When former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visits America, he is welcomed as a war criminal.
In Australia, Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan of Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian treats him like a glorious hero:
Ehud Olmert is a giant of contemporary Middle East politics. As Israel’s prime minister he made war – twice – in Lebanon in 2006, and in the Gaza Strip earlier this year. He’s also tried to make peace, offering the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the most extensive concessions any Israeli leader has ever brought to the table in the search for a settlement.
Now Olmert’s out of office, not because he lost an election but because he is fighting corruption charges in the courts. Previous such charges against him came to nothing and Olmert has always asserted his innocence.
In Sydney this week, I conducted, perhaps, the longest interview and discussion Olmert has undertaken with any media since leaving office in March after more than three years as prime minister.
Dressed in jeans and black T-shirt with a Red Bull logo, Olmert looked pretty chipper for a balding lawyer with a modest paunch in his early 60s who’d just flown 24 hours from Israel.
For 90 minutes in the boardroom of Sydney’s Park Hyatt, and then over a relaxed lunch with his wife, Aliza, at Circular Quay, Olmert talked with remarkable frankness about the military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, the historic peace deal he offered the Palestinians, President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy and the options for action against Iran.
Olmert’s role in history is a big one. If he clears his name of the corruption charges he could come back to the centre of Israeli life, as previous prime ministers – like Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, now PM for the second time – and Labour’s Ehud Barak, who both staged comebacks.
Sheridan is still paying off the debt incurred with those free trips to Israel. And behind that the deference to the US as lord and master.
Sheridan was groomed to be a flunkey and he has performed that role with unqualified excellence since his first days as a placed novice in Packer’s Bulletin.
But surely Sheridan has let the team down in bringing up that little pecadillo of Olmert’s corruption.
Mass murder is a great achievement, as there are now less A-rabs, but we can’t have upwardly mobile pollies who represent our agenda earning a little bit on the side can we?
The answer is obvious – overlook the petty graft so that this mass murderer can be restored to the main game.
I think its important that a deep understanding is developed of what the issue of Palestine means to the right-wing. I think that what is needed is a strong phenomenological account of how the right-wing employ the issue of Palestine, but to also create a deep understanding of what Palestine actually means to the right-wing. It seems to me that for the right-wing the issue of Palestine has become a statement in itself, similar to, say, the way that the right-wing denies climate change. It is a rallying point. That is how the right-wing does politics. It seems to me that they strive for issues that they can apply a commonality to, i.e an attraction to masculine power and a desire to continually denounce and punish the desperate and dispossessed. The very act of publicly supporting the Israeli state and its apartheid agenda is an emotive act of aggression. They need to be truly held accountable for what they say, however, in order for this to happen I think it needs to be contextually understood why greg sheridan will say what he does.
Sheridan is a right wing flunkey looking for a soft landing in one of the US right wing think tanks, when his days at News Ltd are thru.
Sheridan is to investigative journalism what Laslo Toth is to religious art ( thanks to Gough W).
a phenomenological study – deep or not – may be handy to understand zionists, but to “understand why greg sheridan will say what he does” requires no such analysis. sheridan says what he does because he gets paid to.
I really don’t wish to spend time talking about greg sheridan… However, I was, in part, referring to him as a kind-of metaphor for the right-wing and conservative opinion on Palestine in Australia. While I agree that he does get paid for his views on the Palestinian people this is also not an adequate explanation for why there is so much opposition to universal rights for Palestinians. His views are, to me, extremely emotive, loaded with anger and hatred toward the Palestinians and anyone who supports their cause.
It seems that sheridan sees himself as a zionist. This article of his reads like a fantasy or a dream where olmert is portrayed as some sort of a king with a mandate to rule over endless dominions. I have no idea whether he consciously feels this way about Palestine, but it shows that he is aware of the issue of Palestine as a statement for which angry conservatives can find common ground.
Because there is no conscious reason to hate the Palestinians, any hate directed at the Palestinians has to be a displaced emotion. The fact that such vitriol toward a people exists indicates two things; that a discourse of hate is permissible in our society, and that the issue of Palestine invokes an unconscious neuroses which the discourse of hate is an expression of. This is typified by sheridan. In regards to our society, the issue of Palestine is worthy of greater phenomenological criticism because of its potential to invoke such unconscious anger in certain people, and I think that this aspect of the way the issue of Palestine plays out in our society needs a lot more attention. If there is a greater understanding of the neurotic processes involved than more people can be further held accountable.
Gee Antony, for someone who spends a lot of time arguing about the legitimacy of alternative voices and the importance of bloggers in political discourse, you’re very quick to label others. In what way is Greg Sheridan not a journalist? Because he is biased? Because he fails to adequately (in your view) declare he has been lobbied and junketed? Or just because he disagrees with your opinion?