Antony Loewenstein

Does Israeli intelligence lie?

My latest column for New Matilda is about the likely future for Gaza and the conflict:

Now that the shelling is (mostly) over, it’s clear that Israel has achieved the exact opposite of its objectives in Gaza, writes Antony Loewenstein

Palestinians are slowly emerging from the rubble of their lives in Gaza. Credible stories have come to light of Israeli troops wilfully destroying homes, bulldozing entire blocks and leaving offensive graffiti on walls such as, “We came to annihilate you”.

Last weekend Defence Minister Ehud Barak called the IDF the “most moral army in the world“. The victims of Israeli aggression may disagree. The President of the French section of Médecins Sans Frontières has written that “it is difficult to recall a comparable slaughter of civilians in so little time.”

The state of the long-term stand-off between Israel, Egypt and Hamas remain unclear, though a period of relative calm now appears likely.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Israeli TV on the weekend that she fully supported the Gaza onslaught and believed that nearly all the goals of the campaign had been met. “The operation in Gaza was very important to me,” Livni said. “I supported it and I convinced [others] to go through with it.”

But what was really achieved? Hamas remains in control of the strip, its ability to fire rockets is largely intact and the US-backed Fatah is weaker than ever. The Islamists, like Hezbollah after the 2006 Lebanon war, will be instrumental in rebuilding Gaza, despite the opposition of the Western world. Even the Israeli residents near the border with Gaza don’t believe the war achieved very much. It was, wrote Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, an “utter failure” on all levels. Much of the Western media, locked out of the war zone, seem to agree.

In Israel, only a handful of prominent Israelis are publicly wondering how Jews have become utterly indifferent to Palestinian suffering.

Much of the 3 per cent of Gazan industry still operating after the 18-month Israeli blockade has been destroyed, revealing the true intent of the bombardment: the deliberate impoverishment of an occupied people and their indefinite reliance on international aid.

The Independent‘s Patrick Cockburn visited the West Bank last week and found a strong belief among the Palestinian people that Hamas is now the only resistance party able to stand up to Israel. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been negotiating with the Americans and Israelis for years and achieved nothing. One leading Fatah leader said that the “era” of Hamas began on 27 December, the first day of Israel’s offensive against Gaza.

A growing number of international legal experts are demanding that Israel pay a price for its indiscriminate attack on Gaza and face trials for war crimes. Richard Falk, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, described the sealing of Gaza to ensure nobody could leave, including civilians, as a “distinct, new and sinister war crime”.

The Israeli Government has granted legal aid to any IDF troops charged with Gaza war crimes, but the Jewish state can expect an avalanche of suits across the world.

“As far as the international arena is concerned, Israel is entering what is probably its darkest era,” a Jerusalem source told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “The Palestinians and their friends will try to make Israel look like a leper, like China looked after the Tiananmen Square massacre (of 1989), or like Serbia did under (former president Slobodan) Milosevic.”

A recent headline in Haaretz was startling in its honesty: “How IDF legal experts legitimised strikes involving Gaza civilians“. The head of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, was scathing in his assessment of Israel’s war, arguing that the Jewish state seemed determined “to make Gazans suffer for the presence of Hamas — a prohibited purpose for using military force.”

Aside from prima facie evidence that war crimes were committed (including the Hamas firing of rockets into Israel), Israel finds itself isolated like never before. Pro-Israel British politicians can see the writing on the wall, exasperated that there is a “frenzy of hostility” towards Israel. Western ambassadors are warning that Israel’s image has been irrevocably harmed after the murder of hundreds of children during the conflict. Even last weekend’s American 60 Minutes feature on the Israel/Palestine issue harshly condemned the illegal occupation and highlighted the impossibility of a two-state solution.

The way forward is clear. Hamas must be engaged immediately (its leader Khalid Mashaal said last week that his group could not be ignored and had “gained legitimacy through struggle”). The Middle East schism has widened, with the US-backed “moderates” on one side — Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — and the so-called resistance groups on the other — Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah. Even one of the “moderates”, Saudi Prince Turki, a former ambassador to the US, wrote last week that unless Israel and the US radically changed their relationship with the Palestinians, a “jihad” against the Jewish state would be launched.

Instead, the candidates in Israel’s upcoming election, on 10 February, have excelled at ignoring these realities. All of the main candidates view the Palestinians in an equally demeaning way, with the likely next prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, telling Tony Blair last weekend, “I will have to meet the needs of natural growth in the population. I will not be able to choke the settlements”. Netanyahu would prefer to impress the Wall Street Journal by beating his chest about “terrorists” in Iran, Gaza and Lebanon.

The role of the Obama Administration is central to all these negotiations but the initial signs are far from encouraging. Although the appointment of George Mitchell as a Middle East envoy has upset some elements in the US Zionist lobby (who feel that he has been too “even-handed” towards the major parties in the past), the early statements by Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mitchell himself suggest a business-as-usual approach.

Talking peace is a fine thing, but a Palestinian state is a pipe-dream until Israel’s occupation is addressed. As Haaretz journalist Amira Hass wrote during the war, history did not begin with the Qassam rockets launched against Israel.

If President Obama is really serious about resolving the conflict, as opposed to merely talking about it, like virtually every president over the last 60 years, new directions are needed. The Bush doctrine of excluding “extremists” must be reversed. It hasn’t only failed it has emboldened more radical elements in the region. The pragmatic side of Hamas — exemplified by their acceptance of a two-state solution and displayed consistently by various media outlets — must be embraced. Without this, Palestinian disunity — which has been a key aim of Israeli and American policy, but brought disastrous results — will continue.

The Jewish state has chosen a path that guarantees opposition. The boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign has been strengthened by the Gaza war. For example, Oxford City Council has endorsed boycotting Israeli products and companies and many students and lecturers in Montreal have launched a campaign to begin an academic boycott of Israel.

This tide is set to strengthen worldwide.

I wonder why:

The operation in Gaza put an end to the European taboo on equating Jews to Nazis. That message was one of the conclusions of the first international panel discussion on anti-Semitism following the Gaza invasion, which was held in Jerusalem Monday on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Speaking at the panel, which was part of the World Jewish Congress plenary assembly, Professor Dina Porat said, “the comparison has now become self-understood.” She added this applied not only to Muslims in Europe, but among “leftist circles.”

I personally refrain from comparing Israeli actions to Nazi Germany, but reading a report such as this, from yesterday’s Washington Post, makes me wonder.

Anti-Arab sentiment swells among youth in aftermath of Gaza war.

Stephen Walt, Foreign Affairs blog, January 26:

Although it was the official policy of every President since Lyndon Johnson to oppose the construction of settlements, none of them put any serious pressure on Israel to stop. The first President Bush briefly withheld some loan guarantees in 1992 over this issue, but the guarantees were authorized a few months later and settlement construction continued apace. The number of settlers more than doubled during the Oslo period (1993-2001), yet former U.S. negotiator Aaron David Miller recently reported that:

In 25 years of working on this issue for six secretaries of state, I can’t recall one meeting where we had a serious discussion with an Israeli prime minister about the damage that settlement activity — including land confiscation, bypass roads and housing demolitions — does to the peacemaking process.”

Israel has added another 70,000 settlers since 2001, and the Bush administration never took any serious action to stop them. The question you might ask yourself is: why not?

An open letter to the Israeli ambassador of Australia, penned by the Independent Australian Jewish Voices blogger Michael Brull.

The Palestinian liberation movement is changing before our very eyes.

Fatah is close to dead.

Hamas is on the rise.

Mouin Rabbani, a contributing editor at Middle East Report, writes:

The devastation in Gaza has made the inclination to challenge Israel and its occupation and the will to defy international pressure the central criteria for Palestinians.

Get Up! is Australia’s biggest progressive organisation, modelled on US MoveOn.org.

Get Up! has shied away from tackling the Israel/Palestine issue, preferring to focus on more domestic concerns. Its success in Australia is undeniable, though I know a number of members have been frustrated with its silence over the Middle East.

But maybe that is about to change. I was contacted last week by Get Up! to begin an online debate about this subject, as a way for the group to dip its toe into the problem. If, or when, the organisation decides to pressure the Labor government over this, the Prime Minister should be worried.

Here’s my piece:

Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based journalist, author and co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices.

Israel’s latest offensive against the Gazan people has left the occupied territory devastated.

Dr. Marie-Pierre Allié, President of the French section of Médecins Sans Frontières, writes that, “it is difficult to recall a comparable slaughter of civilians in so little time.”

With thousands of dead and injured Palestinians, one of Israel’s leading writers, Gideon Levy, argues in Haaretz that, “this war ended in utter failure for Israel.”

Despite the futility of this conflict, there is a perverse logic to the adventure. Since the Jewish state’s birth in 1948, successive leaders have never accepted the concept of an equal Palestinian partner; they must be humiliated, killed, intimidated or isolated instead of engaged.

Despite these unpleasant realities, the vast majority of the international community, except the US, Australia and a handful of others, accept the vast majority view, namely that Israel must cease illegal settlement building in the occupied territories, split Jerusalem and resolve the refugee issue.

Henry Siegman, former national director of the American Jewish Congress and the Synagogue Council of America, puts it succinctly: “When Jews target and kill innocent civilians to advance their national struggle, they are patriots. When their adversaries do so, they are terrorists.”

Hamas is merely the latest organization classified as a terrorist organization in the West. Its democratic legitimacy is undeniable (as is its willingness to negotiate with Israel) but its refusal to collude with Israel, like Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, deems it an “enemy” to be destroyed.

Australia could play a constructive role but Kevin Rudd has chosen to meekly back Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinians. There is bi-partisan support for this position but it may change soon.

As the Muslim population grows in political power and organization, the influence of the Zionist lobby will inevitably decrease. A more balanced approach to the conflict is both morally and legally required.

One way forward is following the ideas expressed by the initiative I founded, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, including our recent Gaza statement, supported by hundreds of concerned Jews.

Justice and history is not on the side of Israeli expansionism.

BBC management may be scared of the Zionist lobby, but many staff are not:

Last night (25 January), saw our inspiring occupation of the BBC in Glasgow in protest at their decision not to air the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal on behalf of Gaza.

Spirited chants filled the lobby as staff and police considered what to do. The message was aired loudly that the BBC are complicit in the war crimes against Gaza, and that their decision not to allow the DEC Appeal shows them in their true establishment colours.

My following article appeared yesterday in the Canadian magazine Adbusters:

Each side in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict believes criticisms in the media are biased, but the Palestinians are the ones doing almost all the suffering and dying these days. Antony Loewenstein argues for reality-based coverage.

The forgotten people:

The start of 2009 offers little hope to the residents of al-Tanf, a refugee camp on the Syrian-Iraqi border housing more than 700 Palestinians who had fled persecution in Iraq. No country has given any concrete pledge to take any of the refugees for resettlement in 2009, leaving them to battle the cold desert weather this winter with more despair than ever.

The refugees say that despite visits from foreign delegations, resettlements have been few and far between since the camp opened in May 2006.

With the Arab Initiative on the table for Israel – acceptance by the region if the Jewish state accepts a two-state solution, a highly unlikely proposition considering its obsession with expansionism – the recent war against Gaza has shown once again the impotence of the Arab world:

There is more solidarity with the people of Gaza in South America than there is in neighbouring Arab states, according to American-Jewish political scientist Dr Norman Finkelstein.

“There was more solidarity in South America than here.”