Antony Loewenstein

Israel calls a partial settlement halt – rightly rejected by the Palestinians and only partially praised by J Street, both certainly not helped by the fact that East Jerusalem is excluded from the announcement – and apartheid continues:

The human rights organization Yesh Din says not one of the 69 complaints filed during the past four years on damage to Palestinians’ trees in the West Bank has resulted in an indictment. The organization released a report on the matter Tuesday and makes specific reference to damage caused to olive groves, central to the livelihood of Palestinian villagers.

The olive harvest season is coming to an end in most parts of the West Bank this week, with the exception of those areas at higher elevations. Attacks targeting trees harvested by Palestinians – olive trees in particular, but also almond, fig, lemon and others – has been on the rise in recent years.

The Financial Times is one of the strongest global papers on the Middle East conflict. Less spin, more truth telling.

Key writer David Gardiner thinks that Barack Obama still has a few cards up his sleeve (this presumes, of course, that Washington actually has any desire to truly pressure Israel and that ain’t clear):

Israelis have a record of turning against leaders who place the vital US alliance in jeopardy: Menachem Begin learnt this, Yitzhak Shamir learnt this and so, to a limited extent, did Mr Netanyahu, when he was voted out of office in 1999.

Vital to that alliance is US support in the UN Security Council, where it has cast 29 vetoes to shield Israel from condemnation for its actions in the occupied territories. Imagine the signal the US would send were it even to abstain. Or, better still, if the US and its allies took a blueprint for a two-state solution – the outlines of which have long been clear – to the council and voted it through. This game is not over yet.

Is there anywhere on the planet that Google doesn’t exist?

It spread across the web like a wildfire: Google chief Eric Schmidt visited Baghdad today. Yes, just like a statesman. He attended a ceremony with the US Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, at Iraq’s national museum, where he announced that the search giant would post photographs of the museum’s ancient treasures on the net early next year.

The museum – which hosts artefacts from Babylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian cultures – hit the headlines when it was looted in April 2003 during the Iraq war. Its director, Amira Edan, estimates that only around 5,000 of the 15,000 artefacts taken have been recovered so far.

The US has been criticised for not using troops to protect the museum and other cultural institutions with their troops. Now Google has taken more than 14,000 pictures of the treasures to be put online. That is good. Due to security concerns the artefacts of the cradle of civilisation have been largely closed to the public, even after the museum opened earlier this year. But it leaves a strange feeling as well, with private company Google once again serving a more public interest.

Israeli historian Benny Morris, a man with a serious dislike of Arabs and Iranians, yesterday unloaded in the UK Guardian and urged nothing less than a military strike against the Islamic Republic.

Once again, a leading Zionist voice defines his ideology as nothing other than violence and devastation:

The talk in Israel, explicit and open – including in the country’s leading daily, Haaretz, last week – is about a war in the coming spring or summer. The skies will have cleared for air operations, Israel’s missile shields against short- and medium-range rockets will at least be partly operational, and the international community, led by President Obama, will palpably have failed to stymie Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. And the Iranians will be that much closer to a bomb.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, will then have to decide if Israel can live with a nuclear Iran and rely on deterrence. But if they judge the risk of a nuclear assault on Israel too great, Israel’s military will have to do what it can to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, despite the likely devastating repercussions – regional and global.

These will probably include massive rocketing of Israel’s cities and military bases by the Iranians and Hezbollah (from Lebanon), and possibly by Hamas (from Gaza). This could trigger land wars in Lebanon and Gaza as well as a protracted long-range war with Iran. It could see terrorism by Iranian agents against Israeli (and Jewish) targets around the world; a steep increase in world oil prices, which will rebound politically against Israel; and Iranian action against American targets in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf. More generally, Islamist terrorism against western targets could only grow.

But it is not only Israel’s leaders who will have to decide. So will Obama, a man who has, in the international arena, shown a proclivity for indecision (except when it comes to Israeli settlements in the West Bank). Will he give the Israelis a green light (and perhaps some additional equipment they have been seeking to facilitate a strike) and a right-of-passage corridor over Iraq for their aircraft? Or will he acquiesce in putting atomic weaponry in the mullahs’ hands?

It is clear – and should be by then to all but the most supine appeasers – that the diplomatic approach is going nowhere, with the Iranians conning and stonewalling and dragging their feet, all the while enriching more uranium.

The latest on Blackwater, the US military contractor, is fascinating and is once again discovered by Jeremy Scahill:

In an explosive new article in The Nation magazine, investigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill reveals the private military firm Blackwater is part of a covert program in Pakistan that includes planning the assassination and kidnapping of Taliban and Al-Qaeda suspects. Blackwater is also said to be involved in a previously undisclosed U.S. military drone campaign that has killed scores of people inside Pakistan. The article says the program has become so secretive that top Obama administration and military officials have likely been unaware of its existence.

I recently attended the wonderful Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia. Here’s a good news story about it, published in the South China Morning Post on 1 November:

With its old craft culture, mildly bohemian cafes and array of misty hilltop vistas, Ubud in Bali seems to have grown almost to fit its twin industries of art and tourism; travelers here have been feeling the pull of poetry, paint and drama for decades. But where this reputation had always been more of a well kept secret or a nice surprise, it is now official: bottled, capped and priced for the greater good each October, as the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. Now for four days every autumn the town’s venues – its museums, restaurants, bars and yoga studios – become host to professional wordsmiths and their fans as they grapple with literary themes over thick Bali-grown coffee. Sound good? Well it is, mostly.

As the brainchild of an Australian local business owner and her Indonesian husband, the festival was born to regenerate tourism after the bombings, and six years on is doing so, while becoming a who’s who of Asian (and Pacific) literati: this year saw Pakistani journalists and novelists Mohammed Hanif and Fatima Bhutto, India’s Vikas Swarup, who wrote Q&A (better known by its screen title, Slumdog Millionaire), and Singapore’s Shamini Flint, author of the irreverent Inspector Singh Investigates series, among nearly 100 other poets, journalists and literary critics from across the continent and beyond. It also bagged itself a Nobel Laureate; Nigerian novelist and playwright Wole Soyinka.

To a backdrop of free events – a couple of play readings, a poetry slam night and book launches – day pass holders were offered a tight schedule of writer’s panels, many of them lightly academic and vaguely instructional. In a seminar called ‘Make ‘em Laugh’, un-comically early on a Sunday morning, British-Kashmiri novelist Hari Kunzru observed that good humour writing follows the pace of a good joke; it’s all about a well drawn out punch line. Black Canadian writer Dany Laferriere, author of How To Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired (and whose twelfth novel gave rise to the 2005 movie, Heading South), explained the pitfalls of choosing a scandalous book title: very few talk about your content. Yet he is unrepentant and his latest book will be called I am a Japanese Writer, despite the best efforts of the Japanese consulate to make him change his mind (due to concerns, he says, that he’ll obliterate real Japanese writers on Google).

With writers like Bhutto and Soyinka in town, the content was also often political. Though most of the festival-goers were from Australia the panel perspectives were gratifyingly Asian, and African. US President Barack Obama received a drubbing in a panel called Writing in the New World; Obama and Dissent, with Bhutto (niece of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto) reminding writers of their responsibility to stay critical. She was joined by Antony Loewenstein, an Australian writer whose book My Israel Question robustly tells fellows Jews that ‘it’s time to stop living like its 1948’. Loewenstein also appeared on a panel on blogging, alongside Singaporean gay activist and writer Ng Yi-Sheng (lastboy.blogspot.com) and Aceh-based writer Doel CP Allisah (doelcpallisah.blogspot.com).

Soyinka, who spent nearly two years in solitary confinement for his activism and first wrote his poems there on toilet paper, spoke at length on the concept of forgiveness. As strident and satirical as his works tend to be, he noted that writing is about understanding the choices people make to survive, and that how, although atrocities are and will always be ‘part and parcel of our very existence’, literature can play a part in reconciliation.

Many of the writers present have explored critical Asian themes in their novels; Mohammed Hanif, a BBC reporter and one-time Pakistani air force recruit, has written the mostly comic A Case of Exploding Mangos about the life and times of Zia–ul-Haq, a dictator who put Pakistan on a massive ‘Islamisation’ drive that it struggles with today. Former lawyer Shamini Flint has had her Inspector Singh investigating a case of marital injustice in Malaysia, caught between its Shariah law and the penal code, and says that Singh will next be sent to Cambodia to uncover a mystery with a Khmer Rouge undertow. Vikas Swarup, who reportedly wrote Q&A in two months while his family were away for the summer (to many a fellow panelist’s annoyance) has followed it up with murder-mystery Six Suspects, another look at Indian caste and corruption.

However possibly the greatest value held by the festival was its introduction to visiting readers of good under-exposed Indonesian writing, and its political backdrop. A number of the panels were bi-lingual and the festival organizers worked closely with Indonesian critics and journalists to join emerging local writers with old hands, like firebrand Seno Gumira Ajidarma, known for his work on East Timor, and Cok Sawitri, an outspoken lesbian poet, novelist and playwright.

Many of them lamented the reluctance of Indonesians still, to look into the brutality of General Suharto’s three-decade New Order regime, in which books were burned, activists were ‘disappeared’ and secret agents mingled in the hallways of universities. They also complained about the lack of accurate records of the time. “It makes it very hard to get the feelings and experiences of ordinary people back then” said critic Nurhady Sirimok. “We writers have to really use our imagination to tell history from the bottom up.”
Most Indonesians at the festival said that they feel a little undernourished, but free to write. But others, who still vividly recall the brutality of ’98 and before, spoke of self censorship and of covert intimidation by state agents. As one academic pointed out, Bali newspapers were full that week of the murder of local journalist A.A. Narendra Prabangsa, who was abducted and killed this year while reporting on corruption connected to a regent.

Yet the festival prompted some liberal outpourings. Well-heeled literary lunchers at the Alila Ubud saw the rousing performance in Bahasa by Cok Sawitri of her short story Womb, which is about women sterilizing themselves as an act of political protest. At another such event author Laksmi Pamuntjak read from her upcoming novel The Blue Widow, which translates characters from Hindu myth into the New Order years – her warrior becomes a dissident medical student – and puts them on Buru island, a notorious tropical gulag for political prisoners.

This gulag is where one of Indonesia’s most celebrated dissident writers, the late Pramoedya Ananta Toer (who many believe was Asia’s best contender for a Nobel), wrote his epic ‘Buru quartet’ about the oppressive cocktail of Javanese feudalism, Dutch colonialism, militarism and communism that makes up Indonesia’s history. At a lunch Sirimok described the covert operation it once took just to get a ‘Pram’ novel, and of the bittersweet feeling he gets now seeing the books, on the shelves but passed over by young Indonesians who prefer modern tales of horror and romance.

As such, despite some glitches and the feeling of it having sprawled a little large for its organisers, Ubud’s lit fest injected as much vital discussion into the town as it did tourist dollars. “Indonesia is not used to a society full of critics,” Sirimok commented, “and when you don’t read critics what can you learn from? We need a culture of polyphonic voices.” This much has been ensured.

The creeping acceptance globally that a targeted campaign against apartheid Israel is justified arrives in Australia (or at least a public discussion). Here’s a story from last night’s ABC Radio PM program:

MARK COLVIN: The opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank has evolved a new tactic — a mounting campaign against settlement companies and products.

There’s been a rise in anti-Israeli sentiment among consumer, union and activist groups, particularly in Europe.

Now, Europe’s highest court is considering a recommendation to strip all tariff concessions from products made in West Bank settlements.

And the Dutch Government is cracking down on settlement firms that market their products as “made in Israel”.

Middle East Correspondent Anne Barker filed this report.

ANNE BARKER: Ahava is the Hebrew word for “love” but it’s also one of Israel’s most recognisable brand names.

Its skin and beauty products come from the mineral rich mud of the Dead Sea.

AHAVA COMMERCIAL EXCERPT: One of the most amazing secrets of the universe is hidden 400 metres below sea level.

ANNE BARKER: An international advertising campaign has helped Ahava carve a lucrative niche in the European market, under a “Made in Israel” label.

But in reality Ahava’s products are manufactured at Mitzpe Shalem, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Under international law it’s occupied Palestinian territory, and Israel is illegally exploiting the natural resource for its own profit.

(protesters: “Don’t buy Ahava, don’t buy Ahava”)

ANNE BARKER: Protesters recently staged demonstrations against Ahava shops and cosmetics, in Europe and Washington. Ahava’s response is the Dead Sea and its treasures are international and don’t belong to one nation.

But now the Dutch Government has ordered an investigation to confirm whether or not Ahava’s products are indeed made on occupied land.

ADAM KELLER: We know for sure that they are located in the north west shore of the Dead Sea, which is occupied by Israel since ’67.

ANNE BARKER: Adam Keller represents Gush Shalom, a pro-peace organisation that campaigns against Jewish settlements.

He wants other European authorities to follow the Dutch lead and crack down on settlement companies that falsely claim their goods are from Israel.

This one line in a Reuters story says it all:

[Mahmoud] Abbas, for his part, holds sway in the occupied West Bank, his administration largely propped up by Israel.

The “model” for Palestinian independence, indeed.

Nefesh B’Nefesh is an American/Israeli organisation designed to bring Jews to settle in Israel proper and the Palestinian territories, illegal under international law.

It is perhaps no wonder, therefore, that the group has shot this cheesy video to promote themselves (along with a cringe-worthy JTA introduction.)

I guess writing about living on Palestinian land isn’t quite as sexy:

Remember when you first got the Zionist bug back in grade school, and you envisioned Israelis walking around Jerusalem, breaking into spontaneous song and cheesy dancing.

Don’t listen to those jaded Israelis or post-Zionist types who say it isn’t true.

If Nefesh B’Nefesh brings enough American Jews to Israel, any dream is possible (I always imagined it being Hallelujah, but this will do) …

From Jewish Voice for Peace:

I was appalled when, at a recent Jewish event, a speaker shared the ‘good news’ that Israeli Arabs don’t have as many children as they did in the past.

I hear sentiments like this all too often–from leaders in the Jewish community, from media and, even more upsetting, from friends and family. What about you? And when you hear it, how do you respond? When someone around you says something racist, ignorant, or outrageous, what do you do?

I admit that I don’t always know how to respond when prejudices are presented as facts. And I don’t always know how to react to the harsh criticism that inevitably comes after I voice support of peace and human rights in person or online.

At Jewish Voice for Peace we often ask ourselves about how to have these difficult conversations in ways that educate and bridge gaps rather than spark anger. As we head into the holiday season, many of us will be gathering with friends and family for meals, parties, and for conversation. Will Palestine and Israel come up around your holiday table? And if it does-how will you respond?

Please take a couple of minutes to let us know your thoughts. Your answers will help us understand what our community of supporters needs most from Jewish Voice for Peace, and will shape how we think about the coming year. And, of course, we’ll share the results.

Thank you for seeking peace, and as always, thank you for standing with us.

Sydney Levy
Jewish Voice for Peace

The issue of targeted boycotts against Israel are growing by the day (see here and here).

Muzzlewatch documents just the latest sign of panic within the Zionist establishment in the US. No answer to Zionist expansion and racist policies in Israel? Not to worry, just retreat into a bubble and hope the occupation magically disappears and young Jews are attracted to Israel because they’re, well, Jewish. Fat chance:

Bottom line: the Federation [in California] may be able to control what groups can go in and out of the campus Hillel, but they can’t stop people from meeting and debating and reading and visiting the West Bank, from talking to progressive Israelis and Palestinians, from thinking for themselves.

It is precisely this shutting down of doors, without any optional path for ending the occupation, which leads to more and more joining the BDS movement.

As a member on the advisory board of the UK-based Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, we release globally today the following statement:

It is just over 10 weeks since we launched the Campaign. In that time, pressure on the Sri Lanka Government (GoSL) – from this Campaign and from many other directions – has helped to keep alive the issue of the Tamil internees (a more accurate phrase than “internally displaced persons”). It has led to modest steps by the GoSL to release some of those held, and now the announcement by the President’s brother, Mr. Basil Rajapaksa, that those held in the special internment camps “will be allowed out for short periods from next month” (BBC News, 21 November).

We welcome the November 21 announcement, but consider that it does not go nearly far enough. Why, six months after the end of the civil war, should people not charged with any crime be allowed out only “for a day or two at a time?”(BBC News, 21 November) They should be freed, pure and simple.

More important, perhaps, is Mr. Rajapaksa’s reiteration of the government’s recent pledge to resettle those displaced by the end of January. We hope that this pledge, unlike earlier promises, will be fulfilled, and we urge the international community to maintain and indeed to step up its pressure to that end. We remind the international community that the government had originally promised resettlement of all people in the camps within 180 days of the date of the promise, which should have been this week. The end of January will be a full two months after the original promised date.

To convince the world that this time it is serious, the GoSL should be asked to put in place and make known a detailed plan for meeting its own revised deadline in order to ensure that people are “resettled” in places of their own choosing, with full respect for their dignity and basic human rights, which has not been the case with those ‘released’ from the camps up to now (see below). It is vital that UN agencies and international NGOs be given full access to the areas where resettlement takes place, and also to the internment camps as long as people are still being held there.

It should also be noted that the November 21 announcement affects only the civilian detainees who have not been detained as Tamil Tiger (LTTE) suspects. In addition to these, some 12,000 people alleged or suspected to have fought with, or otherwise been associated with, the LTTE are being held in separate camps. Given the long-standing, well-known and well-documented capacity and willingness of Sri Lankan authorities to engage in various forms of mistreatment of prisoners, including torture, during detention and ensuing interrogations, there is every reason to be worried whether basic human rights, as well as basic norms of humane treatment under international humanitarian law, are being respected. The International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as international human rights monitors, must be given immediate and ongoing access to these detainees.

The best estimate of the current situation is that:

- Between 135,000 and 150,000 people are still imprisoned in the main internment camps. Independent observers have very restricted access, so it is not known how the monsoon has affected the health and living conditions of the internees.

- A detailed and careful report from a coalition of NGOs and INGOs, the Colombo-based Internally Displaced Persons Protection Working Group (IDP PWG), makes it clear that the release of approximately 100,000 from the main internment camps does not mean these persons have returned to their homes or even home communities. Some remain in closed transit camps; some are in various kinds of institutions; some are with host families; some are in war-damaged structures that effectively serve as smaller, secondary camps. In general, there is a lack of transport and infrastructure support services and, according to credible reports, many of these still-displaced persons do not enjoy freedom of movement.

The IDP PWG states, by way of overall assessment: “There is a great degree of confusion as to whether IDPs who have been moved have actually returned or remain in displacement, particularly due to the lack of information to humanitarian actors on the current location of ‘releases’ and ‘returnees.’ The lack of information and clarity about the current categories of movements means the potential to monitor protection issues and promote durable solutions to displacement is seriously weakened. Moreover, it is difficult for humanitarian agencies and other actors to assess the type of assistance required.” The available evidence indicates that the GoSL is either ignoring or inconsistently applying the basic norms in the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

- Approximately 12,000 suspected LTTE combatants are still being held and interrogated (or worse) with no external scrutiny.

These actions are all in violation of Sri Lanka’s obligations under a number of rules of international humanitarian law, including common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which requires it to prevent inhumane, degrading, or humiliating treatment. Also being violated are a range of obligations under customary international human rights law and customary international humanitarian law including those pertaining to prolonged arbitrary detention, freedom of movement, core social and economic rights (such as those relating to housing, nutrition, and health), and, in the case of the suspected LTTE combatants, the prevention of torture, extra-judicial executions and other violence (including sexual) to the person.

The GoSL’s explanation of why progress is so slow has not been convincing, especially when it is set against their original target of releasing everyone by the end of the year. For example, it has been known for a very long time that areas in the North and East of the island are heavily mined and thus the recent focus on demining is welcome but far too late. Moreover, the reasoning that some areas are safe for returnees but not safe for NGOs is hard to fathom.

More worryingly, we have heard reports that ‘deTamilisation’ is being carried out in the areas to which they should be returning. The GoSL must allow independent observers and journalists to check the claim made recently in the Sri Lankan parliament by Suresh Premachandran, one of the elected representatives of the Tamil community, that buildings of cultural importance to Tamils which have been demolished in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts are being replaced with large military bases, Buddhist temples and administration buildings. As the media have been denied access to these areas and in view of satellite reports of drastic cleaning up operations, one can only assume the GoSL has something to hide.

We conclude that the GoSL is trying to do just enough to satisfy the international community, in order to retain its privileged (“GSP+”) access to the EU market, gain further IMF funding and avoid further pressure. We also conclude that the actions of the GoSL bear no relation to the various statements made by President Rajapaksa following the end of hostilities, in which he promised to act with compassion, move forward in a spirit of reconciliation, and ensure that all Sri Lankans, including of course the Tamil population, can live ‘in safety without fear and suspicion” (Parliamentary address, May 19, 2009). Instead we note that a growing number of informed commentators – most recently the Director of the Asian Human Rights Commission, himself a Sinhalese – describe the country as a de facto dictatorship.

The reality today is that the most basic rights, not only of those still detained in the camps but of the Tamil population as a whole, are being brushed aside. To continue to accept this is to accept a renewed wave of Tamil emigration and to ensure further conflict in the future.

We therefore call on:
- The GoSL to allow international human rights observers into all parts of all camps, as well as the areas where people are being resettled.

- The GoSL to allow those still in the camps full free movement in and out whilst permanent solutions are developed, and to allow all NGOs, local and international, unhindered access to these innocent people who, after enduring months of trauma, need much physical and psycho-social healthcare.

- The GoSL to put in place and make known a detailed plan for meeting its revised end-of-January deadline for closing the main camps, in order to ensure that people are “resettled” in places of their own choosing, with full respect for their dignity and basic human rights.

- The GoSL and the UN to abide, rigorously and consistently, by the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement in order to promote return to people’s home areas and homes in safety and dignity.

- The UN Secretary General (UNSG), and his representatives, to continue to press for all those held in camps to be treated in line with international standards, to correct unexplained breaks with normal practice (e.g. replacement of UN agencies with other agencies such as the International Organization for Migration) and, in particular, to make ICRC access to all detention centres a non-negotiable demand.

- Given the need for tight coordination of all UN agencies and for pressure to be sustained on a daily basis, we again call on the UN Secretary-General to appoint – with all urgency – a Special Envoy for Sri Lanka.

- The Government of India to use its forthcoming talks with the GoSL to express much stronger concern about the conditions in the camps, the failure to respect international standards and the likelihood of further unrest.

- All donor countries, all those countries that supported the GoSL at the UN Human Rights Council in May 2009, and members of the Commonwealth to express these same concerns.

In addition, we congratulate Baroness Ashton on her appointment as High Representative of the European Union for Foreign and Security Policy, and urge her to stand by her recommendation, made in her previous capacity as Trade Commissioner, that Sri Lanka’s “GSP+” status should not be renewed so long as the GoSL has not conformed to the agreed conditions, especially those concerning human rights. We further call on all EU member states and the European Commission to stand firm on these conditions, and to evaluate any deal with the GoSL in terms of how it improves the basic human rights of those who are illegally detained.

In years to come, we will not be able to say that we did not know what was happening. Or that it was nothing to do with us. Now that the fighting has stopped, people who have lived through so much violence and lost so much deserve at the least to be able to go home, resettle in their communities and play their part in building a new and peaceful Sri Lanka. As well, the right not to be tortured, as well as other core human rights, apply to all human beings, regardless of their proven or suspected past conduct; as such, the situation of the 12,000 suspected LTTE detainees cannot be ignored and their conditions of detention must be rigorously monitored.