Mood:
lazyTopic: big media
As a secular Jewish colleague tells this writer, the Holocaust must never happen again. And one presumes for that, it must never be forgotten.
But arguably it has happened again in many places to many people to a lesser or maybe greater degree. West Papua, Rwanda, East Timor, 27 million dead russians in WW2, 50-78 M dead worldwide in the same war.
Certainly the Holocaust should never be forgotten. Certainly I will never forget the history now understood of the 1.5M Irish who died in the 1845-1852 famine under UK jackboot while a net exporter of food.
However one does get bored seeing more features in the weekend Sydney press about Anne Frank letters and book reviews of the week for my old environmental law lecturer based on a painting with a Holocaust back story.
And outright offended by the hypocrisy of the local Jewish Board of Deputies last week promoting a restitution list for WW2 victims of the Holocaust while effectively silent apologists for predatory settlers and an Israeli government riddled with corruption dependent on the same exponents of creeping conquest - the latest being Israeli Foreign Minister charged by the Israeli Attorney General no less, according to Haaretz mid April 2011.
This writer agrees wholeheartedly the Holocaust should never be forgotten, but where are the voices in local English Big Media press for the several million Palestinian Arabs, or indeed Arab voices for that 250-300 million section of humanity? The balance? It is of course unrealistic to expect loyal supporters of Israel to talk the book of their enemies or rivals but what about the alleged journalists? When are the press going to get over their inherited guilt or perhaps over compensating for (their own?) residual sub conscious anti semitism/racism, and treat Israeli conquest and predation on it's modern merits and lack thereof. Indeed treat Jewish politics according to their common humanity, rather than special or chosen or a people apart?
When indeed will Big Media here see through the gulling of their analytical faculties on the current middle east and in particular a clique of expansionist ziono-fascism leveraging Holocaust porn and guilt in the West. Like some Catholic sin of scruples for a terrible thing and obsessive compulsive hand washing of a black spot they actually have no reason or even right to adopt as theirs to be guilty about?
Israel is a world power with world impacting military, not least nuclear weaponry. The days of Israel as a victim country at existential risk are long gone, notwithstanding the tub thumping about existential risk and suitcase bombs on donkey carts. Indeed that old story is so over whether one comes at it from an Arabic or Jewish perspective. Where indeed is the story about Israel's 100-200 nuclear weapons as estimated by the Federation of American Scientists via simple google of their website?
One gets the distinct impression by the tone and slant of general big media English press coverage in Sydney that there is a moral and political blank cheque to the Israeli government, and the predatory creeping conquest of the alleged 'settler' (who glorify political assassination of PM Yitzak Rabin). Presumably some of it has to do with Australia's own black history of creeping conquest and terra nullius of the 'settler' myth here. That is murderous land theft of the 40,000 year previous owners. That's one great big shameful motive for denial about other so called 'settlers' more akin to land predators pleading a theocratic mandate.
It was however heartening to see all 4 worthies in the moral feature in the Sydney Morning Herald demolish the case for Marrickville Council staying out of the international Boycott Divestment and Sanction campaign, as some balance at least for the Holocaust guilt porn.
