However, he wasn’t really a man, rather he was just a boy who had finished Year 12 and then spent a year in Canada as a Rotary exchange ctudent.
Regular titillating reports from that northern hemisphere country so enthused Riv readers that this young fellow returned home already effectively on the staff.
‘Ready made’ was something of an understatement, as he eventually became editor for a decade, worked for a national newspaper in Melbourne, experienced life as a reporter at a regional newspaper and, along the way, managed an online media company.
And all that was interspersed with trips to disparate destinations around the world, consolidating his man-of-the-world image.
I was not surprised when he took to Facebook to damn the Israeli Government for its behaviour and genocidal approach to Palestinians and, in particular, the people of Gaza.
He did not hold back, enrolling, using and directing every adjective, including ‘murderers’, at Israeli power brokers.
Coincidently I had planned to attend an April event in Melbourne about ‘Recovering Democracy Together’ at which UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was to be one of the speakers.
In preparation, I set out to read her latest book, When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine, closing the book in total agreement with my boy/man of the world.
Ms Albanese convinced me that, as with other nations, there are many layers in Israel from those who see the ‘other’ as something to be exterminated, to many who live under that country’s colours and yet see all people as equals.
Sadly, I didn’t get to hear Ms Albanese speak, as her virtual attendance was disrupted by technical issues.
Writing in his recently released book Israel: What Went Wrong?, Omer Bartov said, in relation to the Hamas attacks in October 7, 2023, “I found this to be an emotionally and intellectually challenging period.”
From Bartov’s book, I shifted to the work of Adam H. Johnson, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza.
Having been an active participant in ‘the media’ for most of my of my life, primarily with local and regional newspapers, I intellectually and emotionally sidestepped that idea of complicity.
That, however, was false comfort, for as a Westerner I was still aligned with the widely approved of idea to flatten Gaza and with that, the killing of thousands of Palestinians, men women and children.
Could we have stopped that slaughter? Well, not ‘we’ as such, but it has been argued that without the United States’ support, Israel’s military resources would have been exhausted in a few weeks.
Beyond Melbourne, Shepparton is the most diverse multicultural community in Victoria and has a similar standing nationwide, and although events in the Middle East my seem remote, they are, in fact, of deep daily concern to many of our neighbours.
Writing in her book, Ms Albanese said: “It is when the world sleeps that monsters are generated. We already have many monsters among us. First among them, our indifference.”
Having read the work of Albanese, Bartov and Johnson, it’s clear my ‘ready-made’ reporter friend is not indifferent and was correct in his damnation of the Israel Defense Forces.
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