Antony Loewenstein

Hard to disagree:

The world faces a watershed moment in human rights with tyrants and despots coming under increasing pressure from the internet, social networking sites and the activities of WikiLeaks, Amnesty International says in its annual roundup.

The rights group singles out WikiLeaks and the newspapers that pored over its previously confidential government files, among them the Guardian, as a catalyst in a series of uprisings against repressive regimes, notably the overthrow of Tunisia’s long-serving president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

“The year 2010 may well be remembered as a watershed year when activists and journalists used new technology to speak truth to power and, in so doing, pushed for greater respect for human rights,” Amnesty’s secretary general, Salil Shetty, says in an introduction to the document. “It is also the year when repressive governments faced the real possibility that their days were numbered.”

But, Shetty adds, the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, and elsewhere, remains unpredictable: “There is a serious fightback from the forces of repression. The international community must seize the opportunity for change and ensure that 2011 is not a false dawn for human rights.”

Writer David Isenberg sets up the scene:

I received the following email from a Dyncorp contractor working in Afghanistan. He works as a trainer to the Afghan National Police. His comments below are worth reading.

But before you do you might remember that DynCorp is a member of the International Stability Operations Association, which has an elaborate Code of Conduct detailing how its companies are supposed to treat its employees. But judging from the below it appears DynCorp missed or ignored Part 6.11.

“Signatories shall provide their personnel with the appropriate training, equipment and materials necessary to perform their duties.”

“For whatever reason Dyn upper management has a severe disconnect between them and the actual workers on the ground. They have, so far, provided very little support in either equipment or services to us. I don’t think I would choose to work for them again.

“My job here is to train and assess the Afghan National Police. They want us to train them in “community policing” and teach them how to run a professional police department.  The soldiers themselves are happy to have me because I provide a lot of experience many of them don’t have. As for the success of the mission, I am skeptical. The Afghans do not think like us and they have a very different culture. I feel that they know we will eventually leave and that things will go back to the way they were prior to our arrival. Therefore they intend to get as much from us as possible while we are here. Were I in their shoes I imagine I would do the same. But ultimately I think our mission here will fail.

“As for Dyn, here is how they handle things. The original contract I signed on for was through the Dept. Of State and it was for one year with the pay being $158,000 and 52 days of leave. After 6 months here Dyn told us the contract was being cancelled and taken over by the DOD. They told us we would be getting a new contract soon that we would have to accept or we could go home. The new contract was for $117,000 and 28 days of leave, for the same job. You should know that we are considered embedded mentors. We live and operate in shitty conditions for the most part. Dyn did a horrible job of transitioning to the new contract and lost most of the contractors, who were disgusted with their lies and unethical handling of things. Dyn meanwhile lied to the DOD, telling them that they had more than enough contractors lined up to meet the requirements of the contract when they didn’t. The new contract has taken effect and Dyn still has nowhere near the number of people they need to fulfill the contract. Due to that they recently raised the pay for the job to $144,000 and 30 days of leave. It remains to be seen if that will be enough to get more people.”

Only in the New York Times.

This is an interesting piece about Barack Obama and his evolving views towards the Muslim world. The idea that people there will suddenly likes America after a pretty speech is delusional. For example, anti-US sentiment is strong in Egypt, as it should be, considering the Mubarak regime was backed for three decades, including by Obama until the last minute.

And note the conversations with supposedly leading foreign affairs “experts”, both of whom largely support the imperial role of the US in the world and backed the Iraq war. Fareed Zakaria assisted President Bush post 9/11 with “advice” how to manage the Middle East.

And, er, would the US President want to speak to some real experts in the Middle East itself?

For President Obama, the killing of Osama bin Laden is more than a milestone in America’s decade-long battle against terrorism. It is a chance to recast his response to the upheaval in the Arab world after a frustrating stretch in which the stalemate in Libya, the murky power struggle in Yemen and the brutal crackdown in Syria have dimmed the glow of the Egyptian revolution.

Administration officials said the president was eager to use Bin Laden’s death as a way to articulate a unified theory about the popular uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain — movements that have common threads but also disparate features, and have often drawn sharply different responses from the United States.

The first sign of this “reset” could come as early as next week, when Mr. Obama plans to give a speech on the Middle East in which he will seek to put Bin Laden’s death in the context of the region’s broader political transformation. The message, said one of his deputy national security advisers, Benjamin J. Rhodes, will be that “Bin Laden is the past; what’s happening in the region is the future.”

“The spotlight is understandably always on whatever country things are going worst in,” Mr. Rhodes said. “What’s important is to step back and say, ‘The trajectory of change is in the right direction.’ ”

Still, although Bin Laden’s killing may provide a rare moment of clarity, it has less obvious implications for American strategic calculations in the region. Some administration officials argue that the heavy blow to Al Qaeda gives the United States the chance to be more forward-leaning on political change because it makes Egypt, Syria and other countries less likely to tip toward Islamic extremism.

But other senior officials note that the Middle East remains a complicated place: the death of Al Qaeda’s leader does not erase the terrorist threat in Yemen, while countries like Bahrain are convulsed by sectarian rivalries that never had much to do with Bin Laden’s radical message. The White House said it was still working through the policy implications country by country.

…

Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, said Mr. Obama was as deeply immersed in all the Arab countries undergoing political upheaval. “The president, in each of these cases, has really been the central intellectual force in these decisions, in many cases, designing the approaches,” he said.

At night in the family residence, an adviser said, Mr. Obama often surfs the blogs of experts on Arab affairs or regional news sites to get a local flavor for events. He has sounded out prominent journalists like Fareed Zakaria of Time magazine and CNN and Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist at The New York Times, regarding their visits to the region. “He is searching for a way to pull back and weave a larger picture,” Mr. Zakaria said.

Mr. Obama has ordered staff members to study transitions in 50 to 60 countries to find precedents for those under way in Tunisia and Egypt. They have found that Egypt is analogous to South Korea, the Philippines and Chile, while a revolution in Syria might end up looking like Romania’s.

This deliberate, almost scholarly, approach is in keeping with Mr. Obama’s style, one that has frustrated people who believe he is too slow and dispassionate. But officials said it also reflected his own impatience, two years after he gave a speech in Cairo intended to mend America’s relations with the Muslim world, that many of these countries remained mired in corruption.

“The way he personally talks about corruption, he understands the frustration,” Mr. Rhodes said.

The irreplaceable Gideon Levy in Haaretz:

Anyone who says “it’s not apartheid” is invited to reply: Why is an Israeli allowed to leave his country for the rest of his life, and nobody suggests that his citizenship be revoked, while a Palestinian, a native son, is not allowed to do so? Why is an Israeli allowed to marry a foreigner and receive a residency permit for her, while a Palestinian is not allowed to marry his former neighbor who lives in Jordan? Isn’t that apartheid? Over the years I have documented endless pitiful tragedies of families that were torn apart, whose sons and daughters were not permitted to live in the West Bank or Gaza due to draconian rules – for Palestinians only.

The following short film was produced by a number of youth in Bethlehem:

Startling information but I’d like to know how many corporate journalists will apologise for publishing these bogus reports all those years ago? Yes, I hear a deafening silence, too:

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq‘s weapons programme was drawn up “to make the case for war”, flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister’s chief spin doctor.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: “We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care.”

His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government’s claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Laurie, who was director general in the Defence Intelligence Staff, responsible for commanding and delivering raw and analysed intelligence, said: “I am writing to comment on the position taken by Alastair Campbell during his evidence to you … when he stated that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war; I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given.”

He continued: “Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not ‘to make a case for war’. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used.”

Laurie said he recalled that the chief of defence intelligence, Air Marshal Sir Joe French, was “frequently inquiring whether we were missing something” and was under pressure. “We could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to WMD [weapons of mass destruction], generally concluding that they must have been dismantled, buried or taken abroad. There has probably never been a greater detailed scrutiny of every piece of ground in any country.”

A leading Jew is blocked from receiving an honorary degree at City University of New York because he’s critical of Israel (and dares challenge the Jewish state’s occupation policies in strong ways, which is more than most liberal Zionists do). Although the decision has been reversed and Kushner has got his piece of paper, the whole episode is instructive of what’s happening to public opinion in the US over the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Here’s Kushner on Democracy Now! this week:

I think that a policy in the Middle East in this country, based on right-wing fantasies and theocratic fantasies and scripture-based fantasies of what history and on-the-ground reality is telling us, is catastrophic and is going to lead to the destruction of the state of Israel. These people are not defending it. They’re not supporting it. They’re in fact, I think, causing a distortion of U.S. policy regarding Israel and a distortion of the internal politics of Israel itself, because they exert a tremendous influence in Israel and support right-wing politicians who I think have led the country into a very dark and dangerous place. And, you know, I think, at the moment, Israel has many, many more serious problems than me. And I think that if people like Jeffrey Wiesenfeld were really concerned about the continued existence of Israel, they should take a look at what has happened in the past, going all the way back to ’47 and ’48, and what actually happened when the state of Israel was founded, and to try and understand the reality that the country faces now and to, you know, understand the realities that the Palestinian people face, because it’s impossible to shape a legitimate and successful path towards peace based on rhetoric and demagoguery and fantasy.

Leading BDS proponent Omar Barghouti, who is clearly anti-Zionist, writes that Israel increasingly finds itself having to defend racist policies and the Zionist Diaspora is caught in a delicious bind:

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League repeats the mantra that by advocating comprehensive Palestinian rights, including full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the UN-sanctioned right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from which they were forcibly displaced, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is “de-legitimizing” Israel and threatening its very “existence.” This claim is frequently made by Israel lobby groups in an obvious attempt to muddy the waters and to push beyond the pale of legitimate debate the mere statement of facts about and analysis of Israel’s occupation, denial of refugee rights, and institutionalized system of racial discrimination, which basically fits the UN definition of apartheid.

Specifically, what is often objected to is the demand for full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. One can only wonder, if equality ends Israel’s “existence,” what does that say about Israel? Did equality destroy South Africa? Did it “delegitimize” whites in the Southern states of the U.S. after segregation was outlawed? The only thing that equality, human rights and justice really destroy is a system of injustice, inequality and racial discrimination.

The “delegitimization” scare tactic, widely promoted by Israel’s well-oiled pressure groups, has not impressed many in the West, in fact, particularly since its most far-reaching claim against BDS is that the movement aims to “supersede the Zionist model with a state that is based on the ‘one person, one vote’ principle” — hardly the most evil or disquieting accusation for anyone even vaguely interested in democracy, a just peace, and equal rights.

…

Having largely lost the battle for hearts and minds at the grassroots level in several key European and other states, and due to a significant rise in negative ratings of Israel in the U.S. public, Israel’s lobby groups in the United States are desperately trying to safeguard Israel’s impunity. Cognizant of the circumstances and dynamics that marked the final stages in the struggle against South African apartheid, Israel is only too well aware of the dire consequences of its militarist, unjust, and patently discriminatory policies being exposed to the U.S. public, its last bastion of popular support around the world. Without challenging Israel’s exceptionalism, however, the prospects for comprehensive and sustainable peace based on justice will remain dim.

This is so desperate it’s comical. Those backing Jewish colonies who live in the Zionist Diaspora want nothing more than no debate over the growing numbers of young Jews turning away from Israeli occupation policies.

American Ted Lapkin (who used to work for the Zionist lobby AIJAC and now lurks with a right-wing think-tank) once wrote regularly in the Australian media about the glories of the Iraq war, the Afghan war, war on Iran, Israeli wars on Palestine, wars on Arabs and just war in general. He seemed oblivious to the fact that such rabid views made Jews seem like war-mongers who couldn’t help kill Arabs at any opportunity. Great PR for Zionism.

He’s now back, writing on the ABC today that young Jews still love Israel and people like me simply can’t accept that Israel is a glorious place. Any mention of the West Bank occupation? Of course not. Siege on Gaza? Hardly. Rampant Israeli racism against Arabs? No chance. Any understanding that mainstream debate in the US is rapidly changing? Fat chance.

Debate about Israeli crimes is now mainstream.

Onto the delusions:

The ‘disaffected Jew’ meme also popped up last year in the pages of the Leftwing NewMatilda magazine. “The Jewish Disaspora is Turning on Israel”, proclaimed the headline of an article by Antony Loewenstein, John Docker and Ned Curthoys.

But the recent publication of two academic research surveys has cast the theory of Jewish detachment from Israel into serious intellectual disrepute. The American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) 2010 Annual Survey of Jewish Opinion found that 74 per cent of American Jews felt “fairly close” or “very close” to Israel. This figure is entirely consistent with the findings of previous surveys done over the past decade.

…

The more extreme version of the Jewish disaffection thesis peddled by Loewenstein, Docker and Curthoys is relatively easy to dismiss. After all, these are self-avowed enemies of Zionism who oppose a Jewish state both in concept and reality. And as we have observed, their argument flies in the face of objective polling reality.

…

Since the 1967 war, it is undeniable that Left-of-centre opinion has moved away from support for Israel towards empathy with mortal enemies of the Jewish state. This is most pronounced amongst radical academics and rent-a-mob protestors who march arm and arm with Hezbollah supporters in street demonstrations.

But these currents have also taken their toll within the more moderate currents of the centre-Left. And as a result, support for Israel is far less pronounced these days amongst progressives than it is amongst conservatives.

Beinart attributes that erosion to Israel’s abandonment of its original sublime ideals. He claims that it isn’t he who left Zionism, but that Zionism left him.

But the true act of defection has been on the part of Western progressives who have cast by the wayside the only full-fledged democracy in the otherwise benighted Middle East.

The greatest supporters of Israel these days are Christian fundamentalists and those who love a charming settlement in the middle of Palestinian land. That’s quite a future Zionism is building for itself.

This weekend I’m speaking at the Sydney Palestine conference organised by the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine. I’m talking about the Arab revolutions and their effect on Palestine, the myopic Australian Jewish community and the media’s inability to speak honestly about Palestinians (I’m looking at you, Murdoch press, who seem to believe that they have to wear a mask before engaging with Palestinians).

Today’s Australian features another non-story about Greens NSW-Senator elect Lee Rhiannon for (gasp!) speaking at the conference. I guess that makes her a rabid anti-Semite who simply believes in peace in the Middle East.

Greens senator-elect Lee Rhiannon has again been accused of pushing an anti-Israel agenda after accepting an invitation to speak at a “Palestine solidarity” conference, while the Senate yesterday condemned the Greens’ support of a boycott against the Jewish state.

Opposition senator Eric Abetz successfully moved a motion raising concerns about the Greens, Labor and union support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel after Marrickville council’s brief adoption of the policy. “The Senate condemned those in the Labor Party, the Greens and unions who are supporting the BDS campaign against Israel,” Senator Abetz said.

The motion led to some fiery discussion, and Greens leader Bob Brown called on the Senate to spend an entire day debating the violence in the Middle East and finding ways to help people in the region.

Ms Rhiannon’s invitation to a two-day conference at the University of Technology Sydney, organised by the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine, is promoted as a forum for discussing “how to make Australian solidarity with Palestinian self-determination more effective”.

“Now that campaigns to isolate Israel are front-page news, the conference is designed to re-focus on the core rights of Palestinians: national freedom, equality, democracy, land, peace and the end of exile of the refugees,” said one of the event’s co-ordinators, Ken Davis.

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff slammed Ms Rhiannon’s involvement with the forum, which he described as “an activist conference lacking any hint of balance or academic integrity on a divisive and complex issue”.

Ms Rhiannon, who will take up her Senate spot when the Greens gain the balance of power on July 1, earned a rebuke from Senator Brown last month over her support for the campaign to boycott Israel.