Antony Loewenstein

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, October 26:

My settler colleague, Israel Harel, his community’s champion at rolling his eyes, playing innocent and speaking with a honeyed tongue, is once again grieving and playing the victim. In a column published here last week (“Have we become Sodom?” October 23), he complained that the reason for what he termed destructive criticism of the settlers is hatred. And indeed, Mr. Harel, this time, you’re right: Large segments of Israeli society do indeed hate. But this is not baseless hatred, not hatred for the sake of hatred, to use your words. It is hatred for your enterprise. You have earned this hatred honestly – the only honest thing about your enterprise.

Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see their countrymen despoiling the vineyards and burning the fields of poor farmers. Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see troops of masked settlers beating elderly shepherds with clubs. Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see other Israelis sicking their dogs on and puncturing the tires of the soldiers who protect them. Yes, there are Israelis who are embarrassed by the fact that tens of thousands of their fellow Israelis live on privately owned lands that were robbed, stolen and extorted, both in broad daylight and under cover of darkness.

What are the vital challenges facing the Middle East in the coming decade?

What happened to Iran being the centre of world terror?

Several American media outlets reported on Saturday that President George Bush is likely to announce after next month’s presidential elections that he intends to restore the diplomatic relations with Iran, almost 30 years after they were suspended.

How to censor online speech one step at a time:

A Turkish court has blocked access to the popular blog hosting service Blogger (Blogger.com and Blogspot.com owned by Google), since Friday, October 24th, 2008. According to BasBasBas.com, a Dutch blogger based in Istanbul, who alerted us to the issue:

It is suspected that the reason for this has something to do with Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, who has in the past managed to get WordPress, Google Groups, as well as Richard Dawkins’ website.

Sometimes, just sometimes, political advertising can be clever (not that many people, myself included, are swallowing the Barack Obama kool-aid):

Palestinian human rights have been abused throughout 40 years of Israeli occupation, according to the UN General Assembly’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

In a report to the UN General Assembly in New York, Richard Falk said Israel’s occupation – of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and, until 2005, the Gaza Strip – possessed characteristics of colonialism and apartheid.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is holding.

A blogger in Gaza reflects on his tough situation and his friend in Sderot explains how life has marginally improved for him.

This is just one example of what the blogosphere can achieve; better cross-cultural understanding.

This is what great Western journalism can and should be: Nir Rosen.

A fearless, brave, curious, deep and insightful man.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the Chinese government’s latest measure to reinforce surveillance of Internet café users, who will henceforth have to have their mugshot taken and their ID card swiped by a Customer Registration Device to be installed in all of Beijing’s estimated 1,500 Internet cafés by the end of the year.

Oh how we’re going to miss Sarah Palin:

Following the news that Australia intends to censor the internet for arguably spurious reasons, the story deepens:

The Federal Government is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the internet, which experts say will break the internet while doing little to stop people from accessing illegal material such as child pornography.

Internet providers and the government’s own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable of adequately distinguishing between legal and illegal content and can degrade internet speeds by up to 86 per cent.

Documents obtained by us show the office of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, tried to bully ISP staff into suppressing their criticisms of the plan.

Isn’t it wonderful to live in a democracy?

Who knew that I was this powerful in the US election?