Antony Loewenstein

This report is a few days old – I’ve been flying to the US – but its importance cannot be under-estimated:

Amnesty International has accused Israel of repeatedly violating the rules of armed conflict during its recent offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“Israeli forces repeatedly breached the laws of war, including by carrying out direct attacks on civilians and civilian buildings and attacks targeting Palestinian militants that caused a disproportionate toll among civilians,” the human rights watchdog said in its annual report.

Of course, Zionist fundamentalists regard the report as biased and probably bordering on anti-Semitism.

Inside Gaza by Philip Weiss.

Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements are generating a great number of stories in the American and Israeli press, but little evidence that real progress is being made to remove them. Without doing so, get ready for long-term apartheid in Palestine.

A smattering of recent headlines:

The Washington Post – Backers of Jewish Settlements Put Squeeze on Netanyahu

Ynet News – Settler leaders vow to renew West Bank construction

Haaretz – Israel rebuffs U.S. call for total settlement freeze

The Guardian – Israelis get four-fifths of scarce West Bank water, says World Bank

Haaretz – Netanyahu letting settlers keep the upper hand

Is it fair to say that LA airport is symptomatic of the collapse in American infrastructure?

In transit.

Normal programming will resume shortly.

In the meantime…

The Australian Jewish News adds some colour to the upcoming Australian-government led visit – aka fellation tour of 2009 – to Israel:

Alongside the high-profile leadership forum, the week-long AICE event is expected to showcase some of Australia’s best talent to Israeli audiences.

Legendary pianist David Helfgott will perform in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, acclaimed Australian-based chef Guillaume Brahimi will whip up a meal at the King David Hotel and jazz great Paul Grabowsky will perform for the first time in Israel.

Any chance of a Palestinian performing at the King David Hotel, the sight of the 1946 Zionist bombing?

Foreign Policy blog The Cable details:

Israeli media are reporting that a small and unconventional Iran office in the Israeli Ministry of Defense will be shut down. The 30-year-old office has been headed by 83-year-old Uri Lubrani, who was de facto Israeli ambassador to Iran in the 1970s and famously predicted the fall of the shah. While the closure of the office may seem a minor bureaucratic matter, it also speaks to the demise of an idea that gained currency in some Washington circles just a few years ago and then faded: that the United States might support a plan of regime change in Iran…

When I visited the unit in September 2006 to conduct an interview shortly after Israel’s war in Lebanon, Lubrani’s small warren of offices looked like something out of the 1970s — a bit dusty, low budget, and low tech. Lubrani and his staff spent their days thinking of ways to counter the Tehran regime by cultivating Iranian dissidents and Iranian ethnic minority groups and supporting efforts to encourage some sort of democratic regime change in Iran. They kept track of and sometimes provided assistance to Iranian dissidents who came out of Iran on their way to the West, stayed in touch with Iranian exiles in Europe and the United States (some who they had known in the shah’s day), and funded a Farsi-language Israel Radio program broadcast on shortwave into Iran. Lubrani’s office may have also conducted other small-scale propaganda and recruitment activities among the exiles, no doubt dwarfed by the efforts of Israel’s and its Western allies’ clandestine security services.

Here’s an idea. The Palestinian minority in Israel and proper-thinking Israeli Jews should openly challenge this absurdity and explain to the world that Israel can’t be both a democracy and a Jewish state; it’s currently called apartheid:

The Knesset plenum on Wednesday passed a preliminary reading of a bill that would mandate the imprisonment of anyone who calls for the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

The global BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaign against Israeli apartheid shows no sign of letting up. In fact, it’s only increasing as the political elite continues to ignore the state’s abuses. Here’s an interesting example from Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies:

	ABN 15 211 513 464
	Dr Jake LynchAssociate Professor and Director

To: Professor Michael Spence, Vice-Chancellor

Cc: Members of University Senate

Members of Academic Board

May, 2009

• • Please cancel institutional arrangements between the University of Sydney and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Technion University, Haifa;
  • Please support visits by Palestinian academics and students instead.

Dear Professor Spence,

I am writing to you on behalf of myself, of the Council of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and of those undersigned, including many who attended a public meeting held in the University on May 7^th, titled, ‘After Israel’s attack on Gaza, how do we work for peace and justice?’

The meeting heard a call from one of the speakers, Honorary Professor John Docker, for academics present to support the academic boycott of Israel organised by PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

This campaign has been organised in recognition of:

• • Israel’s persistent flouting of international law and abuse of Palestinian human rights;
  • The reticence of governments to insist on norms of international law being enforced and to discharge their responsibilities under court rulings such as those of the International Court of Justice;
  • The opportunity and responsibility for individuals, institutions and associations globally to apply their own sanctions as a means of raising the social, economic and political cost of a recourse to aggression and abuse;
  • The complicity of Israeli universities by defending, taking part in or remaining silent over, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.

It should be noted that there is no claim that Israel is alone in this conflict in breaches of international law. In an article commissioned by the International Peace Research Association, however, I discuss the call for a special War Crimes Tribunal to be set up, adding: “the disparity of casualty figures means it would be a travesty of justice if the allegations against Israel were not its main focus”. I quote the distinguished international juror, Professor Richard Falk, who is UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Occupied Territories:

• “These two sides should not be viewed as equally responsible for the recent events. Israel initiated the Gaza campaign without adequate legal foundation or just cause, and was responsible for causing the overwhelming proportion of devastation and the entirety of civilian suffering. Israeli reliance on a military approach to defeat or punish Gaza was intrinsically ‘criminal’, and as such demonstrative of both violations of the law of war and the commission of crimes against humanity”.

Neither does the call for an academic boycott, along with the wider campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, entail overlooking breaches of international law or abuses of human rights by other countries. It is not ‘applying double standards’. In the words of the writer, Naomi Klein, “Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the strategy should be tried [on Israel] is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work”. The general responsibility to act is particularised, in this case, by the opportunity to do so effectively.

It should be further noted that the campaign for an academic boycott of Israel is focused on preventing formal contacts and arrangements between institutions, not individuals. For example, as Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, I recently arranged a talk in University premises by Professor Jeff Halper of the Israel Campaign Against House Demolitions, and there is no suggestion that such visits arranged between individual academics should cease.

The meeting noted the arrangement advertised in an email circular from the University’s Research Office, as below:

Reminder: Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund Fellowships

The University of Sydney and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have established an agreement to encourage mutual visits by academic staff.

For more information about the Fellowships and application details, please contact: Sue Freedman-Levy, Administrative Officer, Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund, telephone (02) 9351 6558 or via the email address below.

Email: sueflevy@anatomy.usyd.edu.au

Closing date: 10 April 2009.

This does cross the line from individual contacts to an arrangement between institutions, being part of a formal Program of Academic and Student Exchange between the University of Sydney and the Hebrew University, “re-ratified in 2001” according to the Sir Zelman Cowen Fund’s web page. We are therefore writing to ask you to cancel this agreement forthwith.

It may be noted that in 2005 the Hebrew University of Jerusalem obtained a letter from al Quds University in East Jerusalem, opposing a boycott. However this has been superseded by al Quds University’s decision, since the attack on Gaza, to join PACBI’s call for a boycott on all Israeli academic institutions. Furthermore, a substantial part of the Hebrew University campus is on land which is recognised in international law as rightfully belonging to Palestinian families expelled by Israel shortly after the start of its military occupation of the territory, in 1968. Both in general and in particular, therefore, the Hebrew University should be seen as complicit in the occupation and its consequences.

This call to sever institutional links with Israeli universities also applies to the scheme for the exchange of medical students with Technion University, Haifa, supported by a

scholarship fund from the Technion Society. We also ask you, therefore, to cancel this arrangement with immediate effect.

Many at the meeting expressed dissatisfaction at the notion of merely boycotting Israeli academic institutions. There were strong calls for this negative action – refraining from doing something – to be joined by positive action. The onerous conditions of life under military occupation for Palestinian civilians bear equally on the academy. We are therefore writing to request that you, as Vice-Chancellor, approach the University’s donor community with an appeal to fund, instead, a program of Academic and Student Exchange with a Palestinian university.

To confer this honour on a Palestinian university would also bring honour on the University of Sydney. It would be of practical help in assisting Palestinian universities to maintain strong connections with the international academic community, something they find increasingly difficult. It would give staff, students and the wider university community here the opportunity to hear and consider important perspectives. It would also send a message to the community at large that the University is concerned to take whatever positive steps it can to support colleagues who are struggling to maintain academic life in extremely difficult circumstances.

Senior university colleagues join me in endorsing this request to you, as listed below, along with others named, who attended the public meeting, or gave their support later, and the Council of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Yours sincerely,

Associate Professor Jake Lynch

And on behalf of University of Sydney academic colleagues:

Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees

Honorary Professor John Docker

Dr Kenneth Macnab

Professor Ann Curthoys

Associate Professor Ahmad Shboul

Dr Evan Jones

Dr Elizabeth Rechniewski

Dr Nijmeh Hajjar

Dr Charlotte Epstein

Dr Bill Dunn

Dr Tim Anderson

Dr Melinda Cooper

Annie Herro

And others who attended our meeting or added their support later:

Dr Hannah Middleton

Keryn Scott

Magdaline Shenton-Kaleido

Nadia Fried

Stewart Mills

Rami Meo

Joanna Blachowska

Lyn Dickens

Maria Giannacopoulos

Patrick Langosch

Gill Burrows

Abe Quadan

Anne Picot

Peter Griffin

Estelle Hinds

Renate Watkinson

Thomas Barnes

Anthea Vogl

Good on J Street for issuing this statement yesterday, in many ways pressuring other Jewish groups to follow suit. The deafening silence of most Zionist organisations speaks for itself; complicity:

Today, J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami issued the following statement:

J Street is deeply troubled by legislative proposals under active consideration in Israel to dramatically limit the civil and democratic rights of Israeli citizens.  Once merely the pipe dreams of Israel’s ultra-nationalist right-wing, today they are moving forward with alarming speed in both the Israeli Cabinet and in the Knesset.

Just today, a law passed its first reading in the Knesset aimed at limiting the free speech rights of Israel’s citizens.  Another proposal working its way through the process would condition citizenship rights on pledging loyalty to Israel as a Jewish, Zionist state.  Others would further limit free expression and constrain democracy.

What was months ago just the racist campaign platform of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party (and secured only 15 of the Knesset’s 120 seats) is now an active legislative agenda for a range of right-wing parties, being advanced in the Knesset.

These proposals threaten not just the health of Israel’s democracy but the soul of the Jewish people.  Targeting the Arab Israeli minority for discriminatory treatment and punishment is anti-democratic, offends basic Jewish values, and threatens to undermine Israel’s own national interest.

Israel’s democracy, founded with a strong commitment to full civil rights for all its citizens enshrined in the country’s Declaration of Independence, has been a source of great pride for Jews around the world and is a prime reason why Americans have been so proud to support the special U.S.-Israel relationship that we have so deeply valued for 61 years.  Democracy can be painful as can dissent – but both are essential to the health of Israel and of the Jewish people.

The Lieberman agenda threatens not simply to undermine the country’s democratic heritage, but also the Jewish and democratic values that form the cornerstone of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

During the recent election campaign, J Street expressed grave concern over the racist and hateful campaign that Avigdor Lieberman rode into the Foreign Minister’s office.  Now that Lieberman and his allies are poised to fulfill his racist campaign pledges, we renew our call on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Knesset to stand up for the values and principles that unite Jews around the world and to prevent these proposals from becoming law.

We also reiterate our call for all organizations and individuals in this country who care about Israel’s future, its democracy and its Jewish character to speak out forcefully against the Lieberman agenda. We commend Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League for likening the loyalty oath to McCarthyism and calling it discriminatory.  Further statements from American Jewish leaders are needed to help Israel’s far-right understand that these proposals are out-of-bounds and unacceptable to nearly all American Jews.

No less than the foundations of Israel’s democracy and the soul of the Jewish people are at risk.

A day in the life of a massive lawsuit against the New Yorker magazine.

Following yesterday’s report in the Fairfax press about Israel’s attempt to make it illegal for Palestinians to remember their Nakba, these letters were published today. First, the Sydney Morning Herald:

January 26, 1938, was the sesquicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet. It was also the date of “a day of mourning and protest” organised by Aboriginal Australians with the aim of obtaining citizenship for Aboriginal people. In 1988, the counter to official bicentenary celebrations was “Invasion Day”, which evolved into Survival Day, a celebration of the survival of the Aboriginal people and culture.

Yet Israel’s deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, says: “Any other country in the world would not stand by while its celebrations of independence are turned into a memorial service” (“Arab fury over push to ban mourning day“, May 27).

He is wrong. Wrong in fact and morally wrong to try to deny freedom of speech to the Palestinians who are the original owners of the land in which he lives.

Jennifer Killen Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine, Dulwich Hill

And the Age:

Your report (“Bid to ban mourning of Israeli national day“, 27/5) contains a mistake. It is not Israel’s victory in the 1948 war that the Palestinians call al-Nakba, the catastrophe.

The Palestinian catastrophe started before the war, when the Jewish underground terrorist groups launched their final military drive. They put Plan Dalet into force on April 1, 1948, with two objectives: to establish a Jewish state beyond the boundaries defined by the UN and to establish a state devoid, as much as possible, of its indigenous Palestinian population by expelling it, in order to turn the non-Jewish majority in Palestine into a minority and the new European Jewish minority into a majority.

Through war and terror, the Jewish terrorist groups dispossessed between 850,000 and 950,000 Palestinians of their homeland, occupied 78 per cent of Palestine (including 85 per cent of Jerusalem) and destroyed 418 Palestinian towns and villages, and denied the rights of refugees to return to their homeland. This is what the Palestinians call al-Nakba, the catastrophe.

Ali Kazak, Manuka, ACT