Antony Loewenstein

What Zionism is doing to Judaism. Here’s the latest press release from Jewish Voice for Peace:

Last night, up to a dozen members of San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs, a right-wing Israeli advocacy group with a documented track record of aggressively taunting and intimidating grassroots peace activists, attended a Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace community meeting at a South Berkeley Senior Center with the intention of disrupting, intimidating and possibly assaulting Jewish Voice for Peace members. Jewish Voice for Peace is the largest U.S. Jewish peace group dedicated to a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on democracy and full equality — the Bay Area chapter is the founding chapter of the organization. Approximately 50 to 60 people were at the meeting, and numerous witnesses are available to corroborate the events.

Watch video of some of the disruptions and the victims and perpetrator of attacks here.
Eyewitness testimonies are here and here.

Wrapped in an Israeli flag, San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs (SFVI/SWU) member Robin Dubner, an Oakland based attorney, pepper-sprayed two JVP members in the eyes and face after they attempted to nonviolently block her ability to aggressively videotape the faces of JVP meeting attendees against their will. The members, Alexei Folger and Glen Hauer, were careful to make no physical contact with her or her camera prior to the attack.

Folger said, “I did not see it coming and all of a sudden there was gooey stuff all over my head and hand. I have never been pepper-sprayed before, my whole head felt like it was on fire.”

JVP had earlier this year filed a police report about a June SFVI/SWU protest at which JVP and (peace group) Women in Black members were intimidatingly videotaped  and threatened by a StandWithUs supporter after being taunted with chants like “Nazi, Nazi, Nazi” or “Kapo,Kapo,Kapo”. Caught on a widely seen videotape was a SFVI/SWU supporter pointing his camera to the faces of silent peace vigil participants while saying “You’re all being identified, every last one of you…we will find out where you live. We’re going to make your lives difficult. We will disrupt your families…”

For that reason, JVP members were particularly concerned about protecting the safety of meeting attendees and preventing the videotaping.

Hauer, a retired attorney and member of San Francisco’s Congregation Sha’har Zahav who was treated for pepper spray explained, ”When one of the intruders [Dubner] continued standing and filming people despite the facilitator and facility manager repeatedly telling her that she could not, I first asked her politely to please put away the video camera, then several times told her to put away the camera, and then tried nonviolently to stay in front of the camera with my body. I could have taken the camera but decided instead to talk to the woman and to try to be the only person she photographed.”

Hauer, who also leads groups on healing from WWII & the Holocaust, and speaks to churches about anti-Semitism as it relates to the movement for peace in the Middle East, went on:

“In my mind was the history targeting of Jewish peace activists by the right wing of the Jewish community–the posting of our photos on internet hate sites, for example, followed by acts of vandalism at our homes and places of work.  There were many in the room for whom I care deeply.  I could also see that many at the meeting were new to the work we were doing, and I did not want them to be scared away.”

Dubner was accompanied by up to a dozen other StandWithUs members–including Dan Spitzer, Susan Meyers, Mike Harris, Bea Lieberman, Faith Meltzer, and Ross Meltzer–who repeatedly disrupted and aggressively videotaped the JVP meeting and JVP members against their will, wielding the cameras in an intimidating and belligerent manner. Despite repeated requests from the JVP meeting facilitator and other JVP activists to desist from recording and put away their videocameras, the SFVI/SWU activists – who had spread themselves throughout the room – continued to record and launch lengthy monologues while the presenters attempted to speak.

They were explicitly invited by the JVP facilitator to stay in the meeting and participate without videotaping but they refused. They also refused offers for floor time by the presenters. The manager of the facility asked the SFVI/SWU members to abide by JVP’s rules or face the police, and when SFVI/SWU refused to comply with JVP’s protocol, the police were called.

At one point, JVP members and presenters worked to restore calm and de-escalate by singing the Hebrew peace song, Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu (Peace will come to us) while waiting for the police to arrive. Most meeting attendees did not know until later that 2 people had been attacked with pepper spray.

When police arrived, Dubner was temporarily placed in handcuffs while other members of San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs remained inside the meeting blowing loud whistles, using videocameras to intimidate meeting attendees.

Dubner refused repeated requests by JVP members or the police to identify the substance she sprayed. A police officer later identified it as pepper spray and paramedics were called to help treat the victims of the attack. One of them, Alexei Folger, looked visibly red and swollen, as though she had been burned on more than half her face.

Immediately following the attack, Ms. Folger, not knowing the nature of the substance on her face, rubbed some of it on Ms. Dubner’s shirtsleeve at which point the physically powerful Ms.Dubner, who also wore a pen videocamera in her shirt pocket, started physically shoving the petite Ms. Folger. A Jewish Voice for Peace staff member stood between them to prevent further escalation or physical contact between Ms Dubner and the shocked and injured Ms. Folger.

This deliberate confrontation is part of a pattern of escalating intimidation and attacks against peace activists in the Bay Area. Earlier this year, the home of Tikkun Magazine editor Michael Lerner was covered in threatening posters. In addition to the videotaped harassment of Women in Black and JVP members, several months ago someone grafiited outside of the JVP offices “Jewish Voices for Palestine: Viva Baruch Goldstein”

An Iranian friend sent me this tragic video. Partly in Farsi, the message is clear. Too many Iranians are having kidney transplants simply to get money:

James Fergusson on the war in Afghanistan that isn’t being discussed in the New York Times or polite circles:

The sound of a propeller engine is audible the moment my fixer and I climb out of the car, causing us new arrivals from Kabul to glance sharply upwards. I have never heard a military drone in action before, and it is entirely invisible in the cold night sky, yet there is no doubt what it is. My first visit to the Taliban since 2007 has only just begun and I am already regretting it. What if the drone is the Hellfire-missile-carrying kind?

Three years ago, the Taliban’s control over this district, Chak, and the 112,000 Pashtun farmers who live here, was restricted to the hours of darkness – although the local commander, Abdullah, vowed to me that he would soon be in full control. As I am quickly to discover, this was no idle boast. In Chak, the Karzai government has in effect given up and handed over to the Taliban. Abdullah, still in charge, even collects taxes. His men issue receipts using stolen government stationery that is headed “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan”; with commendable parsimony they simply cross out the word “Republic” and insert “Emirate”, the emir in question being the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Omar.

The most astonishing thing about this rebel district – and for Nato leaders meeting in Lisbon this week, a deeply troubling one – is that Chak is not in war-torn Helmand or Kandahar but in Wardak province, a scant 40 miles south-west of Kabul. Nato commanders have repeatedly claimed that the Taliban are on the back foot following this year’s US troop surge. Mid-level insurgency commanders, they say, have been removed from the battlefield in “industrial” quantities since the 2010 campaign began. And yet Abdullah, operating within Katyusha rocket range of the capital – and with a $500,000 bounty on his head – has managed to evade coalition forces for almost four years. If Chak is in any way typical of developments in other rural districts – and Afghanistan has hundreds of isolated valley communities just like this one – then Nato’s military strategy could be in serious difficulty.

Behold a rarity. Some questioning in the mainstream media about privatising everything:

TONY EASTLEY: For years now, toll roads and tunnels have been all the rage in many Australian states. Under the preferred model, the private sector takes the risk, finances the project and earns the profit but critics say the toll road model takes motorists for a ride.

New research suggests governments could do a lot better if they borrowed the money, built the roads and kept the assets in taxpayers’ hands.

AM’s Simon Santow spoke to the study author, economist Dr Nicholas Gruen.

NICOLAS GRUEN: The fundamentals are that if you have got a strong balance sheet and you have got infrastructure needs then you use that balance sheet to borrow the money and build the infrastructure. That is the cheapest way, the most effective way, fairest way to do it.

SIMON SANTOW: Why does it bring benefits to taxpayers that the public/private partnership model doesn’t?

NICOLAS GRUEN: Essentially because the public/private partnership model will be trying to make a return on its investment of 10 per cent, 12 per cent something like that and the state government, even at the beginning of this spree of public/private partnerships was facing long-term cost of debt of about 8 per cent and it is now down to a little over 5 so that is a much lower cost of capital and what a freeway is, is mostly capital.

SIMON SANTOW: Voters are consistently told that the public/private partnership model is more efficient.

NICOLAS GRUEN: Er, yes they are. Well, we are told that by a combination of governments who like the sound of saying that we have got a AAA rating and by banks who are making literally billions of dollars out of public/private partnerships.

SIMON SANTOW: So if in the case of New South Wales, the state government had decided to borrow and do the project itself or finance the project itself, would there have been any danger to the state’s AAA credit rating?

NICOLAS GRUEN: Very early on when this was possible, the state government after the 1990/1991 recession had more pressure on its balance sheet so yes it is possible there would have been a downgrade.

By now we would have been laughing because by now it would be adding over $350 million every year to the New South Wales budget. If we’d built a toll road in Sydney using borrowed money at the sorts of rates of return that you get from a public/private partnership, I think it would be outlandish to suggest that that would do any harm to New South Wales credit rating and over 15 years it would actually strengthen its credit rating because it would return money to the budget.

SIMON SANTOW: How do you then assess more recent toll-road projects like the ones in Brisbane, the Clem7 comes to mind?

NICOLAS GRUEN: Well, look I haven’t look at these things closely so obviously caveats would apply but generally speaking, I mean I am a fan of the private sector. I am in the private sector but building roads is not really a very sensible thing to do for the private sector generally speaking. That is because the asset is mostly capital and because one ends up having to write contracts which cost millions of dollars to write and then constrain the government in making planning decisions for the next 20 or 30 years.

Here we go again. Israel faces growing international criticism over its behaviour towards Palestinians. And what happens? Jewish lobby groups cry “anti-Semitism”. If anybody faces hatred simply because they are Jewish, that’s utterly unacceptable. But legitimate arguments against Zionist occupation, West Bank settlements, the siege on Gaza and racism inside Israel isn’t anti-Semitism and no amount of whinging from Jews will change that. Get over the victimhood:

Most Jewish students at universities in Victoria have experienced or witnessed antisemitism, a study by the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) has found.

Fifty Jewish students filled in a questionnaire about their on-campus experiences.  More than two thirds (68 per cent) said they had experienced or witnessed antisemitism.  Written material, such as posters and signs, were the most common form of antisemitism, followed by verbal attack and  prejudice.

Most of the antisemitism was linked to attacks on Israel with cases of Jewish students being abused as “terrorists” or “racists”, Jewish symbols being distorted into swastikas and lectures being interrupted by activists screaming “Jews are murderers”.

There were also cases of students being told not to vote for a student candidate because he was Jewish, of a religious Jew abused for wearing a skullcap and of a student who said she was marked down after a lecturer found out she was Jewish.

Students reported more widespread antisemitism at La Trobe University than at Deakin, Melbourne or Monash. All of the La Trobe Jewish students who responded to the survey said they had experienced or witnessed antisemitism and 85 per cent considered antisemitism a problem at the university. Most of the La Trobe students said either they or their friends sometimes hide the fact that they are Jewish to avoid abuse.

Few students at other universities said they hid their Jewishness to avoid attack or abuse but most said they knew Jewish students who did.

The questionnaire also uncovered cases of faculty members using their positions to launch polemics against Israel or make antisemitic statements in ways which intimidated Jewish students.

ADC Chairman Mr Anton Block said the research showed antisemitism on campus was more widespread than previously thought.

“Campus has become an uncomfortable, even intimidating environment for many Jewish students. If students mention they have been to Israel or even just say that they are Jewish they face abuse. Eighteen year olds get called murderers when they wear a souvenir t-shirt from Israel.

“University administrations have a responsibility to clamp down on the kind of political activity that is just an excuse for vilification. Jewish students have a right to feel safe and comfortable on campus.”

When the Left in the media pat you on the back, quickly reassess where you are and readjust, for the liberals’ praise is a warning bell you must heed. Trust me on that.

Not wanting Arabs in your town? Not racism, just run-of-the-mill Zionism:

In the winding stone alleys of this Galilee hill town, a centuries-old center of Jewish mysticism, a campaign is underway.

It is being waged by the town rabbi, Shmuel Eliahu, who along with other area rabbis issued a religious ruling several months ago forbidding residents to rent apartments to Israeli Arab students from the local community college.

The rabbi has warned that the Jewish character of Safed, long revered as sacred, is at risk and that intermarriages could follow if the students mingle with the locals.

Last month, Eliahu called a public meeting to sound the alarm. On the agenda was “the quiet war,” a reference to the feared Arab influx, and “fighting assimilation in the holy city of Safed.”

Several days later, a building that houses Arab students was attacked by a group of young Jews, and an elderly Holocaust survivor renting a room to students received threats.

To civil rights advocates and other critics, the unsettling developments in this normally quiet community of 32,000 are a window into ugly currents of racism in Israeli society. The events here, the critics say, reflect a general atmosphere of growing intolerance under a government and parliament dominated by parties of the nationalist right.

A true democracy would embrace Wikileaks to prove its commitment to transparency:

Whistleblower WikiLeaks has registered in media-friendly Iceland its first known legal entity — a business that so far has no office or activity, the website’s spokesman said Friday.

Wikileaks is now mulling whether to use the firm to fundraise or for information gathering, Kristinn Hrafnsson told AFP.

“We want WikiLeaks to have a global presence and having a business in Iceland is part of this plan,” said Hrafnsson of the new entity, called Sunshine Press Productions.

“We have registered Sunshine Press Productions as a business in Iceland… but we don’t have an office or activity at the moment,” he added.

The new firm appears to be WikiLeaks’ first known legal presence in a country, though its Internet site functions thanks to servers based in Sweden.

Iceland, which is currently considering far-reaching freedom of information legislation, counts among the countries where WikiLeaks has its most solid base.

In June, the country’s parliament voted unanimously in favour of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI), a resolution developed with the help of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — who travels regularly here — and aimed at protecting investigative journalists and their sources.

WikiLeaks, which last month published an unprecedented 400,000 classified US documents on the Iraq war and posted 77,000 secret US files on the Afghan conflict in July, has said its people have come under pressure and been harassed.

Last week, Assange announced he was considering requesting asylum and basing his website in neutral Switzerland.

When there was no settlement freeze in the first place, now the world press continues the charade. Look, over there, the US is begging Israel to reinstate the non-existent colony freeze:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s seven-member inner cabinet will discuss Saturday an offer by the United States to reinstate a freeze on West Bank Settlement construction in return for a package of incentives.

Netanyahu presented Saturday the U.S. offer, which was discussed by Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday, to the forum of seven.

According to the offer Israel would stop construction in the West Bank for 90 days. The freeze includes construction that began after the end of the first settlement moratorium on September 26.

The moratorium would not apply to construction in East Jerusalem. The U.S. will not ask Israel to extend the new moratorium when it expires.

In return, the U.S. government would deliver 20 F-35 fighter jets to Israel, a deal worth $3 billion. Moreover, if an Israeli-Palestinian agreement is achieved, the U.S. would sign a comprehensive security agreement with Israel. The U.S. and Israel are to discuss the nature of the new security arrangements in the next few weeks.

A stunning piece of work about a troubled land. Hope exists:

To Live And Skate Kabul is a beautifully shot film that follows the lives of a group of young skateboarders in Afghanistan. Operating against the backdrop of war and bleak prospects, the Skateistan charity project is the world’s first co-educational skateboarding school, where a team of international volunteers work with girls and boys between the ages of 5 and 17, an age group largely untouched by other aid programs.

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

Yet another taste of US-backed “democracy” in the West Bank. Armed, funded and backed by Washington and the international community. This is not a just Palestinian future:

A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars – caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from this backwater West Bank town, is highlighting the limits of tolerance in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority – and illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence.

Residents of Qalqiliya say they had no idea that Walid Husayin – the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar – was leading a double life.

Known as a quiet man who prayed with his family each Friday and spent his evenings working in his father’s barbershop, Husayin was secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

Now, he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for “insulting the divine essence.” Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

“He should be burned to death,” said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public “to be an example to others,” he added.