WE NEED TO TALK MORE ABOUT HAMAS

While Palestine advocates like Dr. Sarah Roy, a child of holocaust survivors, takes the opportunity to bash Israel on the holiest night of the year for Jews, the Hamas party which was elected to lead the Palestinians and runs Gaza with an iron fist, continues to unequivocally seek the annihilation of the Jewish people - Hamas Cleric Muhsen Abu 'Ita: The Annihilation of the Jews in Palestine One of the Most Splendid Blessings for Palestine

It's not pleasant to witness the suffering of those Palestinians or those Israelis who are caught in this violent conflict but it is very clear that their suffering arises from attitudes such as those espoused by the likes of Muhsen Abu whose views are endorsed at the very top of the Hamas tree.

However, Roy's talking tour of this country ignored those annihilationist views and focuses solely on blaming the Israelis. One can only wonder therefore at the sad pathology of people like Roy and her fellow traveller Geoffrey Binder who seek to use this connection with the holocaust to perpetrate their attacks on Israel which has to defend itself against a philosophy and a culture that aims to to repeat the horrors of the Third Reich.

The Muhsen Abu sermon will of course, never see the light of day in our mainstream media and will, in the main, stay on the blank pages.

RELIGIOUS CLEANSING IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The LA Times reports on what it calls "religious cleansing in the Middle East" in its editorial - A Christian exodus.

"The religious cleansing of Christians in Iraq is part of a larger pattern in which a faith with origins in the Middle East is being driven out of its native region. From Iraq to Lebanon, which once claimed a Christian majority, to Bethlehem, the West Bank town revered as the birthplace of Jesus, intra-Muslim violence and the Arab-Israeli struggle have combined to persuade (and in some cases force) Christians to relocate to Europe or North America."

The intolerance of Muslim regimes should not come as a surprise. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab and Muslim lands were "cleansed" from their host countries in the wake of Israel's independance in 1948 and prominent Palestinian political groups continue to call for the cleansing of Jews from the Middle East landscape, often with the open support of the so-called intelligensia in the West, some of who even call themselves "Jews" and attend Israel-bashing meetings on Judaism's holiest night.

WE NEED TO TALK MORE ABOUT SUDAN

Eric Reeves reports in The New Republic that "...[I]ncredibly, the regime committing genocide in Darfur is now meant to be in charge of a critical U.N. poverty and disease eradication program." - Millennium Development Grotesquery

He refers to the Sudanese government which has been selected to chair the UN programme overseeing the eradication of disease and poverty.

"Since it was the African countries' turn to pick the chair of the organization, and since the selection of Sudan was supported by China, the outcome - however outrageous--is hardly surprising. Strong support from the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference helped ensured Khartoum's diplomatic victory. The selection of the National Islamic Front regime as chair is no mere symbolic exercise, though the symbolism of the choice is intensely dispiriting. For it comes at a time when the head of the regime faces a likely arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court - for crimes against humanity and for genocide in Darfur."

The inmates are well and truly in charge of the asylum.

Martin Whacks Fairfax

Matthew Ricketson of the Melbourne Age reports that "veteran broadcaster Ray Martin has accused commercial television networks and Fairfax Media, owner of The Age, of abandoning serious journalism - Martin hits out at TV networks and Fairfax cut-backs.

"Would the last journo out please turn off the studio lights?" he quipped to the audience at the annual Andrew Olle address in Sydney.

Too late Ray. The decline at Fairfax began long ago. It gathered momentum in 2002 with the appointment of a Middle East correspondent whose partisan views gave readers a highly slanted picture of the war between Israel and the Palestinians and precious little of the deadly conflicts brewing within Palestinian society during the past six or seven years. Things only got worse when Andrew Jaspan was given the gig as editor.

Abandoning serious journalism?

With O'Loughlin and Jaspan as the clown princes, Fairfax in Melbourne at least, was hardly an exponent of serious journalism, was it Ray?

RACISM AND HYPOCRISY

Detractors of Israel often accuse it of being many things which it is not. During a recent debate on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, one of the speakers offered his opinion that Israel was a "grubby little racist state" but when challenged, he failed miserably to provide any justification for this claim (which probably explains why his organisation has so few friends).

It's a pity therefore that news such as this story from Haaretz - Israel grants rare entry to cancer-stricken Iranian boy hasn't hit the media in our country. Israel welcomes a 12-year-old cancer-stricken Iranian boy for emergency treatment on his brain tumor while the leader of his country President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants Israel "wiped off the map" and vows that Iran will support the anti Semitic Hamas movement which rules Gaza until the "collapse of Israel".

What a shame that neither of these stories are covered in our local press.

TAKING INDEPENDENCE TOO FAR

The Independent Australian Jewish Voices is advertising a series of public lectures to be given around the country by Dr. Sara Roy who many would say is an apologist for radical Islam and Hamas which has among its aims, the destruction of the State of Israel and the killing of Jews everywhere.

The Melbourne public lecture will be held at the University of Melbourne tomorrow night 8 October 2008. The timing is impeccable for these independent "Jews" - most of those who aren't so independent will, in some way or another, be taking part in the observance of Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement.

In their defence I guess the people at the IAJV can say that the speaker is something of a nobody so there's nothing really to atone for on their part.

O'LOUGHLIN MAKES NICE ABOUT ISRAEL

I couldn't believe my eyes this morning when I noticed this article published in the Sunday Age - Revealed: diary of a man who lived and died in space.

An O'Loughlin reporting in the Age from Jerusalem and not a single word of disdain and contempt for Israel or its people.

Thank you Toni O'Loughlin for covering this story about the late Israeli astronaut and hero of the Jewish people with the compassion and honesty that has been so long missing from in your own newspaper, the Guardian, and in Australia's Fairfax media. It was like a breath of fresh air.