Antony Loewenstein

A minor step in the right direction, though of course, if history is any guide, the settlements will expand while intense “negotiations” commence:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is leaving for Washington tonight, has promised the Obama administration Israel will make several goodwill gestures toward the Palestinian Authority in response to Washington’s demands.

For the first time since Operation Cast Lead, Israel has agreed to ease the blockade on the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Netanyahu has agreed to discuss all core issues during the proximity talks, with the condition of reaching final conclusions only in direct talks with the PA.

Netanyahu also agreed to discuss the core issues in the dispute – including borders, refugees, Jerusalem, security arrangements, water and settlements – already during indirect talks, although summations would be made in direct talks with the PA president.

Netanyahu responded to Washington’s demands during his telephone call with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday night. Clinton said on Friday that Netanyahu’s response “was useful and productive, and we’re continuing our discussions with him and his government.”

Netanyahu refused to revoke the building project in Ramat Shlomo or freeze construction in East Jerusalem. He also promised a better oversight system to prevent embarrassing incidents such as the one that triggered the crisis with the U.S. during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit.

Senior officials in Jerusalem said that the prime minister’s gestures include relieving the blockade on Gaza and enabling the UN to transport construction materials to rebuild sewerage systems and a large flour mill, and build 150 apartments in Khan Yunis.

Netanyahu also agreed to release hundreds of Fatah-affiliated prisoners as a gesture to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in keeping with the view of the defense establishment on the effect this will have on the release of Gilad Shalit.

Netanyahu is scheduled to leave for Washington tonight with Defense Minister Ehud Barak to attend the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington. Opposition leader MK Tzipi Livni and Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau will also attend the convention.

Netanyahu is slated to address the convention tomorrow at 7 P.M. (Israel time), then meet Clinton, who is also to speak at the AIPAC gathering. No meeting has been set yet between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, but Israeli officials believe such a meeting will take place on Tuesday in the White House, and contacts are progressing in this regard.

Israel’s Washington envoy Michael Oren said yesterday that outsiders cannot force peace on the Middle East, and any final settlement will have to be initiated by the Israelis and Palestinians themselves. Oren spoke in an interview with U.S. television station PBS. Oren said Israel was not interested in having the White House present its own peace plan, in view of the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Any attempt by the United States to impose a peace deal would be like “forcing somebody to fall in love,” Oren said.

Asked if Israel wanted Washington to present its own peace plan, Oren said: “No. I think peace has to be made between two people sitting across a table. America can help facilitate that interaction.”

It’s encouraging that Palestinians in Gaza are peacefully protesting their situation and we should salute their bravery:

alestinians on Saturday entered 50 meters into the Israeli army’s buffer zone east of As-Salqa in central Gaza, near the Israeli military post at Kisufim.

Mahmoud Az-Zeq, one of the activists, described the rally to Ma’an as “clear, popular, daring, and a real breakthrough,” adding that Israeli forces did not open fire at protesters, despite being carried out “directly next to Kisufim.”

Protesters waved Palestinian flags, with young men reaching the barbed wire which separates Gaza from Israel by only 50 meters.

“The goal of this peace action is to re-guide the compass of the popular struggle toward the Israeli occupation, in addition to get Palestinians out of the state of despair and frustration in Gaza,” Az-Zeq added.

On Thursday, Israeli forces opened fire on Popular Committee Against the Buffer Zone march as the group continued to test the military’s policing of the no-go area.

At the time, an Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers identified “rioters” in what is considered a prohibited area and said they were hurling rocks at the soldiers. “A single warning shot was fired in the air,” she said.

Palestine People’s Party politburo member Walid Al-Awad told Ma’an that “these peaceful rallies are a confirmation of the continuation of these protests against the creation of the no-man zone that the Israeli occupation is trying to impose 300 meters along the border fence, which is confiscating 20 percent of agricultural land in Gaza.”

He added: “Despite the barbed wire and the separation wall, these rallies come to affirm that the Palestinians are unified in confronting the occupation and settlements. These peaceful rallies will continue weekly across all Gaza districts.”

Robert Fisk reports from Pakistan on the 8000 “disappeared” citizens during the country’s US-backed “war on terror”:

There is evidence that Pakistan’s “disappeared” are moved around, between barracks and interrogation centres and underground torture facilities in different towns and cities. There are also terrible rumours – fostered, some say, by the security authorities – that the army has thrown detainees from helicopters, that the cops dispose of bodies at night by dumping them in swamps or in open countryside so that decay and animal mutilation will cover the marks of torture before the bodies are found.

…

So far, the Supreme Court in Islamabad and the Lahore High Court have squeezed around 200 detainees out of the maw of the country’s security apparatus – those, that is, who were still in Pakistan. Many are known to have been freighted off to the tender mercies of the Americans at Bagram in Afghanistan, where Arab detainees have long ago testified to being beaten and sodomised with broom sticks. There have been prisoner murders, too, in Bagram, the jail that President Barack Obama refuses to close.

Swiss-based journalist Shraga Elam comments on the growing problems inside Switzerland, in a speech he gave in Geneva on 19h March:

The huge wave of Islamophobia rolling over Switzerland should be compared to other forms of racism prevailing in this country especially with Judeophobia, with its long history.

It would be wrong to speak in this context about an equation, although there are crucial similarities and common roots and traits.

Xenophobia in Switzerland was and still is an essential part of the dominating rural sub-cultures according to which even the inhabitants of the next village were and sometimes still are considered to be foreigners. Not to speak about recent strong animosities between the various language regions and between Protestants and Catholics. On the other hand, there were and are strong cosmopolitain tendencies even in the countryside. Accordingly, many students in Zurich at the beginning of the last century were Jewish Russian women, and radical leftist Russian politicians like Vladimir Lenin and Mikhail Bakunin found refuge in the Helvetic Confederation. And my catholic spouse comes from a village and not only she but all her 7 siblings married foreigners.

Jews as citizens were anything but welcomed in the Alps confederation. In its editorial from 12.3.2010 the Jewish weekly Tachles reminds that the Swiss authorities did not want to naturalize or even to allow poor Jews from Eastern Europe to stay. After the Nazi racial laws were ratified in Nuremberg in 1937 hardly any Jew was allowed to be naturalized here. Tachles writes accordingly that this dark chapter in the Swiss history should sharpen the Jewish understanding for fellow sufferers. (Gisela Blau, The Red Pass and its Dark Past , Tachles 12 March 2010).

The president of the anti-racism commission, Prof. Georg Kreis, a non-Jew, went in the same direction after declaring in a TV debate on 8.12.2009 that the Swiss People’s Party (SVP or UDC) that had pushed the anti-minaret vote and actually supported an anti-Islamization initiative would have supported an anti-Judaization (Anti-Judaisierung) initiative in the 1930′s. This statement ignited a fierce debate and Swiss conservatives requested Kreis’ resignation for this comparison. This historian was wrong only in one point. There was no need for such an anti-Jewish initiative in the ’30s for the simple reason that once “threatened” with a wave of Jewish refugees as of 1938 the Swiss government decided to close its borders for Jews precisely in order to prevent the alleged danger of “judaization”. And there was no initiative to cancel that anti-human decision.

It is important to note that on the one hand some leaders of the Jewish community also supported the governmental decision, mainly because they had internalized the prevailing anti-Jewish sentiments, especially against Eastern European Jews (Ostjuden). On the other hand many Swiss Christians opposed the border closure. Some of them, like the courageous president of the socialist party, Werner Stocker, were humanists and anti-racists and even acted illegally against the official inhumanity. But some of them, like the journalist, Johann Baptist Rusch, were Judeophobes. For them the Nazi anti-Jewish measures went far too far and they pleaded therefore for a liberal asylum policy towards the threatened Jews. Among them were those who argued either that the rescued Jews would convert to Christianity (the so called “refugees mother” Gertrud Kurz) or that they would proceed to other countries with the next possible opportunity.

Just like today with the anti minaret initiative, it is impossible to say that all those who opposed the anti-Jewish asylum policy were not racists. Similarly many present-day Swiss who are against the minaret ban maintain that position because they believe that the measure is an ineffective way to deal with the alleged Islamic “threat”.

It is also important to note in this connection that some of those who support the ban do not consider themselves to be racist but just anti-clerical or atheists.

Judeophobia was mainly religiously-motivated as part of a primitive and racist understanding of Christianity and like today with Islamophobia was often maintained by persons who never met a Jew in their life or had just one bad experience with a single Jew and then generalized.

Insofar as Islamophobia and Judeophobia express prejudices against “strangers” on cultural and religious bases there are strong similarities between the two and therefore parts of the Swiss Jewish community demonstrates its solidarity in the struggle against the Islamophobia.

But there is a very different and even opposing political background for the two forms of racism which sometimes renders Islamo-Jewish cooperation difficult if not impossible.

The trigger if not the main reason for the present Islamophobia and Arabophobia is a political campaign launched in the mid-1980′s as a coproduction of the US and Israeli military industrial complexes (MIC) which needed a new enemy as it was becoming clear that the “cold war” was going to end and the Communist enemy would soon disappear.

One cannot overlook the large presence of Jews among the so called neo-conservatives in the US, playing the spearhead of the Islamophobia campaign on behalf of the MIC. And they have their representatives in Europe like the philosophers Andre Glucksmann or Bernard Henri-Lévy in France and the journalist Henryk M. Broder in the German speaking countries.

These Jews, like many Zionists, are not looking for conciliation with the Arab and Muslim world but for an ever escalating conflict. They believe they have found the necessary justification for their belligerent attitude in the militant Muslim factions as a kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.

Another hurdle for Muslim-Jewish cooperation is the Islamo-Judeophobia, the counterpart of the Judeo-Islamophobia. Many Arabs and Muslims find it difficult to distinguish between Jews and militant Zionists. So one can hear often on demonstrations against Israeli war crimes slogans like “Khaibar, Khaibar ya Yahud”, meaning figuratively “death to the Jews”.

It is obvious that the Middle East conflict burdens the Jewish-Muslim relationship in Switzerland too, and the necessary common struggle here against racism and for freedom of religion must include the Middle East as well.

“Internet freedom” at Google Trends: Washington, Toronto, Beijing – cities with the most searches (via Evgeny Morozov).

More killing in the name of Zionism:

Two Israeli aircraft appearing to be spy planes flew near Budapest’s international airport last week but did not land there, Hungarian media reported Thursday. According to the reports, the planes were on a “spy mission” that may be connected to the assassination of a Syrian national in his vehicle Wednesday in the Hungarian capital. The two Gulfstream planes, reportedly equipped with the IDF’s finest intelligence means, flew through Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania before entering Hungary’s airspace, the media outlets said. The aircraft were said to leave Hungary after completing their mission, without ever landing in the country. Responding to media questions, a spokesman for the Hungarian Defense Ministry said that the Israeli planes were on a diplomatic mission.

Meanwhile, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry said that air traffic in the country is under the jurisdiction of the local aviation authority. The Ministry refused to address questions regarding the nature of the mission that prompted the Israeli planes to arrive in Hungary. The identity of the Syrian national assassinated in Budapest had not yet been published. Hungarian police officials said an unknown assassin shot the 52-year-old Syrian while he was driving his car. The shooter grabbed a black briefcase from the vehicle before fleeing the scene of the attack, police said.

A fine and internationally recognised journalist from Gaza, Mohammed Omer, is trapped in diplomatic limbo:

Effectively canceling a planned speaking tour, the US consulate in the Netherlands has put an extended hold on the visa application of award-winning Palestinian journalist and photographer Mohammed Omer, scheduled to speak on conditions in Palestine, on 5 April in Chicago.

In 2008, Omer became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, for his firsthand reportage of life in the besieged Gaza Strip. As his prize citation explained, “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless … Working alone in extremely difficult and often dangerous circumstances, [Omer has] reported unpalatable truths validated by powerful facts.”

Upon attempting to return to Gaza following his acceptance of the Gellhorn award in London, Omer was detained, interrogated and beaten by the Shin Bet Israeli security force for over 12 hours, and eventually hospitalized with cracked ribs and respiratory problems. He has since resided in the Netherlands and continues to undergo medical treatment there for his subsequent health problems.

The US consulate has now held his visa application for an extended period of time, effectively canceling a planned US speaking tour without the explanation that a denial would require. In recent years, numerous foreign scholars and experts have been subject to visa delays and denials that have prohibited them from speaking and teaching in the US — a process the American Civil Liberties Union describes as “Ideological Exclusion,” which they say violates Americans’ first amendment right to hear constitutionally protected speech by denying foreign scholars, artists, politicians and others entry to the United States. Foreign nationals who have recently been denied visas include Fulbright scholar Marixa Lasso; respected South African scholar and vocal Iraq War critic Dr. Adam Habib; Iraqi doctor Riyadh Lafta, who disputed the official Iraqi civilian death numbers in the respected British medical journal The Lancet; and Oxford’s Tariq Ramadan, who has just received a visa to speak in the United States after more than five years of delays and denials.

Fellow Gellhorn recipient Dahr Jamail, expressed his disbelief at Omer’s visa hold. “Why would the US government, when we consider the premise that we have ‘free speech’ in this country, place on hold a visa for Mohammed Omer, or any other journalist planning to come to the United States to give talks about what they report on? This is a travesty, and the only redemption available for the US government in this situation is to issue Omer’s visa immediately, and with a deep apology.”

Omer was to visit Houston, Santa Fe and Chicago, where local publisher Haymarket Books was to host his Newberry Library event, “Reflections on Life and War in Gaza,” alongside a broad set of interfaith religious, community and political organizations.

Rather than cancel the meeting, organizers are calling on supporters to write letters and emails calling for the US consulate’s approval of Omer’s visa. They are also proceeding with the event as planned, via live satellite or skype, if necessary.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visiting the Palestinian territories:

Let us be clear. All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped.

Ali Abunimah digs up a document from 1988 that reminds us how the US government was as reluctant to impose serious sanctions on South Africa as they are today against apartheid Israel.

Here’s a comment by John C. Whitehead, then Deputy Secretary of State:

Sanctions are the wrong tool because South Africa has the resources to resist an economic siege and has been preparing for such a contingency for many years.

Popular conservative American blogger Glenn Reynolds:

If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I’d do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible.

The Forward reports on a development in American perceptions of Israel. Washington’s attitude towards the Jewish state is talking tough but still offering billions of dollars every year to fund the worst excesses:

Shoshana Bryen, senior director for security policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, argued that blaming America’s difficulties in its Middle East war zones on Israel’s approach to the Palestinian issue is “a fraud of the largest order.” Arab Gulf countries, she said, are reluctant to cooperate militarily with the United States because of their own internal problems, and they use the Palestinian issue as an excuse. “It is a canard to hang it on Israel,” she added.

Suggestions that Israeli policies might threaten American national security thus far seem not to have gained much traction among lawmakers, said an official with a pro-Israel organization in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said that the prevailing attitude on Capitol Hill is still that Israel is a security asset in the Middle East, not a burden.

A cautionary tale of hubris from a man who should be facing war crimes charges in the Hague (here’s why):

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said there is no truth in the perception that he is building a family dynasty and referred to the Kennedys, Bushes and the Gandhis in politics as an example.

In an interview to the Singapore-based Strait Times, Mr. Rajapaksa in response to a question on the oft-heard complaint that there are too many Rajapaksas in his regime has said, “But for that matter how many Kennedys were there in administration. Or Bushes. Or the Gandhis. I have only two brothers in administration.”

…

To a question on the LTTE [Tamil Tigers], Mr. Rajapaksa has said there are sleeping cadres and there are interested parties, especially outside Sri Lanka.

“It has been just nine months since the war ended… Just because the leaders were eliminated, it is not over. The movement will take some more time.

There are sleeping cadres, trained suicide bombers. They were a factory of suicide bombers”.

Asked how he would like to be remembered, Mr. Rajapaksa has said, “As a man who loved his country and his people, and did my best to serve them.”