A more blatant display of Israeli propaganda than last night's 7.30 Report's Gaza conflict - one year on would be hard to find:
"The aim of the attacks was to end the rocket attacks being made on Israel by Islamic militants." (from the introduction on the website)
"The aim was to end the barrage of crude rockets being being constantly fired by Islamic militants towards Israeli towns." (from presenter Chris Uhlmann)
"Operation Cast Lead was launched to put a stop to years of Hamas rockets on Israel's southern towns and cities." (from ABC Middle East correspondent Ben Knight)
That's our (Zionised) ABC for you, folks. It doesn't get much more mantra-like than that.
Well, why did Israel attack Gaza? Quite simply, to get its mojo (aka deterrence capability) back after losing it to Hezbollah in 2006. Don't believe me? Well, just listen to the war criminals behind the Gaza Holocaust:
"The recent military operation in the Gaza Strip against Hamas has restored Israel's deterrence among its enemies and in the perception of the whole world, Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert said." (PM: Gaza op restored Israel's deterrence, Etgar Lefkovits, Jerusalem Post, 26/1/09)
"Hamas was dealt a blow that created 'the deterrence that is now enabling calm'." (Barak says deterrence enabled calm, Hanan Greeberg, ynetnews.com, 19/1/09)
"[Tzipi Livni] said the Gaza offensive had restored Israel's 'deterrence' against militant factions seeking to attack it... Hamas now understands that Israel will act 'wildly' to any attacks against it, she said regarding the 'deterrence'." (Livni: Only Israel will decide when to end Gaza offensive, Deutsche Presse-Argentur, jewishfederations.org)
No, it wasn't about rockets, rockets, rockets - that was just the fiction decided on by the warmongers to sell Israel's wilding to the world - it was about deterrence, deterrence, deterrence.
Then there's this gobsmacking exchange where Ben Knight throws all pretense of journalistic objectivity to the winds and becomes a mere sock puppet for the Israelis:
"Yohanan Plessner, Knesset EU Relations Committee: The laws that govern warfare today are in many ways not so relevant to security challenges.
Yohanan Plessner is a former Israeli army commando who now maintains Israel's relations with Europe.
Yohanan Plessner: In the new kind of warfare today, civilians are more likely to get hurt as long as terrorist organisations and their sponsors are... situating the centre of gravity of their forces within the civilian population.
Ben Knight: That's exactly what Hamas did in Gaza, so did Hezbollah in South Lebanon a few years ago."
And, incredibly, he does it again:
Ben Knight: Israel's problem is not just where it fought in Gaza, but how. White phosphorus burns down to the bone. It's not supposed to be used in built-up civilian areas. Jumaa Al Najar was one of those hit with a white phosphorus shell.
Jumaa Al Najar, Victim: All over my legs, it felt like I was on fire.
Ben Knight: Before the war, Jumaa Al Najar was a textile salesman. He can now barely walk and his right hand is paralysed and he can't get out of Gaza for treatment.
Jumaa Al Najar: Before I was wounded I was the breadwinner in my home. Now I sit at home wondering how to support my family.
Ben Knight: Israel knows it's not the only nation faced with the problem of fighting enemies who operate in civilian zones.
Knight seems blissfully unaware that reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Dugard Committee and the Goldstone Report have found no evidence to back Israel's claim that Hamas is using human shields. Nor does he appear aware that such claims were retracted by the Israeli military when they were first used to cover its crimes in Lebanon in 2006. Israeli newspaper Haaretz, for example, had this to say on Israel's massacre of dozens of Lebanese civilians at Qana in south Lebanon: "As the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident. It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time. The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday." (Livni: Qana attack led to turning point in support for Israel, Yoav Stern, 1/8/06)
And back when Israel was "punishing, humiliating and terrorising" (to borrow Justice Goldstone's exact words) the people of Gaza, Ben Knight was blithely reporting - I kid you not - on how Arab television was punishing Israel with footage from Gaza. (See my 14/1/09 post Choking on My Falafel) And before that, in September 2008, Knight was busy parroting the argot of the Jewish cowboys who rule the range in the Wild West Bank. (See my 6/10/08 post The Media is the Message)
No wonder the local Israel lobby's given the tick to Knight and his equally clueless ABC colleague Matt Brown*: "On the ABC, both radio and television, the standard of Israel coverage has... depended on the quality of the correspondents. Early in the decade, with Tim Palmer and then Jane Hutcheon, the coverage was at times deplorable. More recently, however, correspondents such as Matt Brown and Ben Knight have delivered more thoughtful and even-handed reporting on the whole." (Bias & Balance in the noughties, Jamie Hyam, The Australian Jewish News, 18/12/09) [*See my posts Sleepless in Sderot, Legless in Gaza (16/1/09) & The Beat-Up Goes On (27/7/08)]
Showing posts with label Yochanan Plesner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yochanan Plesner. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Ram Bam Thankyou Ma'am
The more tarnished Israel's reputation becomes, the more the Zionist propaganda mill must work to maintain Western support for, or neutralise Western opposition to, Israel's relentless hammering of Palestine and its people. One tactic is to approach Western politicians, civic leaders, media personnel, or celebrities (whether past, or in, their prime) and sell them on the dubious virtues of a sponsored pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
To mention only the most recent examples that I am aware of, an Israeli invitation to Prince Charles to make an official visit came to light in October last year only when his minders' emails were accidentally leaked. These revealed just how leery they were of the blandishments of Israel's propaganda millers: "Acceptance," acknowledged Charles' private secretary in one of the emails, "would make it hard to avoid the many ways in which Israel would want HRH to help burnish its image." (The Australian, 17/11/07) Ah, yes,"the many ways."
More recently, the same propagandists of Zion are trying to entice the remaining Beatles (whom they knocked back in the 60s as corruptors of youth) to attend Israel's 60th 'birthday' bash later this year. We can only hope that Paul and Ringo (or their minders) will be as savvy as Prince Charles (or his).
In Australia, however, it seems that our movers and shakers, in politics, the media, or elsewhere, simply can't resist the charms of Israel's thrusting statesmen-warriors.
Author, journalist and blogger, Antony Loewenstein, in his invaluable 2006 investigation into Australian Zionism, My Israel Question, raised the subject of the Australian/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council's Rambam tours to Israel:-
"[AIJAC]'s Rambam program...is designed, in the words of its Sydney-based founder Brian Sherman, to 'lift the veil' on Israel for opinion-makers whose knowledge of the Israel-Palestine issue 'is formed by day to day reports in the media where Israel is largely seen as an occupying force'. Since 2003, around 120 fellows have participated in the program, including unionists, ALP and Liberal MPs, political advisers, journalists and editors. The journalists include: Herald & Weekly Times editor-in-chief Peter Blunden and journalist John Ferguson; the Australian Financial Review's Ben Potter and Robert Bolton; chief editorial writer for the Age, John Watson; The Courier-Mail's Dennis Atkins; SBS's Sally Watson, the SMH's Louise Dodson; and Channel Ten's John Hill...The week-long program includes meetings with prominent Israeli politicians, a tour of the separation fence, brief meetings with Palestinian leaders in Ramallah and a host of other conservative individuals inevitably singing from the same song sheet, including former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu." (pp 220-221)
The latest(?) 'Rambam fellows' to 'benefit' from an AIJAC-organised pilgrimage to Israel are a batch of unrepresentative swill (to borrow from Paul Keating) from the West Australian Legislative Council. According to The Australian Jewish News (25/1/08), they included Nick Griffiths, George Cash, Ray Halligan and Bob Kucera. These ALP and Liberal MLCs "visited the ANZAC cemetery, where they were briefed on WW II historical connections between Australia and Israel [apparently oblivious to the fact that the war had ended well before the creation of Israel, when Palestine was still Palestine] and were treated to a tour of the city of Sderot. They also met Israeli leaders, including Knesset members Ephraim Sneh and Yochanan Plesner...Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus... [also] explained the nature of his work to the Australian politicians." Cooed AIJAC's executive director, Dr Colin Rubenstein, "the MPs gained a better understanding of the many dimensions of Israeli society, its achievements and the challenges it confronts."
Ephraim Sneh, a two-time visitor to Australia, who has said of our political masters, "Thankfully, I don't think that in Australia there is one side that loves Israel more than the other," appears to be a permanent fixture of such junkets. We've already encountered him in the conclusion to Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan's plucking silly Deep inside the plucky country PR piece in The Australian on 19/1/08 [See my posts, Gullible's Travels and When Even the Retraction is Dodgy 1 & 2].
Sheridan had been wined on a glass of vintage Israeli paranoia: "I had gone to see Ephraim Sneh, a white-haired veteran Labour Party politician and soldier, a former cabinet minister and a former general. He points to a picture on the back wall of his office. It is of 2 Israeli F-15 fighters flying over Auschwitz. 'When we didn't have F-15s, we had Auschwitz,' he says." One imagines our WA political junketeers imbibing much the same toxic brew. Or perhaps Ephraim served them this heady little (molotov) cocktail: "There are countries which try to evade the unavoidable confrontation with evil, but in Israel, we don't have this privilege because we are the first name on the hit list" (AJN, 24/8/07). Parenthetically, don't you just love it when the guys who have raised the hit list (not to mention the hit) to an art form talk this way? Hm, what's on today's to-do list: Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran? OK, let's warm up with a couple of liquidations in the West Bank, or maybe a spot of collateral damage in Gaza. A Hard Day's Night indeed!
And Yochanan Plesner, president, no less, of Ehud Olmert's governing Kadima party, did he outline for them "the growing hostility of Israel's neighbors in a geopolitical context," as he did to those Jewish students from the US who documented (on israelactivism.com) the highs of their 2006 Hasbara* Fellowships (designed to enable them to "communicate a pro-Israel message to the Diaspora community, specifically on college campuses"). [*hasbara: Hebrew for 'explanation', as in explaining/promoting Israel to the world]
Did the inimitable Itamar Marcus, Israeli settler, former advisor to Likud leader, Netanyahu, and director of the Zionist propaganda site, Palestinian Media Watch, recycle the same "provocative clips of incitement and indoctrination in Palestinian schools," viewed by the aforementioned incited and indoctrinated US students? After his presentation, we're told the students "discussed a campaign called Teach Kids Peace which Hasbara Fellowships has been bringing to campuses across North America," and which "stresses the need to end the hate being taught in Palestinian schools as the cornerstone for ending the violence in the region." Such a pity, though, those photos flashed around the world during Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon of prepubescent Israeli schoolgirls writing From Israel with love on tank rounds about to be lobbed across the border onto their Lebanese sisters. 'After everything I've worked for', poor old Itamar must have groaned.
Whatever, you can be sure that Ephraim, Yochanan, Itamar, and the rest, vital cogs in Israel's vast propaganda mill, did their orchestrated best to lay our polly waffles in the proverbial aisles.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, if the wooed and wowed WA wallies think they can just sink back into the leather of the Legislative Council and while away their days dreaming of their most recent foreign fling, they've got another thing coming. That is, if the experience of another mob recently returned from a Journalists Mission sponsored by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, is any guide. A NSWJBoD advertisement (AJN 15/2/08) informs us that Glen Wheeler (2UE), Kirsty Needham (SMH), Tim Blair (Daily Telegraph) and Joel Labi (2GB) will be "reporting to the plenum" on 19/2/08 about their "intensive fact-finding programme" in Israel.
No doubt, like the Jewish students from the US on their 2006 Hasbara Fellowships program, and the NSW journalists on their 2007 Journalists Mission, the Rambammed WA MLCs will henceforth be expected to adopt the old missionary position for Israel when required.
To mention only the most recent examples that I am aware of, an Israeli invitation to Prince Charles to make an official visit came to light in October last year only when his minders' emails were accidentally leaked. These revealed just how leery they were of the blandishments of Israel's propaganda millers: "Acceptance," acknowledged Charles' private secretary in one of the emails, "would make it hard to avoid the many ways in which Israel would want HRH to help burnish its image." (The Australian, 17/11/07) Ah, yes,"the many ways."
More recently, the same propagandists of Zion are trying to entice the remaining Beatles (whom they knocked back in the 60s as corruptors of youth) to attend Israel's 60th 'birthday' bash later this year. We can only hope that Paul and Ringo (or their minders) will be as savvy as Prince Charles (or his).
In Australia, however, it seems that our movers and shakers, in politics, the media, or elsewhere, simply can't resist the charms of Israel's thrusting statesmen-warriors.
Author, journalist and blogger, Antony Loewenstein, in his invaluable 2006 investigation into Australian Zionism, My Israel Question, raised the subject of the Australian/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council's Rambam tours to Israel:-
"[AIJAC]'s Rambam program...is designed, in the words of its Sydney-based founder Brian Sherman, to 'lift the veil' on Israel for opinion-makers whose knowledge of the Israel-Palestine issue 'is formed by day to day reports in the media where Israel is largely seen as an occupying force'. Since 2003, around 120 fellows have participated in the program, including unionists, ALP and Liberal MPs, political advisers, journalists and editors. The journalists include: Herald & Weekly Times editor-in-chief Peter Blunden and journalist John Ferguson; the Australian Financial Review's Ben Potter and Robert Bolton; chief editorial writer for the Age, John Watson; The Courier-Mail's Dennis Atkins; SBS's Sally Watson, the SMH's Louise Dodson; and Channel Ten's John Hill...The week-long program includes meetings with prominent Israeli politicians, a tour of the separation fence, brief meetings with Palestinian leaders in Ramallah and a host of other conservative individuals inevitably singing from the same song sheet, including former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu." (pp 220-221)
The latest(?) 'Rambam fellows' to 'benefit' from an AIJAC-organised pilgrimage to Israel are a batch of unrepresentative swill (to borrow from Paul Keating) from the West Australian Legislative Council. According to The Australian Jewish News (25/1/08), they included Nick Griffiths, George Cash, Ray Halligan and Bob Kucera. These ALP and Liberal MLCs "visited the ANZAC cemetery, where they were briefed on WW II historical connections between Australia and Israel [apparently oblivious to the fact that the war had ended well before the creation of Israel, when Palestine was still Palestine] and were treated to a tour of the city of Sderot. They also met Israeli leaders, including Knesset members Ephraim Sneh and Yochanan Plesner...Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus... [also] explained the nature of his work to the Australian politicians." Cooed AIJAC's executive director, Dr Colin Rubenstein, "the MPs gained a better understanding of the many dimensions of Israeli society, its achievements and the challenges it confronts."
Ephraim Sneh, a two-time visitor to Australia, who has said of our political masters, "Thankfully, I don't think that in Australia there is one side that loves Israel more than the other," appears to be a permanent fixture of such junkets. We've already encountered him in the conclusion to Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan's plucking silly Deep inside the plucky country PR piece in The Australian on 19/1/08 [See my posts, Gullible's Travels and When Even the Retraction is Dodgy 1 & 2].
Sheridan had been wined on a glass of vintage Israeli paranoia: "I had gone to see Ephraim Sneh, a white-haired veteran Labour Party politician and soldier, a former cabinet minister and a former general. He points to a picture on the back wall of his office. It is of 2 Israeli F-15 fighters flying over Auschwitz. 'When we didn't have F-15s, we had Auschwitz,' he says." One imagines our WA political junketeers imbibing much the same toxic brew. Or perhaps Ephraim served them this heady little (molotov) cocktail: "There are countries which try to evade the unavoidable confrontation with evil, but in Israel, we don't have this privilege because we are the first name on the hit list" (AJN, 24/8/07). Parenthetically, don't you just love it when the guys who have raised the hit list (not to mention the hit) to an art form talk this way? Hm, what's on today's to-do list: Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran? OK, let's warm up with a couple of liquidations in the West Bank, or maybe a spot of collateral damage in Gaza. A Hard Day's Night indeed!
And Yochanan Plesner, president, no less, of Ehud Olmert's governing Kadima party, did he outline for them "the growing hostility of Israel's neighbors in a geopolitical context," as he did to those Jewish students from the US who documented (on israelactivism.com) the highs of their 2006 Hasbara* Fellowships (designed to enable them to "communicate a pro-Israel message to the Diaspora community, specifically on college campuses"). [*hasbara: Hebrew for 'explanation', as in explaining/promoting Israel to the world]
Did the inimitable Itamar Marcus, Israeli settler, former advisor to Likud leader, Netanyahu, and director of the Zionist propaganda site, Palestinian Media Watch, recycle the same "provocative clips of incitement and indoctrination in Palestinian schools," viewed by the aforementioned incited and indoctrinated US students? After his presentation, we're told the students "discussed a campaign called Teach Kids Peace which Hasbara Fellowships has been bringing to campuses across North America," and which "stresses the need to end the hate being taught in Palestinian schools as the cornerstone for ending the violence in the region." Such a pity, though, those photos flashed around the world during Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon of prepubescent Israeli schoolgirls writing From Israel with love on tank rounds about to be lobbed across the border onto their Lebanese sisters. 'After everything I've worked for', poor old Itamar must have groaned.
Whatever, you can be sure that Ephraim, Yochanan, Itamar, and the rest, vital cogs in Israel's vast propaganda mill, did their orchestrated best to lay our polly waffles in the proverbial aisles.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, if the wooed and wowed WA wallies think they can just sink back into the leather of the Legislative Council and while away their days dreaming of their most recent foreign fling, they've got another thing coming. That is, if the experience of another mob recently returned from a Journalists Mission sponsored by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, is any guide. A NSWJBoD advertisement (AJN 15/2/08) informs us that Glen Wheeler (2UE), Kirsty Needham (SMH), Tim Blair (Daily Telegraph) and Joel Labi (2GB) will be "reporting to the plenum" on 19/2/08 about their "intensive fact-finding programme" in Israel.
No doubt, like the Jewish students from the US on their 2006 Hasbara Fellowships program, and the NSW journalists on their 2007 Journalists Mission, the Rambammed WA MLCs will henceforth be expected to adopt the old missionary position for Israel when required.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)