Antony Loewenstein

Murdoch’s Australian publishes two letters today that address the Durban II conference. Yes, they’re predictable…and mention Hitler:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spews vitriol that could have easily been written by Adolf Hitler himself. How ironic that this should occur at such a morally bankrupt conference organised by some of the worst human rights abusers this world has to offer, on the very anniversary of Hitler’s birth.

Alan Freedman
East St Kilda, Vic

I must disagree with Shimon Peres. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is nothing like Adolf Hitler. He is much more like Borat, only slightly less tolerant.

John Stanley
Balgowlah Heights, NSW

Following the concerns expressed by Gideon Levy in Haaretz that Obama is merely talking the talk over Palestine, Israeli writer Bernard Avishai expands the argument:

Framing the peace process as a negotiation between the interested parties, with more or less active American facilitation, will not work, for reasons I (and others) have laid out, again and again. Colin Powell once said that America cannot want peace more than the parties themselves. It was one of the most fatuous formulations by an American Secretary of State in a long series.

In fact, the leaders of Israel and Palestine will not want peace more than their fanatic oppositions; and they will cling to power by trafficking in the demagogy of national solidarity. Moreover, America is itself an interested party. It is time for the Quartet to present its plan, from Jerusalem to refugees. Oh, and don’t we all know what the plan is, from Jerusalem to refugees?

…

Obama, in other words, has to start by imposing an agenda on Israel’s conversation. He can win over Israelis eventually, but only if every front page story for the next six months is about whether or not Bibi and Lieberman are destroying relations with Washington. That is the only thing Israeli elites fear more than the loss of solidarity. That is what empowers the peace camp, such as it is: the chance to appear, not the party of concessions, but the party of America.

Yet another case of Zionist fanaticism on show at the Durban II conference (thanks to actor Jon Voight, father of Angelina Jolie). Over to you Muzzlewatch:

He started off  his talk at the anti-semitism Dershowitz hate-fest panel with an ode to the Jews. He’s cultish in his fetishization of the Jews. He kicked off  with a couple poems about how we Jews are pretty much the cat’s meow. We’re even good in business. It’s weird and embarrassing. We’re chosen alright:

The Jewish people have given mankind the perfect tools for living, the teachings of the great Torah, which if followed, bring us to peace love courage wisdom and justice and every possible answer to life’s needs.

This is hard core. I don’t even know any Jews, including the practicing ones, who believe that. Those Chabdniks are good. After letting us know what a “righteous Christian ” he is, he gets into it:

Last year I visited the victims of suicide bombings. It was very difficult for me to spend time with these people. Ron Kerma is here-his daughter, 17 years old, was killed in a senseless act. I looked in their faces and my heart was almost torn out. I spoke to a young girl who was victim of a bombing, and she expressed to me she is trying to find ways to forgive. We spent time in Sderot which has been a victim of 7,000 bombings since the turn of the century. All the children have the syndrome that comes from being in battle- they wake up screaming.

Then he cuts to the chase:

I feel complete complete outrage at anyone who can make excuses for this barbarism. And I feel complete contempt for anyone who is not intelligent enough to see that this propaganda in the media painting the Palestinians as poor victims is capable of destroying the Jewish nation of Israel. (I think he means the Palestinians are capable of destroying..)

We’re witnessing a new type of holocaust. And we good people of all faiths should express outrage and demand the truth be heard. The Palestinian radicals have only one prayer on their lips. And it is to kill and rid every Jew young and old from Israel. Let us pray for the courage to stand up and fight against all antisemitism that has found its way  to all the evildoers, let us pray for peace with the understanding we do not bend to terrorism in any shape or form for the sake of peace. God bless us. [text corrected]

That’s the new line. It’s not even enough these days to shut everybody down by saying they’re anti-Semites. The new line set forth in this session, and drawn aptly by Alan Dershowitz later on, is that this is all the new Holocaust. Thousands of Palestinians die, but this is a new Jewish Holocaust. And the moral Israelis, as ever, are simply defending themselves from the evil radical Palestinians who want nothing more than to kill the Jews.

It’s worth saying again. Is this really how Jews want to be known around the world, as a group of bloody-thirst, Arab haters?

I think I know the answer.

Western complicity in Iranian repression is something I examined in my book, The Blogging Revolution. It’s getting worse:

Telecom giant Nokia has spiffy slogan: “Connecting People.” But a new report reveals that Nokia may be helping connect the wrong people: Iranian security agents and grassroots dissidents. It seems Nokia has helped Iran install electronic surveillance equipment to intercept text messages, emails, and more. Several activists appear to have been jailed thanks to Nokia’s technology.

Last year, Nokia provided the state-owned Irantelecom with a “monitoring center,” which enables the regime to tap phones, read e-mails, and watch over all kinds of electronic data transmission. Designed to help stop crime and terror, the new surveillance system appears to have enhanced the regime’s ability to crack down on dissent. Last month, twelve women’s rights activists were arrested at a private meeting that security forces likely learned about through intercepts. Another arrested dissident was recently confronted by interrogators with transcripts of his text messaging.

The following statement is released today by B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights, Gisha, Adalah,The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Yesh Din, Hamoked, The Public Committee Against Torture, Bimkom and Rabbis for Human Rights:

Results of Israeli military investigations published today of alleged violations in Gaza are very problematic – the only way to truly investigate is through an external mechanism

If the Military claims that there were no major deficiencies in its conduct in Gaza, it is not clear why Israel refuses to cooperate with the UN investigation team, led by the South African judge Richard Goldstone, which requests an investigation of alleged violations of international law by both Israel and Hamas.

Progressive Zionist lobbyist MJ Rosenberg wonders why the Israelis think they can ignore the requests from Obama to move towards a two-state solution:

There can be no doubt: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu does not much care what President Obama thinks about negotiations with the Palestinians. He seems to be making the same mistake that Obama’s opponents in the 2008 election made. He thinks Obama is a lightweight and that he can just roll him.

It’s pretty incredible considering that President Obama leads the nation that is Israel’s lifeline. The whole wiorld is lining up to cooperate with the new — and incedibly popular — President, but not the new Israeli government.

In fact, Rosenberg’s belief in Obama is almost child-like:

One of the reasons Obama is so eager to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is because he understands that doing so will help the United States address the Iran issue without going to war. And here the Israeli government takes the American approach and stands it on its head. Talk about sabotaging.

I guess Netanyahu is counting on pro-Israel organizations in America to line up behind him and not Obama. He is wrong. Someone needs to tell him that Barack Obama is more important than Avigdor Lieberman and the settler bloc. Maybe it should just be Obama.

I may be wrong, but Obama will have to do something that no US President has ever done before; truly pressure the Jewish state to abide by international law over settlements etc. I’ll believe it when I see it. The days of endlessly talking need to be over.

Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz a far more likely and depressing outcome:

Whether or not Netanyahu says two states, nothing will change. The Americans will rejoice, the Europeans will be thrilled, the Israeli right will wax wrathful, commentators will again write with pathos about how the dream of the greater land of Israel has been shelved – and the occupation will flourish.

The Jewish settlements in the territories will also continue to metastasize. After all, most Israelis, and at least two prime ministers and two leaders of the opposition, already said yes to the formula for peace long ago, and nothing has happened.

So who will stop this disaster?

A true human rights defender who has spent a lifetime fighting repression:

South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu compared conditions in Palestine to those of South Africa under apartheid, and called on Israelis to try and change them, while speaking in Boston Saturday at historic Old South Church.

“We hope the occupation of the Palestinian territory by Israel will end,” Tutu said.

A vicious smear by a Harvard Law Professor who disgraces his profession and religion:

US attorney Alan Dershowitz said on Monday on the sidelines of the Durban Review Conference on racism in Geneva that Switzerland’s president was supportive of “hate mongering” and that the anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu was a “racist and bigot”.

Tutu dares call Israeli apartheid by its proper name because he suffered under a similar system in South Africa.

A “war on terror” in Sri Lanka that will achieve nothing other than hatred and retribution. The final days of the decades-old war?

A real reason that many Western nations, including the US and Australia, backed out of Durban II?

Ijm Dike of the Urban Justice Center’s Human Rights Project, the driving force behind much of the US delegation, has an entirely different frame on what’s really going on here- why the US and other states backed out from the conference. The whole demonization of Israel issue is a sham. These folks believe the United States was deeply worried about efforts to pursue recognition that slavery is a crime against humanity and reparations.

They’re mad at Obama. Really mad. This is a defining moment and Obama has failed the test, letting politics get in the way of a sincere commitment to address systematic racism.

Internal documents show the United States was against the draft statement of 2001 because of these issue, over a year before Durban I took place. Think about some of the countries that boycotted- besides the US and Israel, you have Canada, the Netherlands and Australia, all with lengthy histories of repressing their indigenous populations and/or the slave trade . Hence the boycott, with a convenient excuse handed to them by the Israeli campaign of counter- demonization.

Physicians for Human Rights in Israel release a statement about the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza:

The army must accept patients’ referral applications and facilitate their exit from Gaza to receive medical treatment:

-        10 patients from the Gaza Strip have died since the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian coordination mechanism
-        Israel refuses to deal with dozens of referrals of Gaza patients it has received from organizations that form a temporary alternative arrangement to the collapsed coordination mechanism.

The Israeli army, by way of the Gaza DCO, refuses to deal with dozens of referrals to medical treatment outside of Gaza that Physicians for Human Rights-Israel had submitted even though the Palestinian coordination mechanism has stopped functioning. In so doing, the DCO prevents many patients from receiving adequate, at times, life-saving, medical treatment. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza has documented ten cases in which the circumstances that brought about a patient’s death were directly related to the collapse of the coordinating mechanism. The World Health Organization, (WHO) confirmed eight of the ten cases.

The coordination mechanism that worked to refer patients to external medical treatment from Gaza, and worked in coordination with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, effectively stopped operating on March 22 when the Hamas Government dissolved the referral office, and replaced its workers, among them the Palestinian coordinator Mr. Rif’at Muhesen with new officials. As a result, Israel immediately stopped its cooperation with the new coordination office.

International organizations like the World Health Organization and the PCRS announced they would not serve as an alternative to either committee – the previous or the new one – and will not submit individual requests on behalf of patients to the Israeli authorities. They therefore do not offer a temporary alternative address to the patients of Gaza.

PHR-Israel that usually operates as an appeal instance in cases of prevention of medical treatment is obliged, under these circumstances, to function as the only body that receives applications for referrals from patients. In the last four weeks more than 120 written requests were delivered by PHR-Israel to the Israeli DCO on behalf of patients in need of medical treatment outside of Gaza. These patients already held all the required documents and the only obstacle preventing them from reaching the medical treatment they needed was an exit permit from the Israeli authorities. The army refuses to deal with most of the appeals submitted by PHR-Israel.

The army is actively preventing medical treatment from patients:

-        By refusing to acknowledge the existence of a new coordinating mechanism in Gaza, and by refusing to deal with it.
-        By refusing to process the dozens of applications referred to it by PHR-Israel, arguing the former coordination committee will soon be reinstated, though it is evident this is not happening.
-        By referring patients to Mr Husein al-Sheikh the person appointed by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to chair the former Civil Committee. The army claims this committee is referring patients from Gaza while in practice, the representatives of this very committee, in Gaza and Ramallah have repeatedly stated they were not referring patients’ applications.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel addressed the army in a letter on April 8 demanding it to process the applications on behalf of patients that are referred to it by PHR- Israel and other organizations. To date, we did not receive any reply and the army’s policies persist.

In its conduct, Israel is making the patients of Gaza into hostages in political power struggles that have no relevance to their medical situation. Israel is using these patients and their vulnerable condition to advance political interests. Until the inter-Palestinian political struggles are resolved, and until the reinstatement of a functioning Civil Committee accepted by all parties, PHR-Israel calls on the State of Israel to accept patients’ referral applications and enable them to exit Gaza to receive medical treatment.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times meets her match with one of the founders of Twitter:

ME: If you were out with a girl and she started twittering about it in the middle, would that be a deal-breaker or a turn-on?

BIZ (dryly): In the middle of what?

With the Durban circus continuing, the editor of the Independent Australian Jewish Voices opinion and letters page, Sara Dowse, has a few reflections:

In June 1975 I was a member of the Australian delegation to the UN Conference for International Women’s Year. It was held in Mexico City, where for the first time a motion went up condemning Zionism as a form of racism. Australia, along with the other Western nations, was expected to vote against it; the Group of 100 non-Western nations supporting the motion had the numbers but, as ever, power was with the West. Australia had been instrumental in drafting a plan of action to improve the status of women over the coming decade and we were keen to get it adopted.

This meant forging alliances with developing nations and parlaying the opposition to key feminist planks from the Vatican and a number of Muslim states. If Australia voted as we usually did, we risked losing crucial support for the plan; if we supported the motion we would be breaking diplomatic rank and infuriating our traditional allies. In the end, after some hard negotiating,  we chose to split our vote, endorsing the plan yet rejecting the motion.

I believed it was a sensible decision but, for me, as for the one other Jew on our delegation, it was not without psychic pain. I knew even then that Israel was a divided society and that Palestinians were discriminated against, but the Holocaust loomed heavily in my mind. Suffering breeds suffering, I told myself, and history had shown all too palpably that the Jews needed a country of our own. Thirty-five years later I have moved on, but UN diplomacy hasn’t. The militarism of the Jewish state and its abusive, separatist treatment of Palestinians, both within its Green Line borders and in Gaza and the West Bank, have been thoroughy exposed. Yet since 1975 there have been numerous such motions equating Zionism with racism adopted by UN instruments, and all have been duly ignored.