Q & A

Pictured: A Q & A Panel (but not the one that took part on this week's programme). An example of the stupidity of Q & A fans is the current online discussion on the ABC website that posits the question when and how was the Jewish People invented. I kid you not!

Tony Jones presided over an interesting television programme on our own ABC this week. Interesting until the panel discussion and question and answer session got to the point where the topic moved to Israel and Palestine and then it got nasty.

Fortunately, Greg Sheridan of the Australian was on the panel to counterbalance lawyer Randa Abdel-Fattah and a derelict looking Guy Rundle. A couple of other panellists were on hand but they were too polite to properly deal with these two Arab propaganda machines or the loaded questions from a couple of stooges handily planted in the audience.

Whenever Abdel-Fattah and Rundle opened their mouths pigs flew out in swarms. The former came up with a ripper when asked about Durban 2 and Ahmedinejad's keynote speech at that forum. She thought it wasn’t too bad ... "leaving aside the Holocaust denial". Let's face it Randa, this wasn't your finest moment but thanks for proving the Australian government's decision correct without its mouthpiece having to even open his ... well, mouth. Your comment was tantamount to saying that Hitler's policies weren't bad either ... "leaving aside his racism".

Rundle had no clue whatsoever and was virtually in denial about the years of constant Palestinian rocket fire at Israeli citizens. Nobody from the Arab lobby either on the panel or in the audience was ready to concede that the attacks on Israeli towns like Sderot are a war crime. Clueless Rundle simply repeated the lie that Israel broke the ceasefire (alluding to the appalling and discredited claim that an Israeli operation to put an end to a Palestinian tunnel into Israel proper on 4 November broke the ceasefire).

Sheridan was at his best in dealing with the smug Aryan type asked why the 20th century worst genocide should be used to justify the 21st Century's worst genocide. He had to explain that he meant the alleged genocide of Palestinians which is simply another of those phoney inventions from the fertile mind of Arab lobbyists.

Even Abdel-Fattah was embarrassed at the suggestion which might receive currency at a rally of froth at the mouth undergrad Socialist Alliance members but it wasn't going to wash on national television. She'd already been caught out lying when she tried to misquote Sheridan and he had told her so. Abdel-Fattah might not have been comfortable with the word "genocide" but she was happier with "ethnic cleansing". However, even that's a bit of a stretch for the Palestinians whose actual population has increased by 30% in the last generation. Some genocide, some ethnic cleansing!

The young Aryan who was insistent on the use of the word "genocide" when it came to Israel's defence of its people against terror groups who really do want to commit genocide and say so in their charters and constitutions, would of course, be fully cognisant of the amount of discussion (virtually nil) at the Durban conference on, ... er racism ... and in particular, about some of the early 21st Century's real genocides such as that of Arab Sudan's black minority where hundreds of thousands have died in the past half decade. But the Aryan didn't care, nor did the Arab Lobby panellists and the ABC didn't plant anyone in the audience to ask the question anyway..

As usual, it was left to Sheridan to deliver the best line of the programme when he advised the Aryan to visit a psychiatrist.