MISLABELLING A SIGN OF HATRED

The Australian's Greg Sheridan makes a very forceful point in today's Australian - ISRAELI LEADERS MISLABELLED BY FOES.

OVER the next year or two, probably for as long as it stays in office, there will be a sustained effort to demonise the Israeli Government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The speech last week by Netanyahu's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in which he explicitly supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute but was reported as if he had said the opposite, is a case in point.

Many in the international press who have a deep seated hatred of Israel automatically resort to applying tags such as "extremist", right winger" and "hard line" when describing Israeli governments of the colour of that currently in power but then ignore the fascism and racism of democratically elected Hamas and the two faced corruption of Fatah which controls the Palestine Authority. These Palestinian parties are in fact far to the right of Liebermam's party (a member of the new Israeli governing coalition) or the Fairfax Press.

In this regard, the reporting in the Melbourne Age has been nothing short of appalling as it continues its campaign of vilifying Israel at almost every opportunity while blanking out any Palestinian sin. If there was any doubt that a Palestinian lobby operates within that newspaper to sow hatred of Israel and Jews then one needs to look no further than its disgraceful censorship of the news about the draconian behaviour of the Palestine Authority and its treatment of the conductor who arranged for her orchestra made up of Palestinian children to play music for Holocaust survivors in Israel.

As Y-Net News Op Ed contributors Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Dr. Harold Brackman so eloquently point out in THE REAL ROADBLOCKS TO PEACE:

As the international community draws up its list of demands for the Right-leaning Netanyahu government to prove "it’s serious about making peace," they should also give this one to PA President Abbas — "re-instate the Strings of Peace Orchestra." For the question of the fate of this ensemble will reveal more about the future of the Middle East than any speech or position paper.

...

Music’s potential as a universal healer is being played out, not only by Palestinian youngsters silenced in Jenin. Native American musician-composer Bill Miller is currently performing his Grammy Award-winning composition, “The Last Stand,” on tour with Israel’s Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra. The best first - and “last stand” - for true peace resides not in any grandiose road map or political photo-ops, but with people who truly seek coexistence and mutual respect. It is those still small voices that demand our protection and nurturing.

And it is those still small voices that the Age has, to its everlasting shame, completely ignored in its camaign of bloodlust against the Jewish State.