It seems that everything associated with Middle East diplomacy these days can be categorised by the description "lame duck".
US President George Bush who lands in Tel Aviv tomorrow in the hope of reviving the peace process he launched at Annapolis in November is in the final year of his presidency and is therefore surely a "lame duck"?
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert isn't very popular with his own constituents and is considered a "lame duck". His PA counterpart Mahmoud Abbas is so weak that he can barely raise a quack and that's not taking into account allegations of collaboration he faces from more hard-line elements of his own and rival parties. Meanwhile, the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip is pretty much ineffectual apart from its capacity to intimidate journalists, rival Fatah party members and the local Christian community so it's pretty much a dead duck.
With all of these dying, injured and dyslectic ducks in the neighbourhood, who else by but the rubbery ducky of them all, Ed O'Loughlin, a lame duck journalist if there ever was one as he sees out his seemingly never-ending last days at the Fairfax Jerusalem Bureau, to put his usual spin on the Bush visit?
He does this brilliantly today with Bush flies to rescue Mid-East peace mission in which he provides an opinion piece which excoriates and misrepresents Israeli policies, highlights Palestinian demands for concessions and rewrites the entire peace process by dismissing Palestinian terrorism and incitement off the agenda altogether. It's an old trick and we're tired of it but it's the best that a lame duck journalist can do.
US President George Bush who lands in Tel Aviv tomorrow in the hope of reviving the peace process he launched at Annapolis in November is in the final year of his presidency and is therefore surely a "lame duck"?
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert isn't very popular with his own constituents and is considered a "lame duck". His PA counterpart Mahmoud Abbas is so weak that he can barely raise a quack and that's not taking into account allegations of collaboration he faces from more hard-line elements of his own and rival parties. Meanwhile, the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip is pretty much ineffectual apart from its capacity to intimidate journalists, rival Fatah party members and the local Christian community so it's pretty much a dead duck.
With all of these dying, injured and dyslectic ducks in the neighbourhood, who else by but the rubbery ducky of them all, Ed O'Loughlin, a lame duck journalist if there ever was one as he sees out his seemingly never-ending last days at the Fairfax Jerusalem Bureau, to put his usual spin on the Bush visit?
He does this brilliantly today with Bush flies to rescue Mid-East peace mission in which he provides an opinion piece which excoriates and misrepresents Israeli policies, highlights Palestinian demands for concessions and rewrites the entire peace process by dismissing Palestinian terrorism and incitement off the agenda altogether. It's an old trick and we're tired of it but it's the best that a lame duck journalist can do.
5 comments:
The Age has other problems today. It's cricket writer Peter Roebuck has just perpetrated the most scurilous attack on our national cricket team. Now Ricky Ponting and Andrew Symonds know what it's like to be Jews.
When is the O'Loughlin/Wikipedia scandal going to be finally exposed in the wider media or do the obsessive Israel basher and his newspaper have total immunity from exposure?
Quoting Haaretz today was a masterstroke from the Fairfax resident quacker. How many items can he cite items from Haaretz that throw a poor light on his Palestinian chums but he only does so when its an adverse item to Israel.
In today's Age the quacker says Mr Bush is deeply unpopular in "nominally Palestinian-controlled areas". This is "because of his perceived pro-Israel and anti-Muslim bias."
O'Loughlin would be deeply unpopular everywhere else in the country because of his pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish bias but for the fact that nobody knows him.
Why doesn't O'Loughlin write about this?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1198517337771&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
In his meeting today with Mahmoud Abbas, President George Bush will likely urge the Palestinian Authority president to implement his responsibilities under the road map, such as eliminating the infrastructure of terrorism. Abbas will claim that he is doing the best he can, and respond by demanding that Israel dismantle outposts and freeze settlements.
And nothing will change.
This sort of pointless, circular maneuvering has, at best, continued for the past 14 years, since the signing of the Oslo principles in 1993. At worst it has degenerated into terrorism and war.
Abbas cannot make peace when he is readying his people for war.
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