Antony Loewenstein

Sigh:

On a day where we’re supposed to feel kindness to all, why not show the profound hypocrisy of the Zionist and Jewish establishment?

At the end of July, The Independent carried a piece by Christina Patterson in which she observed that many of her fellow inhabitants in Stamford Hill were intolerant of her presence. “I didn’t realise that goyim were about as welcome in the Hasidic Jewish shops as Martin Luther King at a Ku Klux Klan convention,” she wrote. “I didn’t realise that a purchase by a goy was a crime to be punished with monosyllabic terseness, or that bus seats were a potential source of contamination, or that road signs, and parking restrictions, were for people who hadn’t been chosen by God.”

Thanks to these words, Patterson has earned herself a place in the Top 10 Anti-Semitic Slurs of 2010 compiled by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. Patterson’s words are apparently so offensive, that she is placed above these entries, taken from Yahoo Finance’s Goldman Sachs Message Boards and Facebook: “Stinking Jews finally getting what they deserve Burn all the jews up [sic]“, “Kill a Jew Year” and “Kill a Jew Day”. As one might expect, Patterson is far from delighted at being labelled one of the world’s top anti-Semites.

What, precisely, is so wrong with what Patterson is saying? First, it is clear from her biography that she is hardly likely to be chummy with Nick Griffin and David Irving. According to The Independent’s website, she is a “former director of the Poetry Society, and literary programmer at the Southbank Centre”. With these credentials, I hope it is not bigoted of me to assume that Patterson is perhaps not a member of the BNP. For heaven’s sake, she writes a column for The Independent.

Secondly, the Wiesenthal Centre has resorted to that old trick of selective quotation – always a top tactic for someone with an agenda. If you read the rest of her column, it’s clear that Patterson’s beef is not just with the behaviour of Hasidic Jews – she doesn’t like little girls wearing hijabs, or young women wearing niqabs. She also has little time for the revolting practice of clitoridectomy, which is inflicted on some 500 to 2,000 British schoolgirls every year. Taken as a whole, the entire column is about the limits of multiculturalism, and examines how, in her words, “certain practices, in different religious communities [...] conflict with some of the values in British society”. Patterson makes it clear that she can just about tolerate bad manners in the name of multiculturalism, but not much more than that. That seems a reasonable position to take, and is an opinion that should be freely expressed.

Thirdly, is there any reason to suppose that Patterson is lying? In her column, she cites the example of a black friend being made to feel unwelcome in a local fishmonger’s shop. Does that sound an unlikely scenario? I think not. Hasidic Jews have a reputation for being intolerant of those outside their world. It’s clear, that by moving to Stamford Hill, Patterson witnesses this intolerance every day. Let’s get this straight: Patterson is telling the truth.

Besides, she’s hardly the first person to say it. Look at the question posed on this website: “Why are hasidic jews so mean and rude? I’m from NYC and they are the rudest group of people I have ever come across. They never say “excuse me”, “please”, “thank you”. They have no social graces at all…” Should the poster of this be put on the Wiesenthal’s Centre’s pop chart of anti-Semitic nasties? Is the question completely without foundation?

Labelling Patterson as an anti-Semite is manifesting far more intolerance than anything she ever wrote. Yes, calling for Jews to be burned to death is anti-Semitic, but asking Hasidic Jews in Stamford Hill to be a little more polite is not. Victimhood status should never confer an automatic exemption from criticism.

So happy holidays to all and yet occupation isn’t going anywhere:

Church leaders in Bethlehem have called for peace and reconciliation at the annual Christmas mass held at what is said to be the birthplace of Jesus.

Tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims are in Bethlehem for Christmas, in a record year for tourism.

Only a lucky few scored tickets for the traditional midnight mass near the spot where Jesus was said to be born.

Church leaders used the mass to renew calls for peace. Latin patriarch Fuad Twal appealed for the church bells to drown out the noise of weapons in the Middle East, and expressed a hope that Jerusalem would become a model of co-existence between Christians, Jews and Muslims.

In a just world, the illegal bombing of another country’s facilities would be a declaration of war, the sign of a rogue state. Instead, the Zionist state is feted in Canberra, London and Washington. Thankfully, many people globally regard Israel as it really is; irresponsible and criminal:

A confidential cable sent on April 25, 2008 by then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to State Department representatives worldwide states that “on September 6 2007, Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor built by Syria secretly, apparently with North Korea’s help.” This cable is included in documents leaked to the WikiLeaks website and revealed Friday by Yedioth Ahronoth’s Ronen Bergman before its official publication on the website.

The document is in fact a first official and detailed confirmation of the attack, starting with the intelligence collected before the strike, the cooperation between Israel and the United States, the troubling and harsh conclusions shared by both countries, the Israeli government’s decision to bomb Syria and the fear that President Bashar Assad would launch a war in response.

“We have avoided sharing this information with you until now for fear of and in an attempt to avoid a conflict,” Rice explained.

The first part of the memo details unprecedented information. “I would like to inform you that the Israeli attack was aimed at destroying the secret reactor built by Syria in a desert area in the east of the country called al-Kibar,” the secretary of state wrote.

“The Israeli mission was successful – the reactor was destroyed without an option of rehabilitation. Syria completed the site’s evacuation, got rid of the evidence of what existed in the area and set up a new building on the site.

“We believe, based on solid evidence, that North Korea helped Syria build the reactor – and we have decided that it’s time to share more information on this matter with you.”

Rice elaborates on the intelligence information that preceded the attack. “Our intelligence experts are convinced that the attack targeted by the Israelis is in fact an atomic reactor of the same type built by North Korean in Yongbyon,” she wrote.

“The American intelligence community engaged in intensive efforts for many months to confirm the information provided to us by Israel about the reactor and collect additional information through our sources and methods.” The secretary of state added that the intelligence information was solid. “We have good reason to believe that the reactor was not built for peaceful purposes,” she wrote. “First of all, we estimate that it was not designed as a power station, was isolated from populated communities and was not suitable for research purposes.

“Second, Syria took far-reaching steps to keep the real nature of the site secret. Third, by acting secretly and failing to provide representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency with sketches of the site, as required by the agreement it signed, it missed the purpose of means of supervision aimed at providing the international community with the confirmation that the reactor is part of a peaceful plan.”

Rice concluded by saying that “the hiding and lies spread by Syria in the months after the attack are clear proof that it has something to hide. Had it not had something to hide, Syria would not have refrained from inviting IAEA supervisors and media representatives to the site to prove its claims.”

Don’t say Wikileaks isn’t opening up the possibility of a more accountable Western state:

The [British] government faces a legal challenge to its support for a Bangladeshi paramilitary group described by human rights organisations as a “government death squad”.

Lawyers are to seek a judicial review of the legality of training assistance provided to the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), arguing that it places the UK in breach of its obligations under international law.

Members of RAB have been held responsible for hundreds of extrajudicial killings since the unit was established in 2004. The unit itself admits to being responsible for more than 600 deaths, which it euphemistically attributes to “crossfire”.

Dhaka has resisted pressure to disband the unit, with one government minister declaring last year: “The government will need to continue with extrajudicial killings, commonly called crossfire.”

Details of British support for RAB were revealed in US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks and reported by the Guardian on Wednesday. They show that the government has been providing training in “investigative interviewing techniques” and “rules of engagement”.

At least some of the training has been provided by serving police officers who travelled to Bangladesh under the auspices of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), a body established three years ago to promote good practice in UK policing and share it with overseas police.

The legal challenge is being mounted by Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, which represents the family of Baha Mousa, the Iraqi hotel receptionist tortured to death by British troops in 2003. In a letter to the Foreign Office and Home Office tonight, the firm alleged that the UK had “aided and assisted Bangladesh in breaching peremptory norms of customary international law”. The UK must withdraw its support for RAB, conduct a prompt investigation and possibly pay compensation to the unit’s victims.

Shiner said: “The British public by now should be sick of our governments’ hypocritical approach to torture and unlawful killings. It pretends to condemn both, but in practice it aids and assists states that they know are violating these basic rights. This represents a serious violation of international law.”

The Foreign Office has defended the training as “fully in line with our laws and our values”. A spokesman sought to suggest it was providing only “human rights training” for RAB, although NPIA says other training has been given, and RAB’s head of training told the Guardian he was unaware of any human rights training since he was appointed last June.

Poor form, Haaretz. Ali Abunimah investigates for The Electronic Intifada:

Haaretz has an international reputation as Israel’s most liberal and reliable newspaper. But The Electronic Intifada has discovered that one of the newspaper’s regularly-featured reporters, Cnaan Liphshiz, used his news reports for the publication to promote the agenda of an extreme pro-Israel group with which he was also employed.

At the same time, Liphshiz appears to have made efforts to conceal his work with the Dutch Zionist group CIDI (Centre for Documentation and Information on Israel), an undisclosed conflict of interest which calls into question the reliability of his reports and the editorial standards of Haaretz.

From 2007 until the present, Liphshiz has written about 50 articles in Haaretz which quote information provided by CIDI or its executive director Ronny Naftaniel, usually without offering any countervailing opinion or sources. Many of Liphshiz’s stories are based entirely on information provided by CIDI.

CIDI has confirmed to The Electronic Intifada that Lipshiz worked for the organization, and is likely to work for them again in the future.

CIDI has earned a reputation as one of the staunchest advocates for Israel in the Netherlands, launching stinging personal attacks and smears on public figures and groups who dare to call on Israel to respect human rights. In an article for The Electronic Intifada, Stan van Houcke, a Dutch journalist and author, described CIDI as an organization whose main goal is to cover up Israel’s violations of international law (“Dutch ‘research’ group covers for Israeli crimes, violations,” 5 November 2007).

The corporate media is hopeless. Here’s a feature in today’s Australian newspaper about Christmas Island, the increasing crisis of refugees being overcrowded and residents getting upset over it all.

But there’s no mention at all of Serco, the British multinational running the place, a firm integral to the institution.

Not good enough:

An Amnesty International report in December last year, written when there were only 1400 detainees on the island, criticised the “prison-like character” of the detention centre and the conditions in which the detainees were held.

It also found that the island was “simply not well placed to accommodate the needs of a large immigration operation”.

“Community representatives are worried about whether the island’s water will be affected, whether the sewerage system will hold up and the increasing cost of food and rent.”

With the island detainee population having doubled since the report was written, these concerns have become only more pronounced.

Hands up all those who like taking free trips to Israel organised by the Zionist lobby?

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Lenore Taylor does and her recent column simply “reported” alarmist Israeli comments over the supposed threat of Iran. It wasn’t journalism; it was very effective stenography. No alternative voices were offered.

Today, in Murdoch’s Australian, there’s Greg Sheridan (who doesn’t acknowledge who held his hand throughout the trip ie. the Zionist lobby) and he simply republishes large swathes of predictable ramblings by Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington.

Quick summary: Iran is a massive threat. The occupation of Palestine doesn’t exist. The Palestinians have themselves to blame for not being independent. Australia is a wonderful ally that backs everything Israel does.

One day, and this day isn’t that far away, Israel and its sycophantic Western backers will have much explaining to do. How the hell has the Zionist state become so loathed because it continues to brutalise Palestinians?

The world is moving towards a decision point on Iran and a key player in any decision will be the government of Israel. I have just spent 10 days in Israel and every discussion there – almost every thought – is infused with Iran.

Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington, thinks some decisions will be made in a matter of weeks. Everything is in the balance. The possible consequences are stark and enormously disquieting.

They include: a nuclear-armed Iran, an explosion of global terrorism and a new war in the Middle East. All are possible.

I met Ayalon for a long discussion in a small ante-room in Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University, oddly enough over haddock and mayonnaise.

The central question asks itself: will the world succeed in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? “I would say it’s touch and go,” Ayalon says. “Iran is a threat not just to Israel, but to Sunni regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the (Persian) Gulf countries, countries in North Africa.

“A nuclear Iran would have a disastrous effect on the entire world order.”

Ayalon, steel-grey-haired, sober, judicious and diplomatic of demeanour, then lists some of the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran: “Iran could control the oil supply and dictate oil prices.

“Anyone who says don’t rock the boat because it will jack up oil prices should try and imagine what will happen under a nuclear Iran.

The Iranians “will also have complete protection in their aggressive actions in terrorism around the world”.

“They are increasingly penetrating into Latin America through Venezuela. They are influential in Lebanon through Hezbollah, in Syria, among the Palestinians through Hamas, in Africa, where they are looking for uranium.”

It is impossible to get Israeli government figures to say what the red line is for Israel with Iran, whether Jerusalem would take pre-emptive military action to destroy or at least retard Iran’s nuclear program.

Both Jerusalem and Washington have studied intensely both the risks and the opportunities of striking Iran’s nuclear program.

And there are endless reports, which Israelis will never comment on, of Israeli and US efforts to sabotage and disrupt Iran’s nuclear program by non-military means.

In Israel these are life and death matters. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has famously called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Ayalon offers a measured and mixed assessment of the effectiveness of efforts, especially sanctions, to constrain Iran.

“Probably in a matter of weeks we will have to sit down and reflect on how effective the sanctions have been,” he says. “Notwithstanding the technical problems Iran has, it’s touch and go. The sanctions were effective on the Iranian economy, and in undermining the self-confidence of the Iranian leadership. But these efforts have not yet changed the Iranians’ behaviour. The Iranians were surprised by the UN resolution (on sanctions) and by the extra measures a number of nations, such as Australia, took. This is the first time the Iranians are paying a price for their international defiance.

Nobody said the American media was brave. Here’s Assange speaking on Al-Jazeera:

The Guardian, El-Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel. Even New York Times could not publish more due to the sensitivities related to the Jewish community in the US.

An expansive interview with Julian Assange in the Guardian that thankfully doesn’t obsess over the contested sex charges:

Julian Assange said today that it would be “politically impossible” for Britain to extradite him to the United States, and that the final word on his fate if he were charged with espionage would rest with David Cameron.

In an interview with the Guardian in Ellingham Hall, the Norfolk country mansion where he is living under virtual house arrest, the founder of WikiLeaks said it would be difficult for the prime minister to hand him over to the Americans if there was strong support for him from the British people.

“It’s all a matter of politics. We can presume there will be an attempt to influence UK political opinion, and to influence the perception of our standing as a moral actor,” he said.

Assange is currently fighting extradition to Sweden. He strongly denies allegations of sexual misconduct with two Swedish women. But he believes the biggest threat to his freedom and to WikiLeaks, his whistleblowing website, emanates from a wrathful United States.

There is no evidence of any imminent US move to indict him. But according to Assange, the Obama administration is “trying to strike a plea deal” with Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old intelligence officer and alleged source of more than a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables embarrassingly leaked last month. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, wants to indict Assange as a co-conspirator and is also examining “computer hacking statutes and support for terrorism”, Assange claims.

Sitting in front of a log fire, his Apple MacBook Pro perched on his lap, Assange said his recent nine-day spell in Wandsworth jail had prepared him for the possibility that he might spend a long period in prison if indicted by the US. He said the prospect of solitary confinement was no longer an “intellectual abstraction” but a reality. The high court bailed him to Norfolk last Thursday, with his extradition hearing scheduled for 6-7 February.

He said: “Solitary confinement is very difficult. But I know that provided there is some opportunity for correspondence I can withstand it. I’m mentally robust. Of course it would mean the end of my life in the conventional sense.”

If the US succeeded in removing him from the UK or Sweden, Assange said there was a “high chance” of him being killed “Jack Ruby-style” in the US prison system.

Since moving to Ellingham Hall, a Georgian country house and organic farm owned by his friend and supporter Vaughan Smith, Assange has given numerous media interviews. But he said he was fed up with the press and described an interview with BBC Radio 4′s Today programme – in which John Humphrys grilled him on how many people he had slept with – as “awful”.

Assange also took issue with a lengthy report in Saturday’s Guardian setting out the prosecution allegations against him in Sweden. Assange acknowledged that the Guardian had a right to publish the material, dealing with his alleged encounters with the women. But he said it had been “sub-selected” and not placed properly in context.Swedish prosecutors have demanded that he return to Sweden to face further questions about the August allegations. Assange also said WikiLeaks did not have enough money to pay its legal bills, even though “a lot of generous lawyers have donated their time to us”. He said legal costs for WikiLeaks and his own defence were approaching £500,000. The decisions by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks – apparently following US pressure – had robbed the website of a “war chest” of around €500,000, he complained. This would have been enough to fund WikiLeaks’ publishing operations for six months. At its peak the organisation was receiving €100,000 a day, he said.

According to publishing sources, however, Assange can take cheer from the fact that he has secured a seven-figure advance for a book about WikiLeaks and his life story. The sources suggest he is likely to receive £250,000 himself, allowing him to pay off some of his debts and to settle his personal defence fund, currently “paralysed”. The book is to be published in the spring by Knopf in the US and Canongate in the UK, the sources suggest.

Assange – who has to wear his electronic tag in the bath, and report every day to Beccles police station – confessed he has no idea where he will be in a year’s time. He described the next chapter in his life as “not yet predictable.

“Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception.”

He argued that Cameron and Nick Clegg were in a stronger position than the previous Labour government to resist his extradition by Washington. “There is a new government, which wants to show it hasn’t yet been co-opted by the US,” he said, claiming that the security services – British and Australian – had a history of spying on and unduly influencing Labour politicians.

Many WikiLeaks supporters have now gone home for Christmas, leaving Assange with a scaled-down team over the holiday period, on an estate where the number of pheasant and grouse greatly outnumber the humans.

His immediate plan, he said, was to rest after a gruelling couple of months and then to continue with the staged global release of redacted US state department cables in the new year. Physically, he appeared somewhat wrung out, although very much composed and in good spirits.

Assange defended one of WikiLeaks’ collaborators, Israel Shamir, following claims Shamir passed sensitive cables to Belarus’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko has arrested 600 opposition supporters and journalists since Sunday’s presidential election. The whereabouts and fate of several of the president’s high-profile opponents are unknown. Of Shamir, Assange said: “He is one of many journalists who have had some brief interaction with us.”

Enough with the conspiracy theories (aka Israel colluding with Wikileaks). The group will soon unload on Israel and it won’t be pretty:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Wednesday that his website is due to release thousands of documents related to Israel, particularly dealing with the Mabhouh assassination in Dubai and the Second Lebanon War, Channel 10 reported Thursday.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Assange said that only very few files related to Israel were published so far and that WikiLeaks intends on releasing many more documents over the next six months.

Assange, who was recently released from a British prison, said that he holds 3,700 more files related to Israel, and the main source of them is the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.

Assange said in the interview that WikiLeaks plans on releasing cables that were classified as top secret regarding Israel’s month-long war with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

Moreover, he also claimed he holds documents indicating Mossad involvement in the assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January.

Assange said that WikiLeaks had not had any direct or indirect relations with Israel, but said he was sure Israeli intelligence is monitoring WikiLeaks’ activities closely.

The true face of Israel is a colonising state:

In the three months since Israel ended its settlement construction freeze in the West Bank, causing the Palestinians to withdraw from peace talks, a settlement-building boom has begun, especially in more remote communities that are least likely to be part of Israel after any two-state peace deal.

This means that if negotiations ever get back on track, there will be thousands more Israeli settlers who will have to relocate into Israel, posing new problems over how to accommodate them while creating a Palestinian state on the land where many of them are living now.

In addition to West Bank settlement building, construction for predominantly Jewish housing in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to make their future capital, has been rapidly growing after a break of half a year, with hundreds of units approved and thousands more planned.

On a tour of West Bank construction sites, Dror Etkes, an anti-settlement advocate who has spent the past nine years chronicling their growth, said he doubted whether there had been such a burst in settlement construction in at least a decade.

Hagit Ofran, a settlement opponent who monitors their growth for Peace Now, said, “We can say firmly that this is the most active period in many years.” She said there were 2,000 housing units being built now and a total of 13,000 in the pipeline that did not require additional permits. In each of the past three years, about 3,000 units have been built.