Antony Loewenstein

Mike Huckabee’s recent visit to Israel and Palestine generated predictable headlines. He certainly didn’t disappoint his Fox News constituents.

Helen Freedman, Executive Director of Americans For a Safe Israel, accompanied Huckabee throughout his trip and loved the experience.

Her report includes this revealing section:

Huckabee’s remarks to the press have been well-recorded, but there were some particular comments that stand out in my memory. He insisted that his visit was not meant to be a provocation. He believes that two sovereign nations cannot control the same piece of territory, and that though the PA deserves to have a state, “it can’t be in Israel.” He affirms the unique relationship between the U.S. and Israel which he describes as “organic,” with both having  experienced the same struggle and victory. He also spoke about his experiences growing up in the deep South with segregated schools, which makes him very sensitive to issues of discrimination and prejudice.

When asked about the “occupation,” Mike Huckabee responded brilliantly. He described Israel’s government as one of  “accommodation, not occupation.” He spoke about Israel’s efforts to bring all types of services to the Arab communities such as schools, infra-structure development, hospitals, and welfare payments.

The idea that Huckabee felt deeply about American apartheid and refuses to acknowledge that what Israel is doing is equally appalling displays profound ignorance and delusion.

Only mad Jews see Huckabee as an ally.

The following story contains little concrete information but I heard during my time in Gaza that Palestinian civilians living near the border with Israel were routinely shot and attacked by Israeli troops:

One Palestinian was killed and another wounded on Monday evening by Israeli soldiers’ gunfire in northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics and witnesses said.

Gaza emergency chief Mo’aweya Hassanein said that the Israeli army informed the Palestinian side that one Palestinian was shot dead and another was moderately injured near the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia.

Witnesses said that two Gaza young men approached an area in al-Atatra neighborhood north of the town, not far from the border between northern Gaza Strip and Israel, adding that Israeli soldiers stationed there opened fire at them.

Akiva Eldar writes in Haaretz of where the real power lies in Israel:

Rather than demand an apology, the Israeli peace camp needs to send Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon a large bouquet of flowers. The videotaped appearance of the vice premier before a group of Feiglinites last week is worth its weight in gold. His statements are straight-from-the-source, first-hand proof of the decisive role the senior military echelon has played in thwarting the peace process.

When he was chief of the General Staff, Ya’alon bragged of how he would often say in closed forums that, “every time the politicians bring us the dove of peace, we as an army need to clean up after it.” Not only did Ya’alon acknowledge that while serving as the top military official in the country, he had denigrated elected officials in the presence of other men in uniform, but he also admitted that as one who had final say on all matters relating to the biggest and most powerful organization in the country, he “cleaned up” the bird droppings of peace.

Ya’alon thus confirms the chilling description offered by Prof. Shlomo Ben-Ami of how the Israel Defense Forces’ top brass helped stoke the fires in the territories. In his book “Hazit lelo oref” (“A Front Without a Rearguard”), the man who served as foreign minister and, by extension, was a member of the security cabinet during the outbreak of the second intifada, recalled how then-minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who spearheaded efforts to reach a cease-fire, was left helpless and at the mercy of the policies implemented by the army’s senior commanders.

Ben-Ami wrote of how goods that were specifically earmarked for the Palestinian population were held up at checkpoints; how bulldozers tore up greenhouses, gardens and orchards under the pretext of security; and how Palestinian rage mounted until it reached an unprecedented boiling point. He stated that the policy of collective punishment and the imposition of economic hardships – which did nothing to serve the nonmilitary echelon’s efforts to forge a cease-fire – were the courses of action dictated by the military echelon, which at that point in time totally ignored the directives and aims of the political leadership.

Ya’alon would later label that policy as one that would be “seared into the minds” of the Palestinians.

I investigated in Gaza the growing Islamisation of the Strip. It continues:

Female students in the Gaza Strip will be required to wear head coverings and full-length robes beginning this school year, the Hamas rules of the Gaza Strip announced on Monday.

According to the new regulations, any female student that does not attend class in the proper attire will be sent home.

The ministry also has ruled that male teachers cannot teach in girls’ schools and women are not allowed to teach at boys’ schools.

Step by step, global public opinion is realising that direct action is the only way to isolate Israel and highlight its crimes:

The British Fire Brigades Union (FBU), which represents 85% of firefighters and support staff in Britain, plans to move motions at the Trade Union Congress’s (TUC) annual congress in September for the British trade union to work to increase Israel’s international isolation.

The FBU’s motions reflect growing support for the Palestinian struggle among unions internationally, resulting in Israel and its supporters in the labour movement becoming increasingly isolated.

There have been countless allegations of torture and abuse at the hands of the Iranian regime since the disputed election in June.

Now testimonies of rape and torture are being spread online. Here’s one:

They took us with tens of others to Kahrizak camp. At least in that room that I were held there were another 200 people, all were injured beaten by batons. you could hear people crying everywhere….the plaincloth guards came into room…beat whom they could. they did for half an hour…after that they put a flash light in our faces and say if you make a noise with put these batons in your asses….to prevent us dying of hunger, everyday they give us a bag of leftover food.

Below is a former political prisoner recounting the experience of being imprisoned, tortured and raped in an Iranian prison in the 1980s. She was only 17 years old at the time and did not know why she had been arrested. More than 90,000 people have watched her testimony on YouTube.

The following letter appears in this week’s Australian Jewish News:

Dr Colin Rubenstein and others, who made a fuss about Hanan Ashrawi receiving the [Sydney Peace Prize] honour several years ago, have been truly vindicated [John Pilger won this year.] Maybe next year they will give the prize to Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, or maybe even Antony Loewenstein, for their contributions to world peace.

Henry Herzog
St Kilda East, Vic

This is highly disappointing because I really want to be compared to Hitler and Osama Bin Laden and not be an afterthought, at best.

Richard Brody writes in the New Yorker about Quentin Tarantino’s revenge fantasy film:

Daniel Mendelsohn’s book “The Lost” is already, justifiably, one of the classics of Holocaust literature. (I say this with a sort of fraternal pride; we’ve known each other since the Ford Administration.) In it, he describes crimes perpetrated by Nazis and their collaborators which must have caused his hand and soul to tremble as he wrote of them. That’s why I don’t agree with him when, writing in Newsweek, he criticizes Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” for “turning Jews into Nazis.” There’s nothing in the film that suggests that the Basterds or Shoshanna, the Jewish proprietor of a movie theatre who takes her own action against the German high command, would slaughter German children, would tear German fetuses from the womb, would, in short, seek to exterminate the entire German people. And this desire to exterminate an entire people—plus the careful marshalling of vast resources to do so—is the Nazis’ distinctive, odious mark on history; Tarantino’s Jewish characters have no such desire or intention.

Israel’s increasingly draconian restrictions on Palestinians (and others) entering Israel and the occupied territories receives coverage in Time magazine:

When Canadian businessman Sam Ismail brought his wife and five children to visit his brother’s family in Ramallah last week, he planned to stay for 10 days and tour both Israel and the Palestinian territories. They had flown into Amman, crossed over to the West Bank. Knowing that Palestinian Authority license plates are banned in Israel, Ismail reserved a car at an Israeli rental company. But, when he got to Israeli border control, he was shocked to discover that his Canadian passport was stamped “Palestinian Authority Only.” “Last time they came, they visited Acre, Haifa, Jerusalem — the whole country,” Ismail’s brother Nedal, who lives in the West Bank, told TIME. “This time they packed up after 96 hours and spent the extra week in Jordan instead.”

Ismail had fallen afoul of an Israeli border policy, quietly begun in June, that bars foreigners who say they are visiting the Palestinian Authority from entering Israel. Israel says the visa helps to exclude visitors who threaten security. According to Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad, the procedure is based on an unpublished 2006 decision by the Israeli interior and defense ministers that “any foreign national who wants to enter the Palestinian Authority must have a permit issued by the army, and entry is permitted only into PA territory.” (Read a story about Mike Huckabee’s visit to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.)

Palestinians say it violates international law and the promise of unhindered movement for foreign travelers under the 1995 Oslo II Accords. “Israel wishes to strictly regulate travel of visitors who come to the country, especially those curious to see the West Bank,” says Toufic Haddad, a Palestinian-American activist. (Read about Ezra Nawi, the Israeli activist jailed for aiding Arabs.)

The policy has affected U.S. citizens. This week, Betty Najjab, an American from Centreville, Virginia and the widow of a Palestinian, was given one of the new visa stamps after visiting in-laws in Jordan. She told TIME she didn’t know if she would be able to fly home: the return leg of her ticket departs from Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport. “We have made it quite known to the Israeli Government… that we expect all American citizens to be treated the same regardless of their national origin,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters this week. “These kinds of restrictions we consider unacceptable.”

At what point will Israel realise that such issues are simply turning it even further into an international pariah?

Oh, the irony. This would be a wonderful idea, if the Islamic Republic didn’t have a few of its own gross human rights abuses to investigate:

A majority of Iranian lawmakers have approved a bill that will fund a program intended to expose “breaches of human rights” in the US.

Following Israeli academic Neve Gordon’s call in the LA Times for a boycott of Israel, some American Jews have taken the bait. As usual. Magnes Zionist explains:

Uri Davis, an Israeli-Palestinian Jew with a long history of challenging Israeli apartheid in Palestine, recently made a very unique record: the first Israeli Jew to be elected to Fatah. The Observer reports today:

What does he hope to achieve as a Palestinian Hebrew who is a full member of the Revolutionary Council?

His core message, he explains, is “to suggest” to his new colleagues that there is nothing to fear in recognising the notion of a Jewish state. “The correct response is that we will not recognise an Israel defined by political Zionism.” And perhaps just as importantly, Davis believes that Fatah can expand its role from representing only Palestinian Arabs to representing all of those who oppose “settler-colonialism”.

“It cannot win the struggle for equality that it has waged for so long as long as it remains only representative of Palestinians. To win the moral [high ground] it has to project itself as a democratic alternative for all. That is the message I first delivered and that I have persevered with and has led to my election to the Revolutionary Council after 25 years.” It seems unlikely that condemnations on Israeli websites will prevent Uri Davis from giving up on his unique mission now.

Davis has had a fascinating life. Read the whole article. Although the idea of joining the fundamentally corrupt and co-opted Fatah is highly questionable, I deeply admire his principles across a rich six decades on this planet.