The abandonment of reason

The government, the opposition and the entire Australian press have been overtly manufacturing consent to bend a genocide around the good hearts of the Australian people.

The media led by Murdoch flagship ‘the Australian’ have abandoned all objectivity in support of the actions of Israel (Source: Twitter)

The latest edition of the “Weekend Australian” was issued with a black-plated front page, citing the “grave moral and political failure” of the Albanese government. They titled it the “Abandonment of Israel”. The dramatic headline was emblematic of the Murdoch-led absolutist pro-Zionist stance in the media since the October 7 attacks, and reflected a new intensity as the conflict has expanded. After the extrajudicial killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah from more than eighty bombs dropped on several apartment complexes in the middle of densely populated Beirut, and as a consequence of Israel’s war expanding out of the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank and into the sovereign territory of Lebanon with the added potential of an all-out regional war with Iran, the longest anti-war protest in Australian history has evolved to encompass the emerging conflicts, yet so has the pro-Zionist rhetoric from media and political circles. 

Since the Israeli response immediately challenged the concept of proportionality, and the UN and International Court of Justice started raising concerns about the number of civilian deaths and the hospitals, schools and refugee camps being bombed, the narrative from the Australian press has failed to reflect the sentiment within Australian society, which is largely appalled at highest concentration of civilian death in living memory. As the scale of destruction has become apparent, and while tens of thousands of Australians hit the streets to protest what the ICJ, NGOs and the United Nations are either investigating, or referring to, as a genocide, and as the billions of humans watching the most documented and visible human catastrophe in history, the public broadcaster was sacking staff who spoke out about what they saw with their own eyes, and the Government was busy removing young female senators who dared to reminded them they lacked a conscience on the crisis. 

Behind the “social cohesion” being spoke upon a daily basis by Murdoch pundits and special envoys the like is a well-funded and equipped network of Zionist “charity status” organisations, industry and lobby groups that are constantly pushing for Israel’s agenda, lobbying both sides of Australian politics, while working in lockstep with a foreign-devised narrative peddled by a corporate media that has been hastily grafted onto our peace-loving country. Post October 7, these groups have morphed into propaganda outlets and political instruments for a belligerent foreign state actor. They are less about charitable ventures for the Jewish diaspora, and more using their platforms to publicly denigrate Australian citizens and promote Israel’s objectives in the Middle East. Statements supporting and normalising Israel’s brutal trajectory in Gaza, controversial diplomatic visits to Tel Aviv, condemnations of protestors, or even consequential decisions like withdrawing UNRWA funding to the occupied Palestinian territories, have had the influence or imprimatur of these organisations who breach the remit of their charity status to divide our secular country.

Over time, the front pages of the newspapers have been reserved for articles from Zionist heavies, op-eds Israeli Government officials, and favourable analysis on the rambling draconian decrees of Peter Dutton, but the streets have been reserved for the biggest continuous protests in our country’s history, and the juxtaposition couldn’t be any starker. 

In a year of overt support for Israel in powerful circles of our society, amongst the irrefutable carnage, an increasingly concerned public has heard overt and repetitive talk about ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’, woven with lop-sided narratives about antisemitism and social cohesion. At times it has felt that the media and political class have been primarily concerned with bending a genocide around the concerned Australian population instead of applying fingers to the national pulse and gauging the sentiments of a public that opposes Israel’s actions in a majority. If they did, they would find a population that does not want to be involved in another Middle Eastern war, and overwhelmingly wants more from its government to urge Israel towards peace.

“How much does Israel have to endure before Australia stands up in support of its so-called close friend and ally?”, blared the “The West Australian” as Israel was indiscriminately bombing ambulances in Southern Lebanon. After Netanyahu called the United Nations an “antisemitic swamp”, the SMH published a cartoon showing a Venn diagram with two Covid like spike proteins, one named “anti-Zionist” and the other “pro-Palestine”, with the overlapping viruses creating a new virus named “Antisemitic”. Pro-Israeli politicians get free-reign to call protestors  “those who seek to import foreign hatreds to our land” in the newspaper, and the perception on the ground goes largely ignored.

Throughout the conflict, the Albanese government has ramped up the entanglement with Israel, and attempted to absorb the flow-on the tension within Australian society, while trying to please an unreasonable minority position. Goaded by the numb-minded and inhumane in the opposition, and corralled by the foreign agent talking points seemingly posited verbatim via the concentrated Murdoch-led corporate press, the government run by the bloke who founded the “Parliamentary friends of Palestine” organisation has tried to please all parties, and has failed miserably. Labor could have done more to sanction Israeli diplomats, freeze military and trade arrangements, or outright condemn Israel for its illegal actions, and done so with the support of the population, but now it sits in the small target territory on a genocide less than a year out from an election.

On the other side of politics, Peter Dutton licks his lips, and bares a set of teeth not yet seen before, proud to be anointed the Zionist partner of choice. There is an unstatesmanlike and cruelly unconditional nature to Dutton’s support for Israel, brought out of him like a poisonous symbiotic incubus, jumping out of his hollow chest and into the public narrative. While much criticism was attached to Penny Wong’s visit to Israel while hospitals and universities were being annihilated, Dutton landed in Tel Aviv recently as Israeli society was debating if it was ok to sexually abuse Palestinian detainees in prisons and the emerging horror of the crisis was well and truly understood by all. Dark and paradigmatic stances have emerged from the minds of the Coalition, from James Patterson to Simon Birmingham, stances not seen in major party political iterations before. There is a cold absolutism and acceptance of any new genocidal norm in the Coalition, borne out of an ignorance and a moral shallowness, and it too doesn’t reflect the more moderate and reasonable viewpoints of the wider Australian conservative population.

When the Burmese military junta slaughtered activists responsible for domestic terror attacks, you didn’t have SLORC representatives writing flowery op-eds about the Junta’s ‘right to defend itself’. The Executive Council of Australian Janjaweed’s didn’t have private direct access to the PMs office during the Darfur crisis in Sudan, nor did the Naxalite–Maoist lobby groups possess the same prestige as the Zionists, who seem to dictate terms in Canberra. If they did, their words would sit as oddly and as morally depraved as the pro-Israeli voices who dominate political proceedings, yet despite their power and influence, ultimately fail to drown out the human revulsion demonstrated week after week in our major capitals.

The crisis in the Middle East looks sharp, heavy and consequential, and support for Israel has as many consequences and perhaps more, but down here in Australia, so far away, political support for Israel looks morbidly disjointed, revealing the pure political machinations of those involved, and the public is largely shocked by what has been revealed. It’s not the essential tacit support for the status quo (which is a genocide), it’s not the excusing of disproportionate response, it’s not the fact that the aggressor is extra-judicially attacking sovereign nations with large, concerned diasporas in Australia, nor it it the lop-sided sentiment favouring one side over the other, it’s not the fact that the Australia has abstained and disregarded UN resolutions and ICJ deliberations - it’s that the government, the opposition and the entire Australian press have been overtly manufacturing consent to bend a genocide around the good hearts of the Australian people.