Antony Loewenstein

Some pro-Israeli Palestinians (yes, they exist) are accusing the Western media of ignoring human rights abuses committed by Hamas.

Maybe some are but I seriously question the claim that Israeli violence is somehow more news-worthy. Hamas atrocities are regularly slammed in the Western media, as they should be. Take this (though the alleged source, Fatah, needs to be remembered):

Channel 10 and Channel 2 TV on Monday broadcast video that appeared to show Hamas forces killing Gaza rebels believed to be part of an extremist group during an armed confrontation earlier this month.

The video of the Aug. 15 clash shows what appears to be black-clad Hamas militants firing at rebels pinned in a mosque courtyard and mowing them own during a fierce exchange of fire. In two scenes, Hamas militants appeared to be executing captives by gunfire at close range…

The stations said the blurred, jumpy video was taken by cell phone from across the street. Channel 2 said Hamas rival Fatah distributed the video.

Channel 10 also broadcast a recording of what it said was the Hamas military communication channel, ordering Hamas forces to execute everyone.

Who are they kidding?

The Palestinian Authority intends to establish a de-facto state within the next two years, despite failing peace talks, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Tuesday.

“We have decided to be proactive, to expedite the end of the occupation by working very hard to build positive facts on the ground, consistent with having our state emerge as a fact that cannot be ignored,” Fayyad told the Times of London. “This is our agenda, and we want to pursue it doggedly.”

According to Fayyad, the idea would be to “end the occupation, despite the occupation.”

Nice thought, collaborators, but your big boss has other ideas:

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, flatly ruled out any Israeli concessions over the occupation of East Jerusalem yesterday.

After a meeting in London with his British counterpart, Gordon Brown, the Israeli leader made it plain that the question of East Jerusalem would not form part of any future peace talks with the Palestinians.

A relationship between “friends” in the Middle East is predictably contemptible. I remember speaking to countless Egyptians during my visit there in 2007 and hearing support for cutting off any relationship with Israel. This story is therefore unsurprising:

To say that Farouk Hosni doesn’t much like Israel is putting it lightly. According to the Anti-Defamation League, he has called it “inhuman,” and “an aggressive, racist, and arrogant culture, based on robbing other people’s rights and the denial of such rights.” He has accused Jews of “infiltrating” world media. And in May 2008, Hosni outdid even himself, telling the Egyptian parliament that he would “burn right in front of you” any Israeli books found in the country’s libraries.

What’s shocking is not just that Hosni has said these things, but that he is Egypt’s culture minister — and even more scandalous, that he is the likely next head of UNESCO, the arm of the United Nations sworn to defend cultural diversity and international artistic cooperation. Less surprising but also sadly true is that Hosni’s opinions about Israeli culture are par for the course among Egypt’s intelligentsia, for whom 30 years of official peace with the Jewish state, the longest of any Arab country, have done virtually nothing to moderate its rampant Judeophobia. If anything, the opposite might be true.

This affair has sparked protests from prominent intellectuals and politicians in Israel and around the world. And the only reason Hosni even has a shot at the UNESCO job, which he’d be the first Arab to hold, is because, in a major reversal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently lifted his country’s opposition to the Egyptian’s candidacy. How this came to pass remains shrouded in mystery. All that’s known is that on May 11, Netanyahu met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and was convinced not to block the culture minister’s candidacy in return for some unpublicized conditions. A few weeks later, Farouk Hosni penned an apologetic article in Le Monde, retracting his statement on book burning. Soon after that, he pledged that Egypt’s culture ministry would translate literary works by two Israelis, Amos Oz and David Grossman. This seemed like a significant concession because official Egyptian policy mostly bars translation from Hebrew to Arabic — or at least any dealings with Israeli publishers.

But what appeared to be signs of positive change in Egypt’s literary elite were actually just reflections of its deep-seated hostility to Jewish and Israeli culture. Hosni was quickly and widely attacked as “courting Zionist influence” by his fellow members of the Egyptian intelligentsia.

Der Spiegel grills Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor in ways that most Western journalists do not. When Israeli officials lie, call them on it:

SPIEGEL: You blame Palestinian intransigence. Western leaders are, of course, demanding that the Arab side compromise on some issues. But they are also putting pressure on Israel to make concessions, as well, especially when it comes to its aggressive settlement policy in the West Bank.

Meridor: There is no such policy.

SPIEGEL: You don’t regard new settlements in the occupied territories as being a major stumbling block in the peace process?

Meridor: That’s exactly why we aren’t building new settlements. We haven’t approved any.

SPIEGEL: You are sidestepping the issue. US President Barack Obama wouldn’t urge Israel to stop its settlement policies if he didn’t have a reason to do so. He has demanded an immediate freeze to any expansion, but your government has chosen not to comply. Some of your colleagues in Israel’s cabinet are even encouraging the most radical settlers to build new, completely illegal outposts. Just recently, several ministers visited these places and delivered provocative speeches.

Meridor: Ours is a big coalition government with diverging views. What you describe is neither the official policy of Prime Minister Netanyahu nor the official policy of the government.

SPIEGEL: But there is no question that your government is providing financial assistance to the ongoing, provocative expansion of existing settlements. This makes it impossible for the Palestinian leadership to negotiate with you.

Meridor: That’s one of your misperceptions. Olmert made an agreement with the administration of former President George W. Bush according to which the Americans accepted that there would be construction within existing settlements. This has been admitted by the deputy national security adviser of the US, and it was recently published in the Wall Street Journal. That did not stop the Palestinians from negotiating with us over three years.

SPIEGEL: Well, the fact is that there is now a new American president who is urging Israel to make this concession. Why is it so difficult for your government to show some restraint and agree to the building freeze, when this is something that the US, the European Union and the United Nations are demanding?

Meridor: We don’t feel pressured by Obama. We haven’t built any new settlements, so we are fulfilling the understanding. Now there are some ongoing discussions about a compromise.

SPIEGEL: A freeze for the next 12 months?

Meridor: I can’t comment on details at the moment because I’m very involved in these things. But, concerning the Palestinians, we are ready to negotiate. We don’t want to wait. We said that from day one of our government. But the problem with the Palestinians is a serious one. You can’t resolve it unless there is a readiness on their side to accept that, along with a Palestinian state, there is a Jewish state, too.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald offers the best explanation of the kind of country America was during the Bush years (and Barack Obama is seemingly happy to keep the rendition program going to torture-friendly nations):

The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle — all things that we have always condemend as “torture” and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies (“torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .”) — reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.

Jewish-American writer and provocateur Max Blumenthal (and some mutual Israeli friends) are keen to tell the world about Israel’s increasing crack-down on dissent and blatant hatred of Arabs. A reality that remains hidden in much of the West. I posted in July a trailer for their forthcoming documentary by The Daily Nuisance. Now, a full-length trailer has arrived for, “Israel’s Terror Inside“:

The fallout over Israeli academic Neve Gordon’s call for a boycott against his country gathers pace. It’s a position I share with him and we’ve exchanged communication in the last days about this. Israel treats the Palestinians like rabid dogs; the state must be forced to understand that its behaviour is totally unacceptable.

Here’s an online petition to support Gordon and send a message to his institution, Ben Gurion University.

The LA Times, the paper that published Gordon’s original article, runs a news story about the controversy and includes this:

Outrage at the private politics of academic faculty or over academic institutions hosting provocative speakers is common in a country where political passions run high. These incidents could be seen as indications of healthy academic freedom. Earlier this year, left-leaning academics petitioned Tel Aviv University to protest the appointment of Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch as a law-faculty lecturer and demanded the appointment be revoked (it wasn’t). She headed the Israeli military’s international law division during the Gaza operation; the appointment met with opposition on the grounds that she had legitimized controversial strikes against Palestinian civilians during the operation.

Then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert blasted the petitioners as “self-righteous hypocrites.”

So far, only around 100 people have signed an online petition calling for Gordon’s dismissal from his tax-payed position, compared with more than 10,000 who signed one Sunday to boycott Swedish companies, including Ikea, over a separate issue. Now there are calls for boycotting the university. The university says it is “exploring its options concerning Gordon’s actions.”

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, based in Gaza, issues a press release about Israeli terrorism:

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns attacks perpetrated by Israeli forces in the evening of 24 August, and the morning of 25 August 2009. Three Palestinians were killed while a fourth is missing consequent to Israeli gunfire in the northern Gaza Strip and aerial bombardment along the Egyptian border, south of Rafah. .

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 15:15 on Monday, 24 August 2009, Israeli troops positioned to the northwest of Beit Lahia town in the northern Gaza Strip (along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel) fired at two Palestinian civilians from Beit Lahia who got close to the border.  Sa’id ‘Ata al-Hussumi, 16, was instantly killed by two bullets to the chest, and Mas’oud Mohammed Tanboura, 19, was seriously wounded by several bullets to the chest.

Al-Husumi and Tanboura were working in a farm in Beit Lahia town, approximately 350 meters away from the border fence. They attempted to get close to the border to find metal wires to sell them.  They were unarmed.

Israel has illegally prohibited movement near the border fence in the north and in the east of the Gaza Strip. The prohibition applies to within a distance of 300 meters from the border fence inside the Gaza Strip. Accordingly, Palestinian farmers are denied access to their lands. Thus, they are denied their right to cultivate these lands or even to approach them. In many cases, Palestinians come under Israeli gunfire from distances that exceed 300 meters.  PCHR has documented many deaths, including children, as a result of Israeli forces firing at civilians while in the proximity of these areas.

In the early morning of Tuesday, 25 August 2009, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a tunnel near the Salah al-Din Gate in the south of Rafah town on the Palestinian-Egyptian border.  Two brothers, Mansour ‘Ali al-Batniji, 30, and Na’el ‘Ali al-Batniji , 20, were killed, and their other brother, Ibrahim, 35, is missing.  Another 6 Palestinians were also wounded.

Efforts by eager Western journalists and Zionist officials to praise the supposedly positive economic signs in the West Bank are thankfully challenged by the Independent. Less checkpoints have undoubtedly brought more freedom for some Palestinians but here’s the rub:

Critics say Mr Netanyahu’s approach is aimed at evading the broad political concessions needed to really defuse the Israeli-Palestinian powder keg. Nablus residents are themselves cautious, especially given the Jewish settlements that surround the town. Back at his shop, Mr Jarwan says the economic boost alone will not be enough to satisfy his countrymen.

“Buying and selling isn’t everything,” he explains. “We want our own Palestinian country and to get our freedom. If the settlements continue to go on like this, I’m sure there will be another explosion.”

Nablus is known for its pastries, especially knafeh, a sweet made out of goats’ cheese. The Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, was the first to sample the “largest knafeh in the world”, which was prepared to draw attention to the city’s revival and as a celebration of the new sense of security and relative normalcy.

But at the city’s most revered bakery, al-Aksa Sweets, there was a sour after-taste as an unemployed teacher declared after finishing his helping: “The lifting of checkpoints is all theatre, nothing substantial, a show for the Americans and Europe. All of this is for a limited time.”

Another resident stressed that Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that swept municipal and legislative elections in Nablus in 2005 and 2006, is still popular, although that is not visible since its leaders are in jail and its activities suppressed.

At the new Cinema City, the owner’s son, Farouk al-Masri, was also hesitant about painting too rosy a picture. “Things are better,” he says. “There is more security, police are keeping law and order, there are less Israeli incursions and less restrictions at checkpoints. The great number of Palestinians from Israel who are coming have breathed life into the city. We’ve been living in this fear, being isolated and not being able to go in and out but now there is more room to move.” But he added: “It’s all very flimsy. We saw it during the years of the Oslo agreement. There were signs of great things ahead and it all collapsed in the blink of an eye.”

In a further sign that anti-Obama forces in the US are going insane, the following comments were made on Fox News by disabled Marine veteran David Hedrick:

National Socialism is very much what we see today in this administration, it’s a policy almost line for line. It’s the same economic policy, it’s the same political policy. And so if they want to talk about Nazis, they better be careful about that conversation because they might find that the swastika is on their own arm.

During last year’s war between Russia and Georgia, conflicting narratives were flying around the world, something I wrote about in the Guardian.

One year on, it now appears that Western-led, PR companies are leading the way to capture the hearts, minds and wallets of the global elite (via the Guardian):

The war between Moscow and Tbilisi is now largely being waged in the western media. In conflicts gone by, it might have been called propaganda, but it is now carefully co-ordinated public relations, devised by agencies in London, Washington and Brussels. Russia hired Ketchum three years ago, to work on burnishing its image ahead of its chairing of the G8 in St Petersburg, and it has continued to use the New York-based PR agency ever since. The hiring of the company, thought to be the first time Moscow had engaged a western PR firm, was seen by many as a sign of Russia’s changing relationship with the west.

Ketchum has around 50 people working on the account in the G8 countries, and uses its fellow Omnicom agency GPlus in Brussels. In London, GPlus subcontracts to Portland, which is run by Tim Allan, the former No 10 spin doctor, and the BBC’s former Moscow correspondent Angus Roxburgh, although the work is largely implementing US strategy, monitoring media coverage and dealing with the Russian embassy.

During the conflict, the Georgians used a Brussels-based agency, Aspect, run by a British expatriate, James Hunt, but have switched to Project Associates, a loose-knit London firm where David Cracknell, the former political editor of the Sunday Times, works on the account.

So here’s a lesson to journalists everywhere in these tough times. If earning an honest living isn’t possible, you can always move across to “selling democracy” to the highest bidder.