Antony Loewenstein

Need evidence that US rabbis are obsessed with Israel during this holiday period, at the expense of more important issues?

The Jewish apartheid state reveals its true side (and unsurprisingly, Israeli-only roads are the subject):

The masses of Israelis who regularly travel to Jerusalem via Modi’in are familiar with the large cement cubes near the signs that indicate the approach roads to the Palestinian villages on either side of the main road known as Highway 443. Anyone who bothers to look to the sides will be able to see, beyond the cubes, at the side of the ride, cars bearing Palestinian Authority license plates. Those who have sharp eyes will be able to descry the passengers climbing up and down the hills.

Now it emerges that there is no order that can give legal validity to discrimination among travels according to nationality. In reply to a question from Haaretz, the IDF Spokesman has confirmed that “in light of the many security risks and threats to traffic on Highway 443 in recent years, it was decided in the Israel Defense Forces Central Command to close several approach roads that connect directly from the village expanse to the highway.” At the same time, the spokesman stresses that “no order has been issued that prohibits travel on the highway,” and in any case, “there is no prohibition on the part of the IDF regarding Palestinian traffic on the segment of the highway located in the territories of the Judea and Samaria [West Bank] area.” Nevertheless, in the same statement in which it is claimed that “there is no prohibition regarding Palestinian traffic on the Palestinian segment of the road,” it is also stated that because of the security risks, some of the approach roads that link the villages to the highway are closed “permanently.” 

And when did Jews become so resistant to open debate on the main issues of the day? Parochialism and faux insecurity are the new buzz words for Zionists the world over. Of course, many Jews would comfortably defend Israeli-only roads as a necessary security measure. I look forward to their justification for anti-Jewish discrimination in the Arab world in the name of racial purity.

Read this story (and wonder why our “war on terror” journalists failed to pick it up.)

John Kampfner, New Statesman, August 7:

At a Downing Street reception not long ago, a guest had the temerity to ask Tony Blair: “How do you sleep at night, knowing that you’ve been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis?” The Prime Minister is said to have retorted: “I think you’ll find it’s closer to 50,000.”

No British leader since Winston Churchill has dealt in war with such alacrity as the present one. Back then, it was in the cause of saving the nation from Nazism. Now, it is in the cause of putting into practice the foreign policy of the simpleton. During his nine years in power, Blair – and in this government it is he, and he alone – has managed to ensure that the UK has become both reviled and stripped of influence across vast stretches of the world. In so doing, he has increased the danger of terrorism to Britain itself. 

(Hat tip: Lawrence of Cyberia.)

What does John Howard think of former Labor leader Mark Latham?

(The Australian media love to hate Latham, but this Age editorial is strange, to say the least. If the “traditional” Aussie bloke is disappearing, then the sooner the better.)

The situation in Darfur is worsening by the day and yet the world community seems incapable or unwilling to act. First-hand accounts are truly shocking.

But what of responsibility by the Bush administration? Their inaction is best explained by political expediency and oil exploration.

After all, who really cares that black people are dying?

Former US President Bill Clinton has boasted to Fox News that he “got closer to killing him [Bin Laden] than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him.”

Such a shame, therefore, that his words are largely irrelevant, hypocritical and many years too late.

A salient lesson for Clinton; never think you’ll be lifelong friends with Rupert Murdoch.

An important lesson in how the Associated Press (AP) underplays insurgent violence directed at US troops in Iraq. Dahr Jamail explains:

It is important to note that the board of directors of AP is composed of 22 newspaper and media executives that include the CEOs and presidents of ABC, McClatchy, Hearst, Tribune and the Washington Post. Two of the directors are members of very conservative policy councils that include the Hoover Institute. The Hoover Institute is a Republican policy research center that has been referred to as “Bush’s brain trust.” Its fellows include Condoleezza Rice and Newt Gingrich, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, along with George Shultz.

Douglas McCorkindale, also on the board of directors at AP, is on the board of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contract company. One does not require crystals to see that the board of AP displays a clear tilt toward right-wing conservative views, and comprises representatives of a huge corporate media network of the largest publishers in the US.

It is not difficult to demolish the myth of the liberal media and its prominent arms like AP.

The myth of the “new anti-Semitism”, a discussion.

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A side of the Jewish state all-too-rarely glimpsed in the West:

A Jewish rabbi living in the West Bank has called on the Israeli government to use their troops to kill all Palestinian males more than 13 years old in a bid to end Palestinian presence on this earth.

“We have to make sure that no Palestinian individual remains under our occupation. If they (Palestinians) escape then it is good; but if anyone of them remains, then he should be exterminated”, the fanatic rabbi added in his article. 

Israel has created a trap from which it can never truly escape. The occupation of the West Bank has produced thousands of fanatical Jews, hell-bent on never leaving the land, despite the necessity for doing so. The result – when international pressure becomes too great and Israel must evacuate all the illegal settlements on occupied land – will be civil war.

Israel and its blind Zionist supporters will only have themselves to blame.

The stark truth about Iraq courtesy of American intelligence agencies:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe. 

There is also a profound price to be paid at home:

More than one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans seeking medical treatment from the Veterans Health Administration report symptoms of stress or other mental disorders _ a tenfold increase in the last 18 months, according to an agency study.

The dramatic jump in cases _ coming as more troops face multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan _ has triggered concern among some veterans groups that the agency may not be able to meet the demand. They say veterans have had to deal with long waits for doctor appointments, staffing shortages and lack of equipment at medical centers run by the Veterans Affairs Department. 

And for what? The “noble” goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East? Or the more likely outcome of opening up Iraqi markets to Western multinationals?