Can't Write, Can't Count

Antony Loewenstein sneers at a journalist with a real job:

Another week and another column by a Melbourne Herald Sun editor Alan Howe on just how dysfunctional is the Middle East, Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, Islamists etc

Yes, this is what countless Zionist lobby trips to Israel do to a Murdoch man.

Countless?

Let's find out. Step one, contact Mr Howe via email and ask:

I would be grateful if you could please advise:

1) How many times you have travelled to Israel.
2) How many times your trip was sponsored by (take your pick) the Jewish Community, the Zionist Lobby, the Vast Zionist conspiracy etc.

Here is his response to me merely a few minutes later:

I’ve been to Israel on three occasions: Twice with the Australian-Israeli Cultural Exchange, and once privately.

Certainly not countless and definitely at least two more trips than Loewenstein had taken before writing his first (ahem) besteller about Israel.

You would think that a man now styling himself as an "investigative journalist" (albeit unemployed) might try to find this out. But no, Howe notes:

To the best of my knowledge, I have never met Loewenstein, nor ever spoken to him, nor ever emailed him.

I wouldn’t know the man if he turned in my soup.

Such are his investigative skills that Loewenstein doesn't need to ask any questions to discover that Howe has been gotten to by the eeevil Zionists.

Loewenstein is incapable of even considering that one can identify how dysfunctional the Arab/Muslim world is, simply by looking at it.

According to the last Arab Human Development Report:

One in five Arabs still live on less than $2 a day. And, over the past 20 years, growth in income per head, at an annual rate of 0.5%, was lower than anywhere else in the world except sub-Saharan Africa. At this rate, says the report, it will take the average Arab 140 years to double his income, a target that some regions are set to reach in less than ten years. Stagnant growth, together with a fast-rising population, means vanishing jobs. Around 12m people, or 15% of the labour force, are already unemployed, and on present trends the number could rise to 25m by 2010.

And that's just the good news! The Report's Chief Author: Nader Fergany, an Egyptian sociologist. Clearly also the recipient of free trips to Israel, right Antony? It continues:

Adult illiteracy rates have declined but are still very high: 65m adults are illiterate, almost two-thirds of them women. Some 10m children still have no schooling at all....
Investment in research and development is less than one-seventh of the world average. Only 0.6% of the population uses the Internet, and 1.2% have personal computers.

Another, no less grave, result is the dearth of creativity. The report comments sadly on the severe shortage of new writing, and, for instance, the decline in the film industry. Nor are foreign books much translated: in the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, say the authors, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in one year. ...
even though women's literacy rates have trebled in the past 30 years, one in every two Arab women still can neither read nor write. Their participation in their countries' political and economic life is the lowest in the world....

Of course you'd have to be a "Murdoch Man" having been on "countless Zionist lobby trips to Israel" to notice any of this.

Update: Thanks Tim Blair for the link which reminded me of your definitive takedown of Antony Loewenstein.