Antony Loewenstein

Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman wants the world to know that anybody who challenges his country’s policies is a secret Jew hater:

Speaking at the Foreign Ministry’s third annual Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism, Lieberman said “classic anti-Semitism, along with Iranian funding and Islamic anti-Semitism, is being used to incite hatred against Jews, and to delegitimize the State of Israel.”

He said that global anti-Semitism had “crossed the line,” and that those behind the effort were “seeking to destroy the Jewish state piece by piece… using academic boycotts and economic sanctions.” He also noted “human rights groups’ effort to deny Israel legitimacy by pushing the United Nations Security Council to adopt the Goldstone Report,” which accused Israel of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.

“Modern anti-Semitism,” the foreign minister asserted, “has taken on the form of being anti-Israel… Instead of saying ‘throw the Jews into the sea,’ they talk of a world without Zionism, and without Israel.”

The following article by Pam Walker appears in this week’s Sydney City Hub newspaper:

Author and journalist Antony Loewenstein is among a group of prominent Sydney activists who will travel to Gaza to join the Gaza Freedom March on December 31, an international protest demanding the opening of the borders and the breaking of the blockade.

With him will be peace activist and Iraq war human shield Donna Mulhearn, Jews Against the Occupation’s Vivienne Porzsolt and Stop the War Coalition’s Marlene Obeid.

The Sydney activists will join 1000 international delegates from 40 countries, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, French Senator Alima Boumediene–Thiery, author and Filipino Parliament member Walden Bello, former European Parliamentarians Luisa Morgantini from Italy and Eva Quistorp from Germany, President of the US Centre for Constitutional Rights Attorney Michael Ratner, Japanese former Ambassador to Lebanon Naoto Amaki, French hip-hop artists Ministere des Affaires Populaires, and 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein.

Also participating are doctors, lawyers, diplomats, 70 students, an interfaith group that includes rabbis, priests and imams, a women’s delegation, a Jewish contingent, a veterans’ group and Palestinians born overseas who have never seen their families in Gaza.

They will march to demand the Israelis end the siege of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, and to protest inaction on the part of world leaders and institutions.

The march marks the one-year anniversary of the December 2008 Israeli invasion that left more than 1400 dead. Medea Benjamin, one of the organisers said the Gaza Freedom March would “go down in history as the day that people of conscience from around the world came together to demand that Israel stop the imprisonment of Gaza’s 1.5 million people”.

For Loewenstein, he said that whatever happens, it would be a unique and overwhelming experience. “For me it’s important to say there’s not just one perspective on this for Jews and it’s possible to be a Jew and to object – what Israel is doing is illegal under international law,” he said. “All the Jews there will be saying ‘this is not done in our name’. We want to highlight that what Israel is doing is fundamentally anti-democratic.”

The delegates will enter Gaza via Egypt in the last week of December and on December 31 will join an estimated 50,000 Palestinians in a non-violent march from Northern Gaza to the Erez/Israeli border. On the Israeli side of the Erez border a gathering of Palestinians and Jews [Israelis are not permitted to enter Gaza] will also be calling on the Israeli government to open the border.

Loewenstein admits a march won’t change the situation but said it was important to draw attention to the occupation and the three-year blockade. And while he’s under no illusion about some of the things Hamas stands for and the “creeping Islamisation” in the strip, he said it was important to acknowledge this was an unequal conflict that inflicted collective punishment on the Palestinian people.

“We’re not talking just about the deliberate targeting of civilian areas during the invasion last year but also that people in Gaza are living in an open air prison they can’t leave. Reconstruction hasn’t been possible since the invasion because Israel will not allow in building materials. It won’t allow in pasta and pens. What possible security risk do these pose?”

He said it was deeply concerning that Egypt had begun to build an impenetrable wall on the border to “stop smuggling”, making the three-year blockade more severe and a sign there was no hope for a solution in the near future.

And we should not forget Australia’s role: “The Rudd government is no different to the Howard government on this issue – they are completely supportive of what’s going on and are backing the ongoing occupation and strangulation of Gaza.”

The protest will be from December 27 to January 2.

The New York Times tries to convince its readers that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has changed his views and now believes in a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

Seriously, are these articles written by the Israeli Foreign Ministry?

One curious mention, however, is this:

The [settlement] freeze was less than what was demanded by the Americans and the Palestinians. It permits nearly 3,000 units to be completed, includes some 28 public buildings and leaves East Jerusalem out. Still, senior American officials say it will greatly reduce the construction as the months roll on — as many as 15,000 units by some estimates, including one by [Israeli President] Mr. Peres. In addition, the American officials say, if the Palestinians return to negotiations, the freeze is likely to be extended.

I write regularly about the dangers faced by journalists in various nations who write against governments and business interests.

Reporters who challenge environmental abuse are the new workers in the firing line:

Cherelle Jackson turned a deaf ear to the threatening calls she got after publishing the first two parts of a story about a government-sponsored development project that was proceeding despite the misgivings of an environmental impact assessment. But, when someone set her office on fire a little over two years ago, the twenty-seven-year-old Samoan reporter fled to New Zealand without publishing the third part.

“In small countries it’s really easy to access people,” she said Friday at the international climate summit here, walking and talking as she rushed to a press conference about threats to environmental journalists. “Part of your job is to deal with the threat. So, I usually ignore the calls, but the burning down of my office is not easy to ignore.”

The number of environmental journalists that are being attacked and threatened is growing, according to twenty-six press freedom organizations who sponsored the press conference. A representative of Reporters Without Borders said fifteen percent of the cases that the group monitors worldwide are now linked to the environment. Other watchdog groups have also found that stories exposing environmental degradation wrought by governments, industry, mafia organizations, and even small-time polluters are increasingly risky for environmental reporters.

A cyber arms-race is brewing largely away from prying eyes and Israel is apparently leading the pack:

Israel is using its civilian technological advances to enhance cyberwarfare capabilities, the senior Israeli spymaster said on Tuesday in a rare public disclosure about the secret program.

Using computer networks for espionage — by hacking into databases — or to carry out sabotage through so-called “malicious software” planted in sensitive control systems has been quietly weighed in Israel against arch-foes like Iran.

In a policy address, Major-General Amos Yadlin, chief of military intelligence, listed vulnerability to hacking among national threats that also included the Iranian nuclear project, Syria and Islamist guerrillas along the Jewish state’s borders.

Yadlin said Israeli armed forces had the means to provide network security and launch cyber attacks of their own.

“I would like to point out in this esteemed forum that the cyberwarfare field fits well with the state of Israel’s defense doctrine,” he told the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a Tel Aviv University think tank.

“This is an enterprise that is entirely blue and white (Israeli) and does not rely on foreign assistance or technology. It is a field that is very well known to young Israelis, in a country that was recently crowned a ‘start-up nation’.”

The case of Israeli politician Tzipi Livni avoiding the UK due to concerns over her legal status continues to echo.

The British government is deeply embarassed, pro-Palestinian activists are emboldened and Zionist officials are issuing defensive statements:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the situation was “an absurdity”.

“We will not accept a situation in which [former Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defence Minister] Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the defendants’ chair,” Mr Netanyahu said in a statement.

“We will not agree to have Israel Defence Force soldiers, who defended the citizens of Israel bravely and ethically against a cruel and criminal enemy, be recognised as war criminals. We completely reject this absurdity taking place in Britain,” he said.

Meanwhile, back in reality, the stifling siege on Gaza continues to cause suffering in the Strip while Hamas vows to continue its “resistance” to aggression.

“Green Zone” is a 20 minute long documentary, exploring Israel’s discriminatory policies in occupied East Jerusalem:

Green Zone from Nimrod Zin on Vimeo.

The following story appears in this week’s Sydney Wentworth Courier:

A wonderful sentiment and photo from Nasrin Alavi about the growing rifts in Iran:

I want to share with you a photo of a member of the Iranian anti-riot police surreptitiously showing his solidarity with the protestors by showing the V sign for victory that has become a symbol of the green movement:

The West Bank as a model dictatorship? Israel and America are training their ideal army to kill any real opponents of a Middle East “vision”:

A fifth battalion of Palestinian security forces, trained in Jordan under United States sponsorship, will return to the West Bank next week to beef up Palestinian Authority forces in cracking down on Hamas infrastructure in the territories.

IDF sources confirmed that the battalion, which had been training for four months in Jordan, was scheduled to return to the West Bank next week ahead of Christmas. After the battalion returns, another battalion – consisting of several hundred security officers – will leave for training in Jordan in January.

The sources said it was not yet known which city the battalion would deploy in. There are currently battalions deployed in Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem and Hebron.

The sources said that the Palestinian forces, trained by the Jordanians under the direction of US Gen. Keith Dayton, were doing a good job cracking down on Hamas infrastructure and restoring law and order in the West Bank.

A few weeks ago on ABC Radio PM we heard the following interview with Sri Lanka’s former foreign secretary Dr Palitha Kohona, now Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United Nations, talking about the alleged killing of surrendering Tamil Tiger fighters in the closing days of the civil war:

The ABC asked him what his role was in arranging the surrender.

PALITHA KOHONA: Absolutely none, because I was in Foreign Ministry I had nothing to do with the Defence Ministry or the defence forces. I had no role in arranging anything, and I don’t think anything was arranged anyway.

SARAH DINGLE: So you’re saying there was no surrender agreed to?

PALITHA KOHONA: Actually not as far as I am concerned, I don’t think anybody else was involved in such a surrender either.

SARAH DINGLE: So did anyone contact you regarding the surrender of those two figures?

PALITHA KOHONA: Anybody from the defence establishment? No.

SARAH DINGLE: Did anyone at all contact you about the surrender of those two figures?

PALITHA KOHONA: There was an attempt to wake me up in the middle of the night, and I told them that I was not the person to contact about those demands.

There was a general query about surrendering and I told them that there was, that I was the wrong person, that I had nothing to do with surrendering and asked them to go and deal with the matter in the way it ought to be dealt with.

SARAH DINGLE: And what was that way?

PALITHA KOHONA: I’m sorry, I can’t answer stupid questions of this nature.

The UK Independent a few days ago reported the following (courtesy of journalist Andrew Buncombe):

Earlier this year, I wrote a story from Sri Lanka about the efforts of several senior LTTE members to surrender in the very final stages of the war and how they were shot dead – apparently while walking towards government troops while carrying a white flag. My sources were pretty good – I had spoken with the Norwegian foreign ministry which confirmed that a senior minister had acted as an intermediary as the men tried to give themselves up. I also spoke with the Sri Lankan foreign secretary, Palitha Kahona, who confirmed that he had personally been in contact with the two LTTE members – whom he had met at ceasefire talks – and advised them how to surrender.

Kohona has changed his story. It warrants serious investigation.

This is so shocking it can only be condemned in the strongest possible terms:

Uganda will be going back to the days of the Idi Amin regime if it passes a Bill which will arrest or kill people for being gay or lesbian and for repeatedly engaging in homosexual sex, say rights activists.

Pro-gay activists compare the provisions in the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill to the 1972 order former dictator, president Idi Amin gave expelling Ugandan born Asians because of their colour.

“This is a form of targeted killings similar to Idi Amin. We already have a law on homosexuality but you see people like David Bahati, instead of concentrating on more pressing issues in his constituency, he is spending time to write a forty-page document aimed at gays and lesbians,” said Jacqueline Kasha, a lesbian Ugandan human rights activist.