You have to laugh. Or you’ll cry.

Has Murdoch’s Australian gone mad? Has it dared speak honestly about Israeli repression in Palestine? The Zionist lobby is outraged. Er, well, Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan – a man who has enjoyed countless free Zionist lobby trips to Israel, all for research purposes, of course – is having none of it today:

Many readers were surprised, as I was, to read a headline in The Weekend Australian: Living under the cloud… of Israel’s cruel apartheid. The headline did an injustice to the story, which only used the word apartheid in… reporting the comments of one person who was interviewed. The editor of this august journal has confirmed… to me that the headline was a mistake, the sort that creeps into newspapers where staff are always battling… the pressure of deadlines. The Australian believes, and certainly I personally believe, the word apartheid has… no application to Israel, which is a democracy in good standing, which extends basic rights to all its citizens,… whatever their race or creed. Too often the misuse of such a word is designed to demonise Israel, wholly… unjustly. In this case, it was just a mistake.