Antony Loewenstein

Andrew Sullivan wades through Sarah Palin’s manifesto and concludes the following message:

The book is emblematic of late degenerate Republicanism, which is based not on actual policies, but on slogans now so exhausted by over-use they retain no real meaning: free enterprise is great, God loves us all, America is fabulous, foreigners are suspect, we need to be tough, we can’t dither, we must always cut taxes, government is bad, liberals are socialists, the media hates you, etc etc.

Resistance will continue:

Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal vows of planning a new political initiative that would discard vain negotiations and instead adopt resistance to redress Palestinian rights.

“Not much hope could be upheld for a future Palestinian state as long as the Zionist occupation persists; Israel pushes ahead with plans to build more homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem Al-Quds as well as the West Bank; and Palestinians are shorn of the right to free decision-making,” Meshaal told al-Jazeera TV network on Wednesday.

Norman Finkelstein was interviewed on Danish TV this week and he urged once again for the international community to simply enforce international law against Israel. This is not complex, merely an inability of the major powers to see Israel as a normal nation:

Hamas is not obliged under international law to accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel.

If you go back for example 1947 Gandhi said he’ll accept the reality of Pakistan, but he would never accept the legitimacy of the state of Pakistan.

Hamas is not expected to be held to a higher level of diplomacy than Gandhi..

Gandhi said: ‘Pakistan is a reality which I’m forced to accept, but I don’t accept it as legitimate.’ And that’s the same position of Hamas. They said we’ll solve the conflict on the June ’67 border:

Yitzhak Laor in Haaretz:

The threats uttered against a possible Palestinian declaration of independence by our leaders Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and Ehud Barak let the Israeli sanctimony (usually tedious and belabored) drop to the floor for a moment, like a woman’s slip. It exposed the ugly skeleton of force that gives only us freedom of speech – we’re permitted, you’re forbidden. We are allowed to reiterate Israel’s Declaration of Independence over and over. You are not allowed to do so with yours.

The simplest explanation for our privileges, and one that is becoming increasingly significant, is the religious one – the land is ours, from God, not theirs, so we’re allowed to declare independence or harm civilians. The simplest explanation offered by secular people of those privileges is force – we’re strong. These two explanations are the axis of consensus. In the name of this consensus, the military rabbis and officers in the Israel Defense Forces, equipped with equal amounts of hysteria, set out to incite the units on their way to kill in Gaza.

And the left? In this spiritual context no left – which can only exist in a discourse of equality – can have air to breathe. So when the ethos “shut your mouth because we’ll punish you” rules everywhere, Peace Now was bound to disappear and be reduced to paid ads in the newspaper, with no foot soldiers. Meretz was bound to evaporate, and Labor’s doves were bound to crumble. This left insisted on clinging to the consensus, treating the conflict with the Palestinians as a war in defense of the state rather than as a massive policing of an occupied nation with tanks and F-16s.

Perhaps only in New York could this headline resonate:

Bagel Shop Owner Is Indicted

The Middle East Report dedicates an edition to the key issue in the Middle East:

We have used the word “apartheid” to describe Israel’s system of rule over the Palestinians with eyes wide open to the incendiary quality of the term and the uniqueness of the South African ordeal that it automatically evokes. Our purpose in making this comparison is not to shock—we are hardly the first publication to assay it. Rather, we seek in this issue of Middle East Report to stare hard, cold realities in the face and to participate in the discussion about how to transcend them without compounding the loss and dislocation they have already caused.

The hard, cold realities are these: Without a heroic reversal of decades of US policy, there will be no two-state solution in Israel-Palestine. As Oren Yiftachel demonstrates in these pages, the willingness of Israeli leaders to speak of Palestinian statehood has increased in inverse proportion to the chances that such a state will come into being. The advance of the settlement project, the proliferation of physical barriers between Palestinians and Israeli Jews, the cantonization of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the agony of Gaza—all of these facts stand in cruel mockery of Israel’s stated determination to pursue a comprehensive peace.

The New Statesman’s Peter Wilby on this week’s Channel 4 documentary about Zionist power in Britain:

The journalist Peter Oborne is a brave man. The inevitable accusations of anti-Semitism are already flying around after his Channel 4 programme on Britain’s pro-Israel lobby. Given 20th-century history, anti-Semitism is just about the most damaging epithet that can be used against anybody, far more so than Islamophobia, and Israel’s defenders rarely hesitate to use it, even against critics who are Jewish.

But one point is usually ignored. Anti-Semites may actually support the state of Israel, on the grounds that it keeps lots of Jews away from everybody else and if strengthened could attract many more. This position is common in eastern Europe and you can trace it back as far as the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which committed the British government to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Its most fervent opponent was Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India and an anti-Zionist Jew. He explained his objections in a memorandum entitled “On the Anti-Semitism of the Present Government”.

The Australian government is so close to Israel it hurts the Jewish state’s jaw. So this news shows a) the hatred of the Zionist lobby towards the Palestinians, any Palestinians and b) the belief of the Rudd elites to only give rudimentary at best support for Palestinian rights:

The federal Government has denied a shift in Middle East policy, despite changing Australia’s vote in the United Nations on a motion on Palestinian self-determination.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said Australia’s UN voting pattern is strongly based on the country’s “long-standing support for the Middle East peace process”, including a two-state solution.

Representatives of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) and the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)  wrote to the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister asking for an explanation about the vote change.

The vote in question was in a committee of the General Assembly earlier this month. The motion reaffirms the right of Palestinian people to self-determination and urges all states to help the Palestinian people realise this.

While the motion itself is not considered controversial, preceding statements refer to the International Court of Justice’s controversial ruling on Israel’s security barrier; to East Jerusalem as part of a future Palestinian state; and to Palestinian relief agencies, which some argue have been found to do more to exacerbate Palestinian problems than solve them.

In previous years, Australia has abstained on the vote, but this year the country voted in favour.

Neo-conservative bible The Weekly Standard ran this curious story last week and, if true, highlights a sad reality of the Middle East; lies, delusion and outright bigotry:

With his new film Tetro billed to open Beirut’s recent International Film Festival, Francis Ford Coppola was diverted from landing in the Lebanese capital when it was learned that his private plane used parts manufactured in Israel. Fortunately, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, whose Lebanese ally Hezbollah controls security at Beirut International Airport, was able to overlook this minor indiscretion and permitted Coppola to land in Damascus, where he caught another plane to Beirut.

Coppola is revered in the Middle East, as in many other parts of the world, as director of The Godfather, and indeed a new version of the three-part epic has just been released in the region, dubbed into the Syrian dialect. (So how do you say “banana daquiri” in Syria? Banana daquiri.)

The director seemed to enjoy his time in Damascus in late October, where he was wildly impressed with Assad and his glamorous wife Asma. “We have felt so warmly received,” Coppola told Fox News correspondent Amy Kellogg. “The people you meet are kind and welcoming. [Damascus] is fascinating for so many reasons, relating to history. The food is fantastic. The president, his wife and family are lucid, appealing and able to speak on so many levels. In this way he convinces me he has a vision for the country which is positive.”

The human rights situation in Cuba – something I examined in my book The Blogging Revolution – remains dire. Some prominent bloggers on the island were recently abused for simply speaking out.

Now, according to Human Rights Watch, the regime continues to oppress its people:

The Cuban president, Raúl Castro, has crushed dissent and continued repression in the country since taking over from his brother Fidel, according to a Human Rights Watch report published today.

The government has extended use of an “Orwellian” law that allows the state to punish people before they commit a crime on suspicion they may do so, a tactic designed to cow actual and potential opponents, it said.

The report, New Castro, Same Cuba, paints a near-dystopian image of an island where those who step out of line risk being beaten and jailed in horrific conditions which verge on torture.

Since taking over from Fidel in July 2006 Raúl has kept up repression and kept scores of political prisoners locked up, it said. “Raúl Castro’s government has used draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who have dared to exercise their fundamental freedoms,” said the report.

The New York-based group said its report was based on a clandestine fact-finding mission in June and July that conducted dozens of in-depth interviews in seven of Cuba’s 14 provinces. It spoke to human rights activists, journalists, clerics, trade unionists and former political prisoners and their relatives.

The report was scathing about the international community’s policies towards Cuba. The decades-old US economic embargo gave Havana a pretext to crack down on dissenters as US-backed saboteurs, it said, and should be abandoned.

Israel has a world class arms industry, selling weapons to pretty much anybody.

So this news is certainly curious:

Use of Israeli-made light arms by militants against security forces in Waziristan has raised several questions amongst many recently.

TheNation has learnt on good authority that militants are using Israeli-made light arms including “Uzi gun” and “Rapid-fire pistol” against security forces in North Waziristan as the operation Rah-I-Rast reached its final stage.

In addition to Israel-made sophisticated arms, militants are making use of the latest version of US-made M-16 carbine with laser designator and binoculars, Bulgarian and Czechoslovakia made Kalakov and M-4 carbine with a grenade launcher and laser designator, which is a unique weapon with the US marines.

Availability of sophisticated Israeli weapons within the militant’s ranks and their use against security forces has raised several eyebrows in Islamabad.

“The war on terror” is all about keeping our bastards on a short leash in an attempt to get them to abuse/kill/detain the pre-determined enemy. So simple and yet so costly:

In the bleak and seemingly endless desert expanse that unfolds east of Jordan’s capital city, Amman, lies a crucial cog in the ambitious regional designs of the US and its allies in the Middle East.

Commonly known by its acronym JIPTC, the Jordan International Police Training Center is ground-zero for the transformation of US-allied security forces not only for the Kingdom of Jordan, but also for Iraq, Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Under the regime of King Abdullah II, this country of six million strategically located at the heart of the Middle East and bordered by Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the West Bank, has developed itself as something of a “Green Zone” in a tumultuous region.

As General Craig McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau in the US said during a joint training mission and tour of Jordan late last month, the country has become “the lynchpin” in the efforts to create a “peaceful central command region.”

JIPTC is staffed mostly by Jordanians, but the trainers are military and police officers from more than a dozen countries — primarily Canada, the United Kingdom and the US — as well as private contractors, such as DynCorp.

The relatively unassuming base, surrounded by blast walls and concertina wire, is comprised predominantly of temporary portable buildings spread out across a five square kilometer facility. The sprawling desert environment is well suited for its multiple shooting ranges for a program that planners say is three-quarters hands-on training, and only one-quarter classroom instruction.

Since graduating its first class in November 2003, JIPTC has trained more than 50,000 police officers bound for Iraq. More recently, the academy has trained four battalions of the Palestinian security forces, deployed under the auspices of United States security coordinator, Gen. Keith Dayton, to back the “caretaker” government of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad in the West Bank.

With little fanfare, JIPTC has Jordan’s regime playing a frontline role in the US project to transform the Middle East.

“Jordan continues to be a key partner and to play a positive role in the region,” General David Petraeus, the US commander responsible for the region told a Senate Armed Service Committee meeting in April. “Jordan participates in many regional security initiatives and has placed itself at the forefront of police and military training for regional security forces.”

I just caught up with Andrew Sullivan’s column from last weekend’s Sunday Times on Obama and Israel. Despite the fact that Jeffrey Goldberg worries about Sullivan’s Zionist credentials, Sullivan argues that Obama has played the Middle East well so far and holds a trump card:

In the long run Obama retains one key advantage. He knows he has a critical lever with respect to Israel and will not use it until Jerusalem gives him no alternative.

In fact, it would be domestically suicidal for him to use it until Jerusalem gives him no alternative. That lever is not the military aid given to Israel, which would have to go through a Congress heavily influenced by the pro-Israel lobby. It is America’s United Nations security council veto, which Israel desperately needs if it is not to become a pariah state in the near future and if its own leaders are to be able to travel abroad without actionable war crimes charges in the wake of Gaza.

In the long run, then, Obama knows he has Israel by the unmentionables.

If so, and I seriously doubt it, Israel is currently acting as it pleases. It is notable, however, that Sullivan acknowledges the changing global atmosphere for the Jewish state.