Antony Loewenstein

So how does Israel pay for its wars against the Palestinians? Thank you, American tax-payer:

War-related defence spending and civilian aid would boost the budget deficit and increase borrowing, said former treasury official Yoram Gabai, who is now the chairman of the Pe’ilim fund management unit of Bank Hapoalim.

“The government must use the US loan guarantees to raise money abroad – a step that needs US approval – to prevent a problem in the domestic market,” Gabai said. In 2003, the US awarded Israel as much as $9 billion in guarantees.

Jewish blogger Phil Weiss notes a growing tendency of Zionist extremists resorting to name calling:

In their refusal to see what the slaughter of hundreds of Arab civilians has revealed about the foreign country they love, Commentary’s Noah Pollak and Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg have begun calling John Mearsheimer “Sheikh Hassan Mearsheimer.” This kind of namecalling is deeply offensive and even disturbing. Both these writers have perches at (once) dignified publications, whose editors would surely have removed this type of schoolyard chanting in the days of print, thereby saving the writers from themselves. I’ve never seen Walt or Mearsheimer, who are both fine and courageous men with considerable decorum, treat any of their adversaries with anything like this kind of abuse.

I’ve experienced this kind of abuse myself. Israel-firsters have little else to defend their racist leanings except throwing mud. Thankfully, the Jewish state is paying a price for this attitude; growing global isolation.

Why will so few Israelis and Diaspora Jews unequivocally condemn the growing tide of racist remarks and intent sweeping the Jewish state?

The answer is clear; deep down, they have no real issue with the Arab minority in Israel and Palestinians in the occupied territories being treated as second-class citizens:

In Non-Jews in a Jewish State, a fascinating book recently published (in Hebrew only) concerning the responsa of Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, Israel’s first Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Herzog makes it absolutely clear that the country will be judged on how it treats its non-Jewish citizens. Writing before the establishment of the state, he said: “The most difficult thing concerning the democratic character of the state… is the question of minority rights.”

60 Minutes featured last night a remarkable story about the Israel/Palestine conflict. The message? The Jewish state’s addiction to colonial expansion has made the two-state solution impossible and apartheid is coming (if not already present in the West Bank). For one of America’s leading current affairs shows to say this, something any realist has known for years, shows that Israel and its blind supporters are against the tide of history:

The next likely Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, tells Tony Blair that the illegal settlements in the West Bank are going nowhere:

I have no intention of building new settlements in the West Bank. But like all the governments there have been until now, I will have to meet the needs of natural growth in the population. I will not be able to choke the settlements.

Exclusive pictures from inside the tunnels into Gaza that provide a life-line to the 1.5 million Palestinians living there.

After the recent war, work on these essential tunnels has already resumed.

The following advertisement appears in newspapers across Australia today (The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Canberra Times, The Courier Mail, The Adelaide Advertiser, The West Australian and The Herald Sun). It was signed by hundreds of Australian organisations and citizens, myself included. Australians for Palestine should be praised for their fine work in making this happen:

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The reality on the ground in Gaza, away from the politics:

Fifteen days after the Israeli offensive ended Wa’el Al-Attar was found dead sitting next to a Kenya tree. Both he and the tree had been wounded by an Israeli missile.

He finally died in the village of Al-Atatreh east of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza strip. It was his own village, and the Kenya tree was next to his ruined home. When his wife and family returned to the area to find both their dead father and a ruined home, his wife fainted from grief, confusion and sorrow.

Online dissidents in authoritarian states such as Egypt thrive on sites like Facebook, according to Harvard University’s Ethan Zuckerman, because, “the government can’t simply shut down Facebook, because doing so would alert a large group of people who they can’t afford to radicalize.”

It is the Dictator’s Dilemma, an issue I cover extensively in my book, The Blogging Revolution.

A stern, unyielding version of Islam is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis in Pakistan.

Sometimes I truly wonder if the Israelis realise how poorly their spin doctors look in the international media:

Why rely on PR hacks to push your case?

Two terror states, Israel and Sri Lanka, seem to have hit a slight problem in their tawdry relationship:

Despite the damage control measures that have been taken, the government fears Israel would withdraw crucial military assistance to Sri Lanka after Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva Dayan Jayatilleka made a scathing attack on Israel over the attacks on Gaza strip.

Israel last week sent an envoy to Sri Lanka to lodge its strongest protest against a statement made by Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva Dayan Jayatilleka which was seen as a direct attack on the Israeli state…

In his statement, Jayatilleka said: “… atrocities committed on the innocent people of Gaza should not be permitted to be obscured, obfuscated by lies, deception, half-truths and selective reordering of facts and chronology.” He also rejected Israeli positions on the conflict and levelled direct accusations against that country.