When Michael Backman penned a column for The Age recently in which he opined that many Israeli tourists who trek in Nepal are loathed by the locals for their arrogance, he was hung, drawn and quartered by the Australian Jewish lobby, Age editor Paul Ramage apologized for the column and incredulously said it was published in error, and Backman was wrongly and grossly unfairly called an anti-Semite in some quarters.
But you can bet your house that this week the Herald Sun ’s Alan Howe won’t face the same fate as Backman did. Howe’s column in this morning’s Herald Sun is a whinge about the protectionist European Union doing over Australian farmers. But he starts off with these rather startling lines:
It’s hard to know which Europeans we like the least. My default position, like most, is the French. France has been an untrustworthy “ally” since cheese was invented and seeks to reinforce this position from time to time, not so long ago with nuclear bombs in our backyard. If we are wary of Austrians, there’s good reason. They delivered us Adolf Hitler. Later they came up with Kurt Waldheim, once their president, who was secretary general of the United Nations before we realised what a devious racist he was. And don’t get me started on the Swiss.
Leaving aside the fairly stock standard anti-French position taken by Howe, his sprays at Austria and Switzerland are a bit over the top. Is he suggesting that all Austrians are Nazis? And what is about all Swiss people that he so loathes?
Now will the Austrian community in Melbourne and the Swiss consul be hot footing it down to the Herald-Sun editor’s office and banging on the desk until they get Howe to write a letter or apology and have the column removed from the paper’s website? Somehow one doubts it. They might write a letter to the editor, and that is all they could expect by way of reply.
But let’s say Howe wrote “If we are wary of the Israelis, there’s good reason.” Or, “And don’t get me started on the Israeli’s?” The Jewish lobby, led by its most prominent Melbourne members Mark Leibler and Colin Rubenstein who went to town over Backman, would not stand for it.
Alan Howe would join Backman on their wall of shame and there’s a fair chance that the Herald Sun editors might succumb to the incessant brow beating by Leibler and Rubenstein and issue some sort of apology.
Of course if Leibler and Rubenstein and others who were outraged by Backman are serious about wanting to stamp out what they perceive as the media tolerating slurs against race shouldn’t they be taking the big stick to Howe as they did to Backman? Or is it ok to say what you like about other countries, because Israel and Israelis are somehow special?
Let’s see, the Swiss… cuckoo clocks, fondue, Roger Federer, neutrality, Toblerone, and direct democracy.
What a disgraceful people. I say BOMB THEM.
“is it ok to say what you like about other countries, because Israel and Israelis are somehow special? ” – Of course they are special, their skin is very thin, so it’s much more sensitive than other peoples.
The situation which is highlighted in this article is the sensitivity of certain groups to criticism. There is much confusion on the distinction between Zionism, which is a racist form of nationalism, and the Jewish religion or Judaism. The Zionists exploit the massive racist discrimination and genocide exercised by the Nazis against Jews in general as a means of deflecting criticism from their own racist policies which they pursue with vigour.
The confrontation between the Zionists and their arabic neighbours is indication of what rampant military power in the hands of politicians will do to idealism. The clothing of vicious nationalism in the guise of victimhood is a massive public relations success. This is not to defend the similarly vicious although much less powerful reactions of the victims in the use of terrorist tactics. the methods used could easily be derived from reading the history of Zionists in the 1930s and 1940s.
The parallels with Warsaw in 1944 are quite fascinating. Poorly armed militants took on the might of the Wermacht in a heroic but doomed gesture of defiance. Here the political bastardry was exercised by both the Nazis as butchers and Stalin as an opportunist.
The politicians are still at work, abusing power for their own ends. The poor civilians in Gaza who are caught in the crossfire have no opportunity to resolve the issues causing their distress.
it must be emphasised that attacks on Zionism is not anti-Semitism as both Jews and the Arabs they are using as cannon fodder for political ends are all Semites. The Zionists have played the race card once too often.
The exercise of power by so-called “settlers” occupying the West Bank and backed up by the Israel Defence Force is “Lebensraum”‘ by stealth. The only positive thing you can say about the Nazis was that they were totally open in their objective of confiscating other people’s land by force for their own twisted racist objectives.
Nice piece Greg…well argued.
Greg Barns has raised a profoundly important issue about the media being intimidated by pro-Israeli lobbyists in Australia. Why is it almost forbidden to question let alone criticise any action of the Israeli government or the behavior of Israelis and their fanatic supporters in Australia? Israel’s policies and actions are highly controversial and face criticism worldwide. Yet the lobby representing the Israels government in Australia behaves like medieval religious leaders who considered any dissent as heresy. Yes, the Jewish people have suffered terribly over the centuries and the Holocaust was the most obscene act of human evil ever perpetrated. But why should the Palestinians carry the burden of that Jewish suffering and why are the Jews now living in Israeli, coming as they do from many parts of the world, be considered by the Australian lobbyists as totally immune from any criticism? What we need are editors and other media executives with the courage to defy the intimidators. Blimey, imagine the mess the media would be in if the Muslim community in Australia were as well organised and as influential as Leibler and Rubenstein.