The vacuous Megan Whelan said nothing this morning when her guest said that
boycotting Israel “reminds some people of the Nazi boycotts of the Jews”.
RNZ National, Wednesday 3 January 2018, 9:30 a.m.
boycotting Israel “reminds some people of the Nazi boycotts of the Jews”.
RNZ National, Wednesday 3 January 2018, 9:30 a.m.
I tuned in to this outrageous little piece of propaganda masquerading as analysis toward the end, so I wasn’t sure who was speaking. I assumed he was someone from the Israeli Consulate, because he made several sleazy insinuations against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, and talked condescendingly and dishonestly about Lorde’s decision to boycott Israel. I thought it might be the infamous Dr David Cumin, who reared his head in late 2016 in order to denounce Marama Davidson….
But this voice was different to Cumin’s. I knew I’d heard him before, but who WAS it? He spoke as smoothly and with the same nerveless dishonesty as Dr Cumin. It might have been the Wellington dentist David Zwarz, who used to be the go-to man whenever the media needed a local comment supportive of a massacre in Gaza, or the shooting of unarmed Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem. But it wasn’t David Zwarz.
Who WAS it?
Finally, at the end of the interview, his patsy Megan Whelan identified him: “That was Professor Robert Ayson, from Victoria University’s School of Strategic Studies.”
Of course! Robert Ayson!!! This bloke has form. A couple of years ago, he insisted to me by email that U.S. troops kill civilians with the best intentions….
…in seeking to target people and groups they believe to be in particular locations they sometimes make poor judgements about the wider consequences.regardsRob
I replied:
The United States military was repeatedly given the coordinates of Kunduz Hospital. They didn’t get their targeting wrong. When they “conquered” Fallujah General Hospital in November 2004, U.S. troops tied up doctors and nurses, and forced patients out of their beds, before also tying them up. Again, that doesn’t seem like getting their targeting wrong.
He did not reply to that.
There is something I find even more disturbing than the malicious propaganda these people routinely dispense: the silence, bordering on approval and complicity, of the person supposed to be interviewing them. David Cumin’s patsy was Jesse Mulligan, who like the others in the studio remained silent as Cumin poured scorn on Marama Davidson and the rest of the protestors who broke through Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza in 2016. I suspect this was a condition insisted on by Cumin before he spoke.
Robert Ayson’s patsy this morning was Megan Whelan, who seems to have no knowledge whatsoever of the situation in Palestine, or of the movement to boycott Israel. On such ignorant and compliant accomplices do Israeli apologists depend.
