Antony Loewenstein

The British government is moving slowly to isolate products in the West Bank and label them appropriately. The territories in Palestine are illegally occupied by Jews, it’s as simple as that.

Israel is fighting back (which is something the Jewish state is doing a lot of at the moment, when the global battle for legitimacy is long lost):

Thirty-nine members of Knesset signed a petition calling the Israeli public to reconsider availing themselves of British goods and services. In the petition, the MKs express their disgust from Britain’s recent decisions regarding marking Israeli goods sold in the country.

According to the report, first published last week in Ynet, the British government recommended all retail chains in the kingdom to place prominent labels on products imported from West Bank settlements and the Golan Heights indicating their origin.

Another war against Gaza? Here’s what establishment figure Bruce Riedel thinks. His bio speaks for itself:

He’s a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in the Brookings Institution. He advised Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama on the Middle East and South Asia in the National Security Council of the White House. He is the author of “The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future”.

His thought bubble:

It could start this way. A jihadist cell ambushes an IDF patrol on the border of Gaza, killing several and capturing one or two. By the time the ambush takes place, let’s say on the anniversary of 9/11 in September 2010, Hamas will have already done a huge prisoner deal with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, exchanging dozens of Hamas killers for Gilad Shalit who was captured in a similar ambush in 2006.

The Israeli government will have to respond forcefully, especially given intense Israeli public criticism over the Shalit deal. Many in the IDF and the Shabak (Internal Security Service) will urge the prime minister to finish the job begun in January 2009. Air power will be accompanied by major ground incursions to cut off the Strip from Egypt, surround major population centers and break Hamas’ hold on Gazans. It may take a month or more.

Hamas will try to avoid the war by cracking down on the jihadist al-Qaeda sympathizers. But it cannot return captured Israeli soldiers for nothing, especially after the Shalit deal. Whether Hamas wants a war or not, the jihadis will have outmaneuvered it. Many in the military wing of Hamas will probably want to fight, having spent the last year and a half preparing for another round.

The imagery of war, captured by al-Jazeerah and by al-Sahab (the Qaeda media arm), will be awful. Even with the greatest care, war in an urban arena means terrible suffering for the innocent. In the first Gaza war, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Zawahiri broadcast repeated messages calling Obama a Zionist warlord, ridiculing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah for doing nothing to help Hamas, and Saudi Arabia for being a closet ally of Israel. Expect more of the same. A bloody Israeli invasion of Gaza resisted by jihadi martyrs would radicalize the Islamic world and send new recruits and new funds to the global jihad.

Should Israel succeed in breaking Hamas in the second round, a big if, what will follow? Fateh and the Palestinian Authority are not ready to take over Gaza alone–certainly not when propped up by IDF bayonets. The international community, led by Obama, will have to decide if it is prepared to take on the job of governing Gaza and providing the economic aid to get it back on its feet.

This will mean troops: NATO probably, with a UN mandate; perhaps some Egyptians and Jordanians, too. With NATO’s attention focused on Afghanistan, it will be hard to find the numbers needed for a risky mission that could turn ugly, with both sides blaming the peacekeepers for any mistakes. Of course, the alternative would be Gaza 3.

The new notorious tale of the Israelis destroying a nice, Jewish girl’s laptop as she entered from Egypt:

Comments made by Israeli OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant to IDF soldiers honoured for their “heroism” during Operation Cast Lead:

In the tough hours of the trial through fire you bravely and resiliently persevered. You are a lighthouse of morality and values.

Very interesting developments in Britain over the role of religious schooling. Why should Jews (or any religion, for that matter) have the right to determine who is “really” Jewish? It’s a complex question that often leads to exclusion rather than inclusion:

A Jewish school was guilty of racial discrimination in the way it operated its admissions policies, the Supreme Court ruled today.

The JFS school in Brent, north-west London one of the top-performing schools in the country – refused a place to a boy because it did not consider his mother to be Jewish.

Whilst his father was Jewish by birth, his mother entered the Jewish faith by conversion at a progressive synagogue not recognised by orthodox jews.

Today, by a slim five to four majority, judges dismissed an appeal against a ruling that the admissions procedure breached the Race Relations Act.

However, they made it clear that they did not believe the school had acted in a “racist” way.

“Any suggestion or implication that they are racist in the popular sense of the word can be dismissed,” said Lady Hale, one of the nine judges.

Israel’s feminist group New Profile has been persecuted for many months over its supposed threat to the Jewish state.

Now, in the latest twist, Israel’s Education Minister has barred the group from participating in school debates.

Israeli democracy, up close and personal.

My following article appears in the British magazine New Statesman:

Freedom marches have a noble pedigree. Hundreds of thousands marched for racial equality in the 1960s US; among them was Martin Luther King Jr, who delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the march on Washington in 1963.

Now, thousands of miles away, the tradition is being revived for an equally important cause. One year after Israel’s attacks on Gaza, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians – many of them civilians – the Gaza Freedom March will highlight the effects of the onslaught and call for an end to the siege on the Strip by both Israel and Egypt (it was revealed recently that Egypt, with US backing, is building a huge metal wall along its border with Gaza, allegedly to stop smuggling).

From 27 December to 2 January, more than a thousand citizens, activists, writers, religious figures, atheists and the old and young from 42 countries will come to Gaza to show solidarity with its people. Participants will include the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, the leading US legal advocate Michael Ratner, European members of parliament and Ronnie Kasrils, the former politician and a prominent Jewish critic of Israel. Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and Naomi Klein have all endorsed the event.

On 31 December, 50,000-plus Palestinians and international visitors will march to the Gazan side of the border with Israel to cast light on the reality of life under occupation. “It is important to let the besieged Gazan people know they are not alone,” the marcher and Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein told Ma’an News Agency.

I am going for the same reason, as a human being first and a Jew second. Visiting Gaza in July, I found a devastated territory, unable to breathe or rest until its people are allowed to live normal lives in freedom. I was haunted by the comments of Nafez Abu Shaban, the head of the burns unit at al-Shifa Hospital, who told me Israel’s use of white phosphorus “was not a war; it was a holocaust”.

The Gaza Freedom March is a challenge to Israel’s imagined victimhood and a demand for peace for an occupied nation.

Antony Loewenstein is the author of “My Israel Question”

The attempt by pro-Palestinian groups in the UK to legally apprehend Israeli politician Tzipi Livni has caused outrage in the Zionist world and corporate press. The Jerusalem Post helpfully provides a summary (and note the outrage that an Israeli, or by implication any Western leader, would ever need to answer for their actions):

Senior Israeli diplomatic officials told counterparts in the British Foreign Office Wednesday that Israel would issue directives to the country’s political and military leaders to stop going to Britain if parliament did not take action to close the legal loophole that enabled an arrest warrant to be issued against Kadima head Tzipi Livni last weekend.

The warning came even as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown phoned Livni and, according to Livni’s office, said he was “completely opposed” to the issuing of the arrest warrant, and that she would be welcome in Britain anytime.

Brown – like Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who called Livni the day before – promised to work to change the legal situation that has led to the harassment of Israeli leaders in Britain.

A British judge issued the arrest warrant against Livni last weekend, thinking she was in the country attending a JNF event. Livni canceled her participation prior to the event, citing scheduling problems.

The Times and Daily Telegraph, British newspapers generally supportive of Israel, both penned sympathetic editorials in Wednesday’s paper. The Independent and The Guardian, which have been known to be vicious in their criticism, did not comment Wednesday on the matter.

Under the headline “Abuse of process,” the Times wrote that “the campaign for legal targeting of Israeli leaders is not merely frivolous; it is repugnant. It risks damaging Britain’s relations with an ally, undermines the government’s moral authority in promoting a two-state settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and brings the legal system into disrepute.”

The paper wrote that the campaign in Gaza was not a crime against humanity; “it was a chapter in Israel’s history of trying to stop violence against its own civilians, which is a prerequisite of achieving the two-state resolution that [Defense Minister] Mr. [Ehud] Barak and Ms. Livni have worked for. You cannot reasonably criticize Israel’s military tactics without understanding Israel’s security needs.”

The Telegraph opined that Livni’s decision to cancel a visit to London because of fears that she might be arrested had “not done much to enhance Britain’s international reputation for fair dealing.”

In its eagerness to placate Islamic radicals, the paper wrote, “the Foreign Office is more inclined to indulge Arab leaders who advocate terrorism than Israelis who seek to uphold the values of the region’s only democratic state.

The Jewish festival of Chanukah as imagined by George W. Bush in 2001:

Who is really serious about addressing climate change? Here’s Bolivia’s leader Evo Morales in Copenhagen:

The budget of the United States is $687 billion for defense. And for climate change, to save life, to save humanity, they only put up $10 billion. This is shameful.

The one year anniversary of the Gaza onslaught continues to produce fine journalism, such as this piece in today’s Guardian:

Last December, Israel began a 23-day bombardment of Gaza, killing around 1,400 people. One year on, a generation of children is growing up amid the wreckage of that attack, traumatised – and radicalised – by the experience

The relationship between Zionist groups and Christian Zionists is a marriage of convenience. It’s therefore healthy to see some challenging this ideology:

Christian leaders in the Middle East and the Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem) are on a holy mission to expose Christian Zionism as a pseudo-religious movement that twists Christianity for its own political purposes.

“We don’t consider these people [Christian Zionists] a legitimate Christian sect or denomination,” Munib Younan, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, told IslamOnline.net.

Younan co-signed the landmark Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism along with leaders of seven other major churches in the Middles East.

In the document, the Christian clergy denounce so-called Christian Zionism as a heretic movement whose ideas and ideals are incompatible with authentic Christian teachings.

“[It’s a] false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.”