The Melbourne Age newspaper has stunned and appalled the Jewish community today by confecting a scandal about the fact that the Prime Minister’s partner works for a Jewish businessman Albert Dadon.
It inaccurately describes Albert as an “Israel lobbyist” which suggests he is paid to promote Israel. That’s simply not correct and conveys a false impression.
Dadon is an investor, in property and many other things and was the Chair of Melbourne’s international Jazz Festival and created the Australia Israel Leadership Forum...
...Dadon went to some effort to encourage The Age to open its eyes to both sides of the story in the Middle East and ...a member of The Age’s staff was invited to attend Australia Israel Leadership Forum events, including one in Israel.
[Editor of the Age, Paul] Ramadge endorsed this and went to some trouble to undo the damage done by his predecessor Andrew Jaspan whose attacks on Israel seemed to know no decent bounds. That reputation will be confirmed by today’s breathtakingly anti-semitic attack that deems all Jews to be “pro-Israel lobbyists”.
The story was based around a letter from a retired and grouchy Arabist crank, Ross Burns ...a career diplomat who was given many sweet plum Ambassador appointments, ...a perfect embodiment of [anti-Israel bias].
Burns has now retired into the comfort of superannuation and is completing a PhD at Macquarie University on archaeology in Syria. He very frequently visits Syria...[and] has a long history of blowing anti-semitic dog-whistles against Israel, with a steady stream of cranky letters to the editor, speeches, appearances on an appreciative ABC and so on.
... Where will this obscenity end? Will The Age’s Jewish employees soon be subjected to tests to ensure they are not “pro-Israel lobbyists.”
As for Burns, he is an old crank, who is just running out his private hatreds of Israel in public view...
But The Age has a greater responsibility than that....[It's] sickening effort today reveals it not to be a force for good in any respect.
The newspaper’s revenues are in freefall, its employees facing further redundancies, its circulation numbers rigged, the shares of parent company the most shorted in the entire stock market.
Its end is nigh. And we’ll be dancing in the streets when that day finally comes.
1 comment:
Certainly, the oil rich Arab countries would not allow The Age to go under and will come to the rescue.
The Age has done them a great, invaluable service in Israel bashing in their campaign to demonise, dehumanise and de-legitimize Israel.
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