What I feared has come to pass: a massive Israel lobby barrage of confected outrage has scored a direct hit on the Sydney Morning Herald, completely destroying its slogan, 'Independent. Always.' The sound of popping champagne corks and excited South African accents can be heard from lobby redoubts in Sydney's east even as we speak.
Warning: the following editorial contains instances of extreme grovelling that may cause nausea in some readers:
"There has been widespread reader and community reaction during the past 10 days over a cartoon that was used to illustrate an opinion piece by columnist Mike Carlton on the conflict in Gaza. Much of that concern was borne out publicly on our letters pages - and there has continued to be commentary and correspondence that has sought to make sense of the conflict. The Herald has drawn opinions from a wide variety of sources to help readers to understand the causes of, and the possible ways to end, the war between Hamas and Israel. Deeply critical exchanges have taken place over the opinions expressed in Mr Carlton's column, and properly so, as we invite debate over any column we publish. But the Herald has also fielded a number of accusations of racism over the cartoon.
"Today, the Herald wishes to apologise for this distress, draw a line under the debate about the cartoon, and return focus back to the events in Israel and Gaza.
"The cartoon showed an elderly man, with a large nose, sitting alone, with a remote control device in his hand, overseeing explosions in Gaza. The armchair in which he was sitting was emblazoned with the Star of David, and the man was wearing a kippah, a religious skullcap. A strong view was expressed that the cartoon, by Glen Le Lievre, closely resembled illustrations that had circulated in Nazi Germany. These are menacing cartoons that continue to haunt and traumatise generations of Jewish people.
"In addressing individual and community concern after the publication of the cartoon on July 26, the Herald looked to the fact that Mr Le Lievre's distinctive drawing style routinely sees old people depicted with large noses and pronounced facial features. It is the way he draws and his visual archive, dating back many years, confirms this. It was also significant that the cartoon had its genesis in news photographs of men seated in chairs and lounges, observing the shelling of Gaza from the hills of Sderot. One of those photos depicted an old man, wearing a kippah, reclining casually as part of a group - with Mr Le Lievre seeing comparisons between this and someone watching their television; hence the remote control. Another photo portrayed a lone man on a large couch - and thus the cartoon blended these two images.
"The Herald deeply regretted the upset the image had caused, but felt - not least because the cartoonist lacked any intent and that actual photographs influenced the setting and physical depiction of the character in the cartoon - that no racial vilification had occurred.
"However, this newspaper accepts that this position was too simplistic and ignored the use of religious symbols. The Herald now appreciates that, in using the Star of David and the kippah in the cartoon, the newspaper invoked an inappropriate element of religion, rather than nationhood, and made a serious error of judgment. It was wrong to publish the cartoon in its original form. We apologise unreservedly for this lapse, and the anguish and distress that has been caused.
"Our commitment remains to reporting in a fair and balanced way on the appalling events in Israel and Gaza, where our correspondent, Ruth Pollard, is currently based, witnessing daily the horrors of war. The devastation being inflicted on innocent men, women and children, on livestock and property, has shocked a world that has become all too comfortable with its own indifference - with all sides in the conflict being condemned by the United Nations for unconscionable practices. All the while, the world earnestly hopes and waits, so far in vain, for a lasting ceasefire and a sustainable peace - a resolution that will stay the blood and the tears." (We apologise: publishing cartoon in original form was wrong, 4/8/14)
You can read my posts on this issue, beginning with Carlton & Le Lievre Get Gaza (27/7/14), by simply clicking on the 'Mike Carlton' label below. Note that the Herald has been subjected to threats of legal action and a boycott by the usual suspects.
Israel lobby 1, Free Speech 0.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Why Is the MSM Ignoring Israeli Firepower?
Here's something rare: a mainstream media estimate of the number of Israeli artillery shells lobbed onto Gaza thus far. (I have no idea, BTW, whether this includes naval shelling):
"Former assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs Bing West, today an author on war-fighting and counter insurgency, told The Weekend Australian 'artillery is a distance weapon, and Israel has fired over 30,000 shells. In the April 2004 invasion of Fallujah, the US Marines did not fire one artillery shell. 'New devices, especially GPS and reliable individual radios, enabled the marines to co-ordinate a street-by-street, house-by-house search without using long-distance area weapons. However, the cost was 27 marines killed in face-to-face fights inside houses. The Israelis are unwilling to accept higher casualties by using such discriminating tactics'." (Israel aims to minimise troop casualties, Rowan Callick, The Australian, 2/8/14)
I can't quantify this (maybe someone else can), but I imagine that each of these 30,000 shells is infinitely more destructive than any Palestinian rocket.
As to the destructive capacity of Israeli aerial bombing, please note the following:
"In 2002, the launching of a one-tonne bomb on a home [in Gaza] resulting in the death of 14 civilians was the exception... Seven years later, during Operation Cast Lead, there was widespread use of the tactic of dropping bombs over densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip. Today, in Operation Protective Edge, the air force boasts of having released more than 100 one-tonne bombs on Gaza. What was once the exception is now the policy." (From admitting mistakes to an embrace of killing, 'mostly moral' army lost its way, Yuli Novak, Sydney Morning Herald, 30/7/14)
God only knows the full extent of Israeli ordnance raining down on Gaza today. So why isn't the msm media investigating and reporting on this?
Why is it that all we ever seem to hear about are Palestinian rockets (largely of the pinprick variety) and mortars*, estimated by the Israeli military, as of 31/7/14, at a mere 2,670**?
[*See my 17/7/14 post Is It Rocket Science?;**Warning of 'new Gaza targets', John Lyons, The Australian]
"Former assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs Bing West, today an author on war-fighting and counter insurgency, told The Weekend Australian 'artillery is a distance weapon, and Israel has fired over 30,000 shells. In the April 2004 invasion of Fallujah, the US Marines did not fire one artillery shell. 'New devices, especially GPS and reliable individual radios, enabled the marines to co-ordinate a street-by-street, house-by-house search without using long-distance area weapons. However, the cost was 27 marines killed in face-to-face fights inside houses. The Israelis are unwilling to accept higher casualties by using such discriminating tactics'." (Israel aims to minimise troop casualties, Rowan Callick, The Australian, 2/8/14)
I can't quantify this (maybe someone else can), but I imagine that each of these 30,000 shells is infinitely more destructive than any Palestinian rocket.
As to the destructive capacity of Israeli aerial bombing, please note the following:
"In 2002, the launching of a one-tonne bomb on a home [in Gaza] resulting in the death of 14 civilians was the exception... Seven years later, during Operation Cast Lead, there was widespread use of the tactic of dropping bombs over densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip. Today, in Operation Protective Edge, the air force boasts of having released more than 100 one-tonne bombs on Gaza. What was once the exception is now the policy." (From admitting mistakes to an embrace of killing, 'mostly moral' army lost its way, Yuli Novak, Sydney Morning Herald, 30/7/14)
God only knows the full extent of Israeli ordnance raining down on Gaza today. So why isn't the msm media investigating and reporting on this?
Why is it that all we ever seem to hear about are Palestinian rockets (largely of the pinprick variety) and mortars*, estimated by the Israeli military, as of 31/7/14, at a mere 2,670**?
[*See my 17/7/14 post Is It Rocket Science?;**Warning of 'new Gaza targets', John Lyons, The Australian]
Sunday, August 3, 2014
The Carlton/Le Lievre Backlash 5
Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton, and cartoonist Glen Le Lievre, are predictably the latest "terror targets" for The Australian Jewish [sic: Zionist] News.
So heinous is their 'crime' that they've been the subject (along with Chanel 9's 60 Minutes) of a massive front page editorial bombardment in the August 1 issue. Here's the relevant bit:
"As for Carlton's column, that was altogether more insidious. Not only were we treated to baseless accusations of 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' on Israel's part, but then there was a subtle shift. These were crimes being committed by 'a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory'.
"This column was no longer about a country, this was about a people and a race - a people and a race who should know better because of what they themselves went through. In short, you Jews are the same as the Nazis, worse perhaps because you choose to ignore the lessons of your own history.
"How low can a columnist in a mainstream newspaper sink?
"And then, to illustrate the point, a cartoon featuring a big-nosed, bespectacled Jew, the kind that would have featured in Der Sturmer, wearing a kippah and with a Star of David scrawled on the back of his armchair - just in case it wasn't quite clear he was Jewish - pressing a remote control that detonates an explosion in Gaza...
"If you haven't done so already, consider cancelling your Fairfax subscriptions today." (MEDIA DISGRACE: Shame on those Australian journalists who are fanning the flames of hatred against Jews and Israel)
The confected outrage on display here highlights the always shifting goalposts of the Zionist propaganda game.
On the one hand, the targeted journalists (Carlton & Le Lievre) are slammed (a fave Murdoch/Zionist press word) for allegedly not differentiating between Israel and Jews in general. On the other, this accusation comes from a rag in which every effort, in every issue, in true Zionist style, is made to conflate being a Jew with support for Israel.
So heinous is their 'crime' that they've been the subject (along with Chanel 9's 60 Minutes) of a massive front page editorial bombardment in the August 1 issue. Here's the relevant bit:
"As for Carlton's column, that was altogether more insidious. Not only were we treated to baseless accusations of 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' on Israel's part, but then there was a subtle shift. These were crimes being committed by 'a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory'.
"This column was no longer about a country, this was about a people and a race - a people and a race who should know better because of what they themselves went through. In short, you Jews are the same as the Nazis, worse perhaps because you choose to ignore the lessons of your own history.
"How low can a columnist in a mainstream newspaper sink?
"And then, to illustrate the point, a cartoon featuring a big-nosed, bespectacled Jew, the kind that would have featured in Der Sturmer, wearing a kippah and with a Star of David scrawled on the back of his armchair - just in case it wasn't quite clear he was Jewish - pressing a remote control that detonates an explosion in Gaza...
"If you haven't done so already, consider cancelling your Fairfax subscriptions today." (MEDIA DISGRACE: Shame on those Australian journalists who are fanning the flames of hatred against Jews and Israel)
The confected outrage on display here highlights the always shifting goalposts of the Zionist propaganda game.
On the one hand, the targeted journalists (Carlton & Le Lievre) are slammed (a fave Murdoch/Zionist press word) for allegedly not differentiating between Israel and Jews in general. On the other, this accusation comes from a rag in which every effort, in every issue, in true Zionist style, is made to conflate being a Jew with support for Israel.
MERC's Dictionary of Ziospeak 8 & 9
terror targets: Palestinian civilians & civilian infrastructure
weapons development centre: university
(as in "'In the past 24 hours, we struck over 200 terror targets in Gaza, including a weapons development centre located in the Islamic University,' [the Israeli military] said on Twitter." A weakened Hamas clings on to the people's support in Gaza, Jason Burke, theguardian.com, 3/9/14)
weapons development centre: university
(as in "'In the past 24 hours, we struck over 200 terror targets in Gaza, including a weapons development centre located in the Islamic University,' [the Israeli military] said on Twitter." A weakened Hamas clings on to the people's support in Gaza, Jason Burke, theguardian.com, 3/9/14)
Saturday, August 2, 2014
The Carlton/Le Lievre Backlash 4
Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton witing in today's edition:
"As I predicted, the abusive emails and tweets have been thundering in all week, hundreds of them. The Israel lobby - or as I prefer it, the Likud lobby - rose in fury at last week's column about Israel's war crimes against civilians in Gaza.
"I lost count of the number of times I was called a Nazi. A man named Ziggy even did it in German: 'Die Nazi-Obst fallt nicht weit vom Stamm,' he sneered. 'The Nazi fruit does not fall far from the tree.'
"Ho hum. More disturbing was a broad streak of racism and bigotry every bit as vicious as the anti-Semitism some of these people claimed to find behind every rock.
"Unsurprisingly, a lot of this filth came from 30-somethings, keyboard warriors whose smartly coiffed heads beamed out from Facebook pages and Linkedin profiles. They showed a slender talent for undergraduate insult, although no evident enthusiasm for actually donning an Israeli army uniform and risking their comfortably upholstered lives to take part in the terrible conflict that has seen so many needless deaths - including, heartbreakingly, those Benjamin Netanyahu so elegantly described the other day as the 'telegenic corpses' of Palestinian children.
"To point out the bleedin' obvious yet again, it is not anti-Semitic to criticise Netanyahu or Israel, any more than it is un-Australian to have a go at Tony Abbott. It is a co-ordinated campaign to smear, to bully, and to browbeat the critics into silence. One bizarre slander doing the internet rounds, put out by an eastern suburbs travel agent, is that 'Carlton's business is bankrolled by the Obeids'. I kid you not.
"Some more civil Jews did try to reason. They showered me with documents, videos, photographs. Their arguments were mostly bog standard Hasbara, the Hebrew word for information, although better thought of as Orwellian Newspeak. This stuff is carefully crafted and widely disseminated so everyone is on message.
"Two lines were repeated over and over again: 'We gave them Gaza; they gave us rockets. Israel takes every care to avoid unnecessary casualties, but Hamas is using children and civilians as human shields.'
"In fact, Israel turned Gaza into the world's largest prison, a sink of misery under siege for the past 7 years. And the human shield has been a Hasbara staple since the 1970s, when Israel's fourth prime minister, Golda Meir, supposedly told Egypt's Anwar Sadat that 'we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children'.
"Happily, the vitriol was far outweighed by hundreds of supportive emails. Fair-minded Australians are disturbed by the murder of children and the widespread carnage. Quite a few were from Muslims, but not one was anti-Semitic. I was grateful for them, and even more for brave and often poignant letters from Jews aghast at the horrors of Gaza." (Clover Moore's worm offers a touch of whimsy in another brutal week)
The above was again accompanied by another wonderful cartoon by Glen Le Lievre, showing a sombre group of Sydneysiders standing outside a TV shop window, their attention riveted by those aforementioned horrors of Gaza, broadcast on a large, flat screen TV inside. A gesticulating Clover Moore, off to one side, can be seen vainly trying to divert them with the city's latest $9m display of outdoor sculpture.
Hang in there, guys!
See also Carlton's 2010 column, A Ferocious Beast, posted on MERC on 12/6/10.
"As I predicted, the abusive emails and tweets have been thundering in all week, hundreds of them. The Israel lobby - or as I prefer it, the Likud lobby - rose in fury at last week's column about Israel's war crimes against civilians in Gaza.
"I lost count of the number of times I was called a Nazi. A man named Ziggy even did it in German: 'Die Nazi-Obst fallt nicht weit vom Stamm,' he sneered. 'The Nazi fruit does not fall far from the tree.'
"Ho hum. More disturbing was a broad streak of racism and bigotry every bit as vicious as the anti-Semitism some of these people claimed to find behind every rock.
"Unsurprisingly, a lot of this filth came from 30-somethings, keyboard warriors whose smartly coiffed heads beamed out from Facebook pages and Linkedin profiles. They showed a slender talent for undergraduate insult, although no evident enthusiasm for actually donning an Israeli army uniform and risking their comfortably upholstered lives to take part in the terrible conflict that has seen so many needless deaths - including, heartbreakingly, those Benjamin Netanyahu so elegantly described the other day as the 'telegenic corpses' of Palestinian children.
"To point out the bleedin' obvious yet again, it is not anti-Semitic to criticise Netanyahu or Israel, any more than it is un-Australian to have a go at Tony Abbott. It is a co-ordinated campaign to smear, to bully, and to browbeat the critics into silence. One bizarre slander doing the internet rounds, put out by an eastern suburbs travel agent, is that 'Carlton's business is bankrolled by the Obeids'. I kid you not.
"Some more civil Jews did try to reason. They showered me with documents, videos, photographs. Their arguments were mostly bog standard Hasbara, the Hebrew word for information, although better thought of as Orwellian Newspeak. This stuff is carefully crafted and widely disseminated so everyone is on message.
"Two lines were repeated over and over again: 'We gave them Gaza; they gave us rockets. Israel takes every care to avoid unnecessary casualties, but Hamas is using children and civilians as human shields.'
"In fact, Israel turned Gaza into the world's largest prison, a sink of misery under siege for the past 7 years. And the human shield has been a Hasbara staple since the 1970s, when Israel's fourth prime minister, Golda Meir, supposedly told Egypt's Anwar Sadat that 'we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children'.
"Happily, the vitriol was far outweighed by hundreds of supportive emails. Fair-minded Australians are disturbed by the murder of children and the widespread carnage. Quite a few were from Muslims, but not one was anti-Semitic. I was grateful for them, and even more for brave and often poignant letters from Jews aghast at the horrors of Gaza." (Clover Moore's worm offers a touch of whimsy in another brutal week)
The above was again accompanied by another wonderful cartoon by Glen Le Lievre, showing a sombre group of Sydneysiders standing outside a TV shop window, their attention riveted by those aforementioned horrors of Gaza, broadcast on a large, flat screen TV inside. A gesticulating Clover Moore, off to one side, can be seen vainly trying to divert them with the city's latest $9m display of outdoor sculpture.
Hang in there, guys!
See also Carlton's 2010 column, A Ferocious Beast, posted on MERC on 12/6/10.
The Carlton/Le Lievre Backlash 3
First it was Israeli lawfare outfit Shurat HaDin's attempt to silence Sydney University Professor Jake Lynch. Now the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) is threatening legal action against the Sydney Morning Herald.
The following details come from the J-Wire site:
"The Executive Council of Australian Jewry... sought an apology from the Sydney Morning Herald for publishing a cartoon portraying 'an ugly stereotype of a Jew'. Executive Director of the ECAJ Peter Wertheim told J-Wire: 'On July 26, the SMH... published a cartoon by Glen Le Lievre portraying a stereotype of a Jew - identified with a hook nose, a kippah (religious head covering) and a Magen David (Star of David) - using a device to blow up people and buildings, presumably in Gaza'."
[For an analysis of Le Lievre's cartoon, see my 29/7/14 post Deconstructing the Carlton/LeLievre Backlash 1. It should be noted here that, in order to make his case, Wertheim has deliberately shorn the cartoonist's image of its context: the old man is clearly one of the now notorious Israeli ghouls seated on a hill overlooking Gaza, enjoying the Zionist festival of slaughter as though on a television screen, and the so-called "device to blow up people and buildings" in his hand is obviously a TV remote. However, nowhere is Wertheim's sleight of hand more apparent than in the words "presumably in Gaza."]
"'The cartoon was accompanied by an appallingly inflammatory and un-factual article by Mike Carlton and a headline accusing Israel of violating international law and basic norms of human behaviour. Our organisation... received a very large volume of complaints about these items... but it was the cartoon which we considered to be antisemitic'."
[It's tempting to see here a deliberate decision by ECAJ to target Le Lievre, Carlton being simply too popular with the Herald readership to pursue safely.]
Herald editor in chief, Darren Goodsir's July 28 response read in part:
"In my view, it does not, and was not intended to, depict an 'ugly stereotype' or to incite racial hatred. Not only did Mr Le Lievre use an actual image as the source for his cartoon, he adopted the same distinctive style he has developed over the years in which most old people have very pronounced features... He usually draws old people this way."
ECAJ, however, was not to be deterred, coming out on the 29th with - ahem - all guns blazing:
"The figure in the cartoon... is unambiguously identified as a Jew," which "is a device for conveying a message about Jews generally... Whether the cartoonist intended it or not... the cartoon thus attributes to Jews generally a collective blood guilt for the deaths and suffering in Gaza. This is the calumny of Jewish people which your letter simply fails to address. We therefore cannot accept your explanation, nor your failure to publish our letter, or to publicly apologise for what has clearly been a descent into racism in your newspaper. In the circumstances, we feel we have no alternative but to seek redress by legal means. You will be hearing from us or one of our constituent organisations in this regard shortly."
One hopes that Darren Goodsir will stand by Glen Le Lievre and defend the Herald against this kind of hysterical Zionist bullying. Le Lievre's cartoon is an honest and powerful response to an act of Israeli barbarism. Nothing more. Nothing less. It takes enormous chutzpah for ECAJ to pretend otherwise. Watch this space...
The following details come from the J-Wire site:
"The Executive Council of Australian Jewry... sought an apology from the Sydney Morning Herald for publishing a cartoon portraying 'an ugly stereotype of a Jew'. Executive Director of the ECAJ Peter Wertheim told J-Wire: 'On July 26, the SMH... published a cartoon by Glen Le Lievre portraying a stereotype of a Jew - identified with a hook nose, a kippah (religious head covering) and a Magen David (Star of David) - using a device to blow up people and buildings, presumably in Gaza'."
[For an analysis of Le Lievre's cartoon, see my 29/7/14 post Deconstructing the Carlton/LeLievre Backlash 1. It should be noted here that, in order to make his case, Wertheim has deliberately shorn the cartoonist's image of its context: the old man is clearly one of the now notorious Israeli ghouls seated on a hill overlooking Gaza, enjoying the Zionist festival of slaughter as though on a television screen, and the so-called "device to blow up people and buildings" in his hand is obviously a TV remote. However, nowhere is Wertheim's sleight of hand more apparent than in the words "presumably in Gaza."]
"'The cartoon was accompanied by an appallingly inflammatory and un-factual article by Mike Carlton and a headline accusing Israel of violating international law and basic norms of human behaviour. Our organisation... received a very large volume of complaints about these items... but it was the cartoon which we considered to be antisemitic'."
[It's tempting to see here a deliberate decision by ECAJ to target Le Lievre, Carlton being simply too popular with the Herald readership to pursue safely.]
Herald editor in chief, Darren Goodsir's July 28 response read in part:
"In my view, it does not, and was not intended to, depict an 'ugly stereotype' or to incite racial hatred. Not only did Mr Le Lievre use an actual image as the source for his cartoon, he adopted the same distinctive style he has developed over the years in which most old people have very pronounced features... He usually draws old people this way."
ECAJ, however, was not to be deterred, coming out on the 29th with - ahem - all guns blazing:
"The figure in the cartoon... is unambiguously identified as a Jew," which "is a device for conveying a message about Jews generally... Whether the cartoonist intended it or not... the cartoon thus attributes to Jews generally a collective blood guilt for the deaths and suffering in Gaza. This is the calumny of Jewish people which your letter simply fails to address. We therefore cannot accept your explanation, nor your failure to publish our letter, or to publicly apologise for what has clearly been a descent into racism in your newspaper. In the circumstances, we feel we have no alternative but to seek redress by legal means. You will be hearing from us or one of our constituent organisations in this regard shortly."
One hopes that Darren Goodsir will stand by Glen Le Lievre and defend the Herald against this kind of hysterical Zionist bullying. Le Lievre's cartoon is an honest and powerful response to an act of Israeli barbarism. Nothing more. Nothing less. It takes enormous chutzpah for ECAJ to pretend otherwise. Watch this space...
Friday, August 1, 2014
Daddy, What's Zionism?
Israeli child: Daddy, what's Zionism?
Israeli dad (cleaning gun): That's when our neighbours start getting smaller.
"Already Israel's military operations have reduced the inhabitable area of Gaza by 44%, with the enforcement of a three-kilometre buffer zone around the strip, the UN's Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. The move has created a huge population of displaced people, with more than 200,000 people seeking shelter in UN schools and thousands more in mosques and churches. The death toll across Gaza rose to 1,210, with 6,896 injured, mostly civilians, the Ministry of Health said." (Residents face the devastation, Ruth Pollard, Sydney Morning Herald, 31/7/14)
Israeli dad (cleaning gun): That's when our neighbours start getting smaller.
"Already Israel's military operations have reduced the inhabitable area of Gaza by 44%, with the enforcement of a three-kilometre buffer zone around the strip, the UN's Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. The move has created a huge population of displaced people, with more than 200,000 people seeking shelter in UN schools and thousands more in mosques and churches. The death toll across Gaza rose to 1,210, with 6,896 injured, mostly civilians, the Ministry of Health said." (Residents face the devastation, Ruth Pollard, Sydney Morning Herald, 31/7/14)
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