Why, asks this poor Jewish reader in the Australian Jewish News this week, is the Melbourne Age so riddled with anti-Semitism and Israel-hatred? And the Jewish establishment wonders why they’re often viewed as paranoid, insecure and seemingly desperate to live in a country where Israel is viewed as the utopia that it clearly is:
Hardly a week goes by without The Age newspaper having a report in either its world news, its focus section or as an opinion piece regarding Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, reiterating over and over again how many Palestinians were killed and always giving different figures based on unreliable sources.
And if it’s not that, it’s something else to demonise Israel, such as portraying Mordechai Vanunu as a hero for betraying Israel’s military secrets. And when does it do this? During Easter.
Even The Sunday Age (26/04) had a piece on Israeli author Amos Oz, which read really well until the end when the journalist said that 1400 Palestinians were killed in Operation Cast Lead, 40 per cent of them children,
But do we hear about all the mass murders of civilians, such as in Darfur, and human rights abuses in other parts of the world in that paper? Hardly at all.
So, rather than calling on individuals to cancel their subscriptions to The Age, we should be calling on corporate members in our community, who spend millions in advertising, to boycott The Age.
I mean, who needs the Durban Review Conference when we have The Age?
Henry Herzog
St Kilda East, Vic