Who knew that anti-Semitism was everywhere? Jews are currently hiding in their houses for fear of being attacked by crazed anti-Zionists.
Or not.
Murdoch’s Australian newspaper wants to create an image of rampant anti-Israel sentiment everywhere because growing numbers of people are recognising the deep racism within Israeli society. The paper has been running a daily campaign for a while now claiming the Australian Greens are really the new Communists, secretly bringing Arab propaganda into the mainstream; the kind of message accepted by millions of Australians (who vote for the Greens). It’s like the crazy old soldier uncle banging on about the mad Japanese…back in 1944.
Today the paper leads with this hilariously “shocking” piece on the Greens talking about Palestinian human rights (what will come next, abiding by international law?):
Two Greens senators have publicly supported calls for Australian sanctions against Israel over the Middle East conflict, putting them at odds with party policy and their leader Bob Brown.
West Australian senator Scott Ludlam last year demanded an arms embargo on Israel, which he described as “a rogue state”, while South Australian colleague Sarah Hanson-Young addressed a rally where protesters called on Australia to sever ties with the Jewish state.
The stance by the two senators conflicts with Senator Brown’s assurance last week that his federal party was not anti-Israel and did not support the NSW branch of the party advocating sanctions against Israel.
The Coalition last night labelled the Greens “reds”, while the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council called on Senator Hanson-Young to visit Israel before jumping to conclusions.
Senator Brown yesterday refused to comment on the activities of his senators and directed The Australian to his party’s policy on Israel, which clearly advocated a peaceful two-state solution.
Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan, whose care of human rights can be determined by whether he’s been wined and dined by Western-friendly dictators, thinks the Greens are mad:
The depth and longstanding nature of the Greens’ visceral hostility to Israel reveals something very unpleasant about the nature of the Greens themselves.
They are essentially a party of extremists. Like most extremists operating in a democratic space, they try to garner support on broadly populist issues while still servicing their extremist activist base with extremist positions and campaigns.
The language of a number of the Greens senators about Israel – rogue state, apartheid, should be boycotted – is the language of political sectarianism and prejudice.
It is, of course, too much to expect that the Greens should actually display any knowledge of this subject, but are they aware of the rapid economic growth in the Palestinian West Bank territories?
Do they think this could be maintained in the face of widespread boycott of Israel?
Would the Greens wish to boycott the Israeli power station which provides electricity for Gaza?
Would the Greens like to boycott the Israeli hospitals that routinely treat patients from the West Bank?
Would the Greens like to boycott Israeli-funded schools in East Jerusalem?
Would the Greens like to boycott the Peres peace centre Aussie rules team that brings together Jewish Israelis and Palestinians to play Aussie rules in a single team?
Do the Greens propose that the government should ban the annual Israeli film festival in Australia?
Do the Greens support dialogue with every government in the world except the Israeli government?
The madness of the boycott policy is not an aberration by the NSW Greens. It reflects the political culture of the Greens.
The astonishing thing this time is that someone has actually called the Greens to account for that political culture.
And then the paper’s editorial continues the onslaught:
The Greens’ anti-Israel posturing is wrong and dangerous.
Anti-Americanism was a fundamental tenet of the Left in Australia and around the world during the Cold War and some of it continues to this day, often expressed through the proxy of antipathy towards Israel. This is the only plausible way to explain the foolish and dangerous anti-Israel posturing of the Greens, exposed in our pages again today.
For many years the Labor Party was forced to quash this sort of theatrical railing against Israel but it has been largely relegated to the past because leaders such as Bob Hawke, Kim Beazley, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have demonstrated a solid commitment to the US alliance and a healthy respect for the democracy of Israel. Sadly, the Greens have been all too willing to take up the ground vacated by Labor’s lunar Left. Former NSW Labor premier Bob Carr warned about this trend recently, saying the conservationists in the Greens are being “overtaken by the hardline leftist Greens”.
…
Labor and the Coalition are longstanding, robust and bipartisan supporters of a two-state solution and harsh critics of the Hamas extremists. If the Greens are to be taken seriously as responsible contributors to federal governance they will have to develop a credible and consistent attitude to foreign policy rather than have senators and state MPs free-ranging. The Greens need to inform themselves and contribute to an intelligent debate.
This daily campaign against the Greens and its rational and sensible policy on the Middle East isn’t because Murdoch and his merry mates are feeling confident about Israel. It’s because they see world debate is shifting and less people buy the line that the Zionist state is a “democracy” – colonisation of land makes you anti-democratic by definition – and they want to make sure nobody speaks out of line here in Australia.
Mature people who believe in something welcome public debate. Israel isn’t a protected species, it’s a rogue state that occupies and kills Palestinians. That’s something to be rejected, but then again this is from a media empire who loves every Western-led war that targets Muslims.