Antony Loewenstein

The Columbia Journalism Review is currently running a series about this year’s war in Gaza (one piece is by the New York Times stringer based in the Strip and another comparing British and American media coverage).

Lisa Goldman, an Israeli journalist, has written an essay that reveals the dark heart of the Israeli state:

During the first week of Israel’s winter military operation in Gaza, a broadcaster for ChanNel 2, which has the highest rating of Israel’s three television stations, sparked a small firestorm by expressing what was perceived as excessive sympathy for the enemy. Summarizing a report during the evening news, anchorwoman Yonit Levy said, “It’s hard to convince the world that the war is justified when we have one person dead and the Palestinian nation has 350 dead.” Channel 2 was soon inundated with letters of complaint and came under fire online, where somebody set up an Internet petition to have Levy fired. Several of Levy’s colleagues, horrified by what one called a “lynch,” came publicly to her support.

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Gaza infertility specialist, suffered the death of his three daughters during Israel’s January offensive. His story was heart-breaking and inspiring. A man who had nearly lost it all yet refused to hate. Amazing.

Now this:

Four months later, far from voicing bitterness over his loss, Abuelaish is trying to turn his tragedy into hope, raising money for a scholarship fund for Gaza girls and an Israeli hospital, and preaching reconciliation.

“We need to open our eyes, our minds and to have big hearts, to smash the mental and physical barriers and borders, to build the broken trust,” said the Harvard-trained son of a Gaza laborer, sitting in the apartment where 14-year-old Aya, 15-year-old Mayar and 21-year-old Bissan were killed two days before the war ended.

Despite all the rhetoric over Israel/Palestine, this news is what truly matters (and it bodes terribly for the region):

Despite expectations that the Obama administration will pressure Israel to accept a two-state solution and implement practical measures, the U.S. administration has sent signals that aid to Israel will, in fact, be raised. At the same time, the budget also imposes harsh conditions on the Palestinian Authority in order to receive aid.

According to the Israeli daily, Haaretz, the budget proposed to Congress for 2010 includes $2.775 billion in aid to Israel, compared to $2.5 billon budgeted for 2009. This is more than a 10% increase in total U.S. aid to Israel.

The budget also includes an increase in the assistance to the production of weapons systems, such as the missile Hetz-3.

Following my recent piece in Crikey about the Jewish community’s regular defamation of Islam, one of my targets, Daniel Pipes, today responds:

Re, “Palestine, Israel and freedom of speech: striking at the heart of liberal democracies” (Monday, item 17). I object to a paragraph written by Anthony Loewenstein and published by Crikey on May 18, The offending parts are in bold:

There have been countless examples of senior Jewish leaders publicly supporting viciously anti-Islam and anti-Arab sentiments and regularly welcoming overseas visitors, such as Daniel Pipes, who routinely defame Muslims in the name of their Zionist jihad. Pipes continually claimed during last year’s US Presidential debate that Barack Obama was Muslim, a transparent attempt to insinuate terrorist-sympathy. I don’t remember the shock-jocks calling for the Jewish establishment to stand up and take a stand against such bigotry (such is demanded of Muslims.)

There are two errors of fact in this statement:

I attack Islamists and Islamism, not Muslims and Islam – a very important distinction. Here is one of many examples where I make this distinction, from an article titled “Islamophobia?” from 2005: “Despite writing again and again against radical Islam the ideology, not Islam the religion, I have been made the runner-up for a mock ‘Islamophobia Award’ in Great Britain, deemed America’s ‘leading Islamophobe,’ and even called an ‘Islamophobe Incarnate.” (What I really am is an “Islamism-ophobe.”)
I wrote that Obama was a Muslim as a child but is now a Christian – a critical distinction that your author misrepresents. For documentation of the falsehood of the second point, including a prior retraction by the American ABC News, see “Obama is currently a Muslim?“

What exactly is an ecomonic peace for the Palestinians?

Jeremy Page writes in the London Times:

We should boycott the callous Sri Lanka regime: Those who buy clothes made there, or who go on holiday there, must show their anger at the way the Tamils have been treated.

An interesting editorial from the Arab News on 20 May:

For decades, the chasm between words and deeds has been the root cause of the continued nonexistence of a Palestinian state and the Israelis’ ability to treat international views on the matter with contempt. There have been floods of fine words about Palestinian rights and Israeli abuses but nothing has ever been done and the words have remained only that — words without action.

And it seems to be happening yet again. In Monday’s meeting in Washington between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, promoted beforehand by American officials as a watershed in US-Israeli relations, there were fine words from the president about the need for a two-state solution and Israel’s obligation to stop Jewish settlement in the West Bank, but Netanyahu ran rings around him. There was no acceptance by the Israeli leader of a Palestinian state, nothing about settlements; Netanyahu simply stalled, spinning empty words about being willing to live “side by side” with the Palestinians, knowing perfectly well that could mean anything (he would like it to mean all the Palestinians forced into Jordan, living “side by side” with the Jordanians). Most of the time, he threw spanners into the works with his instance that peace talks be linked to Iran’s nuclear program but that before they can take place, the Palestinians first must recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

The demand used to be that Israel’s right to exist be recognized — which the Palestinian Authority has done. Now it is Israel’s right “as a Jewish state.” What next? That the Palestinians accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state where Jewish dietary laws are strictly enforced on everyone there or where the call to prayer and church bells are banned? Why not? Anything to delay, anything to humiliate. As for linking the Palestinian issue to Iran’s nuclear plans, this may well be the most outrageous case imaginable of moving the goal posts. Iran is not Palestine. Iran and Palestine are entirely different issues. Netanyahu might just as well demand that Palestine be linked to resolving the problems of Kashmir or Tibet. He is quite capable of doing even that — and pretending to be serious at the same time.

The meeting is all the more exasperating given the positive spin on it last week by the Americans with the implication that Netanyahu was going to be told in no uncertain terms what he had to do. It was not progress; it was stalemate — and Obama is in part responsible. He has raised expectations of a breakthrough in the Middle East. He has to deliver. If he does not, there will be a dangerous tidal wave of Arab and Muslim anger. Signs of it are already visible in the response by Hamas who accuse him of deliberately trying to mislead international public opinion about his intentions toward the Israelis and Palestinians.

Next week, it is the turn of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and then Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to meet Obama. After his exchange with Netanyahu, he is going to have his work cut out convincing them that change will happen. Reiterating his support for a two-state solution will not be enough. He will have to tell them how he is going to make it work. He has the power to force the Israelis to action. But does he have the will to wield that power? That is the question.

Nation editor Roane Carey investigates some initiatives in the Middle East to breach the lack of effort by the political players:

The fact is that even aside from the occupation, Israel is already a binational state–increasingly, a multicultural state–albeit one that is dominated by one ethnic/religious group. What if, instead of talking past one another, Jews and Palestinians were to take a step toward admitting this reality by acknowledging the other’s historical narrative and trying to live together? It turns out that some are doing this, and in very interesting ways. I recently attended the sixth annual “Independence Day/Nakba Day” gathering near the northern city of Haifa, a two-day workshop organized by Arabs and Jews “designed to respect and commemorate the pain and loss on both sides.” Sponsored this year by Beyond Words, a nonprofit organization that empowers Arab and Jewish women to work for social change and peace, the event featured a history lecture, recollections of the 1948 expulsion from Ramle by a Palestinian who experienced it and of the Holocaust by a survivor, personal testimonies of loss in a common grieving ritual, and breakout workshops, as well as music, dance and prayer.

It may be hard for Americans to comprehend just how threatening such an event is perceived in Israel–by both Jews and Palestinians. Many of the former find it nearly treasonous that on two consecutive days considered nearly sacred–the Day of the Fallen and Independence Day, when throughout the country everything comes to a screeching halt for two minutes as sirens sound–fellow Jews would go out of their way to acknowledge those who consider the time of Jewish national liberation to be a catastrophe. And just as many Palestinians are no less irritated that their dispossessed brethren, who endure continuing discrimination as second-class citizens, would commune with a people who celebrate what is for Palestinians a time of defeat and expulsion. But that’s just the point: the participants don’t presume to furnish a “solution” to the conflict, nor do they expect to synthesize the two vastly different national experiences into a unified whole. The idea, rather, is that in a society where the two opposing narratives almost completely negate the legitimacy of the other, simply to come together, to listen to the other, to accept the other’s narrative as at least somewhat legitimate, is a crucial step in the healing process necessary to ending the conflict.

Since when was it the right of US-backed dictatorships in the Middle East to dictate policy towards the Palestinians?

Amid much speculation over US President Barack Obama’s upcoming address to the Muslim world, reports published on Wednesday outlined the details of his Middle East peace plan, which are said to include a demilitarized Palestinian state.

The US president’s initiative, which was formulated in consultation with Jordan’s King Abdullah II during the two leaders’ recent meetings at the White House, reportedly does not significantly stray from the pan-Arab peace initiative proposed in 2002. Rather, it bolsters certain details within the Saudi-proposed plan.

The Obama-Abdullah plan was put together in response to concerns from both Israel and the US that the Arab plan was too general and intransigent, and according to a report in Wednesday’s Yediot Ahronot, will call on Arab countries to take trust-building measures in order to clear the air with Israel.

Obama is expected to present the initiative in an address to the Arab and Muslim world from Cairo in three weeks, and set out conditions for a demilitarized Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, within the next four years. Yediot reported that Obama’s vision for an independent, democratic and contiguous Palestinian state would not have its own army and would be forbidden from making military agreements with other states, in order to provide for Israel’s security.

Following this letter in yesterday’s Melbourne Age, the paper today publishes two responses:

Eli Court (Letters, 20/5) speaks with all the disdain of the ivory tower intellectuals who wouldn’t “soil” their hands by being on the street. If Eli had taken the trouble to attend the debate after the performance of Seven Jewish Children — chaired by a Jewish QC — he would undoubtedly have clarified many issues in his mind. But that involves mingling with the “dumb” scarf-wearers and flag-wavers.

Narendra Mohan Kommalapati, Abbotsford

Shades of grey
I am reassured to hear that people like Eli Court exist. It is vital that people such as Eli understand that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is not black and white. However, many students could be forgiven for thinking as such from all the racist slogans and catchcries plastered around campus by anti-Israel propagandists attempting to dehumanise Jews and Israel alike. Someone as cynical of the media as Eli should know that the pictures taken at the protest give only a small snapshot of what went on.

Instead of resorting to factually void slogans and chants as the “anti-Israel” activists did, Jewish students interacted and engaged positively with the crowd waiting to see the play. Many of these people walked away when we “unpacked” the issues with them. It’s clear to me that when “pro-Palestinian” groups scream slogans of hate towards Jewish students, it can only be because they’re so short on facts that they resort to dehumanising the other side. In this, they progress no one’s cause.

Stefan Oberman, Victorian president, Australasian Union of Jewish Students, Caulfield South

Just another day of “oops, we did it again” by the US empire, courtesy of the New York Times:

Arms sent by U.S. may be falling into Taliban hands.

Israeli army rabbis were condemned during the Gaza war for encouraging soldiers to kill Palestinians with impunity. They’re only Arabs, right lads?

This story is therefore amusing, but hardly deals with the key issues at hand, namely the infiltration of religious fundamentalists in the IDF:

The Israeli military has issued new regulations that impose greater restrictions on the ability of soldiers to grow beards. Religious soldiers are still allowed to have facial hair, but now they must get authorization from their units’ rabbis and commanders — a policy that has come in for some criticism. Recently, an Orthodox army rabbi refused to allow Conservative Jewish soldiers to claim a religious exemption from the beard ban.