Antony Loewenstein

Nahid Siamdoust, TIME magazine correspondent in Tehran, reports on the latest in her country.

Britain’s Channel 4 has exclusive pictures:

Harvard University’s Berkman Centre (where I gave a presentation last year on my book, The Blogging Revolution) have released a new report mapping the Arabic blogosphere. Some key findings that suggest Barack Obama will need to match his pretty words with far more than rhetoric:

The one political issue that clearly concerns bloggers across the Arab world is Palestine, and in particular the situation in Gaza (Israel’s December 2008/January 2009 military action occurred during the study). Other popular topics include religion (more in personal than political terms) and human rights (more common than criticism of western culture and values). Terrorism and the US are not major topics. When discussing terrorism, Arab bloggers are overwhelmingly critical of terrorists. When the US is discussed, it is nearly always critically.

Is Israel involved in the Twitter campaign to cover the turmoil in Iran?

Neve Gordon writes in the Nation about the uber-seriousness of the Israeli state towards illegal settlers:

Last week, the government sent troops to dismantle two outposts. The television networks were invited to cover the event, and that evening viewers watched how a group of settlers struggled against the most powerful military in the Middle East. Within hours of the news broadcasts, the settlers had already rebuilt the outposts, and thus today we are, once again, back to square one.

The perceptive viewer understands that the government and the settlers are staging the events, using the media to broadcast them to the world. The images of lawless fundamentalists fighting the military convey a clear message to the audience at home: if Netanyahu dares to dismantle the outposts, the settlers will not only topple his government but there will be blood. More specifically, the not-so-latent inference is that if Netanyahu goes ahead with Washington’s directive, he will be responsible for a civil war.

Independent Jewish Voices Canada has made a monumental decision that deserves global praise:

Ottawa – Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) voted to join the growing international campaign in support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, at its first Annual General Meeting this past weekend. This decision makes IJV the first national Jewish organization in the world to do so. The adopted resolution states that IJV will “Support the Palestinian call for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and complies with the precepts of international law, including the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”

Independent Jewish Voices is a member-led organization, with chapters in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax.

Robert Fisk knows how to tell a joke (and mean it):

…My favourite memory was at San Francisco International Airport, where Homeland Security spotted all the pariah visas in my passport.

“Have you ever met a terrorist?” one of them asked me with a frown. Yes, I said. I met Osama bin Laden and I met Ariel Sharon. They were concerned about the bin Laden admission. But they were terrified of the political implications of discussing Sharon and terrorism. “Have a nice day, Sir,” the guy with the frown said. And stamped me through in three seconds. There must be a lesson there somewhere…

How to recover a dead body in Palestine under Israeli fire, part 76432:

The initiator of the petition against Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her impending trip to Israel, Ned Curthoys, sent the following letter to her today:

Dear Julia Gillard,

The following is a petition that I’m presenting to you on behalf of some 180 concerned Australians, many of them eminent names in their chosen fields, who would prefer it if you refrained from leading the Australia-Israel exchange delegation this month. They see this trip as a poorly timed public-relations exercise for the Israeli government that can only reaffirm your internationally anomalous disregard for the Palestinians during the Gaza crisis of December-January, when you refused to call for a cease-fire or acknowledge the disproportionate nature of Israel’s response, its initial breach of the cease-fire with Hamas on November 4 2008, or the devastating nature of Israel’s (with Egypt’s complicity) economic blockade of the Gaza Strip which constitutes collective punishment, continuing to deprive Palestinians of basic medicines, hospital equipment, adequate electricity supplies, food stuff, and gas for cooking.

I note that your latest comments in defence of the trip stress Israel’s diversity, but does Israel’s continual demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, denial of Palestinian building permits in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and zoning of ‘Jewish only’ residential eras in East Jerusalem, speak well of this diversity and inclusivity? How inclusive can a nation be, that, unlike Australia, restricts its right of return to Jews and their spouses while ignoring the plight of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes in 1948 and 1967? What is the relevance of this diversity if the grand narrative of Israel since 1948 is the uninterrupted theft of Palestinian land, a process that actually intensified during the Oslo Peace process of the 1990s and has been guaranteed by the present government? Will you be talking to Israel Jewish anthropologist Jeff Halper of the Committee against House Demolitions about the true purpose of the almost daily demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank? Will you visit Hebron where some 180. 000 Palestinians face constant violence and disruptive military curfews because of the presence of hundreds of Jewish religious settlers protected by the Israeli Defence Force? Are you thinking of visiting the Gaza Strip to see how Palestinians are rebuilding their lives or to listen to their traumatic testimony?

If you speak with Netanyahu and government officials will you solemnly nod and sympathize with the generosity of an offer for a ‘Palestinian state’ that is demilitarized and cannot control its own airspace or external trading relationships, that cannot have East Jerusalem as its capital, and that must recognize and affirm the Jewish character of Israel despite some 20 percent of the population being Palestinian and Bedouin and despite the Jewish character of Israel being the very rationale for refusing Palestinians the right to return to their ancestral lands? Will you be asking discerning questions of Netanyahu’s offer? Please keep me informed of your travels and transform it into something worthwhile, a fact-finding mission, a conversation with Israelis and Palestinians of all political persuasions as conducted by brave journalists such as Antony Loewenstein, a tour of the some 500 military checkpoints that disrupt and degrade the lives of West Bank Palestinians, perhaps then you’ll have your mind opened to the devastating nature of the apartheid system governing the lives of Palestinians like Desmond Tutu, and Jimmy Carter before you. It’s still my hope that you will be mentioned in the same breath as statespeople like these.

On behalf of supporters of Palestinian human-rights everywhere,

Yours sincerely,

Ned Curthoys

The latest on the crisis in Iran. Violence, state brutality, Twitter and resistance.

Just how threatening are alternative, Jewish voices to the Zionist establishment?

Independent Australian Jewish Voices blogger Michael Brull explains.

Zionist fundamentalists are most displeased with that extremist, Muslim terrorist, Barack Obama:

There is growing concern among the American Jewish community over Obama’s Mideast initiatives, this according to the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein.

“President Obama’s strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning what he really believes,” Hoenlein, said in an interview published Monday.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth…

Rap and hip-hop in Gaza.

Life must go on.