Antony Loewenstein

Amira Hass, Haaretz, September 20:

Six Palestinian churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip suffered damage and arson attempts in reaction to the words of Pope Benedict XVI. Palestinian spokesmen of all stripes condemned these attacks and said that the Palestinian nation – Christians and Muslims alike – is one, and is united in its struggle against the occupation. Reports on the attacks in the Palestinian media described the perpetrators as “unknown.” In the Palestinian subtext, “unknown” implies “of suspicious identity,” a phrase that borders on a half-concealed accusation that Israel’s Shin Bet security services sent agents provocateurs.

But is it possible to separate these ills completely from the Israeli occupation? 

My following article appeared in yesterday’s Crikey newsletter:

In the months before the 2003 Iraq invasion, the mainstream media nearly wholly swallowed the premise that Iraq had WMD and only invasion and occupation would alleviate the threat. More than three years later, the country is suffering a civil war and the US-sanctioned leadership is incapable of bringing the nation back from the brink. Despite these bitter lessons, our political and media elites are now dragging us into an “inevitable” war with Iran.

The Bush administration is demanding the Iranians give up their supposed nuclear weapon’s program or pay the consequences (unsurprisingly, Australia is mirroring Washington’s position). Corporate media, such as Time magazine, are now openly war-gaming the possible military consequences of such an encounter and stipulating that the conflict is a matter of when, not if.

Furthermore, despite the humanitarian and strategic debacle of the Iraq engagement, Israel and its supporters are openly advocating military action against the Islamic state. Caution has been abandoned in the face of collective psychosis, and alleged truths have been accepted as fact.

The reality is far different. A senior representative of the IAEA said in mid-September that a US House of Representatives report on Iran’s supposed nuclear threat was “outrageous and dishonest” in trying to push for war. Furthermore, the IAEA contradicted US claims that Iran was making weapons-grade uranium when in fact it was producing material at a level far below what was required for nuclear weapons. This report received little coverage in the Australian media.

The answer is clear: Iran is the next “legitimate” target for regime change, and few media commentators have the bravery to question the accepted narrative (Ted Turner has been a notable exception).

Now is the time for our media to rediscover their critical faculties. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defence analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, has called for officials within government to leak information about any conflict with Iran, including the cost.

The humanitarian, political and social consequences of a strike against Iran are impossible to calculate, though military action will not bring peace to the region. If the Iraq war taught our media anything, it should be that government-sanctioned intelligence was notoriously unreliable and politically malleable.

It seems that many corporate journalists and editors would rather be co-opted into the war machine than present the unvarnished truth.

Iranian Jews are proud, discreet and active. Their country is full of contradictions:

Despite the offence Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has caused to Jews around the world, bizarrely his office recently donated money for Tehran’s Jewish hospital.

It is one of only four Jewish charity hospitals worldwide and is funded with money from the Jewish diaspora – something remarkable in Iran where even local aid organisations have difficulty receiving funds from abroad for fear of being accused of being foreign agents.

Most of the patients and staff are Muslim these days, but director Ciamak Morsathegh is Jewish.

“Anti-Semitism is not an eastern phenomenon, it’s not an Islamic or Iranian phenomenon – anti-Semitism is a European phenomenon,” he says, arguing that Jews in Iran even in their worst days never suffered as much as they did in Europe.

Australian Jews, for the most post, prefer parochialism, warmly embraced by Prime Minister John Howard.

Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, September 22:

The republic of fear is born again. The state of terror now gripping Iraq is as bad as it was under Saddam Hussein. Torture in the country may even be worse than it was during his rule, the United Nation’s special investigator on torture said yesterday.

The report, from an even-handed senior UN official, is in sharp contrast with the hopes of George Bush and Tony Blair, when in 2003 they promised to bring democracy and respect for human rights to the people of Iraq. The brutal tortures committed in the prisons of the regime overthrown in 2003 are being emulated and surpassed in the detention centres of the present US- and British-backed Iraqi government. “Detainees’ bodies show signs of beating using electric cables, wounds in different parts of their bodies including in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns,” the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq says in a new report. 

Hugo Chavez and the West, a recipe for renewal and welcome provocation (along with Chomsky book sales.)

I recently attended the Brisbane’s Writer’s Festival and one of my papers discussed Israel and Zionism (Brisbane Writer’s Festival discussion paper – Loewenstein). I debated Melbourne academic and “left-winger” Philip Mendes (more on Mendes here), a man seemingly torn between critiquing Israeli occupation yet incapable of truly condemning it. His heart and head are hopelessly conflicted.

Unsurprisingly, the Australian Jewish News (AJN) reported proceedings:

Cultural differences in the definition of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, not Israel’s actions in isolation, pose an obstacle to resolving the enduring conflict, a Melbourne-based Jewish academic said in Brisbane.

“Israel has always viewed peace in highly western terms as the cessation of war and violence following negotiations and mutual compromise. In contrast, Palestinians seem to define peace not as the absence of war per se, but rather as the restoration of their national, territorial, and political rights,” Monash University social work lecturer Dr Philip Mendes told an audience of around 150 people at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival on Saturday.

Dr Mendes was responding to strident Israel critic and rookie author Antony Loewenstein in a debate on “The Israel question”, a take on the title of Loewenstein’s controversial debut book My Israel Question.

Loewenstein, 31, argued that the claim by its supporters that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is a “lie”.

“Israel’s behaviour in the West Bank and Gaza are the tactics of a rogue, terror state,” he argued. “Enough with the Holocaust, alleged Palestinian ‘terror’ and victimhood. Take some responsibility for the parlous State of Israel in the international community. For all of us who want a safer Middle East, today’s Israel is currently the problem, not the cure.”

Defending his criticism of Israel, Loewenstein said he was a “proud Jew who believes in Israel, but not at the expense of the Palestinians. I believe in an independent Palestinian state.”

Dr Mendes, who is the author of Jews and Australian Politics, said another prerequisite to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the cessation of the Arab world’s 58-year-old military, political, trade and intellectual siege of Israel.

“If this change in attitude occurred among both fundamentalist and secular Arabs, I believe we would then see a similar change in attitude within Israel leading to a far greater Israeli willingness to seek non-military solutions to political problems,” Dr Mendes said.

Among the audience members was Australasian Union of Jewish Students Queensland president Ariel Radzinski, who said Loewenstein needed a “serious reality check”.

“He needs to witness what it is like to live in Israel and be under constant threat of a suicide bomber … Then let him come back to Australia and try to make comments like Israel has caused untold trauma with the Palestinian people.”

The debate was chaired by La Trobe University’s Professor Dennis Altman.

Last month, Loewenstein made several appearances at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, including a session on whether or not the West should negotiate with terrorists.

The AJN clearly decided some time ago to cover my book in a cynical and dishonest way. Calling me a “rookie author” is just the beginning (after all, how many AJN reporters have ever written anything longer than a 500 word article?) If I need a “reality check” for daring to highlight Israel’s occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, I’m more than comfortable leaving the young Zionist to his delusions. The newspaper’s journalism is best described as rehashing talking points from the Israeli foreign ministry. Independent thought must cost a premium.

The AJN’s coverage reminds me of a recent conversation with a senior Australian columnist. He recently spoke to a leading group of Australian Jews and told them that their overly aggressive tactics towards media players was leading to antagonism of Jews and Israel, opposite of the desired effect. I suspect this group of Zionists had no concept of approaching individuals any other way.

Keeping one’s head in the sand is far preferable, it seems, to actually wondering why Israel is increasingly hated around the world.

My Israel Question is now moving into a 3rd reprint and remains on the best-seller list (the latest review is here.) I’m being invited around the country to speak to various groups on the issues of Diaspora Jewry, Israel, Zionism and the Middle East. The response has been overwhelming.

The AJN and its fellow-travellers want to believe that victimhood is the preferred state of the Jewish community and robust debate about Israel is best done in private, if at all. Here’s a wake-up call: they’re being left behind in the debate by refusing to acknowledge legitimate criticisms of the Jewish state. Remaining silent in the face of ongoing Israeli barbarity in Gaza and the West Bank makes them complicit. But, of course, it’s only Palestinian suffering.

Leading UK journalist and author George Monbiot has released a new book, Heat, an examination of the ways in which civilisation can stop the planet burning.

He’s also launched an associated website, Turn the Heat Up, “exposing environmental claims made by corporations and celebrities.” Coldplay’s Chris Martin has a few questions to answer.

My following story appeared in Monday’s edition of the Crikey newsletter:

The Brisbane Writer’s Festival, which hosted over 200 writers from Australia and overseas, is over for another year.

Controversial London-based American author and Orange Prize winner, Lionel Shriver, gave the opening night address. Her message was blunt: writers should offend, be as politically incorrect as possible and to hell with the consequences. Artists should provoke, stir and challenge, she argued. Her wearing of two black gloves only added to the intrigue.

One of the more interesting sessions, on protecting journalists’ sources, featured ABC journalist and former foreign correspondent Mark Bowling (whose new book, Running Amok, details his years working in Indonesia) and Sarah Stewart, a Walkley-award winning journalist currently working for Agence France Presse in Malaysia.

Bowling said that the ABC was always under scrutiny in Canberra, and it mattered little that the organisation was pursuing “good journalism.” He revealed a forthcoming ABC editorial policy that will protect journalists from outside attempts to reveal sources that may place professional relationships in jeopardy.

It was an encouraging sign, if implemented properly, as most speakers warned of the “chilling effect” of the Howard government terror laws on actively pursuing stories that challenged the accepted political wisdom of the day.

Stewart offered some welcome perspective, and said that although problems existed in Australia with protecting sources and ever-increasing government interference, local media in many parts of Asia received no legal protections at all. While Western journalists knew their governments would probably help them if they faced political difficulties, using local talent required sensitivity by not placing them in excessive risk.

Another session featured London bombing survivor John Tulloch, ABC journalist Leigh Sales and Labor MP Carmen Lawrence, who discussed “fear of the other.”

Tulloch was a fierce presenter, angry at Western governments’ unwillingness to understand the root causes of terror (something even the Howard government may be finally acknowledging).

Lawrence challenged politicians who suddenly discovered patriotism, flag waving and defining Australian “values” (a clear dig at Kim Beazley’s infantile attempt to out-Howard Howard). She reminded the audience that Howard had form on these matters, as he told parliament in 1984 that ethnic groups sometimes abused their women, but Anglo-Saxon groups did not.

The dog whistle is as subtle as a sledgehammer and as pointless as bombing Iran (now being game-planned by mainstream commentators).

Perhaps the strangest comment was by Robert Manne during a Q&A, who disputed the idea that the US or UK were committing state terror in Iraq, despite his harsh criticisms of the mission. One wonders what else he would define as state terror, if not in Iraq.

Justice, US-style.

Irfan Yusuf, Daily Telegraph, September 19:

Seriously, if the Pope wants to say or write anything about my faith, it is no skin off my spiritual nose.

If they can’t practise the restraint of their ancestors, they should consider finding another religion.

Just a harmless exercise in unbiased education?

The New York City Council’s education committee approved a study program on Israel initiated by the public relations department of the Israeli Consulate in New York.

The study program will be integrated into the training program for educators teaching in 1,400 public high schools in New York City. The teachers will be able to register to a 30-hour course dealing with the history of the State of Israel, its economy, the high-tech industry, Israeli art and Ethiopian Jews.

The incentive offered to teachers who will take the course: Credit points for an academic degree.

In all likelihood, this is a not-too-subtle attempt at instilling Zionist values and its narrative, not info about Israel or Judaism.

The lobby strikes again.

War with Iran, an overview.

It’s disheartening, though unsurprising, that the corporate news media sees war with Iran as a matter of when, not if.