Antony Loewenstein

A strong editorial in Haaretz this week (I’m a few day’s behind on the news, dear readers, due to tramping and speaking around New Zealand) on Israel’s rejection of Noam Chomsky. We’re still waiting for the outcry from the Zionist Diaspora after this blatantly anti-democratic and stupid Israeli move. Deafening silence? That’s a real change from normal proceedings:

By stopping the illustrious American scholar Prof. Noam Chomsky at the Allenby Bridge and barring his entry into Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the government’s outrageous treatment of those with the audacity to criticize its policies has reached new heights. Israel looks like a bully who has been insulted by a superior intellect and is now trying to fight it, arrest it and expel it.

…

Israel, however, has lost its last remnants of tolerance for anyone who does not join its shrinking chorus of supporters. On the right, but not only there, Chomsky is seen as a deserter, a traitor and an enemy of the people. The details of the incident, as reported by Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, sound as if they were taken from the theater of the absurd or from some political satire on places and times that have gone down in infamy. The questions that were posed to Chomsky by a border inspector, on orders from his superiors, have to be read and reread to be believed.

…

One does not have to be an ardent supporter of Chomsky in order to agree with his view that Israel is behaving like South Africa in the 1960s, when it understood that it was an outcast, but thought it could solve the problem with the help of a better public relations campaign.

This site has covered the extensive and global efforts by some Zionist organisations to block the performance of the play Seven Jewish Children. The latest example was in Perth, Western Australia

One of the organisers behind the show sent me the following flyer, handed out by Jewish protestors before the program, in an attempt to demonise Palestinians as potential terrorists. Best kill them off, then:

This is what my contact sent me:

The evening was a resounding success, a full house, an appreciative audience, and a modest contingent of rather sedate protestors. I have attached the propaganda piece they produced to hand out to people in line. What I still find astounding is that they can take offence at [writer Carol] Churchill chastising Zionists for their indifference to Palestinian suffering, yet  I interpret this nonsense as hate speech. Are they not suggesting that it is wrong to kill Jewish children because they are innocent but the children of Gaza are fair targets as mere terrorists in waiting? I am hard pressed to think of another way to judge the juxtaposition of the images of children. It would be an amusing bit of crude propaganda if they were not so damn earnest. Sigh.

Could somebody please explain why Noam Chomsky now appears to be supporting the dictatorial and corrupt Palestinian Authority when only a short while ago he rightly called the body fundamentally corrupt and complicit in selling out the rights of Palestinians?

Following this week’s announcement that A-list musician Elvis Costello was cancelling his tour of Israel due to that country’s occupation of Palestine, looks like things are soon to get even more interesting:

In reaction [to the Costello decision], a music industry insider confirmed that the winds could be shifting. The music executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity in light of his ongoing business ties with artists, said that in recent months he had approached more than 15 performing artists with proposals to give concerts in Israel. None had agreed. The contracts offered high levels of compensation. He called them “extreme, big numbers that could match any other gig.”

Russia in the 21st century has become a largely lawless land, where journalists are especially attacked, harassed and killed for simply do their jobs.

We stand in solidarity with them:

Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb.

“Last spring, I called for the resignation of the city’s leadership,” Mr. Beketov said in one of his final editorials. “A few days later, my automobile was blown up. What is next for me?”

Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. His fingers were bashed, and three later had to be amputated, as if his assailants had sought to make sure that he would never write another word. He lost a leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence.

The police promised a thorough investigation, but barely looked up from their desks. Surveillance videos were ignored. Neighbors were not interviewed. Information about politicians’ displeasure with Mr. Beketov was deemed “unconfirmed,” according to interviews with officials and residents.

Prosecutors, who had repeatedly rejected Mr. Beketov’s pleas for protection, took over the case, but did not seem to accomplish much more. Mr. Beketov’s close colleagues said they were eager to offer insights about who in the government had been stung by his exposés. But no one asked.

Eighteen months later, there have been no arrests.

In retrospect, the violence was an omen, beginning a wave of unsolved attacks and official harassment against journalists, human rights activists and opposition politicians around the region, which includes the Moscow suburbs, but not the city itself. Rarely, if ever, is anyone held responsible.

One editor was beaten in front of his home, and the assailants seized only copies of his articles and other material for the next day’s issue, not his wallet or cellphone. Local officials insisted that he sustained his injuries while drunk.

Another journalist was pummeled by plainclothes police officers after a demonstration. It was all captured on video. Even so, the police released a statement saying that he had hurt himself when he was accidentally pushed by the crowd.

These types of attacks or other means of intimidation, including aggressive efforts by prosecutors to shut down news media outlets or nonprofit groups, serve as an unnerving deterrent. And in a few cases in recent years, the violence in the country has escalated into contract killings. Corruption is widespread in Russia, and government often functions poorly. But most journalists and nonprofit groups shy away from delving deeply into these problems.

The culture of impunity in Russia represents the most glaring example of the country’s inability to establish real laws in the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And this failure radiates throughout society, touching upon ordinary men and women who are trying to carve out lives in the new Russia, but are wary of questioning authority.

An extract (via Mondoweiss) of an amazing new book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa.

What’s that about Israel “sharing values” with the democratic West?

The Israeli–South African relationship was not only about profit and battlefield bravado, however. After Menachem Begin’s Likud Party came to power in 1977, these economic interests converged with ideological affinities to make the alliance even stronger. Many members of the Likud Party shared with South Africa’s leaders an ideology of minority survivalism that presented the two countries as threatened outposts of European civilization defending their existence against barbarians at the gates.

Indeed, much of Israel’s top brass and Likud Party leadership felt an affinity with South Africa’s white government, and unlike Peres and Rabin they did not feel a need to publicly denounce apartheid while secretly supporting Pretoria. Powerful military figures, such as Ariel Sharon and Rafael (Raful) Eitan, drew inspiration from the political tradition of Revisionist Zionism—a school of thought that favored the use of military force to defend Jewish sovereignty and encouraged settlement of the biblical lands of Greater Israel, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sharon, Eitan, and many of their contemporaries were convinced that both nations faced a fundamentally similar predicament as embattled minorities under siege, fighting for their survival against what they saw as a common terrorist enemy epitomized by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The ANC may have never employed indiscriminate violence to the extent that the PLO did, but in the eyes of the generals in Tel Aviv and Pretoria, Mandela and Arafat were one and the same: terrorist leaders who wished to push them into the sea. And for the top brass in both countries, the only possible solution was tight control and overwhelming force.

Foreign Ministry officials in Israel did not always approve of close ties with South Africa, but it was the defense establishments— not the diplomatic corps— that managed the alliance. The military’s dominance was so complete that the Israeli embassy in Pretoria was divided by a wall through which no member of the diplomatic corps was allowed to pass. Only when opponents of apartheid within the Israeli government sought to bring down that wall in the late 1980s did the alliance begin to crumble.

Malcolm Evans is one of New Zealand’s leading cartoonists (I spent time with him in Auckland earlier in the week.)

He used to be employed by the New Zealand Herald but after drawing a handful of cartoons critical of Israel, such the one below (and note the then editor’s comments alongside), he no longer worked for the paper. Indeed, I’ve been told that not one Israel/Palestine-related cartoon has appeared in the newspaper since 2003:

Welcome to the reality of the Zionist lobby and gutlessness of some in the mainstream media.

The news that one of Australia’s leading unions, the CFMEU, has begun a boycott of Israeli products from illegal colonies in the West Bank received a tiny item in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald but nowhere else that I can see.

Here’s the group’s statement from 12 May:

The CFMEU National Executive in October 2009 discussed the latest state of affairs regarding the longstanding Israeli/Palestinian conflict and considered information regarding the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) approach being adopted by some national trade union centres.
The CFMEU Executive resolved to invite the Palestinian Ambassador to Australia to address the
CFMEU’s NEC and then consider our union’s approach to this matter further.

The NEC heard from Izzat Abdulhadi at its February meeting and considered the arguments for a
boycott of products and goods produced in illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories.

Since that time further provocations have been forthcoming from the current aggressive Netanyahu
regime including the announcement of the construction of fresh settlements during the visit of US
Vice President Biden and the use of false passports (including forged Australian documents) in the
Dubai killing of a Hamas official.

Most  recently  following  the  debate  at  the  UK  TUC  Congress,  the  TUC  have  joined  with  the  call  for  a
selective  consumer  boycott  of  goods  produced  by  Israeli  Settlements  in  the  Occupied  Palestinian
Territories  under  the  general  banner  of  the  global  ‘BDS’  campaign.  This  has  been  assisted  by  recent
UK Government moves to clearly label such goods as coming from occupied Palestine.

With comrades Mal Tulloch and David Forde who have just returned from a tour of the Occupied
Territories during the recent APHEDA visit to Israel and Palestine furnishing us with detailed
information on the Palestinian situation, the CFMEU is now in a position to adopt a considered
approach on a union wide level.

In all the circumstances the CFMEU believes that a boycott of products made in the illegal settlements is justified and is the kind of solidarity action that can send a message loud and clear to
the Netanyahu government.

The CFMEU further resolves that we will argue for this approach in the forums of the labour
movement in Australia including the ACTU and the ALP and that we will also argue for it in
international forums as appropriate.

The approach recommended on the BDS question remains one aspect of the broad solidarity and
support that should be rendered to the long suffering Palestinian people until a just and lasting
peace is secured with a durable two state solution.

A strong letter in the UK Guardian that puts some necessary pressure on Britain’s new Deputy Prime Minister. Speaking about “change” is politically necessary these days, but alas, what does it really bring to the people under American or British occupation?

To the British deputy prime minister:

Dear Nick Clegg,

This is a request for action speaking louder than words by the new coalition. I welcome your early commitment to the restoration of civil rights as part of the mainstream agenda for the UK. However, there is a civil rights crisis in the Middle East. Both these situations were seriously ignored by the previous Labour administration.

I appreciate that you are well aware that the humanitarian disaster occurring on a daily basis in Palestine has been brought about by the well-recognised and documented unlawful activities of the Israel state. Your article in the Guardian last December admirably exposes the iniquity of the Gaza blockade. There are of course many other examples – illegal settlements, the separation wall, the demolition of Palestinian homes, sequestration of water supplies, destruction of olive groves, etc.

The UN and other bodies have passed resolution upon resolution about these matters as well as an extremely strong judgment by the international court of justice in The Hague concerning the wall. But nothing ever happens.

As I write, a flotilla of ships convened by a collective of courageous individuals is heading towards the coast of Gaza laden with cement for the long overdue reconstruction and school books for the children. The Israeli navy regularly and illegally restricts Palestinian territorial waters and prevents lawful activity by Palestinians and the entry of humanitarian aid. It is utterly predictable, given the Israeli flagrant disregard for international law, that they will attack this flotilla.

You are now in a position to implement the policies you expressed in your article.

First: the Royal Navy (recently employed to rescue stranded airline passengers) should be on hand to prevent the Israeli navy from violating the lawful activities of European citizens.

Second: for the longer term, the UK government must fulfil its obligations as clearly set out by the international court of justice to terminate Israel’s manifold violations.

Third: your support of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine when it comes to London in November will be much appreciated. I write as a jury member of the tribunal and as someone who has participated in two missions to Palestine in the past.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Mansfield QC

A message I continue making across my current tour in New Zealand (presently in Wellington, after sell-out events in Christchurch and Auckland) is that Israel isn’t a democracy and such untruths must be continually challenged. It was something I discussed with senior members of parliament today. Re-framing the debate. Making the general public understand that the Jewish state is moving in a direction that in many ways makes it far easier to explain why the Western elites should seriously question its relationship with the country. Yet another reason:

Two weeks after Israel imposed a travel ban on him, Ameer Makhoul, a well-respected Palestinian leader holding Israeli citizenship, was kidnapped from his home on 6 May in the middle of the night. The persecution of Makhoul brings back memories of the South Africa apartheid regime: he has been held incommunicado and was not allowed access to his lawyer for two weeks; a court order prohibited publication of any information on the case against Makhoul for 90 days; and the so-called evidence justifying the “security charges” against Makhoul remains secret. During the South Africa anti-apartheid movement, similar tactics were used against those advocating for freedom and equal rights, who were accused of terrorism and having links with the Soviet Union.

The detention of Ameer Makhoul follows a wave of repression of Palestinian leaders and activists resisting the occupation in the West Bank, and he is not the only Palestinian community leader in Israel to be receiving such treatment. Internationally-renowned pharmacologist Dr. Omar Said was detained two weeks before Makhoul and a gag order was used to silence the media. Detentions and gag orders are imposed by Israel to intimidate and harass those who speak out and campaign for freedom and equal rights.

The US empire contributes greatly to peace and security in the Middle East:

U.S. gives some stylish new bikes to Lebanon