Antony Loewenstein

“Despite Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, major violations of human rights continue to result from its occupation of Palestinian territories, construction of barriers and expansion of settlements, according to the United Nations official monitoring that situation in his latest report to the General Assembly.”

UN News Centre, 28 September

UPDATE: Amira Hass continues to expose Israel’s true agenda:

“Next month, as is the case every October, the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza will begin issuing 16-year-olds their first identity cards. Each 16-year-old will bring photographs and documentation to his school, which will pass them on to the ministry. And, just as it has every year since the Palestinian Authority was established, the ministry will pass all the information on to Israel’s Interior Ministry. Despite Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian ministry still cannot issue identity cards unless Israeli clerks approve the applications.”

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail:

“A contractor I know working in Iraq wrote me recently. He gives me periodic updates about how life is on the base where he works in support of the military. He wrote:

‘”Another convoy hit hard-3 drivers killed and many others wounded – I don’t know if it’s my friends yet. They don’t like to advertise these kinds of things much around here because they cause the exit planes to fill up – the only problem is, there are more plane loads waiting in Houston [to come here]. The gullible waiting for their chance at the tarnished brass ring. [Me and my friends] agree this countries’ policies of oil have led us down the path of Armageddon.’

“At least 1,917 US soldiers have died in Iraq now, 16 just in the last week. At least 10 times that number have been wounded for life, both physically and psychologically.”

With the world’s oil supplies dwindling and the media reluctant to ask even the most basic questions of our leaders, Iraq will continue to descend into chaos.

How about these suggestions for journalists:

“John Howard, how do you feel about the fact that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have died since the “Coalition” invaded in 2003?”

“Prime Minister, any concerns that Iraq is increasingly aligning itself with Iran?”

“Howard, what exactly are Australian troops doing in Iraq?”

“I want to thank the political and media establishment for the way in which they have received The Latham Diaries. When John Howard, the Australian Labor Party, the Canberra press gallery, and the Packer and Murdoch empires combine, as they have over the past fortnight, to tell people not to read this book, it sends a powerful message: the Canberra club has a lot to worry about and a lot to hide. Thankfully, the reading public (is) not silly. They are not easily swayed by media hysteria and sensationalism. They know what’s going on here: The Latham Diaries (blows) the whistle on the Canberra club, providing a contemporary, behind-the-scenes account of the many flaws in the system. This is why the book sold out last week and MUP has had to triple the print run.”

Former Labor leader Mark Latham, speaking last night at Melbourne University.

US-based Counterpunch publishes my article on the recent controversy regarding attempts by Federal Labor MP Michael Danby to censor my forthcoming book on Israel/Palestine. Read it for a perspective on the wider issues at play.

Since publication, I’ve received dozens of emails from around the world, including Australia, Iceland and America. And I’ll be appearing tomorrow on an LA radio station explaining the story.

UPDATE: I’ll be on KPFK’s “Middle East in Focus” program tomorrow.

- What exactly is the US military doing in Paraguay? Blogger Benjamin Dangle wonders if they’re trying to secure the country’s oil fields.

- Beyond Right and Left is a new book by academic David McKnight that looks at Australia’s culture wars and the rise of the Right. The Left gets a justified serve as well.

- Norman Solomon on the mainstream media and its inability to deal with the anti-war movement:

“If ‘journalism is the first draft of history,’ the journalism of corporate media is usually the quickie top-down view of history that’s told from vantage points far removed from progressive movements. Media technologies and styles aside, what we’re experiencing now from major U.S. news outlets is not very different from the coverage of the Vietnam War.

“A persistent myth is that mainstream American news outlets were tough on the war in Vietnam while boosting the antiwar movement. And these days – after a summer of plunging poll numbers for President Bush along with the profoundly important media presence of Cindy Sheehan – many people seem to think that the news media have turned against the war makers in Washington. But overall the media realities are something else. Actual history should make us wary of any assumption that the press is apt to be a counterweight to militarism.”

- Former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke thinks Australia should be a nuclear waste dumping ground. His progressive credentials grow by the day.

Malcolm Fraser, Elizabeth Evatt and Greg Combet plus others will be speaking.

The Guardian reports:

“The US military told an al-Jazeera cameraman being held at Guantanamo Bay that he would be released as long as he agreed to spy on journalists at the Arabic news channel.”

Perhaps the Iraqi government would like to demand American troops report on the shameless profiteering and war-mongering of Fox News.

“…Israel needs no one but itself. If Israel does not resolve the conflict of its own free will and at its own initiative, it will not be resolved. If Israel does not establish the Palestinian state, it will not arise.”

Alon Liel, former director general of the Foreign Ministry and member of the Council for Peace and Security, Haaretz, September 24

Perhaps Dr Liel needs reminding of the foreign aid budget of the American administration. Without the billions of dollars – and political capital – that find their way to the Jewish state every year, Israel would arguably cease to exist.

Australian columnist, Glenn Milne, is never one to shirk a government or opposition leak. In fact, he’s best known for channelling Howard government propaganda as his own musings.

Today, he writes of the ALP’s supposed antagonism towards Israel. Following recent comments by Labor backbencher Julia Irwin in federal Parliament, “an understandably furious Australian Jewish community believes Irwin is engaged in dangerous moral relativism, putting forward the phony proposition that Israel is acting in the same way as Hitler.”

Irwin said the following:

“Gaza is now a Palestinian ghetto; a prison for its one million people. All flows of people and goods must pass through Israeli border controls, which has resulted in the World Bank’s reporting that unemployment and poverty will rise in Gaza. Now Israel will rule Gaza like a walled ghetto, a giant penal colony, a concentration camp.

“We are witnessing the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, the heart and soul of the Palestinian nation. The world must not allow this to happen.”

Irwin’s comments – except perhaps her use of the word “concentration camp” – are reasonable and factually accurate. If Milne doubts Irwin’s veracity, perhaps he’d like to read this on Israeli settlement expansion in occupied Palestinian territory and attempts by Israeli authorities to marginalise and ghettoise Palestinians in East Jerusalem. I saw it with my own eyes earlier in the year. If Milne ever goes to Israel, of course, he’d be on a Zionist lobby paid jaunt.

For Milne however, “Labor’s overall credibility on the Middle East” is in question. The comment is ludicrous. During an interview with the Australian Jewish News in June, Beazley completely agreed with the extreme positions taken by the Howard government in relation to Israel. There were no quibbles or disagreements. Surely a mature political party can stomach dissent from the official line? It’s clear, however, that neither Labor nor Liberal are evolved enough to hear anything other than “Israel is always right”.

A number of Australian Zionists including AIJAC’s Martin Guenzl – a man who used to write abusive emails to me in years past, chastising my less than acceptable Zionist credentials – accept nothing less than complete subservience to the pro-Israeli and pro-American line. If they do not receive that from either Labor or Liberal, except propagandists like Milne to stand up for what’s “right”.

Milne suggests that any debate daring to suggest Western actions contribute to Islamic fundamentalism is almost tantamount to treason. After all, he writes, “anti-US sentiment necessarily equates to being anti-Israel.”

Milne’s “you’re either us or you’re with the terrorists” worldview fits perfectly with the Murdoch line as well as the established Zionist perspective. Surely with the Iraq war beyond its tipping point – ably supported by “pro-US” types like Milne and the Zionist lobby – the days of lecturing us are well over.

Never expect a propagandist to admit he’s wrong. Milne isn’t a journalist, he’s a useful mouthpiece for various factional interests in the Liberal and Labor teams. And his understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict is as nuanced as Binjamin Netanyahu.

When former Labor minister Barry Cohen claimed in late 2004 that anti-Semitism was rife in the ALP, he had people like Irwin in mind. I interviewed Cohen for my forthcoming book on the Middle East and his view of Israel was far removed from reality; a perfect, democratic paradise amidst evil Arab states, he thought.

Milne’s column rehashes old prejudices and attempts to shut down legitimate debate around the most sensitive of subjects.

John Pike, director of the Washington military research group, GlobalSecurity.org:

“”How many evil-doers have we sent to their maker using bullets rather than bombs? I don’t know.”

The Independent reports:

“US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan – an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed – that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.”

Read the whole article. It’s comforting to know that war-mongers spend their days calculating how many bullets have been used in the “War on Terror” and how many “evil-doers” have been killed in the process. Any chance of a body count of innocents killed?

Anti-war protests shook America and Britain yesterday – remarkably, today’s Sydney Morning Herald completely ignores the events – but where were the Democrats?

Wayne Madsen Report explains:

“Very few Democratic members of Congress to appear. Reason: [leading pro-Israel lobbyists] The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to Democratic insiders on Capitol Hill, put out the word that any member of Congress who appeared at the protest, where some speakers were to represent pro-Palestinian views, would face the political wrath of AIPAC.

“According to Democratic sources on the Hill, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts was the chief conveyor of the AIPAC warning to his colleagues. At the time of this report, three members of Congress were to address the anti-war protestors: Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), John Conyers (D-MI), and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA). The word is that AIPAC will direct its massive campaign support to Woolsey’s neo-con and pro-Iraq war primary challenger, California State Assemblyman Joe Nation, who has strong connections to the Rand Corporation, one of the Pentagon’s chief war-making think tanks. Woolsey represents California’s Marin and Sonoma counties.”

“U.S. Army troops subjected Iraqi detainees to severe beatings and other torture at a base in central Iraq from 2003 through 2004, often under orders or with the approval of superior officers.

“Three U.S. army personnel – two sergeants and a captain – describe routine, severe beatings of prisoners and other cruel and inhumane treatment. In one incident, a soldier is alleged to have broken a detainee’s leg with a baseball bat. Detainees were also forced to hold five-gallon jugs of water with their arms outstretched and perform other acts until they passed out. Soldiers also applied chemical substances to detainees’ skin and eyes, and subjected detainees to forced stress positions, sleep deprivation, and extremes of hot and cold. Detainees were also stacked into human pyramids and denied food and water. The soldiers also described abuses they witnessed or participated in at another base in Iraq and during earlier deployments in Afghanistan.”

Human Rights Watch, September 24