Antony Loewenstein

Following Israeli academic Neve Gordon’s recent call for a boycott campaign against Israel due to its “apartheid” nature, Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner simply refuses to go this far (wishing, pointlessly in my view, that somehow outside pressure, from the Obama administration, will force Israel to become a civilised nation):

Supporting the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] campaign is a very, very far cry from what the Zionist Left, myself included, have been doing: urging the Obama administration to pressure Israel into trading land for peace. The difference is that the Obama administration, like all of its predecessors and like the Zionist Left, is anti-occupation but pro-Israel. There may never have been a country that was as good a friend to another country as the US has been to this one. When we call on Washington to pressure Israel into ending the occupation, we do so knowing that Washington is not going to take any step that would damage this country’s security.

We do it knowing that Obama and his team, even if they wouldn’t put it in these terms, really do want to save Israel from itself…

No, unlike the Obama team’s approach, the BDS campaign isn’t about tough love for Israel. It’s about abuse.

Neve Gordon, like others in the movement, cites the campaign against apartheid South Africa as a model, a precedent for using strong, unpleasant medicine to heal a very sick, obstinate patient. Without going into all the differences – as well as the similarities – between apartheid and the occupation, I want to show briefly why the BDS campaign against apartheid South Africa was just, and why the one against Israel is just wrong.

The Shepherd Hotel is a contentious site in Jerusalem, a place radical Jews want to develop for themselves only. I reported on this from the ground in July.

Now settlers have produced this video that aims to portray Arab terrorism as committed for the sake of pure hatred of Israel and Jews rather than brutal occupation:

Two articles that display the reality (versus rhetoric) of life in Israel and Palestine. Incidentally, peace is impossible when Israel continues to build illegal structures in East Jerusalem:

A plan to build about 150 housing units for Jews in Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods moved forward in the first half of 2009, according to a report published Thursday by coexistence non-profit group, Ir Amim. According to the group, this would mean that 750 Jewish residents would join some 2,000 already living in Arab neighborhoods in the east of the city.

Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook writes on another oppressed minority:

The inhabitants of the Bedouin village of Amra have good reason to fear that the harsh tactics used by the Israeli army against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been imported to their small corner of Israel’s Negev desert.

Over the summer, the Tarabin tribe, all of them Israeli citizens, have had the sole access road to their homes sealed off, while the dirt track they must use instead is regularly blocked by temporary checkpoints at which their papers and vehicles are inspected at length.

Coils of razor wire encircle much of the village, and children as young as eight have been arrested in a series of night-time raids.

“Four-fifths of our youngsters now have files with the police and our drivers are being repeatedly fined for supposed traffic violations,” said Tulab Tarabin, one of Amra’s 400 Bedouin inhabitants. “Every time we are stopped, the police ask us: ‘Why don’t you leave?’”

Lawyers and human rights activists say a campaign of pressure is being organised against the Tarabin at the behest of a nearby Jewish community, Omer, which is determined to build a neighbourhood for Israeli army officers on the tribe’s land.

Here’s Donald Macintyre in the Independent on lawlessness in the West Bank:

On a still, hot, August afternoon you can only hear the bleating of the lambs and the occasional bark of a dog. There are few places more exposed and isolated in the West Bank than the cluster of tents and caves that is home to Khalil Nawaja, his wife Tamam, their two sons and their 50 sheep.

It was close to here that the couple were severely beaten last summer by four masked, club-swinging Jewish settlers in the barley field. Tamam, her face still bleeding after being clubbed in the jaw, was driven in an Israeli Army ambulance to Beersheeva’s Soroka hospital, where she required three days of treatment.

And it was here that they received the news last week that the Israeli police had closed an investigation without making charges, even though the attack was caught on video, causing shock and outrage across Israel and beyond when it was shown on television last year.

During current talks in London, reports suggest that building in East Jerusalem will continue, pushing more Arabs from their homes.

The farce goes on.

The following article is a powerful reminder of Jewish hate in Israel. Published in Haokets by former Haaretz journalist Meron Rapoport, translated from the Hebrew by Keren Rubinstein and distributed by the Middle East News Service, its value speaks for itself:

Last Thursday was a heat wave, but along the paved stone path that ascends through the centre of Silwan – The City of David, it was more pleasant. Perhaps it was the cool breeze, or the cool stone houses mollifying the air, or maybe it was broad vista of Jerusalem’s mountains. There were three of us – Ilan the director, Michael the cameraman, and me, the interviewee. We were making a film that explores the overt institutional discrimination against this East Jerusalem neighbourhood’s Palestinian residents. It is accompanied by a discrimination in favour of the Jewish settlers who for their part do not hide their desire to “Judaise” the neighbourhood and erase its Palestinian nature.

Even before we manage to position our camera, a group of religious girls comes up the path (we could tell they were religious by their skirts). They were around eight to ten years old, smug and beautiful chatterboxes. One of them slowed down beside us. “Film me”, she said amiably. “What would you like to tell us”, we asked. “I want to say that Jerusalem is a city that belongs to us, the Jews”, she said while walking – “it’s just a shame there are Arabs here. The Messiah will only come when there’s not even a single Arab left here”. She walked on. The girls giggled and sauntered along with her.

Two minutes later, a robust young man arrives carrying a weapon and walkie-talkie, bearing no identification on his clothes. Even before he opened his mouth I surmised that he was a security guard, employed by the private security company, operated by the settlers but financed by the Housing Ministry to the tune of 40 million shekels, annually. This security company has long ago become a private police force that polices the whole neighbourhood and terrorises the Palestinian residents without any legal basis. A committee set up by the Housing Minister determined that this arrangement must be stopped, and that the safety of the inhabitants (both Jewish and Arab) must be in the hands of Israel’s Police force, as applies to the rest of Israel’s citizens. The government adopted the committee’s recommendation in June 2006, but changed its mind six months later. The settlers had been lobbying The private police continue to operate here.

“What are you doing here”, the young man asked. “What are you doing here”, I asked him. “I’m a security guard”, he answered, “tell me what you’re doing here”. “We’re standing here in the street”, I told him. “Tell me what you’re doing here”, he became irate. “It’s none of your business”, I told him. “What’s your name”, he asked me. “And what’s your name”, I ask him. “Doesn’t matter”, he answered, “I’m a security guard”. “So it doesn’t matter what my name is either”, I replied. The irritated guard talks on his walkie-talkie. Were we Palestinian, we would have long ago been gone. That is the unwritten protocol. But we were Israelis, Hebrew speakers and a problem. Headquarters apparently explained to him that there was nothing he could do, that this was a public area. The guard took his position beside us, with his weapon, and didn’t leave us alone throughout our stay.

We moved our position. Two-three minutes later two young women came up the path. They are seventeen or eighteen years old. Secular, evidently not local residents. One of them stood in front of the camera. “Take my picture”, she fawned. “Do you want to be interviewed”, we asked her. “Yes”, she said. She’s from Gan Yavneh, came to visit Jerusalem, the City of David, she said. “Why the City of David in particular”, we asked. “Because this is where David was a king, this is a very important location for the Jewish people. It’s just a shame there are Arabs here. But soon all the Arabs will die, God willing, and Jerusalem will be ours alone”. She walked on.

Two minutes went by. An Orthodox family came up the path. The husband, dressed in black, asked Ilan the director: “say, do both Arabs and Jews live in this neighbourhood?” “Both Palestinians and Jews”, Ilan replied, “but the majority is Palestinian”. “That’s temporary”, the Orthodox man allayed his concerns; soon there will be no Arabs left here.

I look at Ilan and Michael. Barely a quarter of an hour had passed since we arrived; we had not interrogated anyone about their attitude to Arabs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or about the future of Jerusalem. We just stood in the middle of the street. Like pylons. The hatred poured on in our direction, like a river to the ocean. Freely, naturally. “Say”, I asked Ilan. “Will we encounter anyone who’ll tell us something positive, something humane, something good about humankind?” “Forget about humane”, Ilan replied. “Give us someone who’ll say: “what nice air we have here, in Jerusalem’”.

Silwan. Remember the name. Soon it will help you forget Hebron.

Following my article in yesterday’s Crikey about John Pilger, the Sydney Peace Prize and the Zionist lobby, the following letter by Justin Templer is published today:

I have always enjoyed Antony Loewenstein, if only as an entertaining foil against the overly influential pro-Israel machine. But in his latest writings Antony’s enthusiasm overwhelms his sense of even-handedness.

First, he attacks apparent attempts by Jewish leaders to heavy the Sydney Peace Foundation over its award of a prize to John Pilger, condemning the intolerance of debate of many Jews. But in the next breath he seems to condone Associate Professor Jake Lynch (director of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies) calling for an academic boycott against Israeli institutions for their complicity in the occupation of Palestine.

Debate has to go both ways, Antony.

The trafficking of organs in China receives an unexpected revelation:

In a rare admission of the extent to which this takes place, China Daily – citing unnamed experts – said on Wednesday that more than 65% of organ donations come from death row prisoners.

China executes more people than any other country. Amnesty International said at least 1,718 people were given the death penalty in 2008.

The drive against Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons program is fraught with leaks and Israeli disinformation.

Inter Press Service outlines the black ops:

Western officials leaked stories to the Associated Press and Reuters last week aimed at pressuring the outgoing chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, to include a summary of intelligence alleging that Iran has been actively pursuing work on nuclear weapons in the IAEA report due out this week.

The aim of the pressure for publication of the document appears to be to discredit the November 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian nuclear programme, which concluded that Iran had ended work on nuclear weapons in 2003.

The story by Reuters United Nations correspondent Louis Charbonneau reported that “several” officials from those states had said the IAEA has “credible information” suggesting that the U.S. intelligence estimate was “incorrect”.

The issue of credibility of the NIE is particularly sensitive right now because the United States, Britain, France and Germany are anticipating tough negotiations with Russia and China on Iran’s nuclear programme in early September.

The two parallel stories by Charbonneau and Associated Press correspondent George Jahn in Vienna, both published Aug. 20, show how news stories based on leaks from officials with a decided agenda, without any serious effort to provide an objective historical text or investigation of their accuracy, can seriously distort an issue.

The following advertisement just came through via the Daniel Pipes email list.

Zionists must be salivating at this trip organised by the Israel Law Center:

A once-in-a-lifetime experience:

THE ULTIMATE MISSION TO ISRAEL

Monday, October 26 – Monday, November 2, 2009

Experience a dynamic and intensive eight day exploration of Israel’s struggle for survival and security in the Middle East today: “a military, humanitarian, historical, judicial, religious, and political reality check.”

Mission Highlights

• Briefings by Mossad officials and commanders of the Shin Bet.
• Briefing by officers in the IDF Intelligence and Operations branches.
• Inside tour of the IAF unit who carries out targeted killings.
• Live exhibition of penetration raids in Arab territory.
• Observe a trial of Hamas terrorists in an IDF military court.
• First hand tours of the Lebanese front-line military positions and the Gaza border check-points.
• Inside tour of the controversial Security Fence and secret intelligence bases.
• Meeting Israel’s Arab agents who infiltrate the terrorist groups and provide real-time intelligence.
• Briefing by Israel’s war heros who saved the country.
• Meetings with senior Cabinet Ministers and other key policymakers.
• Small airplane tour of the Galilee, Jeep rides in the Golan heights, water activities on Lake Kinneret, a cook-out barbecue and a Shabbat enjoying the rich religious and historic wonders of Jerusalem’s Old City.

First Class Accomodation

• Five-star accommodations at the Sheraton Plaza Jerusalem (Glatt Kosher);
• Three meals a day (all Kosher);
• Luxury bus transportation and knowledgeable tour guide;
• A dedicated Executive Communications Center at the hotel;

Personal cell phone for each participant.

Report: American Schools Trail Behind World In Aptitude Of Child Soldiers

Laura Rozen writes in Foreign Policy on the likely moves by the Obama administration towards Middle East “peace”:

Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East peace negotiator for six secretaries of state, said Sunday that the Obama administration is planning to produce, “in late September or October,” either a conference or an announcement of a plan for a peace process — Madrid Plus, as he called it — involving at least three components:

1. A relaunch of Israel-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, as well as a track for resuming formal multilateral relations between Israel and other Arab states
2. An agreement with the Netanyahu government on a settlement freeze that goes further than any other Israeli government has ever gone, and one that would “grandfather in a large number of discreet units and quiet understandings on Jerusalem”
3. The resumption by Arab states — with or without the Saudis, but including the Bahrainis, other Gulf states, Tunisians, and Moroccans — of liaison offices or interest sections with Israel.

“And they are going to wrap the whole thing in an event — a conference or an announcement,” Miller, now with the Woodrow Wilson Center, said…

(Netanyahu’s proposed formula to Mitchell on settlements is that Israel won’t build new Jewish settlements, won’t expropriate land, and won’t expand existing settlements, but will continue with existing projects already underway, the Israeli prime minister told a small gathering in London Monday. Jerusalem is not a settlement, he further said.)

American film-makers Jordan Flaherty and Lily Keber recently visited Gaza and documented the human rights catastrophe there:

Gaza Under Siege from Lily Keber on Vimeo.

My documentary of Gaza is here.

My following article is published in the Middle East newspaper, The National:

Kamal Awaja lost his son in the recent Gaza war. He claims that Israeli soldiers murdered his child in front of his eyes before shooting his wife and himself in the leg, chest and arm. Today he lives with his large family in a tent in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, trying to provide a sense of normality for his children by tending a vegetable patch and constructing a small, plastic swimming pool.

Despite his hardships and antipathy towards the state of Israel, he told me in July that he still believed in a two-state solution and expressed no hatred for Jews in our hour-long conversation. “I don’t like speeches [by Muslim clerics] about killing Jews.”

Life in Gaza remains a daily ordeal for its 1.5 million citizens. The massive destruction of buildings and infrastructure remains largely untouched since the end of the war. Neighbourhoods lie flattened with families sleeping in the rubble of their former homes. I saw babies and young children lying on mattresses under crushed roofs. Engineers are now building clay structures due to the lack of cheap cement because Israel bans the material from being imported.

The western-backed siege had forced virtually every person I met to utilise and support the tunnels on the border with Egypt. Hamas controls this lifeline and imports everything from cars and shampoo to fish and underwear.

Unemployment is close to 80 per cent; I lost count of the number of men who told me their wives begged them to leave home every day. “Fifteen hundred people were killed during the war,” one resident, Nafez al Dabba, said. “But more babies than that have been born since because there is nothing to do.”

People like Mr al Dabba and his son Mohammed confounded my expectations about attitudes in Gaza and indicated a deep desire for some kind of normalised relations with Israel. Mohammed al Dabba, a militant who fires rockets into Israel and treats all Israeli civilians as legitimate targets, said he still supported a two-state solution, the right of return and enforcement of 1967 borders. He said he rejected the “extremism” of Hamas. But, like his father, he had no faith that Israel would stop building settlements. “Now [Israel] is even telling America to get lost.”

Bleak prospects are certainly breeding extremism in the Strip. Mid-August’s showdown in Rafah between Hamas and the al Qa’eda-affiliated group Jund Ansar Allah was only the beginning. I heard from various sources in Gaza, including the BBC Arabic reporter Shahdi al Kashif, that extremist organisations were thriving under the siege imposed by Israel and Egypt. These groups are not yet powerful enough to mount an effective challenge, but they remain frustrated with Hamas’s increasing willingness to engage with the international community.

Hamas has been conducting a vigorous public relations campaign to foster relations with the outside world emphasising pragmatism over militancy, according to a recent New York Times report.

Dr Ahmed Yousef, Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, said his group had made recent gains and now desired a viable two-state solution. He also warned that “resistance” would continue if progress was not made in the near future.

“Hamas is now showing ideological flexibility as a political player”, he said. “The way we speak about our vision of a Palestinian state in 1967 borders is that we’re in power and have to look at the international community, not just the street’s opinion as when we were only a movement.”

This shift in strategy has barely been acknowledged by Israel, the United States or the members of the Quartet.

Hamas’s own growing Islamisation programme runs parallel with its crackdown on extremist groups. Although there in not an official policy, there is a creeping move towards a stricter interpretation of Sharia, as shop-owners are urged to remove female mannequins from windows and women instructed to wear the hijab and loose fitting clothing in public. During my visit, I saw people told not to wear T-shirts with “inflammatory” English words and phrases, including the name of the singer Madonna. When Imad Aqel, an action-packed ideological film that marked Hamas’s debut in the “cinema of resistance”, premiered in Gaza in early August, men and women sat in separate sections of the theatre.

Not everybody appears to be listening however. Hamas recently told Gaza’s most popular hip-hop group, Darg Team, that they couldn’t perform in public, but they were unfazed. They continue to rap about the occupation, politics, religion and right of return.

Darg Team’s manager Fadi Srour said the group would perform in Israel if they had the chance. “Every society has good and bad and we want to reach people directly,” he said. “We’d love to perform in the Knesset.”

Certainly devastation, psychological trauma and anger in Gaza are still very real. The Hamas and Fatah split looms over political discussions, with ideologues on both sides appearing to hold back a national unity government.

It was refreshing, though, to find so many besieged voices still seeking peace after the recent war and shocking hardship. But it remains up to Israel whether that peace will have a chance.

Antony Loewenstein is a freelance journalist and the author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution