Antony Loewenstein

I recently debated in Sydney on the motion that governments shouldn’t censor the internet. ABC TV broadcast the discussion and our team included a robust explanation on the principles of free speech.

An edited version of the debate was broadcast tonight on ABC Radio National Big Ideas:

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We read such stories below and expect little better from the brutes in Sri Lanka. The world responds accordingly. Shock, horror etc.

Israel behaves equally aggressively – witness the mass destruction in Gaza – and a myriad of excuses are made.

That’s called hypocrisy:

Exclusive: a senior Sri Lankan army commander and frontline soldier tell Channel 4 News that point-blank executions of Tamils at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war were carried out under orders.

In August 2009 Channel 4 News obtained video evidence, later authenticated by the United Nations, purporting to show point-blank executions of Tamils by uniformed Sri Lankan soldiers.

Now a senior army commander and a frontline soldier have told Channel 4 News that such killings were indeed ordered from the top.

One frontline soldier said: “Yes, our commander ordered us to kill everyone. We killed everyone.”

And a senior Sri Lankan army commander said: “Definitely, the order would have been to kill everybody and finish them off.

“I don’t think we wanted to keep any hardcore elements, so they were done away with. It is clear that such orders were, in fact, received from the top.”

Despite allegations of war crimes, Sri Lanka’s government has managed to avoid an independent inquiry. But the evidence continues to mount.

Sri Lanka’s representative in Australia must be getting training from the Israelis. Deny every war crime, allege bias in every report and cause intelligent people to treat you with contempt. Well done, Colombo:

ELEANOR HALL: The Sri Lankan Government has hit back at renewed criticism of its human rights record.

The country’s senior diplomatic representative in Australia says a report into the civil war in his country by the International Crisis Group is full of fabricated evidence.

High Commissioner Senaka Walgampaya told our reporter Simon Santow that he also rejects calls for an independent investigation into the conflict.

SIMON SANTOW: High Commissioner, will the Sri Lankan Government accept the call from the International Crisis Group for an independent international investigation into these war crimes?

SENAKA WALGAMPAYA: The Sri Lankan Government has rejected this so many times because the Sri Lankan Government has already set in motion its own mechanism. A commission was appointed last year consisting of very imminent lawyers from Sri Lanka.

SIMON SANTOW: But why not have an independent investigation?

SENAKA WALGAMPAYA: Well, Sri Lanka does not think that is required. You see even in England on the (inaudible) war they set up their own tribunal and that’s proceeding. So I mean that’s the standard set by the West and why should Sri Lanka be held to do otherwise.

SIMON SANTOW: Well, your country’s critics say that there’s too much intimidation that can happen if the inquiry is an internal one?

SENAKA WALGAMPAYA: That’s absolutely false allegation. This is being maintained by people who want to make a case out for people to seek asylum in other countries. That’s the whole crux of the matter. It’s very clear from what they finally end up with that the Government of Australia here should start reprocessing their applications. The Diaspora who are behind this, they’re saying that the must be an inquiry into war crimes because they want us Australian Government, to relax its criteria for asylum seekers.

SIMON SANTOW: If you look at the International Crisis Group and its credentials, there are some very well respected people involved in the ICG, not the least of which is Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general.

SENAKA WALGAMPAYA: But the people who are behind the ICG at the moment, they’re people who are be absolutely hostile to Sri Lanka over a period of time. Louise Arbour, Gareth Evans, they have been hostile to Sri Lanka for a number of years. They have been attacking Sri Lanka, this is nothing new to Sri Lanka.

SIMON SANTOW: So Louise Arbour and Kofi Annan, you don’t have faith in them being a great part of the ICG?

SENAKA WALGAMPAYA: Kofi Annan, I don’t know his connection to the ICG, but they’re, Kofi Annan can’t be involved in every case, but there are others who have been providing the information who have been very hostile to Sri Lanka, who are biased and what they are giving is not bona fide information about Sri Lanka.

SIMON SANTOW: So when the ICG says that it has multiple witness statements and hundreds of photographs, videos, satellite images, electronic communications and documents. Can they be anything but what they say they are?

SENAKA WALGAMPAYA: They made, most of them are not authentic. I mean they can, anybody can make images, get photographs, and, you know, how these things operate.

SIMON SANTOW: So you think these people…..

SENAKA WALGAMPAYA: This is a huge, huge propaganda machine over the last 30 years and they are very quite capable of doing all these things.

SIMON SANTOW: So you think that these people from the ICG have been hoodwinked?

SENAKA WALGAMPAYA: Of course they have been.

SIMON SANTOW: Really, that they can’t distinguish between fake documents and fake testimony – with the real thing?

SENAKA WALGAMPAYA: I think so. Yeah.

ELEANOR HALL: Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to Australia, Senaka Walgampaya, speaking there to our reporter, Simon Santow.

A brave and principled move that will inspire millions:

Singer Elvis Costello has pulled out of two gigs in Israel due to concerns over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The musician, who was due to perform later this summer, said: “Having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act.”

Costello said his decision was “a matter of instinct and conscience” and “too grave and complex” to be addressed at a concert.

He apologised to ticket holders and event organisers.

The songwriter also said sorry to Israeli journalists who have interviewed him in advance of the concerts.

‘Keenly aware’

“They were of great value and help to me in gaining an appreciation of the cultural scene,” he said.

In a statement on his website, Costello explained: “I must believe that the audience for the coming concerts would have contained many people who question the policies of their government on settlement and deplore conditions that visit intimidation, humiliation or much worse on Palestinian civilians in the name of national security.

“I am also keenly aware of the sensitivity of these themes in the wake of so many despicable acts of violence perpetrated in the name of liberation.”

He added that his decision mean he would be unlikely to receive another invitation to play in Israel, and called it “a matter of regret”.

Costello concluded his statement “with the hope for peace and understanding”.

Is this political correctness run mad? Or cultural insensitivity? Or just stupidity?

The Canadian Jewish Congress says the Toronto Police Service is pushing anti-hate law “to its most absurd level” by listing “non-Jewish Shiksa” as a victim category in its latest hate crime study.

The statistical report reveals that officers investigated hate crimes in Toronto last year against such unusual victim groups as teachers, feminists, infidels, police, Nazis and pedophiles.

But it is the redundantly named category of “non-Jewish Shiksa” — a slur for a non-Jewish woman, from a Hebrew root meaning “a detested thing” — that has especially baffled the CJC, a prominent advocate for stronger hate crime laws.

“You just can’t apply it to literally everything,” said CEO Bernie Farber.

The report, not yet released on the TPS website, shows an increase in “hate/bias occurrences” over the year before, from 153 to 174, with 23 charges laid.

Jewish, black, and LGBT were the top victim categories, but Tamils also registered, with six occurrences. By far the most common crime was mischief, usually graffiti, followed by assault and threatening.

The 2009 shiksa incident, classified as “mischief,” happened in 53 Division, a central uptown area colloquially known among police as “Sleepy Hollow” because it includes the city’s most pleasant residential communities, including some of the Jewish neighbourhoods around Bathurst and Lawrence.

It is not known whether a charge was laid, or a prosecution successful.

Following the recent feature in New Zealand magazine The Listener on my work, this week’s edition publishes the following letters (and note the perfect “balance”, one pro and one anti):

In the unbalanced demonisation of Israel (“Cry the promised land”, May 15), writer Joanne Black, swallowing every generalisation, stereotype and distortion made by Antony Loewenstein, managed to delegitimise the Jewish state and its struggle to survive the unrelenting efforts of terrorists, backed and financed by members of the United Nations, to murder and kidnap its citizens. The media in a democratic society such as New Zealand’s have a responsibility to ensure that free speech and dissent is balanced by truth and facts. This article fell well short.

As a Kiwi living in Israel, I can testify that far from being the warmongering, murderous apartheid-like society portrayed, Israel is a bastion of human rights for all citizens regardless of race, creed or ethnic origin. Readers should also know that after the murder of six million of their brethren and the incessant call by Iran and its paid terrorists to repeat this Holocaust, the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis prefer action, rather than meaningless resolutions and declarations, to thwart this evil intent. If this upsets Loewenstein and friends, too bad.

The Listener has an obligation to present the facts and not the half-baked fantasies of someone who sees everything that Israel represents as an unmitigated evil.
Michael Kuttner
(Efrat, Israel)

It is heartening to read Loewenstein’s views. If anyone calls him – or me, for that matter – an anti-Semite, I suspect it shows defensiveness and perhaps a tweak of conscience.

I am Jewish, and to help the development of the State of Israel, my husband and I gave what we could in financial assistance. That was during the 1960s. At that time we were ignorant of the brutal displacement of Palestinians from their land and the appropriation of their homes. Had we known that, I doubt we would have supported Israel.

Fifty-odd years later, I am appalled at the rapacious brutality of the Israeli state. There are, no doubt, many Jews in Israel who are not happy with the actions of the Government, but obviously they are in the minority.
And if being disgusted with those Jews in the US who support Israel makes me an anti-Semite, so be it. Their strong lobby, both political and financial, is crucial to the ability of Israel to function and so they share the moral responsibility for the actions of the Israeli Jews.

When the subject of Israel comes up in any conversation, my being Jewish embarrasses me. I immediately make it clear that I am totally against Israel’s conduct towards the Palestinians and that my sympathy is with the latter.

With every new house built on occupied land, with every Palestinian humiliated, Israel is creating more anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, and elsewhere. A state built on so much injustice and injury to others cannot survive in the long run. By their actions, the Jews in Israel are losing their humanity.
Eva Rawnsley
(Paekakariki)

With this decision, Australia once again shows itself to be far outside the parameters of international law, making security assessments based on a system completely lacking transparency.

I once spoke at this Sydney Islamic centre last year and found an important space to engage Muslims on issues related to the Middle East and re-defining the stereotype of all Jews being blind Zionists. The departure of Sheik Mansour will leave many local Muslims in a state of shock and anger:

AUSTRALIA has defied a United Nations request by ordering the deportation an Iranian Muslim cleric on security grounds before the UN assesses the alleged denial of his human rights.

Sheikh Mansour Leghaei lost a 13-year legal battle to stay in Australia yesterday when the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, refused to intervene against ASIO’s adverse security assessment of the moderate preacher, who has raised his four children in Sydney.

Dr Leghaei, who has never been told why ASIO suspects him, has been given six weeks to leave the country, angering the 1200 members of his congregation at his Islamic centre at Earlwood, which faces closure without him.

”I hope God forgives him because he does not know any better,” Dr Leghaei said of Senator Evans at the University of Sydney. Here the sheikh was flanked by one of his many Christian supporters, the Anglican priest Dave Smith, and Ben Saul, one of the human rights barristers who sent a petition to the UN a month ago.

A week later, on April 21, the UN’s Human Rights Committee asked the Australian government not to deport Dr Leghaei while it considered his case, a process that could take a year.

ASIO had accused Dr Leghaei of undisclosed ”acts of foreign interference” but, because he is a non-citizen, Australian law entitles him to no explanation – a position confirmed by the High Court. But Associate Professor Saul, the co-director of the university’s centre for international law, said Australia was in violation of six articles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

”In other countries, like Britain and in Europe, affected persons are given an opportunity to see at least a summary of the evidence against them. In the sheikh’s case, he’s been given access to nothing whatsoever.”

Insisting he was no spy or terrorist, Dr Leghaei said: ”I think my 16 years of peaceful life in Australia is my best evidence.”

Senator Evans decided not to deport Dr Leghaei’s wife, Marzieh, and 20-year-old Ali, the only one of their children who is not a citizen. But Dr Leghaei said it was an effective deportation of his 14-year-old Australian-born daughter, Fatima, because she would need her parents.

He addressed hundreds from his congregation last night.

Senator Evans said national security must be paramount. ”Many people have expressed their support for Dr Leghaei and I understand that my decision will disappoint his friends and members of his local community. The fact remains that he is the subject of an adverse security assessment.”

In 1995, authorities at Sydney Airport secretly photocopied Dr Leghaei’s exercise book containing notes on scholars’ explanations of jihad. But the Federal Court later accepted his translation, not ASIO’s which, he says, added inflammatory material about the killing of infidels.

How a Jewish, American soldier hears some anti-Semitic comments in Iraq (during protests against the Gaza massacre), becomes incredibly racist against Arabs on his return to the US and then reflects on why he still remains proud to be Jewish (and presumably Zionist).

Yes, “liberating” Iraq is such a noble, Jewish act; millions of Arabs will certainly thank you.

What fun-loving Israelis do on the weekend, imagine war scenarios with a nuclear-armed Iran:

A nuclear-armed Iran would blunt Israel’s military autonomy, a wargame involving former Israeli generals and diplomats has concluded, though some players predicted Tehran would also exercise restraint.

Sunday’s event at a campus north of Tel Aviv followed other high-profile Iran simulations in Israel and the United States in recent months. But it broke new ground by assuming the existence of what both countries have pledged to prevent: an Iranian bomb.

“Iranian deterrence proved dizzyingly effective,” Eitan Ben-Eliahu, a retired air force commander who played the Israeli defense minister, said in his summary of the 20-team meeting at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Lauder School of Government.

Though the wargame saw Iran declaring itself a nuclear power in 2011, the ensuing confrontations were by proxy, in Lebanon.

In one, emboldened Hezbollah guerrillas fired missiles at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. That was followed by U.S. and Israeli intelligence findings that Iran had slipped radioactive materials to its Lebanese cohort, to assemble a crude device.

Neither move drew Israeli attacks, though Ben-Eliahu said his delegation had received discreet encouragement from Arab rivals of Iran to “go all the way” in retaliating.

Instead, Israel conferred with the United States, which publicly supported its ally’s “right to self-defense” and mobilized military reinforcements for the region while quietly insisting the Israelis stand down to give crisis talks a chance.

“As far as the United States was concerned, Israel was trigger-happy. It sought to use the Hezbollah (missile) attack as justification for what the United States was told would be an all-out war,” said Dan Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who flew in to play President Barack Obama at the IDC.

A fascinating new museum has just opened in Berlin documenting the often faceless bureaucrats behind Hitler’s Final Solution. Such almost casual brutality was driven by ideology but also a strong desire to advance one’s career. What’s killing a few Jews between the hours of nine and five?

The center also reveals the worst historical legacy of the German Federal Republic. The fact that thousands of murderers and their accomplices were able to lead quiet lives in post-war Germany, undisturbed by the criminal justice system. The site of the exhibition is probably the most historically contaminated place in Berlin. The complex on what was once Prinz Albrecht Strasse, just a stone’s throw from today’s government buildings, was the headquarters for the Third Reich’s brutal repression.

In 1933 the Gestapo made the former art school at Prinz Albrecht Strasse 8 its headquarters. The adjacent Hotel Prinz Albrecht became the SS headquarters in 1934 and that same year the SS intelligence service, the SD, took over the Prinz Albrecht palace on nearby Wilhelm Strasse. It was from this complex of buildings that Hitler’s officials administered the concentration and extermination camps, directed the deadly campaigns by the SS death squads and kept an eye on the regime’s opponents.

The “Final Solution” that was discussed at the famed Wannsee Conference on Jan. 20, 1942 was also prepared here. A group of ministerial officials and SS functionaries based here chose the venue for the conference of high-ranking Nazis, where the plan for the murder of Europe’s Jews was hatched.

Hitler was rarely at the complex. He preferred to stay away from Berlin, sometimes ruling from his Wolf’s Lair military headquarters and sometimes from his Bavarian mountain retreat. But this was where the brains behind the Nazi crimes, such as SS leader Heinrich Himmler and SD chief Reinhard Heydrich, had their offices.

Climbing the Career Ladder

And they surrounded themselves by men who didn’t necessarily fit into today’s stereotype of a Nazi war criminal, neither boorish sadists nor bloodless bureaucrats. They were ambitious university-educated men, aged around 30 and more likely to be ideologues than technocrats. They alternated between serving at the Berlin headquarters and in foreign posts, like young managers at a big company making their way up the career ladder. And after the rupture of 1945 most of them simply faded away into the background.

Erich Ehrlinger, for example, a lawyer from Giengen in southern Germany, who at the age of 25 was already a staff leader at the SD main office, before becoming a commander in the German security police in Ukraine and leading the 1b Einsatzkommando, or mobile death squad. A case against him in 1969 was dropped because he was deemed incapable of standing trial. Yet Ehrlinger lived for another 35 years.

Then there was the Munich businessman, Josef Spacil, who joined the SS at the age of 27. He was stationed in an occupied area of the Soviet Union as an SS economist, then came back to Prinz Albrecht Strasse to serve as a department head. He appeared as a witness in the Nuremberg Trials but was never prosecuted himself.

Photographs of a group of young lawyers, Werner Best, Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Hans Nockemann, stare down from the walls — all were born in 1903. “One easily forgets that National Socialism was a young movement,” say Andreas Nachama, the director of the new documentation center.

More on Noam Chomsky’s barring from entering the West Bank by “democratic” Israel (a move supported by an Israeli politician of the supposedly centrist Kadima party but opposed by a leading columnist):

In a telephone conversation last night from Amman, Chomsky told Haaretz that he concluded from the questions of the Israeli official that the fact that he came to lecture at a Palestinian and not an Israeli university led to the decision to deny him entry.

“I find it hard to think of a similar case, in which entry to a person is denied because he is not lecturing in Tel Aviv. Perhaps only in Stalinist regimes,” Chomsky told Haaretz.

Robert Fisk on our friends in the “war on terror”:

I began my column last week with the words “We know all about Guantanamo”. I was wrong. Courtesy of the Toronto press – until a few days ago, when half of them were censored out of the drumhead courts martial that pass for “justice” in this execrable place – I have been learning a lot more.

Because the case involves a Canadian citizen – and because the Canadian government is doing sod-all for its passport-carrying prisoner – it hasn’t been getting a lot of publicity on this side of the Atlantic. It should.

Omar Khadr was 15 when he allegedly – the word “‘allegedly” is going to have to be used for ever, since this is not a fair trial – shot and killed a US Special Forces soldier in eastern Afghanistan in July 2002. Last week, a former US serviceman called Damien Corsetti, nicknamed “The Monster” at the Bagram jailhouse where torture and murder were widespread, agreed via a video link to the Guantanamo “court” that Khadr was trussed up in a cage “in one of the worst places on earth”. “We could do basically anything to scare the prisoners,” Corsetti announced.

Beating was forbidden, “The Monster” acknowledged, but prisoners could be threatened with “nightmarish scenarios” like rendition to Egypt or Israel where, according to Canada’s Globe and Mail, “they would disappear”. Which tells you a lot about Israel. Or what the Americans think of Israel. Quite a lot about Egypt, too, come to think of it.