- everything is fine*
- Posts
- Can journalists stop buying Zionists lunch
Can journalists stop buying Zionists lunch
On how Australia props up Israel
Alex McKinnon
January 16, 2024
Two months ago the Guardian’s Katharine Murphy wrote that “Australia is not a player in Middle East politics globally” and that “anyone who pretends otherwise is having a lend of you”.
This was news to me as I’m sure it was to lots of people who know, for example, that former defence minister Christopher Pyne now has his own lobbying firm facilitating the sale of Australian weapons to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Or that Frank Lowy was a member of the Haganah, a Zionist militia that committed dozens of massacres of Palestinians during the Nakba, and has spent millions advancing Zionism in Australia and around the world ever since.
Or that Mark Regev, former international spokesperson to two Israeli prime ministers and one of the world’s foremost mouthpieces for Zionist hasbara, or propaganda, was born and raised in Melbourne. Or that the number of Middle Eastern countries we’ve invaded and occupied in the last 25 years is more than zero.
Back in 2019 Richard Marles gave a speech in parliament marking 70 years of diplomatic relations between Australia and Israel outlining just how little influence Australia has in the Middle East and in Israel especially:
Australia’s lack of importance in Middle Eastern politics was on display again last week during the International Court of Justice case considering whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The lawyer who gave the opening address in Israel’s defence, Tal Becker, is Australian as it turns out!
Becker offered no real challenge to South Africa’s lawyers pointing out the many ways in which Israeli decision makers from the President and Prime Minister on down have openly expressed genocidal intent toward Palestinians, or the many ways in which Israeli soldiers are enthusiastically acting on those statements, often while filming themselves. Instead Becker quickly gained a lot of attention for doing that thing Zionists do where they roll the ‘h’ in ‘Hamas’ because it scares the white people while otherwise speaking in a broad Australian accent.
Besides this thread from a left-wing Jewish activist recounting how Becker’s racism towards Palestinians during a university lecture single-handedly turned them into an anti-Zionist I couldn’t find much about him online except for puff pieces in Zionist media and this thing in the Sydney Morning Herald from 2019:
I don’t know what the Herald’s obsession is with taking people out to lunch but you cannot Google the name of a prominent Australian Zionist without reading 1200 agonising words on the raw Spencer Gulf kingfish with cucumber, wasabi and white soy they had while answering softball questions about how Israel is the Middle East’s Silicon Valley.
I know the Herald and The Age have done this take-them-out-to-lunch thing forever, and I know the Annabel Crabb Kitchen Cabinet argument that you can get real insights into a person in a more relaxed environment than the traditional interview setting.
Which, okay, but here are some quotes from some of those articles in no particular order so you can judge for yourself what kind of hot scoops these journalists are getting:
Probably my favourite one though is this piece with Mark Regev from 2010 with the extremely normal headline ‘Behind the lines of Mr Cool’. It pivots wildly from lunch in a kosher pub to a dramatic retelling of Regev’s hectic workday after IDF soldiers killed nine people during the Gaza flotilla raid:
The journalist who wrote that last one is now a senior media adviser to home affairs minister Clare O’Neil so that’s nice.
It’s understandable that most people don’t know how much Australia props up the Zionist project when the people best placed to interrogate our relationship with Israel are out buying roasted beetroot with black rice, purple mustard and dill for the people doing the propping up. Good thing Australia is not a player in Middle East politics globally.
Reply