Antony Loewenstein

A really wonderful piece by Joseph Dana, Israeli human rights activist, about the role of dissent in Israeli society. The Iranian uprisings are having an effect:

There is a minority in Israel that is willing to risk life and limb to stand up to the occupation at its core. Multiple times a week, groups of Israelis venture through checkpoints into the West Bank in order to meet with Palestinian counterparts and help them maintain the basic necessities of livelihood and hold on to what little land they still legally own. We are continually attacked by settlers and harassed by Israeli authorities, which try to restrict our efforts and often use excessive force. Despite the constant obstacles and fear of arrest, court dates and injury, we continue to fight the occupation with nonviolence.

As an Israeli actively contesting the overt and covert policies of my government, I have been struck with a feeling of familiarity and identification with the events that have been unfolding in Iran. The images of young people flooding the streets, confronting the authorities and standing up for the rule of law is similar to the Israelis who confront the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank. I see students in Tehran, of the same age as myself, using twitter and blogs to communicate information from the ground in the face of great censorship. I have been watching the YouTube videos from the front line and it conjures up the same feelings as the videos that we are making in the West Bank. It is a different situation in Tehran but one cannot ignore the common determination to challenge governmental policies, take risks and get the word out. In both countries, the only way to do that is to make your presence known in the most corporeal way.

Iran and Israel are different countries with different systems of government, histories and values.  The current regime in Iran is authoritarian while in Israel we have democratic systems, at least as far as the Jewish residents are concerned. But there are also similarities: both countries’ national characters stress the bond between religion and state and are ideologically driven, such that both societies necessarily have elements of oppression and movements against that oppression. The struggle that many young people are taking up against the current Iranian government regarding the election has never taken place in Israel. But Israel’s parliamentary system is horribly flawed and it is widely agreed in Israel that it is in desperate need of reform.

Both Israel and Iran have sizeable populations of people under the age of thirty. These populations carry an unusually heavy burden. In Iran, as in Israel, the country places on its youth the weight of defending its country in the military. The obsession with defense and strength falls directly on the shoulders of the countries’ youth. With responsibility comes voice. In Iran, the youth has been finding its voice quickly and strongly in the past weeks. In Israel it has been a long process, but in both places, it requires the steadfastness of defiance.

If you feel solidarity with the struggle in Iran over elections, don’t forget that in Israel we have our own resistance, a homegrown and genuine resistance. In both countries, law-abiding citizens are looking to reform their governments’ policies out of a commitment to make their country a better place to live in.

My latest column for New Matilda is about the American Jewish community and its inability to see the writing on the wall regarding Israel:

In the US, moderate Jewish voices on the Middle East are gaining strength, but many American Jews are still reluctant to criticise Israel, writes Antony Loewenstein

During the “Salute to Israel” parade in New York in May, over 100,000 Jews marched in solidarity with the Jewish state. It was an awesome sight of organisation, dedication and passion. But something was missing: Arabs and Palestinians were near invisible. There was no room for that 20 per cent of Israel’s population or for the millions in the West Bank and Gaza. There was, however, a handful of protesting Arabs, dissident Jews and ultra-Orthodox Neturei Karta.

Last Sunday’s Tel Aviv beach event in New York’s Central Park — a massive amount of sand was flown from Israel to re-create the “fun” of the country’s biggest city — was equally devoid of Arabs or Palestinians. As one protester’s sign at that event read, “When do we Jews notice that Israel is insane?”

Both events are symptomatic of the challenges facing the world’s largest Jewish Diaspora community.

I’ve been in the US for the last month speaking to a range of individuals about the shifting relationship between Israel and Washington (see Tony Judt’s piece this week in the New York Times). Something is afoot and it’s worrying the establishment.

Executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, said recently that the US President’s “strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning what he really believes.” He was horrified that any US leader would demand Israel cease settlement building or even empathise with Palestinian suffering. Hoenlein offered no alternative solutions, presumably endorsing indefinite continuation of the status-quo: Israel ruling over millions of Palestinians.

The extremes of the debate remain alive but the voices of realists are getting an increasing amount of air-time. Tony Judt, commemorating Israeli journalist Amos Elon in the New York Review of Books, argues that Zionism has “been corrupted into an uncompromising ethno-religious real estate pact with a partisan God, a pact that justifies any and all actions against real or imagined threats, critics, and enemies”. Jewish-led pogroms in the West Bank are just one indication that Judt is right.

Meanwhile, Noam Chomsky told me in Boston last week that he doubted America’s relationship with Israel would fundamentally change (a point he made directly after Obama’s speech in Cairo). His cause for pessimism was the separation rhetoric from reality. “What Israel and America will likely continue to do is what [former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert] called ‘convergence’; take over what they want, take over everything inside the separation wall and let everybody else rot.” This week’s announcement of more illegal, West Bank settlements supports this theory.

Chomsky challenged me on my description of the situation in Palestine as apartheid. He claimed that the bad days of South Africa are not a good analogy because “the situation there was far more humane. In South Africa, the government and population relied on black labour, so they kept the Bantustans up and developed them to an extent because they were crucial. Just like how slave owners fed their slaves. In Palestine, the situation is different. They [the Israelis] don’t want the Palestinians, nor do they care about them. They don’t really rely on them anymore and they don’t need them for labour. They get cheap labour from Thailand or Romania. That’s what’s taking place.”

Chomsky told me that it was likely that the occupation would continue indefinitely, “as much as you can predict anything in foreign affairs”.

It is a view echoed by a leading American intellectual from a completely different school of thought. John Mearsheimer, American professor of political science at the University of Chicago, wrote the following in the American Conservative magazine in May:

“The United States and Israel fundamentally disagree about the need to establish a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel. President Obama is committed to a two-state solution, while Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is opposed and has been for many years. To avoid a direct confrontation with Washington, Netanyahu will probably change his rhetoric and talk favourably about two states. But that will not affect Israel’s actions. The never-ending peace process will go on, Israel will continue building settlements, and the Palestinians will remain locked up in a handful of impoverished enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza. Anticipating this outcome, Obama has told Congress to expect a clash with Israel.”

Mearsheimer told me this month that his thesis remains accurate. “At a rhetorical level, Obama has introduced change that no-one really anticipated, including me”, he said. “He’s been very tough on the Israelis rhetorically, but the proof of the pudding is in policy. What matters are facts on the ground. Is he willing to get tough with the Israelis when they’re expanding the settlements? Will he get tough on the Israelis when they’re not serious about creating a viable, Palestinian state? My guess is that Obama will back off and the Israelis will prevail. And in large part the [Zionist] lobby will make it impossible for Obama to put serious pressure on Israel.”

We discussed at great length the likely trajectory of the Middle East conflict and Mearsheimer said that he believed “apartheid” was the right word to describe the situation, “a position I share with Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak. Both of them have said in the last year that if there is no two-state solution, Israel will end up in a South African-style situation. I think one could make an argument that Israel is already an apartheid state. This would be a disaster for Israel and I don’t understand for the life of me why Benjamin Netanyahu and his hawkish allies in Israel and the US don’t understand that the two-state solution is the best outcome for Israel.”

But a change in American Jewish thinking is equally important. “It is essential that the Nakba narrative be acknowledged”, writes Jewish blogger Phil Weiss. “We know how vital it was to Jewish liberation in America in my generation to have the Holocaust recognised.” The Palestinians are rightly waiting for a similar moment.

Yet something is stirring. Jewish writer Eric Alterman wrote on The Daily Beast after Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University that the Israeli Prime Minister’s address ignored the disastrous reality Israel is facing: “Either expel millions of Palestinians from their lands to preserve the state’s Jewish character or give up on democratic rule entirely, embracing a nightmare future much like that in South Africa under apartheid.”

My sense of the overall feeling in the American Jewish community is one of inertia, anger and impotence. Jews are overwhelmingly pro-Democrat and voted for Obama, but many seem reluctant to seriously pressure Israel to end its disastrous occupation. Meanwhile in Israel, according to a new poll, only 6 per cent of Jewish Israelis now regard Obama as pro-Israel.

Despite the inspiring nature of recent events in Iran, they have also highlighted, depressingly, how much less vibrant Israel’s dissenting community is compared to that now making itself felt in the Islamic Republic.

But for some in the insulated Zionist community, that’s a simple “win-win”. A headline this week on America’s leading Jewish news network, JTA read: “Iran turmoil likely to benefit Israel”.

Cockroaches can allegedly survive a nuclear holocaust, but an Orthodox man in Israel worries that God frowns upon his sullied behaviour:

The Knesset cafeteria was closed Tuesday following an incident in which a cockroach was found in a plate of rice served up to Shas secretary Tzvika Yakobson.

One Shas official called the incident a “scandal,” adding that it was difficult to understand how a cockroach could be found on a plate at a cafeteria that operates under kosher supervision.

Clearly a cockroach is more important than the Palestinians.

Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide is a new book endorsed by Desmond Tutu and Professor John Dugard, South African ex-UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (2001-2008).

A fascinating interview with a pro Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cleric in Qom, Iran:

Look, in Iran, we have a few sources. We have two TV channels, radio, and then we have the newspapers, which are particularly popular among Iranians. Now, we also have the internet, and yes, we are familiar with these videos showing the murders of these people and the violence against them. I can tell you the impression of the people here… they believe that it is the people who are damaging and vandalizing, these planted forces from outside, that are committing these murders. This is what people believe in Iran.

Iran has become the biggest foreign news story here in the US for years. Barack Obama has now stepped up his rhetoric against the Islamic Republic:

Absurdly, war criminal Henry Kissinger – responsible for the deaths of literally hundreds of thousands of civilians in the 1970s – appears on BBC to advocate the possibility of regime change:

Perhaps the media would like to speak to people who actually know something about democracy, as opposed to those who want to snuff it out.

Israel’s seriousness about peace is displayed yet again:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has authorized the building of 300 new homes in the West Bank, defying U.S. calls for a halt to settlement growth.

Activists for Bimkom association, which works for justice and human rights in planning and knows a thing or two about the situation in the territories, have discovered that Barak recently authorized the Civil Administration to submit a plan for the construction of 300 housing units in the unauthorized outpost of Givat Habrecha, near the community of Talmon.

And then the words of a wishful thinker (Ehud Olmert finally acknowledged the realities of apartheid Israel but did everything in his power to expand the settlements):

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas that the Holy Basin area of Jerusalem would be under no sovereignty at all and administered by a joint committee of Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans, the former prime minister told Newsweek magazine in an interview in the current issue.

Olmert’s offer was confirmed to Newsweek by Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. “It’s very sad. He was serious, I have to say,” Erekat said. He said that he and Abbas began preparing a response, but within a few months the Gaza war erupted, and Olmert had left office.

The Daily Show on the American media and political elite’s cluelessness towards Iran. Perhaps somebody should suggest an invasion soon?

So the Australian government’s whoring towards Israeli crimes is deeply appreciated by war criminals. This should make us so proud:

Before she even arrived in Jerusalem for the Australia-Israel leadership forum, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard had made a lasting impression on local powers that be.

In front of an elite audience of Israeli politicians, academics and cultural figures at a dinner at the landmark King David Hotel, senior Israeli minister Isaac Herzog paid a warm tribute to Ms Gillard for her support for Israel during the Gaza conflict in January.

“You stood almost alone on the world stage in support of Israel’s right to defend itself,” enthused Mr Herzog, an act of courage he said would never be forgotten by the people of Israel.

Ms Gillard was Acting Prime Minister when Israel launched a three-week offensive against Hamas that resulted in the deaths of more than 1300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

No other country requires and indeed expects such blind, fanatical support. Thankfully, less and less Australians believe the spin.

Vanity Fair, the magazine of Democrat sycophancy:

Why We Love Obama: He’s Just Like Reagan?!

Robert Fisk knows a correct comparison when he sees one: Iran and Israel:

Unleashing a rabble of armed government forces on to the streets and claiming that all whom they shoot are “terrorists” is an almost copy-cat perfect version of the Israeli army’s public reaction to the Palestinian intifada. If stone-throwing demonstrators are shot dead, then it is their own fault, they are breaking the law and they are working for foreign powers.

When this happens in the Israeli-occupied territories, the Israelis claim that the foreign powers of Iran and Syria are behind the violence. When this happens on the streets of Iranian cities, the Iranian regime claims that the foreign powers of the United States, Israel and Britain are behind the violence.

A letter writer in this week’s Australian Jewish News:

Obama’s demand for a cessation of all “natural growth” in settlements echoes Nazi sterilisation policies.

Forty international aid agencies and non-governmental organizations have released a joint statement condemning Israel’s blockade of Gaza, to mark the second anniversary of the coastal territory being hermetically sealed off from the outside world.

“These indiscriminate sanctions are affecting the entire 1.5 million population of Gaza, and ordinary women, children and the elderly are the first victims,” read the statement, to mark the anniversary on 17 June.