Antony Loewenstein

George W. Bush must be so proud of his protege, Barack Hussein Obama:

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.

The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers’ laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.

Jimmy Carter talks to al-Jazeera about the “absolutely necessary” end to West Bank settlements and the engagement of Hamas. Carter has been saying the same thing for years and I admire him for it:

When film-maker Ken Loach recently called for the Melbourne International Film Festival to refuse Israeli government funding, the response was electric.

Now, the director of the festival has fully responded (and I’m informed Loach has responded to this response by Richard Moore):

To allow the personal politics of one filmmaker to proscribe a festival position would not only open a veritable floodgate, but also goes against the grain of what festivals stand for. Not that I felt the need to justify ourselves but in my response to Loach, explaining why Melbourne’s film festival would not comply with his demands, I reminded him that it had had a long interest in the Middle East and has programmed many films about the Israel-Palestinian question – most, if not all, sympathetic to the Palestinians.

Loach’s reply was:

“Film festivals will reflect many points of view, which are often radical and progressive. It is also true that there are many brutal regimes and many governments, including our own, which have committed war crimes. But the cultural boycott called for by the Palestinians means that remaining sympathetic but detached observers is no longer an option.”

In other words, everyone has been given a royal dispensation from Loach to commit war crimes bar the Israelis. Far be it for me to act as an apologist for Israel but the logical extension of Loach’s position is absurd. Aside from ignoring the fact that film festivals fulfil an important role in allowing filmmakers to circumvent national censors, is he saying we can continue to programme films from North Korea, from Iran, from China – but we must boycott Israel? On a moral relativity scale does that mean that Iran’s treatment of women is acceptable? Should we keep quiet about how North Korea treats its citizens? Loach disagreed with George Bush’s approach to foreign policy; so was it OK to programme American films during the Bush era?

Loach’s demands were beyond the pale. As a supporter of independent film and filmmaking he should be ashamed of himself.

South Africa’s Desmond Tutu has dedicated his life to fighting oppression, including in the Middle East.

Currently in Isreal and Palestine with The Elders in an attempt to find a path to peace, he tells Haaretz that he has strong views on Israeli academic Neve Gordon’s call for a boycott against Israel:

“I always say to people that sanctions were important in the South African case for several reasons. We had a sports boycott, and since we are a sports-mad country, it hit ordinary people. It was one of the most psychologically powerful instruments.

“Secondly, it actually did hit the pocket of the South African government. I mean, when we had the arms embargo and the economic boycott.”

He said that when F.W. de Klerk became president he telephoned congratulations. “The very first thing he said to me was ‘well now will you call off sanctions?’ Although they kept saying, oh well, these things don’t affect us at all. That was not true.

“And another important reason was that it gave hope to our people that the world cared. You know. That this was a form of identification.”

Benjamin Netanyahu allegedly called two of Barack Obama’s senior advisers, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, “self-hating” Jews because he didn’t like their leader pressuring his country. The poor dear.

The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier, a life-long dedicated Zionist, has something to say about that:

If Emanuel is a self-hating Jew because he believes that Israeli settlement in the West Bank should finally cease, then I, too, am a self-hating Jew.

Israeli peace activist Ezra Nawi, currently facing the prospect of jail time for allegedly attacking an Israeli officer, was defended in a Jerusalem court last week by the country’s former deputy attorney general:

She said the Palestinians’ life in the southern Hebron Hills “is surreal – they have no water, no power supply, they are subject to constant harassment by settlers and are also up against a government that wishes to expel them.”

“Where there is no law and no one to turn to, Ezra is seen as a law breaker, while the state itself breaks the law and fails to uphold its basic obligations. Ezra is the savior of these people. He blocks with his body settlers who stop the farmers from working on their land. You could call him Robin Hood of the Wild West.”

I accompanied Nawi into the West Bank in July and saw with my own eyes his dedication to protecting Palestinians from violent Jewish settlers and complict Israeli soldiers.

UPDATE: It should be noted that Nawi vehemently denies attacking the Israeli soldier and the IDF is known to fabricate such charges regularly.

The Israeli group Breaking the Silence recently released a report about alleged crimes by IDF officers during the Gaza war. The response from many in Israel was to attack the messenger rather than examining the charges.

Benjamin Netanyahu continued this onslaught during his visit to London:

“They are breaking their silence about the only democracy in the Middle East that has an independent legal system and an investigative press that does not cease dealing with these issues. There is no silence to break. What are they talking about?”

Netanyahu criticized non-government organizations like Breaking the Silence and others for not documenting human rights violations in the Gaza Strip and other Arab countries.

“Why don’t they break the silence over what is happening in some of the regimes in the Middle East?” Netanyahu said. “Let them do it in places in which there is silencing of others, like the Hamas regime in Gaza.”

“In the case of Hamas, I have not seen the same enthusiasm and the same concerted effort to break the silence over what is happening in Gaza,” the prime minister added.

The Foreign Ministry is lobbying European governments, including those of Holland, Spain, and Britain, to cut off its funding of the group’s activities. Israel says foreign funding of the group is tantamount to interference in the country’s internal affairs.

During his meeting with [Gordon] Brown, Netanyahu raised a number of sensitive issues, including efforts by some in Britain to charge IDF officers with war crimes for actions in the Palestinian territories.

“This is something that does not go hand in hand with morality and clear logic,” Netanyahu told Brown. “Israel, like Britain, is fighting terrorism and is exercising its right to self-defense. There is no place for accusing IDF officers just as no one can accuse British officers operating in Afghanistan or Iraq. Ultimately, these things will also hurt [the British].”

Haaretz rightly reminds the Israeli leader that he’s not the head of North Korea:

The strength of a nation depends not only on its ability to fight its enemies, but also on its willingness to listen to critical voices from within. Breaking the Silence acted in order to provide details to the public about IDF behavior in Gaza, behavior which the official establishment had played down. The democracy of which Netanyahu is so proud is also tested by its openness to listening to additional viewpoints, and not only by declaiming government policy.

According to Netanyahu’s line of thought, criticism of the government is legitimate if it comes from the right wing – that is to say, the state is not militant enough and its excesses should be glossed over. Funding is fine as long as it comes from various foreign groups of conflict-mongers, and on behalf of settlements endangering peace and security, but not to warn of injustices.

JTA reports on growing moves by religious Jews to divide and conquer Arab villages with previously minimal Jewish presence:

“We fear these are extremists who want to make Peki’in into a Jewish village,” Mofeed Mohana, a former city councilman, told JTA. “They are buying homes and walk around with guns. We are not against Jews living here in equality and partnership, but we are against this.”

Teplow dismisses Mohana’s fears.

“I frankly don’t care what they think. My attitude is that a Jew has a God-given right to live in the Land of Israel and I’m not stealing anyone’s house — I’m buying it,” Teplow said. “What is Zionism? It’s Jews going back to their land. If you are going to put limits on Jews going back to their national homeland, you end up hampering Zionist goals.”

The tension in Peki’in is playing out in cities and towns across Israel as a movement to boost the Jewish presence in mixed Arab-Jewish cities gains steam. In places like Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Akko, seed groups of Orthodox Zionists are buying property in predominately Arab neighborhoods where there is a minimal Jewish presence, moving in and setting up yeshivas.

Rush Limbaugh, America’s leading radio host, on the Obama administration:

This whole administration is as radical and far left as any that the country has ever had, and what they’re trying to do here to communications is simply stifle dissenting voices. They’re trying to wipe out any opposition.

Who says academics are irrelevant in the modern age? Israel’s Neve Gordon continues to cause waves after calling for a boycott of his own country over its discriminatory and “apartheid” regime in the occupied territories.

The President of his institution, Ben Gurion University, wrote the following:

…The severity and scope of the [Gordon's] attack are unprecedented, both because of the article’s extremist line, which is perceived by many readers as an act of treason against the state of Israel…

…I am personally deeply disgusted by it.

What a poor woman. Not disgusted by anything Israel does. No, against one individual who speaks his mind. The truth remains that most Israeli academics either remain silent over Israeli crimes against the Palestinians or actively collude in them.

Gideon Levy in Haaretz unloads on the hypocrisy:

Israel, and with it most of the international community, imposed a boycott on 1.5 million Gazans only because they did not vote for the right party in the democratic elections that the international community demanded.

A country that constantly demands boycott from the world and also imposes boycotts itself, cannot play the victim when the same weapon is turned against it. If the election of Hamas is cause for boycott, then occupation is a far more potent cause. The fact that Israel is living a lie – pretending that the occupation does not exist, that it is just, temporary and unavoidable – does not make the struggle against it any less legitimate. So let us admit the truth: The occupier deserves to be boycotted. As long as the Israelis pay no price for the occupation, the occupation will not end, and therefore the only way open to the opponents of the occupation is to take concrete means that will make the Israelis understand that the injustice they are perpetrating comes with a price tag.

Despite the bleating from the occupiers, the global boycott campaign is picking up pace and I support it 100%. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Israel finally receives a little pressure over its illegal behaviour and Israel Harel in Haaretz thinks about the Nazis:

This ongoing, organized, global and completely unbridled campaign of demonization is liable (and who should know better than we?) to end in a new license for genocide – against us.

Israel Policy Forum gives one reason why there seems to be such a recent flurry of Obama administration-led rhetoric over the Middle East conflict:

According to Peace Now, in 2008 Jews represented 51.8 percent, and Palestinians 48.2 percent of those living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. By 2015, Peace Now says these figures will be reversed. Do the math–a few months into 2011, they will be equal in size.

These demographic concerns are what led former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to carry out the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, despite his long-time staunch support for the right-wing settlement movement.

It is not yet clear whether the current Israeli government–with the urging of the Obama administration–might undergo a similar transformation.

Writing in the conservative online magazine Commentary in May, Michael Oren, who was subsequently named Israel’s new Ambassador to the United States, wrote that the demographics issue represented an existential threat to the State of Israel:

“Israel, the Jewish State, is predicated on a decisive and stable Jewish majority of at least 70 percent. Any lower than that and Israel will have to decide between being a Jewish state and a democratic state. If it chooses democracy, then Israel as a Jewish state will cease to exist. If it remains officially Jewish, then the state will face an unprecedented level of international isolation, including sanctions, that might prove fatal.”

Analysts project that the end of efforts to reach a negotiated two-state solution as it has widely been understood would give rise to the concept of a bi-national state, which would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.