Antony Loewenstein

Guess who’s also opposed to Israel’s ever-expanding occupation? Two authoritarian regimes, China and Sri Lanka.

It’s hard to know the truth in all this but if history is any guide the tabloid press, working with the police, have a dark past of smearing individuals with a social conscience:

A hunger striker who held a 23-day fast in Parliament Square last year in protest at the Sri Lanka’s offensive against the Tamil Tigers is suing two newspapers over claims that he secretly ate burgers during his vigil.

Parameswaran Subramanyam, a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee who now lives in south London, has issued proceedings against the Daily Mail and [Murdoch's] The Sun over articles they ran last October claiming that he was secretly given Big Macs by his supporters.

The BBC World Service has published my following article about the internet in Iran (originally published on BBC Persian last week):

The face of murdered Iranian woman Neda Agha Soltan, killed by a bullet in the Iranian capital Tehran, echoed around the world.

Like this, the vast majority of iconic images that documented Iran’s disputed presidential election to the outside world were shot by citizens on mobile phones or digital cameras.

They were raw, brutal, confused and powerful. A society was challenged in a way that rocked the foundations of the state.

Neda’s boyfriend, Caspian Makan, told the UK Guardian newspaper in November 2009 that Neda’s death forced him to become political and speak out against the regime.

“As I left Tehran”, he said, “I was looking around at the good people of Iran, who are kind and patient. They looked so weighed down.”

No revolution

This is exactly the sentiment I found in Iran during my visit there in 2007.

I spoke to countless bloggers, editors and dissidents, to determine the effect of the internet on civil society.

It was both profound and frustrating. The last years have undoubtedly seen a growth in countless websites dedicated to the discussion of once-hidden subjects, from gay emancipation to dating.

But despite the often-liberating nature of the technology, nobody talked about using the web alone to bring democracy.

Besides, many Iranians don’t use the internet, and have other issues on their minds.

After an initially slow acknowledgement of the power of the web to shape public opinion, the conservative clerics appropriated the medium with ruthless efficiency.

Numerous reports have emerged over the last months of an Iranian Cyber Army, which hacks numerous websites critical of the mullahs and threatens stronger action.

One message read: “USA Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But They Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power.”

A fundamental misreading of last year’s public protests in Iran led many in the West to conclude that a Twitter Revolution was brewing and would inevitably bring down the state.

A journalist from the Atlantic visited the holy city of Qom a few months after the June uprising and found little evidence of tension. In fact, he found “the happy docility of a one-party state.”

Internal repression

This is not to diminish the undeniable resistance to authoritarian rule in the Islamic Republic.

I found an impatience either expressed by leaving the country for better opportunities, or venting anonymously on blogs and online forums. There was fear of being caught by authorities, but also a growing bravery in flouting the “red lines” in society.

Too much of the Western press coverage of Iran reflects the projected wishes of the American political elite – namely “regime change”, or at least a radical shift in policy.

The nuclear enrichment issue hangs over virtually every discussion with Iran. Bloggers both inside and outside the country try to understand the seemingly impenetrable moves of Ahmadinejad and the mullahs.

But the prospect of tighter sanctions against Tehran will likely only result in greater internal repression.

The most appropriate ways to support movements against the regime, according to New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, is to back the US State Department’s request for issuing a general license that “would authorise downloads of free mass-market software by companies such as Microsoft and Google to Iran necessary for the exchange of personal communications and/or sharing of information over the internet such as instant messaging, chat and email and social networking.”

But how many Iranians trust the interests of the State Department is another question entirely.

The key question remains: how central is the internet in Iran to challenging the Ahmadinejad regime?

Web commentator Evgeny Morozov wrote in Prospect in January that it was unwise to see online social media as central to the so-called Green Revolution.

He argued that the Iranian government “has not only survived but has in fact become even more authoritarian”, utilising the same tools of the protestors to entrap and monitor their every move.

“What do we really gain”, he asked, “if the ability to organise protests is matched (and perhaps even dwarfed) by the ability to provoke, identity and arrest the protestors?”

Brighter future

The Wall Street Journal outlined in December 2009 the myriad ways that Iran was now monitoring dissenters outside its borders, and interrogated some who arrived in Tehran and demanded Facebook accounts be examined at the Imam Khomeini International Airport.

The ascendency of the Revolutionary Guard to a ruling position is ominous for the foreseeable future.

The simple truth is that brutal regimes can block the use of text messages and email, and detain, torture and kill opponents.

There is little dissidents can do in the short-term to counter these overwhelming factors, as we have seen in Burma and China.

I have heard from various sources that many once-active bloggers have gone underground for fear of arrest. The online voices from Iran we are reading today are therefore either strongly backing Ahmadinejad, or the forces against him but the latter are at a distinct disadvantage without the apparatus of the state behind them.

Iran’s future will not be written in London or Washington. We should be cautious of any Western player claiming to know what the Iranian people want.

Exaggerating the influence of the internet on Iranian society is dangerous, but so is excluding its potentially liberating effect.

I remember speaking to many Iranians in the country who couldn’t imagine life without the ability to communicate with friends, lovers and students, and share stories that were once only whispered.

Predicting the demise of the Islamic Republic is a fool’s game.

But we can listen to the thoughts and requests of Iranians who long for a brighter future, both those online and the millions of others who dream of the day when their country’s poverty is alleviated.

Antony Loewenstein is an Australian journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution. This article was written for the BBC’s Persian service.

American realities:

“Support for Israel is one of those issues, like anti-communism used to be, that holds together a number of pieces of the conservative movement, including evangelicals but also neocons, economic conservatives and foreign policy hawks,” said Tevi Troy, a visiting senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who served as Jewish liaison in the George W. Bush White House.

Adalah is an Israeli organisation that focuses on legal rights for the country’s Arab minority.

Its new short film, Targeted Citizen, highlights the inherent discrimination against non-Jews in Israel. The only democracy in the Middle East, indeed:

Targeted Citizen – English from Adalah on Vimeo.

While some Western newspapers are upset that Israel acts with impunity, the Jerusalem Post claims in this editorial that the Jewish state has the right to act as it wants, even illegally, as it’s fighting the “war on terror” that all Western states are fighting. The last bit is true and hypocrisy is the name of the game here, but what kind of country proudly asks publicly for the world to tolerate the stealing of passports and murder of “enemies”?

Has the United Kingdom lost its moral bearings? That would explain British Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s announcement Tuesday of the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat over the forging of British passports allegedly used by those who did the world a favor by killing Hamas missile-trafficker and strongman Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a self-confessed murderous terrorist.

It would also explain the decision by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office to amend its travel advice for potential passengers to Israel as a result of what Miliband called our “identity theft.”

Unsurprisingly, when the Dubai drama broke, Britain mustered the requisite outrage at the ostensible gross violation of its diplomatic sovereignty. After all, if British passports were forged by an ally, even in the cause of ridding the world of a Hamas killer, this was a breach of trust between friends and a diplomatic transgression – an infraction not to be taken lightly, at least not officially.

But even if it had “compelling evidence” from an investigation by the Serious Organized Crime Agency into the cloning of up to 15 British passports, why has the UK government now decided to publicly humiliate Israel over the affair with so drastic a response?

More fundamentally, where is the outrage that Dubai was hosting this poisonous individual in the first place? And are those who risk their lives to confront such peddlers of death seriously expected to travel openly, under their own identities, into the danger zones?

PERHAPS THE British government’s lost moral compass also explains its dire voting record on the Goldstone Report. And perhaps it lies at the root, too, of its abiding failure to stop the exploitation of its legal system for the purpose of arresting our politicians and military officers should they dare to set foot on British soil.

It spoke of amending its abused legal system back in December, after a London court issued a warrant against opposition leader Tzipi Livni. The Livni farce was preceded by the near arrest in 2005 of Gen. (res.) Doron Almog, former commander of IDF forces in Gaza, and by the cancellation of a trip to Britain by former IDF chief of General Staff Moshe Ya’alon.

“The government is looking urgently at ways in which the UK system might be changed in order to avoid this sort of situation arising again,” Miliband said at the time. Prime Minister Gordon Brown also voiced support for an amendment.

Now, with elections around the corner, the prospects of change are nil.

One British newspaper has intimated that Israel’s purported forgery of British passports is connected to the delay in revamping what Miliband called the “unusual feature of the [legal] system in England and Wales.”

“Israel does not help its cause when it demands respect for its own citizens abroad but shows no regard for the rights or future security of British passport holders overseas,” argued the Times, which is largely sympathetic to Israel’s challenges, in an editorial shortly after the Dubai incident.

The paper, like the British government, it would appear, has its good guys and bad guys confused. Intelligence activities designed to protect citizens’ lives, even if they cross certain diplomatic frameworks, merit a sensible public response founded in moral support. Those who would manipulate the law to secure the unwarrented prosecutions of Israeli political and military leaders should be stopped.

Britain truly has lost the plot if Dubai and the passport imbroglio have had anything to do with the British government’s failure to amend a legal system that does not distinguish between representatives of terror organizations (both the US and the European Union list Hamas as a terror group) and the political leaders of democracies and their military personnel.

But even if there is no link, the fact is that Britain is dragging its feet over closing an untenable loophole in its law. Meanwhile, it is working hard to castigate Israel for the alleged “identity theft” that led to the termination of a man who bragged about killing civilians.

It has taken punitive action more commonly imposed on the likes of Libya and Syria – action that has been properly imposed on those such countries but cannot be justified in this case.

In so doing, the British government is showing all too dismally where its priorities lie.

A surprisingly strong editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald that indicates the growing anger towards Israel in the Western elites. A healthy sign:

Most of the experts working on Middle East peace think Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are hindering progress. Not so Benjamin Netanyahu. ”We must not be trapped by an illogical and unreasonable demand,” the Israeli Prime Minister told congressional leaders in Washington this week. ”It could put the peace negotiations on hold for another year.” On top of insulting old allies like Australia by abusing their passports in an assassination operation, and affronting Israel’s main backer by announcing more settlements during the visit of the US Vice-President, Joe Biden, Netanyahu is now insulting everyone’s intelligence with this kind of statement.

He has apparently continued his obduracy on the settlements in his talks with Barack Obama and other US leaders this week, which have been held without the usual cordiality and described as ”candid”, diplomatic-speak for acrimonious. In Britain, the government has taken the unusual step of expelling the Mossad station chief in Israel’s embassy over the passports issue.

The reaction in Israel, as it has been since Obama’s election, has been to suggest this is all a result of either bias or inadequate understanding that will be remedied by a change of president or a change of mind. Yet only two weeks ago, the chief of the US military’s Central Command, General David Petraeus, who is increasingly proposed as a future Republican presidential candidate, made a telling observation about the endless dispute between Israel and the Palestinians: ”The conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of US favouritism towards Israel.” Biden told Netanyahu that illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories meant more risk for American soldiers. In effect, Israel is being seen less as a Western asset in the Middle East, more as a liability.

Netanyahu’s logical contortions reflect the political foundations of his government, where his conservative Likud party needs to keep a host of small religious and ultra-nationalist parties happy. He is also appealing to an Israeli public that overwhelmingly supports the idea of a two-state solution to the Palestinian stand-off – but also supports ”strong” policies like the East Jerusalem settlements that make that solution less likely.

Let us hope the Israeli public comes to see that Netanyahu is leading them into a tighter corner. He relies on the extremists because he cannot get moderates like Tzipi Livni of Kadima to work with his leadership. Perhaps if foreign allies made it clear they cannot work with him either, Israeli opinion would shift, a happier outcome than if Washington pulls on its really big levers of influence, the billions in financial aid and access to high-tech weaponry it provides Israel.

Columbia Journalism Review mentions the ever-growing losses of the Murdoch empire. When Rupert finally meets his maker, his so-called empire will certainly change greatly. The arrogance of his current editors will dissipate very quickly. The poor dears:

What lengths will Rupert Murdoch go to support his newspapers?

Last year, The Wall Street Journal lost $80 million. The New York Post lost an estimated $70 million. And we find out today that The Times of London and Sunday Times lost a staggering $132 million last year.

Four papers, $282 million in losses. While in the short-term we’re glad such largesse is keeping journalists in jobs, such losses aren’t sustainable for long.

Trouble in paradise:

Britain has expelled Mossad’s most senior official in London after concluding there was compelling evidence that UK passports used by a hit squad in Dubai were cloned by Israel. The Independent has learnt that the documents were cloned at Ben Gurion airport, and officials then made follow-up calls to check surreptitiously that the travel plans of those whose identities had been stolen would not interfere with the assassination.

“Such misuse of British passports is intolerable,” the Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Parliament. “The fact that this was done by a country which is a friend, with significant diplomatic, cultural, business and personal ties to the UK, only adds insult to injury.” In an unusual move last night, the Foreign Office also updated its travel advice for Israel, warning would-be visitors of the perils of passport cloning. “We recommend that you only hand your passport over to third parties including Israeli officials when absolutely necessary,” the travel bulletin said.

In Israel, the official response to London’s action was notably terse. “The relationship between Britain and Israel is mutually important,” the foreign ministry said. “We therefore regret the British decision.” But in other quarters there was undisguised fury. “I think [the] British are behaving hypocritically and I don’t want to offend dogs on this issue, since some dogs are utterly loyal. [But] Who are they to judge us on the war on terror?” said Aryeh Eldad of Israel’s National Religious Party.

The news behind the news:

The Israeli diplomat who is to be expelled from Britain over the alleged forgery of British passports connected to the killing of a top Hamas militant, is a Mossad officer who will be replaced by the Jewish state, Israeli media reports said on Wednesday.

Downing Street on Tuesday declared the unnamed diplomat persona non grata after a police investigation found that Israel stole the identities of 12 British citizens to make the fake passports.

Public radio and other Israeli media said the diplomat was an officer in the Mossad spy agency and would be replaced “soon” by another intelligence officer.

Murdoch’s Australian shows typically twisted logic. The more extreme Israeli actions, the closer the West should stand with the Jewish state. So, let’s say Israel bombs Iran. Presumably these voices would encourage a tongue kiss that never ends. Swapping saliva never looked so dirty:

Unless British Foreign Secretary David Miliband knows considerably more about the alleged Mossad passport scandal than he has so far revealed, the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat from London appears remarkably heavy-handed. Little good will follow from isolating Israel, the Middle East’s only stable democracy, at a dangerous moment in the region. The use of forged passports in the plot to kill Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January is indeed an infringement of sovereignty and tests longstanding friendships. But the infraction comes nowhere near Mabhouh’s murderous record.

Wisely, Israel has not announced counter-measures and responded to the rebuke with an expression of regret. Mossad needed a sharp lesson, but unfortunately Britain has overplayed its hand at a time when Western nations would do more for the cause of Middle East peace by maintaining close ties with Israel. The hostility in the House of Commons, where one MP claimed that Israel was becoming a “rogue state” is a sad reflection of the growing climate of anti-Israeli sentiment in Britain.

The timing of Israel’s decision to build 1600 new homes in East Jerusalem as tentative peace talks were about to begin earlier this month was unfortunate to say the least. But the reaction from the US administration has only inflamed the situation. The Obama administration will harden attitudes in Israel if it makes peace negotiations hostage to demands that can never be met. Israel’s attempts to find a peaceful solution, from the time of Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 onwards, were rebuffed, often with hostility. In 2000, Ehud Barak offered to set up an independent state in Gaza and 95 per cent of the West Bank and territory from Israel proper to compensate for the remaining 5 per cent. But then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat, unwilling to be seen to give up the fight with Israel, foolishly rejected the offer. An even more generous offer, including much of East Jerusalem, was made by Ehud Olmert in 2008 and similarly rejected by Mahmoud Abbas.

And in 2005, when Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas responded by shelling Israel and launching a brutal takeover of the territory. In a hostile region, friction between Israel and its allies will only be exploited by Israel’s regional enemies, delaying progress towards a viable two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

At least the UK Independent shows some anger (though the last line here seems contradictory, to say the least):

Diplomatic expulsions are unusual. But they are even rarer between friends and allies, which is why the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat marks a nadir in recent relations between our two countries. Even when friendly nations fall out, they try to limit the damage by agreeing not to publicise diplomatic departures. Here, the Government clearly wanted not only to communicate its displeasure to Israel but to broadcast it loud and clear to the British public.

This is surely explained in part by the extraordinary revelation that gave rise to Britain’s initial protest: the discovery by police in the United Arab Emirates that 12 members of a team believed responsible for the assassination of a Hamas leader used cloned British passports to enter the country. Israel insists there is no proof that its agents were behind the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month – and this remains the position. That there are links between Israel and the false passports, however, is hard to deny, given that many – if not all – of the real people whose identities were used reside in Israel.

The scandal of a friendly country – a democracy, as David Miliband emphasised yesterday – being prepared to take advantage of Britain in this way is not to be underestimated. But neither is the interest of the Government, and specifically the Foreign Office, in making its fury more widely known. British citizens had woken up to find their reputations compromised; the security of our national identity documents was impugned. Above all, though, the British authorities were made to look powerless – even, indeed, complicit, something Mr Miliband took pains yesterday expressly to deny.

It is reasonable to ask whether the Government’s response would have been so harsh or so public, had relations with the Israeli government not already been close to rock bottom – what with the Gaza war, the stalling of the international peace process under Benjamin Netanyahu, and the arrest warrant that recently deterred the former Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, from visiting Britain. The truth is that diplomatic expulsions tend to be not the cause, but a symptom, of malaise. From here, the hope must be, UK-Israel relations can only improve.

Not so fast in believing that Google has completely ended its censorship regime in China:

Google’s operations and long-term prospects in China were shrouded in confusion , as it emerged that it is still censoring search services for its partners because of contractual obligations.

The world’s leading search engine hoped to resolve two months of uncertainty with Monday’s announcement that it had closed its mainland search service and shifted its Chinese-language facility to Hong Kong.

The territory has different laws under the “one country, two systems” formula adopted after the 1997 handover and that allows Google to display results without removing sensitive material, as promised.

But the company has over a dozen syndication deals with internet and telecommunication firms on the mainland. Those sites would break the law if they offered uncensored searches.

“Over time we won’t be syndicating censored search to partners in China but we will fulfil existing contractual obligations,” a spokesman said.

But mobile and online service provider Tom.com – controlled by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing – has already dropped the Google search box from its portal, switching to Chinese rival Baidu.

And the involvement of Washington is highly problematic on many levels (not least because the US is often seen as a barrier to free and open speech):

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has called on Washington to take a stand against China‘s censorship of the internet, urging the US to make the issue a “high priority”.

Brin, talking to the Guardian about Google’s decision yesterday to lift censorship from its Chinese internet search engine, called on government and businesses to act in order to put pressure on Beijing. “I certainly hope they make it a high priority,” he said. “Human rights issues deserve equal time to the trade issues that are high priority now … I hope this gets taken seriously.”

The Obama administration has been playing down the growing conflict between one of America’s most successful companies and the Chinese authorities, suggesting that the relationship between the two countries is “mature enough to sustain differences”.

But Brin said it was vital that Obama tackled the issue – not least because the importance of the internet means that trade and censorship are inextricably linked. “Since services and information are our most successful exports, if regulations in China effectively prevent us from being competitive, then they are a trade barrier,” he said.

China web watcher Rebecca MacKinnon offers her thoughts on how the West should see the world’s largest internet community:

Many of China’s 384 million Internet users are engaged in passionate debates about their communities’ problems, public policy concerns, and their nation’s future. Unfortunately these public discussions are skewed, blinkered, and manipulated – thanks to political censorship and surveillance. The Chinese people are proud of their nation’s achievements and generally reject critiques by outsiders even if they agree with some of them. A democratic alternative to China’s Internet-age authoritarianism will only be viable if it is conceived and built by the Chinese people from within. In helping Chinese “netizens” conduct an un-manipulated and un-censored discourse about their future, the United States will not imposing its will on the Chinese people, but rather helping the Chinese people to take ownership over their own future.

Go girls:

Last year I wrote about the proposed illegal settlements in East Jerusalem, funded by wealthy Jewish businessman Irving Moskowitz.

Now, the reality:

The Jerusalem municipality’s representative on the Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee, Yair Gabai, said Wednesday that all committee deliberations over expansion of construction have been frozen following the recent tensions between Israel and the United States over construction in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo.

“Unfortunately, since [U.S. Vice President] Biden’s visit all the committee’s sessions have been put on hold until further notice,” Gabai said.

The Interior Ministry confirmed Gabai’s statements, saying that “the prime minister has deicded to form a committee of chairmen to improve the coordination between the various government offices over all matters relating to construction and building permits.”

Despite this, the Jerusalem municipality has given final approval to a group of settlers to construct 20 apartments in a controversial hotel in east Jerusalem, Haaretz learned on Tuesday.

The announcement comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington smoothing over ties with the United States over the latest settlement-related tensions, and hours before the premier was to meet with President Barack Obama in Washington.

The Shepherd Hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was purchased by American Jewish tycoon Irving Moskowitz in 1985 for $1 million.

Moskowitz, an influential supporter of Ateret Cohanim and heightened Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, plans to tear down the hotel and build housing units for Jewish Israelis in its place.

The local planning council initially approved the plan in July, a move which angered Britain and the United States and prompted them to call on Israel to cancel the plans. The council issued its final approval for the project last Thursday, which now enables the settlers to begin their construction at once.

An existing structure in the area will be town down to make room for the housing units, while the historic Shepherd Hotel will remain intact. A three-story parking structure and an access road will also be constructed on site.