Australia's Jewish Lobby Hits The Panic Button

Forget Paul Sheehan and others reacting to Alan Ramsay's intriguing weekend piece. The most interesting story in today's papers is from Imre Salusinszky, revealing that Jewish leaders betrayed Labor to support Malcolm "Merchant Banker" Turnbull's failed leadership coup, but now they are desperately calling Rudd to apologise:

Grahame Leonard, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, has phoned federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd over the tensions and the two have scheduled a meeting.

The development comes as the battle for the Jewish vote turns nasty, with Peter Costello accusing the labour movement of harbouring anti-Semitism.

In an interview with the Australian Jewish News published last Friday, the Treasurer trumpets his pro-Israel credentials, stretching back to his days in the student movement, and warns Australia's position would be threatened by the election of a Rudd government.

"At national level, there is support for Israel on both sides of parliament; however, I think that Labor's support is not as strong as the Coalition's," he told the newspaper.

Yeah, a secret Labor pledge of $20 million to Jewish private schools for "security" is obviously not pro-Israel enough. What's really needed is support for an all-out attack on Iran and the further subjugation of the Paltestinian people.

The article also reveals some interesting AEC shenanigans:

Labor was also outraged at the inclusion of supportive letters from several Jewish organisations in the Liberal Party submission to the Australian Electoral Commission on new borders for Mr Turnbull's eastern Sydney seat of Wentworth.

While the Environment Minister's margin was halved to 2.5 per cent in last year's redistribution, the situation would have been worse without the AEC agreeing to salvage part of the neighbouring seat of Kingsford Smith because it includes Jewish schools and nursing homes.

So now we are drawing up electorates based on ethnic and religious profiles? Really? But it's OK, coz they are not Muslim, right? Right?

Australians who pay attention should get an interesting look into how politics in this country really works this week.

And then there's the global perspective. This ABC story strongly implies that Israel attacked Syria last week because Syria was getting WMDs from North Korea. But, as the reporter breathlessly explains, such a thing cannot be clearly stated in the media because of Israeli state censorship:

What happened in Syria 10 days ago has been at the centre of one the biggest guessing games in Israel. Whatever it was, it was very serious.

Yossi Melman is one of Israel's most respected military correspondents. He might or might not know exactly what happened and you can forgive his hesitation because he cannot by law report it.

"I would like to believe that what happened in Syria was that serious, that immediate, that it was worth the risk of all-out war with Syria," he said.

"We [in Israel] cannot say anything which is based on Israeli sources. Nothing."

So we are asked to trust the vague insinuations of Condi "Mushroom Clouds" Rice, John Bolton, WaPo and the Israeli government. And the proof?

Syria complained of Israeli aggression, but no other Arab country has come to its support. Only Russia, Iran and North Korea denounced the Israeli action.

That's it. That's all the proof you need, right? Right?