He decided to teach them a lesson the entire world would witness. 'This is a provocation!' he exclaimed, and of course he was right. The main aim was indeed to create a provocation, in order to draw the eyes of the world to the British blockade. What followed is well known: the episode dragged on and on, one stupidity led to another, the whole world sympathized with the passengers. But the British did not give in and paid the price. A heavy price. Many believe that the Exodus incident was the turning point in the struggle for the creation of the state of Israel. Britain collapsed under the weight of international condemnation and decided to give up its mandate over Palestine. There were, of course, many more weighty reasons for this decision, but the Exodus proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back." (Exodus 2010, 6/6/10)

So, Bevin bad, bunch of Jews good, right? Or is there more to the Exodus affair than that?

The full story of the Exodus (or President Warfield, to give it its correct name) is covered exhaustively by Israeli historian Idith Zertal in her 1998 book From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel. Zertal's account completely contradicts Avnery's assertion that the aim of the Exodus was simply to break Britain's blockade of illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine. She makes it abundantly clear that the whole affair was a joint Mossad/Jewish Agency media production designed to reap maximum publicity for the Zionist cause at a critical juncture (July 1947) in the United Nations' deliberations over the fate of Britain's Palestine mandate.

Culled from Displaced Persons camps in Germany and equipped with counterfeit documents, the ship's passengers were smuggled into France by Mossad agents with the aim of getting them to Palestine in time for the visit there of the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP), the body charged with finding a solution to the Palestine problem following Britain's pullout in 1948.

As Zertal reveals, "Messages that Mossad headquarters in the Yishuv sent to the ship at sea and as it approached the shores of Palestine, are another piece of evidence of the importance the Zionists attached to the ship in light of the UNSCOP work. This included precise instructions regarding what the ship was to broadcast to the shore: descriptions of the suffering of the refugees, with an emphasis of their fierce desire to reach their homeland. In particular, the instructions stressed, the ship should broadcast from the high seas a call for UNSCOP to intervene, to board the ship and record living testimony before the commission's members leave the country. Accordingly, the ship's messages implored the members of the commission to come see with their own eyes the plight of Exodus's passengers." (p 56)

As for the British, in contrast to Avnery's Big Bad Bevin vs the Holocaust Survivors caricature, and his factually incorrect assertion that the Exodus affair preceded Britain's decision to bail out of Palestine, there was far more involved here than the mindset of Britain's foreign secretary: In the words of Britain's ambassador to France, "the illegal Jewish immigration traffic is not a spontaneous exodus of refugees, but a carefully-organized Zionist campaign designed to force the hand of His Majesty's Government and to increase the proportion of Jewish population in Palestine [and so cause] severe embarrassment and difficulty for His Majesty's government in its efforts to reach an equitable solution to the Palestine question." (p 65)

Zertal makes it quite clear that the unfortunate Holocaust survivors on board the Exodus were mere pawns in Zionist hands:

"Eighteen days after the President Warfield slipped away at dawn from the [French] port of Sete [12/7/47], its 4,500 passengers crowded onto three British prison ships appeared again on France's horizon. During the weeks between the ship's sailing from France and its passengers' return in British custody, while the President Warfield was still making its way towards Haifa, its name was changed at sea by the Mossad agent on board to the Exodus 1947. Its passengers engaged in a bloody battle against the British navy and eight British warships. They were then led to the port of Haifa, taken off their ship, and forced, in view of UNSCOP members, onto three British 'prison ships' meant to return them to the port from which they had departed. During this period the issue of the ship and its passengers never left the political agenda of the Zionist leadership, the British, and to a slightly lesser extent, the country from whose port they had sailed, France... [T]here was a three-way international confrontation of interests and forces... As in previous incidents, the Zionist struggle ostensibly fought over the fate of the Jewish refugees was, in fact, aimed higher, directed toward the great, decisive battle for the establishment of a Jewish state. The people who actually showed concern for the immediate fate of the 4,500 human beings thrown at their doorstep were the French, in whose territory the Exodus affair reached its climax. They displayed concern even though - or perhaps precisely because - they were the junior, accidental partner in the power triangle; in any case, they were not involved of their own volition. The Zionists had never intended to actually bring the 4,500 refugees onto the shores of Palestine, and such an effort had no chance of success since the Exodus was a show project from its conception. The ship's sailing was no secret, expect for the moment it made its way, at dawn, out of the port at Sete, and as it set sail, it was under close surveillance by a light British patrol plane and the ships of the British navy. The messages sent from the ship to the Mossad center in Palestine, and from the Mossad to the ship, as well as the Jewish Agency political department's invitation to the members of UNSCOP to be present in Haifa when the refugees were loaded onto the British deportation ships, prove that those involved on the Zionist side were aware of the tremendous political effect of a ship carrying thousands of Holocaust survivors being denied access to the shores of their 'national home' through the use of British force." (pp 82-83)

For further revelations by Zertal, as well as the lowdown on Avnery, simply click on the relevant tags below.

A Blockade Gazans Can Only Dream Of

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has just (14/6/10) issued a document, Gaza closure: not another year. These are its opening sentences:

"The serious incidents that took place on 31 May between Israeli forces and activists on a flotilla heading for Gaza once again put the spotlight on the acute hardship faced by the population in the Gaza Strip. As the ICRC has stressed repeatedly, the dire situation in Gaza cannot be resolved by providing humanitarian aid. The closure imposed on the Gaza Strip is about to enter its fourth year, choking off any real possibility of economic development. Gazans continue to suffer from unemployment, poverty and warfare, while the quality of Gaza's health care system has reached an all-time low. The whole of Gaza's civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility. The closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law... The international community has to do its part to ensure that repeated appeals by States and international organizations to lift the closure are finally heeded. Under international humanitarian law, Israel must ensure that the basic needs of Gazans, including adequate health care, are met... Furthermore, all States have an obligation to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of all relief consignments, equipment and personnel."

In June 1940, Britain's Channel Islands, off the French coast, were occupied by the Germans, causing the Royal Navy to blockade the islands. As Wikipedia puts it, "there was considerable hunger and privation during the five years of German occupation, particularly in the final months when the population was close to starvation." However, "[i]ntense negotiations resulted in some Red Cross humanitarian aid, leading to the arrival of the Red Cross supply ship Vega in December 1944."

Here's a fuller account:

"Things were at their very lowest ebb in December 1944 when we ran out of bread altogether, having already been on half rations... for a fortnight. The total shortage lasted for 3 weeks, and people subsisted as best they could on boiled potatoes, swedes and turnips... Morale had reached its very lowest ebb, when suddenly came news of a Red Cross ship, and rumours ran around the Island like wildfire. After several false alarms, the Vega arrived on 31 December 1944 and her cargo was unloaded and stored in a heavily guarded warehouse on the quay. Distribution of of parcels started on 2 January and a typical parcel contained six ounces of chocolate, twenty ounces of biscuits, four ounces of tea, twenty ounces of butter, six ounces of sugar, a two ounce tin of milk, fifteen ounces of marmalade, fourteen ounces of corned beef, thirteen ounces of ham or pork, ten ounces of salmon, five ounces of sardines, eight ounces of raisins, six ounces of prunes, four ounces of cheese, a three ounce tablet of soap, one ounce of pepper or salt. In addition there was a consignment of special-diet and invalid parcels, plus a number of layettes for new-born babies, supplied from a fund set up by Lady Campbell, wife of the British Ambassador to Lisbon. Everyone in the Islands received two parcels, and there was a surplus which was withheld and would only be distributed when it was known that the Vega had left Lisbon on her second journey. In addition the Vega brought a good supply of white flour, and the bread ration was re-established for the time being. As well as the parcels, the Vega also brought small quantities of cigarettes, tobacco, medicines and shoe leather, and we began to feel almost pampered. She continued to visit about every five or six weeks and, in addition to her usual cargo, she brought things like paraffin, candles, seeds, nails, matches and clothing. Thereafter, the diet was much more varied and interesting although by no means ample, and the other odds and ends filled many a long-felt want. The spirits of the Islanders began to rise. They never stopped rising until our longed-for liberation on 9 May 1945." (A Doctor's Occupation, John Lewis, 1982, pp 184-185)

Truly, a blockade the people of Gaza can only dream of.

Israel's Useful Fool

"Responding to international demands, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday appointed a commission to investigate the naval interdiction of a Gaza-bound humanitarian convoy two weeks ago that left 9 dead. In addition to three Israeli members, the commission will include two foreigners as official observers - David Trimble, a Northern Island Unionist leader who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, and retired general Ken Watkin of Canada, a former judge advocate-general. It is the first time Israel has given foreign experts a place in an official probe, reflecting the political sensitivity of the issue, which has stirred anti-Israel sentiment worldwide." (Israel appoints flotilla inquiry, Abraham Rabinovich, The Australian, 15/6/10)

So why Trimble? Well, he's just crazy about Israel:

"Initiated and led by Spain's former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, a group of international leaders is to meet in Paris on Monday night to launch the 'Friends of Israel Initiative', a new project in defense of Israel's right to exist. The leaders - who include the Nobel Peace Prize laureate David Trimble, Peru's former president Alejandro Toledo, Italian philosopher Marcelo Pear, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and British historian Andrew Roberts - say they seek to counter the attempts to deligitimize the State of Israel and its right to live in peace within safe and defensible borders." (Anzar, Trimble to launch new pro-Israel project 'Friends of Israel', Jerusalem Post, 31/5/10)

And Trimble's got form. You know in advance he's not that big on justice and he's not going to do a Goldstone on you:

"The long-awaited report into the Bloody Sunday massacre [Derry, January 1972] will conclude that a number of the fatal shootings of civilians by British soldiers were unlawful killings, the Guardian has learned. Lord Saville's 12-year inquiry into the deaths, the longest public inquiry in British legal history, will conclude with a report published next Tuesday, putting severe pressure on the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland to prosecute soldiers. Lord Trimble, the former leader of the Ulster Unionists and one of the architects of the Good Friday agreement, revealed to the Guardian that when Tony Blair agreed to the inquiry in 1998, he warned the then prime minister that any conclusion that departed 'one millimetre' from the earlier 1972 Widgery report into the killings would lead to 'soldiers in the dock'." (Bloody Sunday killings to be ruled unlawful, guardian.co.uk, 10/6/10)

Snark & Bile, Snort & Giggle

In writing about the Helen Thomas affair, The Australian's Caroline Overington had this to say about opinion columnists:

"It's worth noting that Thomas's remarks about the Jews weren't said at a White House briefing, yet the White House Correspondents Association couldn't have seized more eagerly on the opportunity to 'revive the issue of whether it is appropriate for an opinion columnist [that is, a person whose stock in trade is snark and bile, who isn't there on a fact-finding mission but to giggle and snort] to have a front-row seat in the White House briefing room'. The answer, then and now, and here as well as there, is no." (Thomas goes from White House to the dog house, 10/6/10)

Talk about the emperor's clothes! You now have it from an insider that opinion columnists are all snark & bile, snort & giggle. And, absent a credible statement to the contrary by Overington, presumably that applies to the most opinionated of them all, The Australian's foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan.

And speaking of snort & giggle, consider this little gem, again inspired by Thomas, from another snark & bile merchant, this time over at the Herald:

"There is no easy option here. Israel either allows Hamas to bomb it into oblivion or it keeps the blockade and hopes Gazans eventually become disillusioned with Hamas." (Acid tongue sinks the scribe who swam with anti-Israel sentiment, Miranda Devine, 10/6/10)

Snort & giggle? I nearly cacked myself!

PS: I couldn't help but notice this particular sentence in Devine's serving of s & b: "Reuters news agency has been criticised for cropping two photographs to remove knives shown in the hands of activists surrounding bloodied Israeli commandos." However, as one who, by definition, isn't on a fact-finding mission, I doubt she'd be interested in the story behind the (cropped) photo of the bearded, knife-wielding Muslim 'fanatic' which turned up in Haaretz with the label: 'An activist on board the Gaza flotilla holding a knife after Israel Navy commandos boarded their ship on May 31, 2010. Photo by: Provided by IDF Spokesperson's Office'. Check out (Updated) nailed again: IDF description of suspicious photo it distributed is retracted, 8/6/10, maxblumenthal.com)

A Ferocious Beast

It is indeed a jungle out there. Just ask Sydney Morning Herald columnist and former 2UE broadcaster Mike Carlton:

"It is a ferocious beast, the Jewish lobby. Write just one sentence even mildly critical of Israel and it lunges from its lair, fangs bared. 'I rejoice every time a f...ing Palestinian dies, f... them!!!! Israel should flatten Gaza with a nuclear strike and be done with it', said one of hundreds of Jewish emailers this week. 'How dare you insult Israel you overpriviledged [sic] racist white moron, f... you and your stupid article. I wish I could smash your dumb face in'.

"The stupid article was last week's column, which suggested that Israel's attack on the Gaza flotilla was lethal idiocy and that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was an unprincipled thug addicted to the use of military force.

"Few of the emails were as brisk as that one. Many, though, were nakedly racist, such as this from a man named Schwarz. 'Do Jews do drive-by shootings every other day like in Sydney's south-west? Do Jews or Arabs make up a large proportion of the Australian jail population? Do Jews gang rape young girls in Sydney?' he mused.

"Others like to threaten. A travel agent from Double Bay drafted an apoplectic denunciation and circulated it to his friends. 'The more of us write with a copy [sic] to The Sydney Morning Herald, the more chance we may have that the Herald will change its one-eyed view of the situation and give us a more balanced reporting and maybe even sack Mike Carlton', he said hopefully. One of his chaverim mistakenly forwarded it to me.

"It's standard operating procedure for the lobby to hurl accusations of anti-Semitism with that peculiar Israeli blend of paranoia and belligerance. 'That you are happy to indulge in hate-mongering makes you quite the sadist', wrote a man from Melbourne. 'Your article gives you away as an anti-Semite and as much as you might hide behind the guise of a pro-Palestinian humanitarian, your Holocaust revisionism in comparing the conflict of the modern era to the systematic extermination of the Jews shows your true colours'.

"That is just plain dumb. My Jewish friends would confirm that I am not a sadistic, anti-Semitic, hate-mongering Holocaust denier. But I did enjoy the sneers about my manifold failings as a journalist. 'You are a cheap hack making money out of lies', was typical. 'Journalists are generally recruited if they have an IQ larger than their shoe size', was another. Yuk yuk, guffaw.

"None of this is accidental. The Israel lobby, worldwide, is orchestrated in Jerusalem by a department in the Prime Minister's office with the rather Orwellian name of the Ministry for Public Diplomacy & Diaspora Affairs. Less than 24 hours after the attack on the Mavi Marmara, the ministry hit the internet with 'important talking points' for Jews around the world, the first of which was - surprisingly - that 'the Palestinian people are not under blockade'.

"'Wtite letters to your local newspapers, comment on blogs and news websites, call in to radio programs and post links to social networking sites to help spread the real version of events', urged the deliciously named Mr Ronen Plot, the Ministry Director-General.

"This is all free speech, of course. I just wish they could be more polite." (Funny, they remember their epithets but not their manners, 12/6/10)

Still, if you haven't been savaged by the beast, you're not really doing your job. I sincerely hope that Carlton is made of stronger stuff than former ABC broadcaster and Age columnist, Terry Lane:

"I have said publicly that I will never write or speak on the subject of Israel or Palestine ever again. Here is why: The Zionist lobby in this country is malicious, implacable, mendacious and dangerous. They have caused me a great deal of lost sleep - and in the end my insomnia has not contributed anything to the resolution of the conflict over Palestine. I might as well keep my mouth shut and get some sleep. What's more, once the expression 'anti-Semite' hits the air, or, heaven forbid, the sacred formula 'six million' is uttered, then I know from bitter experience that there is not one manager or editor in the country who will defend an underling. We are thrown to the jackals. In the end the truly tolerant have no defence against intolerance. I surrender. To the Zionists I say: you win. To the Palestinians: forgive my cowardice." (I surrender, Generation, September 1992)

I also hope that Carlton will not be thrown to the jackals. The resistance to lobby pressure shown thus far by the editor of The Age should serve as an example to the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald:

"[Zionist Federation of Australia president Philip] Chester said an article that appeared on the front page of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald appeared to pit 'Muslims against Jews' and put the safety of local Jews at risk. He expressed unhappiness with what he felt was a lack of response from The Age to concerns. 'I telephoned Paul Ramadge, the editor of The Age, to explain that from the point of view of our community, that article should never have found its way into The Age and that he once again has to take responsibility for the fact that what they put in the Melbourne Age impacts upon the safety and security of the Jewish community in Melbourne. 'Let me make it abundantly clear. The editor of The Age neither took my call, nor has he returned my call', Chester said. (Community turns out to hear facts, Australian Jewish News, 11/6/10)