Antony Loewenstein

The latest brilliant Mark Steel column in the Independent that really needs no introduction:

I should think when the British Legion appears at the International Court in The Hague, they’ll claim they had no idea the £4.6m “gift” they received from warlord Mister Tony Blair was blood money from a criminal. “We just thought it was a charming present from an admirer”, they’ll say, although Mia Farrow will contradict this by suggesting she’d warned the Legion about the origins of the donation, and add she’d witnessed them being “flirtatious” with Mr Blair on a number of occasions.

You can’t blame the British Legion for accepting this money, because we seem to have devised a system for looking after disabled soldiers that depends on donations from book advances. Other more backward countries still use the old-fashioned method of providing money from the society that sent them to war. But we’ve developed a more reliable method of waiting for someone’s book money. I suppose when a limbless soldier first applies for assistance, they’re told, “If JK Rowling comes through you’re in luck. Otherwise you’ll have to get about on a wheelbarrow I’m afraid.”

So they have to appear grateful, but it seems many soldiers and their families are uneasy, seeing as the donor was the man who caused them to need the donation in the first place. Still, I’m sure they see the positive side, and say, “I might have lost a leg, but with these facilities I can represent the West Midlands at disabled table tennis so it’s all worked out in the end.”

Despite a push by some Zionists in the US and beyond to strike Iran, Noam Sheizaf blogs from Israel that there’s hardly consensus inside his country to bomb the Islamic Republic.

Some sanity still remains.

The hysteria over the proposed Islamic centre and mosque near Ground Zero in New York shows most in the political and media elites have failed miserably since 9/11 to explain what Islam is and is not.

Anti-Islam bigotry is rising in the US and often connected to the Zionist project. Increasingly, the most vocal backers of Israel these days are radical Christians, Muslim haters and hardline, Jewish Zionists. Charming.

This video is typical of the mood (and a new poll finds one fifth of Americans think Barack Obama is Muslim):

Rationality is needed.

What’s this I hear? Zionist victimhood? A multi-millionaire property developer hires a man with no property experience and resents being asked whether politics (ie. the influence of the Zionist lobby) or access to the ALP has anything to do with it? It’s called accountability and they’ll be much more to come:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s partner Tim Mathieson would “absolutely” be welcomed back to his job as a property salesman after the election despite speculation the job is inappropriate for Australia’s potential first bloke.

Labor sources have told The Age newspaper that there is growing consensus it would be untenable for Mr Mathieson to work for developer Albert Dadon, a Labor Party donor and prominent Israel lobbyist, if Labor wins on Saturday.

But Mr Dadon stresses that he makes donations and raises funds for both major parties – “and the amount is pathetic”.

“I feel really that this whole thing is simply because I’m a Jew and that’s what I resent,” he told ABC Radio.

Mr Dadon said Mr Mathieson had taken leave of absence from the role at his own request following intense media pressures.

“The bloke is entitled to have a job,” he said.

“After the election he’s absolutely welcome to resume his job.”

Mr Dadon said Mr Mathieson was employed at the Ubertas Group because of his knack with people.

“It takes him absolutely no time to establish a relationship and people warm up to him,” he said.

Mr Dadon said he had never sought any political favours for developments in exchange for donations, but whether conflicts of interests existed for Mr Mathieson was not a matter for him.

“That is not up to me, the conflict of interest,” he said.

“I do what I do whether Tim is with me or whether he’s not with me.”

A French-born Moroccan Jew, Mr Dadon is an accomplished jazz guitarist and composer.

He is married to Debbie Besen, daughter of Marc Besen, billionaire chairman of Highpoint Property Group and founder of the Sussan clothing chain.

Who wants to win a prize from fundamentalist Jewish settlers to be the “Best Zionist Editor” on Wikipedia?

Barack Obama declares victory in Iraq.

Sort of.

While the Zionist establishment in Australia has no real concerns over Saturday’s election win – both major sides love Israel to death – the mainstream media only occasionally reveals the workings of the Zionist lobby (and almost in passing):

The controversial property career of Julia Gillard’s partner, Tim Mathieson, is in serious doubt as the couple face the possibility of a fishbowl life in the Lodge in Canberra.

Senior Labor and business sources say it is unlikely Mr Mathieson will continue to act as a sales consultant with high-profile Melbourne developer and ALP benefactor Albert Dadon if Labor is victorious on Saturday.

A growing consensus in Labor and government is that it would be untenable for the Prime Minister to have a partner in property development – especially one working for a developer who raises funds for Labor and is dependent on state Labor government planning approvals.

Last night the Prime Minister’s office left open the possibility of Mr Mathieson ending his property career: ”Julia and Tim will be sitting down after the election, considering his options,” a spokeswoman said.

The review of Mr Mathieson’s employment was confirmed yesterday as it emerged that Ms Gillard attended a pre-election breakfast with the Jewish community at Mr Dadon’s Toorak mansion on Sunday.

The ALP increasingly regards Mr Dadon as a major conduit to donations, including from the Jewish business community.

Some Labor sources described the event as a fund-raiser. Others who were there, including prominent ALP fundraiser and Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby, disagreed.

The pre-poll breakfast tradition was begun in the 1950s by clothing industry figure and Gloweave founder Saul Same. Since then Labor leaders have met prominent Jewish community members shortly before each federal election.

”It’s really an opportunity for the ALP to sell itself, and then on that basis individuals would choose whether to give [donations] or not,” said David Same, Mr Same’s son.

Mr Dadon told The Age the breakfast was neither a fund-raiser nor a party. ”It’s not a gathering, obviously you don’t know the tradition, there’s no need for me to make any comment.”

One business source explained that money was not collected at such events but some attendees would later be asked for contributions.

Kevin Rudd attended a similar function at Mr Dadon’s home before the 2007 poll.

Mr Mathieson, a former hairdresser and hair products salesman, was employed by Mr Dadon as a property consultant last year despite having no property experience.

The appointment also followed Ms Gillard and Mr Mathieson leading a delegation of Australian MPs to Israel as part of the first Australia-Israel Leadership Forum, founded by Mr Dadon. The appointment sparked controversy on two fronts: the possibility of special planning treatment for Mr Dadon’s inner-city apartment projects by the Brumby government, and concern over Ms Gillard for perceived uncritical support of Israel.

Last year Planning Minister Justin Madden contentiously called in and approved a Ubertas Group apartment project at 568 St Kilda Road, before Mr Mathieson worked for the group.

As part of the approval the government relaxed long-standing rules requiring setback from the adjoining lane. The government has also approved Ubertas projects at 505 St Kilda Road and at 350 Williams Street.

One senior Jewish business figure said Mr Mathieson faced a career change if Labor won. ”She [Ms Gillard] needs to get him another job, and I’ll be very surprised if she doesn’t.”

Newsweek publishes a list of “the world’s best countries”. Finland is 1st, Australia is 4th, the US is 11th and Israel is 22nd.

Clearly occupying another people and discriminating against an Arab minority doesn’t affect the corporate mindset towards the Zionist state.

Rupert Murdoch’s news.com.au publishes this AP story that is surely designed to make the reader feel sorry for the Israeli state; they just can’t keep “secrets” secret anymore. The poor dears. What on earth should soldiers occupying the Palestinians do with their spare time?

The security obsessed Israeli military is confronting a new adversary – trying to control what its own soldiers post to the Internet.

Facebook, along with YouTube and other popular sites, is turning into a formidable nuisance for the Israeli Army, as young recruits in the tech-crazy country post embarrassing and potentially sensitive information online, circumventing tight military controls.

The issue exploded onto the national agenda this week when young ex-soldier Eden Abergil posted pictures of herself in uniform, posing in front of handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinian prisoners on her Facebook page under the heading “Army – The Best Time of My Life”.

The controversial posting, along with a series of other recent gaffes, highlighted the challenges facing Israel’s high-tech military – known, among other things, for its shadowy electronic-warfare units – as it struggles to keep up with the ever-shifting sands of the internet.

…

Such incidents illustrate “how difficult it is for the military to operate, stick to policy, and keep people in line in light of the new communication realities”, said Sheizaf Rafaeli, director of the Sagy Center for Internet Research and the Study of the Information Society at the University of Haifa.

William Dalrymple in the New York Times talks some sense about Islam and the “war on terror”, a message singularly ignored by many politicians and media hacks:

President Obama’s eloquent endorsement on Friday of a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center, followed by his apparent retreat the next day, was just one of many paradoxes at the heart of the increasingly impassioned controversy.

We have seen the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” seek to discriminate against American Muslims. We have seen Newt Gingrich depict the organization behind the center — the Cordoba Initiative, which is dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations” and interfaith dialogue — as a “deliberately insulting” and triumphalist force attempting to built a monument to Muslim victory near the site of the twin towers.

Most laughably, we have seen politicians like Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, question whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal figure behind the project, might have links to “radical organizations.”

The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.

Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.

Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.

Yes (via Haaretz editorial):