Antony Loewenstein

Never let facts get in the way of promoting Zionist propaganda:

“I offered a deal that has never been offered by any Prime Minister in the history of the State of Israel. A deal that dealt with the heart of every problem,” outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today at a speech at the Raphael Recanti International School in Herzliya.

Olmert revealed that in September he showed Mahmoud Abbas a map that detailed the Israeli offer precisely: how Israel and the Palestinians would divide the border, and how Jerusalem would be split. Olmert’s offer went farther than what Barak promised in 2000, Udi Segal said on Israel’s Channel 2 evening news.

And what do the Palestinians have to show for it? Absolutely nothing, other than a more repressive occupation.

The Israel Lobby co-author John Mearsheimer asks a reasonable question:

It seems clear to me and to many smart people I know that this story does not have a happy ending. Indeed, it looks like a disastrous ending. Greater Israel cannot be a democratic state, because there will soon be — if there aren’t already — more Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea than there are Israeli Jews. So, if you give each person one vote, Israel becomes Palestine. That is not going to happen anytime soon, if ever, which leaves two possible outcomes: apartheid and expelling the Palestinians — and there are more than 5 million of them — from Greater Israel. Talk about repulsive options. It is worth remembering that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that if there is no two-state solution, Israel will end up in a South Africa-like situation and that will mean the end of the Jewish state. In effect, he is saying that Israel is turning itself into an apartheid state.

My bottom line is that Israel, with the backing of the lobby, is pursuing a remarkably foolish — Ehud Olmert would say suicidal — policy towards the Palestinians.

I would appreciate it greatly if Israel’s American backers would explain what I am missing here. They must think that there is a happy ending to this story that Olmert and I simply fail to see. Otherwise they would not be backing the Greater Israel enterprise. There is no need for Christian Zionists to respond, because I know what their happy ending is: the Battle of Armageddon and then the Second Coming of Christ. Israel’s Jewish backers do not buy this story, which, in fact, many consider anti-Semitic. But they must have an alternative explanation for how Greater Israel is good for the Jews. What is it?

The New York Times editorialised yesterday that it hoped and prayed Israel’s new government was serious about peace. It surely knows the truth; namely that every single Israeli government for decades has continued to expand the illegal colonies in the occupied territories:

If Mr. Netanyahu is serious about being a partner for peace, he will not get in the way of the militant group Hamas entering a Palestinian unity government with the rival Fatah faction — as long as that government is committed to preventing terrorism and accepts past agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. He will recognize that the United States has its own interests in diplomacy with Syria, Iran and the Palestinians — and allow the Obama administration the freedom to pursue them. He also will not start a preventive war with Iran.

The necessary inclusion of Hamas gets a boost from the leading paper of the American political elite.

But will Obama get serious about this?

For many years, the United States has had a policy against spending aid money to fund Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which successive administrations have regarded as an obstacle to peace. Yet private organizations in the United States continue to raise tax-exempt contributions for the very activities that the government opposes.

There’s nothing illegal about the charitable contributions to pro-settlement organizations, which are documented in filings with the Internal Revenue Service. They’re similar to tax-exempt donations made to thousands of foreign organizations around the world through groups that are often described as “American friends of” the recipient.

But critics of Israeli settlements question why American taxpayers are supporting indirectly, through the exempt contributions, a process that the government condemns. A search of IRS records identified 28 U.S. charitable groups that made a total of $33.4 million in tax-exempt contributions to settlements and related organizations between 2004 and 2007.

Something to brighten the day:

I was sent the following email earlier in the week, in Hebrew – “I am a Jewish Australian- Israeli student at Melbourne Uni. I served as a tank commander in the IDF, with pride – and my friend translated the message:

Dear Mr. Loewestein,

I couldn’t ignore your posters that are all over the university. It’s a shame that a Jew like you humiliates his people and foments so much anti-Semitism. It is people like you who are the cause of so much hatred towards Israel. Even the left in Israel wouldn’t think of committing a crime such as yours.

It is you, the Socialist group, weak and ignorant, that are using emotional manipulation via selective information.

My dear Antony, there has arisen a new group at the university called ISF [Israel Stands Forever], whose aim is to fight and shut the mouths of people like you.

In every place that you’ll be. We’ll be there too.
In every place where sprout your dirt, we’ll sprout back. [a Hebrew slang roughly meaning "ruin someone's name" or "say something bad about them with no good reason"]
In every place where you’ll talk, we’ll talk back.

Of course this is all in the spirit of politics and civility.

A Jewish friend commented:

I’m struck by the explicit goal to “shut the mouths” of people they don’t agree with. I mean, it’s such a bizarre and explicit totalitarian reaction and they have no consciousness at all of their mirroring fascist mentality.

A way to save struggling media companies?

With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

“This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat,” said Senator Benjamin Cardin.

Charles Freeman, the recently resigned applicant for chairman of the National Intelligence Council – the Zionist lobby struck again – talks about his views on the Middle East to the Jewish Forward newspaper:

…Our relationship with Israel, given what Israel has done to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, has helped to create an atmosphere first in the Arab world and now through all of Islam, in which anti-Americanism flourishes. There is a hell of a lot of polling date to sustain this. It’s ridiculous to say it’s cause and effect. But it’s also ridiculous to say there are no consequences. There are consequences.

Israel getting a bad rap internationally?

Two good reasons here and here.

How to solve the problem, according to the former Yesha Council chairman?

Form an Israeli PR ministry:

Today, it is clear that a country that embarks on war, or any other dramatic step needed to secure its existence, must create public legitimacy both domestically and internationally. The almost complete Palestinian takeover of the public opinion arena in networks such as Sky News, CNN, and BBC News, not to mention the venomous propaganda in the Arabic-language and English-language al-Jazeera, undermines the State of Israel’s ability to win its wars.

An Israeli PR ministry would not be able to change the images of destruction from Gaza, yet should the PR apparatus be given proper budget, and headed by a PR minister with the ability to effectively coordinate and manage our efforts, it may counter-balance the venomous propaganda with other images.

The issue, dear Zionists, isn’t the message. The problem is your shocking behaviour.

The following statement is released by Ned Curthoys and John Docker of the Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism:

We the undersigned submit that the 1950 Israeli Law of Return for Jews, which gives Jews alone the right to migrate to Israel and obtain citizenship, is a racist law and an affront to a just, democratic, and non-ethnically determined concept of citizenship.

There is little doubt that the Law of Return was and is a key instrument in the Zionist colonisation of what remains of historic Palestine, a law which worked in tandem with the Absentee Law of 1950 which allowed the Jewish state to expropriate the land of those Palestinians declared ‘absentee’ but who were in fact forcibly prevented from returning to their original homes by the Israeli military. The Law of Return needs to be holistically interpreted as yet another modality of Zionist territorial nationalism and colonisation, similar in its function to the Jewish National Fund, which has reclamation of land for the Jewish people as its primary purpose and whose forestation policy aims to erase the traces of the Palestinian presence prior to 1948 and cover up the demolition of Palestinian villages. In this sense we do not regard the Right of Return as the law of a normal nation-state but as an aggressive weapon in the ongoing Zionist attempt to erase historic Palestine.

We submit that the notion of a ‘return’ by Jews who have lived in the diaspora for millennia is a dubious attempt to mystify a nationalist and colonialist endeavour that seeks to ensure a Jewish demographic majority in Israel and colonize the Palestinian West Bank with Zionist settlers. Not only is the Law of Return a devastating affront to all those Palestinians scattered throughout the world, many still in refugee camps, who are prevented from returning to their ancestral homes, as they are entitled to do under international law, but the Law of Return can only delegitimize the continuing presence of Palestinian Israelis, some 20% of Israel’s population, and fuel racist incitement against them, including the ominous possibility of the fulfillment of the Zionist dream of ‘transferring’ the Palestinian population.

We diasporic Jews renounce the idea of living in a state which both formally and informally privileges one ethnicity, to the severe detriment of its sizeable minorities, the Palestinian and Bedouin minorities. A state that discriminates on the basis of race will never find true peace and security until it becomes a just society that respects international law and enters into dialogue with both its immediate region and the international community.

We renounce the right of return to Israel:

Ned Curthoys (Australia)

Mike Cushman (UK)

John Docker (Australia)

Rick Kuhn (Australia)

Steven Rose (UK)

Jonathan Rosenhead (UK)

Ron Witton (Australia)

The following statement is released by Ned Curthoys and John Docker of the Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism:

Responding to the CALL of Palestinian civil society to join the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, we are an Australian campaign focused specifically on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, as delineated by PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel):

In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and

In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions:

We scholars, inspired by the wishes of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

These nonviolent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Palestinian and Arab lands and dismantling the Wall which separates Palestinians from their arable lands;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

The principles guiding our campaign and the three goals outlined above are also points of unity for the British, Canadian, and US Campaigns for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USCACBI, this statement is a modified version of theirs). There can be no academic freedom in Israel/Palestine unless all academics are free and all students are free to pursue their academic desires.

If you are committed to these principles of unity, and wish to work on a campaign of boycotting academic and cultural institutions guided by this approach, please join our campaign.

Gaza is but the latest incident in a series of ongoing Israeli massacres, from Deir Yassin (1948) to Kafr Kassim (1956) to Jenin (2002) to the wars on Lebanon (from 1980s to 2006). All demonstrate a pattern of violence by a state that will not end its violations of international law and war crimes on its own, without international pressure. We must act now. As academics we wish to focus on campaigns in our universities and in institutions of higher education to advocate for compliance with the academic and cultural boycott, a movement that is growing internationally across all segments of global civil society.

This call for an academic and cultural boycott parallels the call in the non-academic world for divestment, boycott and sanctions by trade unions, churches and other civil society organizations in countries such as the United States, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Norway, the United Kingdom, Brazil, South Africa and New Zealand.

Actions

Since Israeli academic institutions (mostly state-controlled) and the vast majority of Israeli intellectuals and academics have either contributed directly to maintaining, defending or otherwise justifying the above forms of oppression, or have been complicit in them through their silence, we call upon our colleagues to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid, by applying the following:

1. Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions;

2. Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;

3. Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by academic institutions;

4. Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;

5. Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.

As educators and scholars of conscience in Australia, we fully support this call. We urge our colleagues, nationally, regionally, and internationally, to stand up against Israel’s ongoing attacks on the rights of Palestinians to education, land, and human dignity, and to support the nonviolent call for academic boycott, disinvestment, and sanctions.

Dr. Anthony Ashbolt, University of Wollongong

Jumana Bayeh, Macquarie University

Professor Ann Curthoys, The University of Sydney

Dr Ned Curthoys, Australian National University

Professor John Docker, The University of Sydney

Ann El Khoury, Macquarie University

Professor Heather Goodall, University of Technology, Sydney

Laila Hafez, University of Wollongong

Professor Terry Irving, University of Wollongong

Dr Evan Jones, The University of Sydney

Dr Jon Jureidini, University of Adelaide

Dr Ray Jureidini, American University in Cairo, Egypt

Professor Peter Manning, University of Technology, Sydney

Dr Morris Morley, Macquarie University

Dr David Palmer, University of Adelaide

Rosemary Pringle

Professor Lyndall Ryan, University of Newcastle

Dr Ron Witton, University of Wollongong

This headline in today’s Australian newspaper speaks for itself:

Netanyahu talks Palestinian peace, but settlements to grow

And to think we hope China will save us from economic ruin (though shame about the authoritarianism):

Addressing the National Peoples Congress, China’s leaders attempted to put the best possible face on the deepening economic crisis. Wen assured delegates that 8 percent growth was achievable, promoted the regime’s stimulus measures and announced new social welfare measures. Everyone present was well aware that anything less than 8 percent would mean rising unemployment and social unrest. Already 20 million rural migrant workers have lost their jobs and a growing army of urban workers, college graduates and demobilised soldiers are unable to find work.

Buried in the budget presented to the NPC was a significant item—a massive increase in spending on public security, by 20.5 percent to more than $71 billion. The figure is larger than China’s total military budget of $70.2 billion for 2009. “We will improve the early warning system for social stability to actively prevent and properly handle all types of mass incidents,” Wen blandly told the delegates. The purpose is all too evident—the linchpin of the “Chinese miracle” has been a pervasive police-state apparatus to suppress all criticism, political opposition, protests and strikes.