Israel:
Palestinian jihadists in Israel have recently murdered four rabbis, killed a policeman, stabbed two Israelis to death, killed a baby and three other people by driving cars into crowds, and shot and stabbed others. YetLateline last night portrayed this surge in jihadist attacks as actually a two-way battle - as “violence between Jews and Palestinians”:
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the recent upsurge in violence between Jews and Palestinians a “battle for Jerusalem”.
The short report focuses on Israeli reprisals, and does not mention Hamas and Palestinian Authority incitements. ABC cuts:
On ABC Radio National Breakfast Fran Kelly and Paul Bongiorno categorically brand the cuts to the ABC as a broken promise. No ABC staffer or regular commentator notes that Abbott, yes, spoke far too loosely on SBS on election eve but that he referred to what Joe Hockey had said on the ABC itself. Abbott:
I trust everyone actually listened to what Joe Hockey has said last week and again this week. No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.
Hockey three weeks earlier on Q&A:
TONY JONES: is the ABC immune from cuts? …
JOE HOCKEY: I’d just say to you is there any waste in the ABC at all, Tony? /// Well, if there is waste, we will cut it.
Yes, conservative Janet Albrechtsen is later brought on to defend the cuts, but as a voice from “outside”. Where are the ABC voices to defend the cuts and the attempts to rein in ABC bias?
Bob Ellis:
Bob Ellis, the former Labor speechwriter, has become vile in his apparent desperation for attention. For instance, after the beheading of US journalist James Foley, he sneered: “Beheadings occur routinely in Game of Thrones. And no complaint has been laid. Why then all the fuss?” Some of Ellis’s abuse of Abbott and his family is so vile it cannot be repeated. He has defended Saddam Hussein and called murderous jihadists “honourable men”. His abuse is contemptible, and includes calling Paul Kelly a “c..t”. Yet no Leftist is too vile for the ABC to embrace them. Ellis is the honoured and promoted guest of Life Matters today, which hails his wisdom.
Israel: Daniel Eisenbud, Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post, Monday:
AMID an onslaught of unfounded claims in the Palestinian media Monday that an Arab bus driver was murdered by Jewish settlers Sunday night in Jerusalem, an autopsy report concluded the driver’s death was self-inflicted, resulting from hanging himself inside the vehicle ... the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, Wafa, said in several dispatches that “settlers” had “executed” Ramuni by hanging. ... the PA Foreign Ministry held Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “personally” responsible for the “assassination” of the bus driver ... PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi ... claimed that Ramuni had been tortured before being hanged to death. However, she did not back up her charge with any evidence. ... Hamas joined the chorus of charges ... and called on Palestinians to “rise up against this ugly racist crime.”
Staff, Jerusalem Post, Tuesday:
THE Arab doctor (at the autopsy, Dr Saber Al-Aloul) operated freely and consented to the findings (police said). “During the autopsy, there was consensus on the various findings and their significance, and there was no suspicion that the death was caused by another man,” (police said). ABC RN Breakfast, yesterday:
FRAN Kelly: Hamas is calling for the continuation of ... what they describe as revenge operations, this one, apparently in revenge for the hanging of a man ... a Palestinian bus driver who was hanged ... near this area.
Anti-Abbott, anti-Pyne, anti-conservatives:
ABC presenter Jonathan Green, who celebrated the downfall of John Howard by having guests bash a Howard piñata:
On the other hand, give Tony Jones credit:
TONY JONES: Now Malcolm Turnbull says there’s been no broken promise on ABC and SBS funding because both he and the Treasurer warned time and time again in the leadup to the election that the public broadcasters would not be exempt from efforts to eliminate waste and inefficiencies. It’s true those warnings were given, isn’t it?
JASON CLARE: Look, I don’t think that passes the pub test…
TONY JONES: But it passes the truth test, does it, but not the pub test?
JASON CLARE: Well, what he’s effectively saying ... is that Tony Abbott didn’t break a promise because even though Tony Abbott said there’d be no cuts to the ABC, what he really meant was that there’ll be no cuts over and above the cuts that I said there’d be to the ABC ... People know the Prime Minister promised the night before the election that there’d be no cuts to the ABC… TONY JONES: I’ll just go back to take up Malcolm Turnbull’s point. Joe Hockey, in the same Q&A program, sitting next to in me in fact, answering a questioner as to whether the ABC’s funding would be cut, said, essentially, he couldn’t rule out changes due to waste and inefficiencies. And Malcolm Turnbull says he’s gone through this process now methodically. He’s appointed a review of waste and inefficiency, effectively. Now he’s acting on that.
