THE AIRBRUSH SCAM

Picture: The Israeli woman who won't be airbrushed out of existence by the Blank Pages of the Age

The Age seems intent on following the U.K's Guardian newspaper all the way in its attempts at villifying and scorning the Jewish State judging by today's offering from the Sunday Age - ISRAELI PAPERS AIRBUSH WOMEN MINISTERS FROM PHOTOS.

It seems that the editorial staff of a couple of obscure Israeli ultra-orthodox newspapers deemed that printing pictures of women is "immodest" so they "simply airbrushed the offending female figures out of photographs of Benjamin Netanyahu's new cabinet" according to the Guardian's Rachel Shabi who wrote that "two female ministers within a 30-strong cabinet may not sound like a big deal".

Naturally, it's a big enough deal for the Age to make it THE story of the day from a region where this week Palestinians axed a young Israeli kid to death, where Palestinian leaders exiled the conductor of a youth orchestra because it played music for Jewish Holocaust victims and where Arab leaders (including Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas) got solidly behind the Sudanese President who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide.

That's not news in the Age which has to turn the airbrushing of women from a photo by a couple of hitherto unknown ultra Orthodox Jewish newspapers into a big ticket item.

Well go figure!

You may accuse me of being politically incorrect till you're blue in the face but I missed the Age coverage when Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli (pictured above) appeared on the cover of the Swimsuit Edition of Sports Illustrated Magazine - Israeli model Bar Refaeli lands Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover. No doubt, I will also miss the Age story one day when a pretty Gazan follows Refaeli's lead and gets executed by a Hamas firing squad for her troubles.

Predictably, Australia's own intellectually challenged Hamas loving Israel loathing Jewish Holocaust denier, Antony Loewenstein, picked up on the story in Jews with gender issues forgetting that he has shown a penchant of his own with gender issues when it comes to the subject of Israeli ministers. He once described former Kadima Minister Tzipi Livni as a "he" (she's definitely a "she") but we can forgive him for that because, in the scheme of things, it was one of his lesser gaffes!

There's a double standard too at the Age because back in 2006 when elections were held for the Palestinian Legislative Council, that newspaper did an excellent job in airbrushing out of existence the true story of Mariam Farhat, or Umm Nidal (mother of Nidal) who was elected on the Hamas ticket. Ms. Farhat was identified by the New York Times as "the mother of three Hamas supporters killed by Israelis" and added that "she bade one son goodbye in a homemade videotape before he stormed an Israeli settlement, killing five people, then being shot dead. She said later, in a much-publicized quotation, that she wished she had 100 sons to sacrifice that way. Known as the 'mother of martyrs,' she was seen in a campaign video toting a gun."

The Age did a wonderful job of airbrushing this particular female Hamas politician right out of existence. However, you can't say that the Age was discriminatory because it also managed to apply the airbrush to another candidate whose nickname (for obvious reasons) is "Hitler". Apparently, there's a lobby at the Age that doesn't want its readers to know such things about Palestinian politics.