Fairfax soft on Hamas, Nasty and Vicious on Israel

The Melbourne Age demonstrates today why it has become a nasty little joke on the Australian journalistic landscape with today's piece of front page sensationalism - Gillard accused of soft line on Tel Aviv. 

This is nothing but a vicious attack on Gillard, one that would not be tolerated if the subject matter wasn't about the Age's favourite whipping boys - Israel and the Jews. The piece highlights a letter written to the Sydney Morning Herald by Ross Burns, a former ambassador to Israel who believes Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been too soft on Tel Aviv (by the way Jerusalem is Israel's capital) over the blockade of Gaza which is run by the outlawed terrorist group. Conveniently, neither Burns in his letter nor the Age mention this or the fact that Egypt is also involved in the blockade because of it's own security concerns.    

In his spiteful attack, Burns raises "the propriety of Ms Gillard's partner, Tim Mathieson, being employed as a real estate salesman by the founder of the Australia Israel Forum, Melbourne property developer Albert Dadon." The article also cites the fact that Burns is supported by another former Australian ambassador to Israel, Peter Rodgers.

Mathieson's business connections with Dadon are no secret. They are matters which he has fully disclosed in the past. But non disclosure only seems to matter when the boot's on one foot. There is no attempt on the part of the Age to disclose the fact that, for a number of years, both Burns and Rodgers have shown sympathy to the Arab cause. Burns writes books (admittedly very boring books) about Arab culture. Indeed, it's fair to call both of them "Palestinian lobbyists" and this background information would be invaluable to Age readers in assessing their views on an article in which they attack the so-called "Israel lobby" or the "Jewish lobby". But the Age keeps it readers in the dark about the past association of both gentlemen with the Palestinian propaganda machine, of which the Age itself has chosen to be part with its one sided approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Age newspaper has for years turned the other cheek to the excesses of Palestinian terror. We rarely read about Hamas thuggery, its genocidal charter and its avowed policy to destroy Israel, it's treatment of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and its dreadful psychological warfare against his family. Nor do we hear much about incitement to violence against Jews in Palestine Authority media. When Hamas attacks mosques and kills dozens of worshippers, steals food from its own people and burns down school camps, the stories somehow miss the pages of this newspaper.

What we do get is bias dressed up as reporting from the likes of Paul McGeough who did a hatchet job on the Jewish State with his "insider's" view on the fraudulent Gaza flotilla which somehow missed the fact that the violence was initiated by Jihadist IHH activists on board on of the ships. Pity about the clear film of the mob attacking Israeli soldiers as they boarded the Mavi Marmara and even more so about the vision of the so-called "peace activists" throwing an Israeli overboard. McGeough could only retell a tale from a fellow traveller of throwing weapons overboard. The human being tossed over the deck was conveniently forgotten like so much of the truth about the excesses of terrorists in this region whose nefarious activities are airbrushed out of existence in the cause of producing sketches of a Palestine that doesn't really exist.

We know that the Age is not reticent about telling stories of Islamic Jihadists because this appeard in its papers last week - Hanging of eight-year-old turns many against Taliban. What chance is there that such a story would have appeared in the Age had the perpetrators been from Taliban's sister organisation, Hamas?

I can tell you the answer - absolutely nil because Fairfax and the Age are soft on Hamas.