Antony Loewenstein

How to bring endless war:

In 2008, according to an authoritative report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), $55.2 billion in weapons deals were concluded worldwide.

The latest weekly edition of Gaza Gateway:

It doesn’t often happen that we get to report success stories, but this week Ayman Quader “made it”. Ayman, a 23-year-old student from the Gaza Strip, overcame numerous obstacles to reach his goal. After working tirelessly and contacting anyone who would listen to his story, he received his longed-for transit permit from Israel in order to exit the Gaza Strip and travel to University of Jaume in Spain, to pursue a graduate degree in Peace, Conflict & Development Studies (how appropriate!).

On November 3, 2009, Ayman received his acceptance letter from the university, and from that moment he began his journey on an obstacle course to receive the necessary transit permit from Israel to leave Gaza. First up, the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee refused to forward his application to the Israeli District Coordination Office (DCO), noting that the DCO does not accept applications from students, but Ayman did not give up. His next step was to contact Gisha who appealed to the Spanish Embassy. This was necessary because Israel makes a transit permit conditional on an official request from the student’s destination country and requires its diplomats to escort the student from the Erez border crossing between Israel and Gaza to the Allenby Bridge border crossing between Israel and Jordan – an awkward arrangement that overburdens diplomats and restricts students.

Ayman, who knew the fate of most others who had submitted similar applications, simultaneously launched a media “campaign“, which started on his blog, continued on the Facebook group he created, and reached a peak with his starring role in countless articles in the local and Spanish press. His efforts ultimately bore fruit, and Ayman, who has meanwhile become a media star in Spain, received his transit permit from Israel to travel to Spain. Ayman’s story has a happy ending, but there are still close to 600 young people waiting in Gaza for exit permits to travel abroad to study. Ayman, finish your degree in conflict resolution and come back quickly! Your talents are sorely needed.

A very strong article by Fairfax Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis that outlines a Jewish state increasingly at war with itself, while the Jewish Diaspora simply whistles while their beloved state walks towards a cliff:

On the way out of a popular Jerusalem steakhouse last Wednesday, I was introduced to an American-Israeli named Eliza.

A member of the Israel Defence Forces public relations unit, Eliza quickly explained that she was busy hosting a dinner for some foreign journalists. “Whom of course, internally, I despise,” she added apologetically, not knowing who I was.

Among the “despised” journalists at her table were Charles Levinson of The Wall Street Journal, and Sheera Frenkel, who writes for The Times of London. Both are American-born Jews, and neither they, nor their Murdoch-owned mastheads, are what you would call typically rabid haters of Israel.

Whether or not the IDF flack actually loathed these two reporters hardly matters. What her comments do reveal is the deep resentment felt by Israel’s political elite towards what is perceived to be a biased foreign press corps.

After last year’s war in Gaza, and the later report for the United Nations Human Rights Council by Justice Richard Goldstone that accused Israel of war crimes, sensitivity to how Israel is perceived abroad has been more heightened than ever. Yet the most piercing insights into the Israeli-Arab conflict today have nothing to do with the foreign media. They come from within Israeli society itself.

In the past two years, internationally acclaimed films such as Waltz With Bashir, Ajami, and Lebanon, have added exceptional context to the deep divisions within Israeli society and the long-term effects of the conflict on its people. More disturbing still are the verbatim accounts of some of the soldiers who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The damaging effects of the occupation, not just on Palestinians but on the soldiers themselves, are laid bare in a booklet published last week by the group Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli army veterans who have taken it upon themselves to expose life in the occupied territories to the Israeli public. Titled Women Soldiers’ Testimonies, the booklet details the experiences of more than 40 female soldiers who have served in various roles in the territories since 2000.

Testimony 24 was provided by a sergeant on a night-time search for weapons near Hebron, a Palestinian city that is also sacred to Jews and whose centre has been taken over by Israeli settlers. It was about 2am when the raiding party climbed the steps to a large Palestinian house.

“So we entered these people’s home, the father opens the door for us, in his robe, and the mother and grandmother and two little kids woke up too. Now they look at you with this look, like ‘you’re entering our home at two o’clock in the morning’.

“Everything was just so messed up . . . and the father tries to ask, the owner tries to ask questions and talk and none of us even bother to speak to him at all. The soldiers go on, opening and trashing and trashing just about everything in that house, turning the whole place inside out . . . all the drawers, the closets, everything. And we didn’t find a thing. Nothing.”

After an hour, the soldiers went on to a second house.

“That was the first moment I realised why we are looked at like that, and why we are so hated. You enter in the most disgusting manner, without a drop of humanity, because the disrespect in the answers the man was given — the wife and children were not even addressed — I mean, no one even looked at them.

“I can’t even begin to describe to you the shame I felt, ashamed of the way we were behaving, entering their home like that, that we . . .

“I’ll never forget this as long as I live, I’m telling you. I have this picture in my head, of those kids staring at me.”

With the Zionist organisation Reut Institute releasing a report detailing how to attack Hamas, Hizbollah, critics of Israel and anti-Zionists (yes, we’re all seen as an equal threat), clearly the global campaign against Israel is starting to bite. And can’t simply be erased by military means.

The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah highlights one disturbing part of the Reut propaganda effort:

Reut recommends to the Israeli government an aggressive and possibly criminal counter-offensive. A powerpoint presentation [Reut president Gidi] Grinstein made to the recent Herzliya Conference on Israeli national security actually calls on Israel’s “intelligence agencies to focus” on the named and unnamed “hubs” of the “delegitimization network” and to engage in “attacking catalysts” of this network. In its “The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall” document, Reut recommends that “Israel should sabotage network catalysts.”

The use of the word “sabotage” is particularly striking and should draw the attention of governments, law enforcement agencies and university officials concerned about the safety and welfare of their students and citizens. The only definition of “sabotage” in United States law deems it to be an act of war on a par with treason, when carried out against the United States. In addition, in common usage, the American Heritage Dictionary defines sabotage as “Treacherous action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate subversion.” It is difficult to think of a legitimate use of this term in a political or advocacy context.

At the very least, Reut seems to be calling for Israel’s spy agencies to engage in covert activity to interfere with the exercise of legal free speech, association and advocacy rights in the United States, Canada and European Union countries, and possibly to cause harm to individuals and organizations. These warnings of Israel’s possible intent — especially in light of its long history of criminal activity on foreign soil — should not be taken lightly.

The Reut Institute, based in Tel Aviv, raises a significant amount of tax-exempt funds in the United States through a nonprofit arm called American Friends of the Reut Institute (AFRI). According to its public filings, AFRI sent almost $2 million to the Reut Institute in 2006 and 2007.

From the archive:

In 1969, Israel’s legendary diplomat Abba Eban warned that withdrawal from the territories his country occupied in June 1967 would be a return to “Auschwitz borders.” Since then some Israeli politicians have used these provocative words to attack almost anyone who defies them.

The American Islamic Congress reports on the key troubles with last week’s anti-government protests in Iran:

CRIME Report sources inside Iran analyzing the events surrounding last Thursday’s protests – the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution – suggest that organizers may have been too crafty. It appears there was a “Trojan Horse” plan to attend the main regime-sponsored rally in Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square. People were supposed to appear inconspicuous in the early stages of the rally to enter the Square without attracting attention from the mass of security officers. During Ahmadinejad’s speech, all the protestors were then supposed to start chanting and turn the square green.

It would have been a major blow to the regime if their plan had worked. But apparently the disguises of the opposition ended up being too good. Protestors had no way to recognize each other as “greens.” “Who would dare to begin chanting anti-regime slogans when you suspect that you’re completely surrounded by the pro-regime crowd?” observes one Iranian. Indeed, many posters on chat forums report seeing many in the crowd stay silent when the regime speakers called for slogans. They suspect these were potential protesters like themselves.

“In any demonstration a few reckless vanguards need to dare to break the silence and trigger the domino of protest,” noted a source. “But when you are too dispersed and suspect you are alone, the cascade doesn’t occur.” So the protestors stayed silent all the way through and became dissolved in the mainstream pro-regime crowd – ironically adding to the crowd’s size! And thus, apparently, the Green Trojan Horse kicked back.

Israel mulls NIS 500M ‘heritage’ trails that reach into West Bank.

Leading Jewish American legal mind Michael Ratner, a participant on the Gaza Freedom March, recently visited Israel and Palestine with his family and was shocked by what he saw. Ratner’s words are especially important because until recently he didn’t really speak out on this issue. Now he is:

The politics of re-building of Haiti is examined by Noami Klein and Al-Jazeera.

Haitian economist Camille Chalmers: “It’s time to go much further [than debt cancellation]. We have to talk about reparations and restitution for the devastating consequences of debt.”

What does this story remind us of?

Six suspects in the assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai entered the country using British passports, it emerged yesterday.

Police in the Gulf state announced that they were hunting for 11 suspects, including a woman, for the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas commander, who was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20.

Six of these suspects were travelling on British passports and three were carrying Irish passports, including the woman. The other two entered Dubai with German and French passports.

“We have no doubts that it was 11 people holding these passports, and we regret that they used the travel documents of friendly countries,” said Lieutenant-General Dhafi Khalfan, Dubai’s chief of police.

Cast your mind back to 2004:

The prime minister of New Zealand angrily denounced Israel and imposed diplomatic sanctions on it after two suspected Mossad agents were jailed for six months for trying on false grounds to obtain a New Zealand passport.

The plot, which involved obtaining a passport in the name of a tetraplegic man who had not spoken in years, provoked a furious reaction yesterday.

“The breach of New Zealand laws and sovereignty by agents of the Israeli government has seriously strained our relationship with Israel,” said the prime minister, Helen Clark.

“This type of behaviour is unacceptable internationally by any country. It is a sorry indictment of Israel that it has again taken such actions against a country with which it has friendly relations.”

Al-Jazeera has amazing footage of the alleged killers in Dubai:

B’Tselem releases a statement:

B’Tselem recently uncovered a number of cases in which minors aged 12-15 from Silwan, in East Jerusalem, were arrested in the middle of the night by police officers and Israel Security Agency agents accompanied by armed border policemen. In four cases documented by B’Tselem, the minors were taken from their beds and homes and brought, their hands cuffed, to interrogation at the police station in the Russian Compound, in West Jerusalem. The parents of the children were not allowed to accompany them. The minors were then interrogated on suspicion of stone throwing. Testimonies given to B’Tselem indicate that, during the questioning, the interrogators beat and threatened them. The detention of one of them, a 14-year-old, was extended for seven days. The rest were released. There are indications that several other minors were similarly arrested and interrogated.

The ongoing friction between residents of Silwan and the settlers in nearby Beit Yehonatan and security personnel guarding it, in which context Palestinian children in the neighborhood throw stones at the building, is apparently the reason for the arrests.

The authorities’ treatment of the minors completely contravenes the Youth Law, as amended in 2008 (Amendment No. 14). Under the Law, a minor who is suspected of committing a criminal offense may consult as a rule, with a parent or other relative prior to being questioned, and the parent or relative may be present during the questioning. The Law also prohibits, other than in exceptional cases, questioning a minor at night, and states that, if the objective can be achieved in a less harmful way, the minor should not be arrested. In the present case, some of the parents were willing to undertake to bring the minors in the morning for questioning, and there was no need for the night operation.

The actions by the authorities severely violated the human rights of the minors, all of whom are Israeli permanent residents. A military-style operation conducted in the middle of the night, with the aim of detaining for interrogation minors aged 12-15 suspected of stone throwing is illogical and unjustifiable on any grounds. It is hard to believe that the security forces would have acted similarly with Jewish minors.

B’Tselem has sent urgent letters to the Jerusalem police commander, Maj. Gen. Ilan Franco, and to the head of the Department of the Investigation of Police, Herzl Shviro, calling for an end to police, ISA, and Border Police operations to detain minors in Silwan. If any child from the neighborhood is suspected of having committed a criminal offense, he can be summoned for questioning in the presence of an adult on his behalf. Also, the questioning must be conducted by youth interrogators.