Murdoch condemns US over Israel support

AUSTRALIAN media magnate Rupert Murdoch took a thinly veiled swipe at the Obama Administration’s support for Israel and condemned European governments for their complicity in the “soft war” against Jews and Israel.

Accepting the International Leadership Award from the Anti-Defamation League in New York last week, the chairman of News Corporation, owner of newspapers including The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun, spoke of three phases in the campaign to destroy Israel.

“For the first decades after Israel’s founding, this war was conventional in nature. The goal was straightforward: to use military force to overrun Israel. Then came phase two: terrorism. Terrorists targeted Israelis both home and abroad — from the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich to the Second Intifada.

“Now the war has entered a new phase. This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimising it. The battleground is everywhere: the media … multinational organisations … NGOs. In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.”

Contrasting Israel and Iran, Murdoch said: “Israel becomes increasingly ostracised, while Iran — a nation that has made no secret of wishing Israel’s destruction — pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke.”
Murdoch slammed European society, in which “anti-Semitism today enjoys support at both the highest and lowest reaches … from its most elite politicians to its largely Muslim ghettoes. European Jews find themselves caught in this pincer.”

Detailing some examples, he recalled that in Sweden, once the home of liberal tolerance, a visiting Israeli tennis team was greeted with rioting, and the local mayor’s response was that Jews in the town would be safer if they distanced themselves from Israeli actions in Gaza. He also listed a case whereby the Norwegian Government banned a shipbuilder from using its waters to test a submarine being built for the Israeli navy.

“In Europe today, some of the most egregious attacks on Jewish people, Jewish symbols and Jewish houses of worship have come from the Muslim population,” Murdoch said.
“Unfortunately, far from making clear that such behaviour will not be tolerated, too often the official response is what we’ve seen from the Swedish mayor — who suggested Jews and Israel were partly to blame themselves.”

Even his adopted country, the United States, was not immune from Murdoch’s criticism. He claimed Washington’s recent approach “sometimes emboldens these ¬≠extremists”.
The owner of Fox News, Fox Movies and Britain’s BSkyB lamented that “violence and extremism are encouraged when the world sees Israel’s greatest ally distancing herself from the Jewish State”.

“Some believe that if America wants to gain credibility in the Muslim world and advance the cause of peace, Washington needs to put some distance between itself and Israel. My view is the opposite. Far from making peace more possible, we are making hostilities more certain. The peace we all want will come when Israel feels secure — not when Washington feels distant.

AJN STAFF