Antony Loewenstein

Jerry Haber, an Orthodox Jew, writes:

For some time I have had a dream about a community, a coalition, a big tent that includes within it all those constituencies who cry out to end the occupation now. Yes, I know, there already is a US Campaign to End the Occupation, and they do good work. Read about them here. But I am thinking of something else

I am thinking of people of all colors, races, creeds, ethnicities, sexual orientation – and of varying, even opposing ideologies. Under this tent are committed anti-Zionists who believe that a Jewish ethnic state is a bad thing; others who don’t think that Jews have right to national self-determination in Palestine; Palestinians who would, if they could, liberate all of Palestine from Zionist hegemony, and liberal Zionists, who believe that Israel, for all its flaws, offers promise to the Jewish people, the world, and, yes, even to the Palestinians. What unites these constituencies is the conviction that the occupation and subjugation of one people by another over three generations is morally intolerable and can go on no longer. And that now is the time to link arms, despite our profound and irreconcilable differences, and act to end the occupation.

But what does “ending the occupation” mean? It doesn’t mean merely a withdrawal of the Israeli Defense Forces from the West Bank. It doesn’t even mean the creation of a Palestinian state. It means simply this: that Palestinians can live freely and with dignity, that they are not under the control of anybody else, that they are free at last. And that this freedom extends not only to the Palestinians living still within Palestine but wherever they may be, in the camps, in the Arab emirates, in Jordan, in Detroit. It also means that Israelis, Jews and Palestinians, can also live a life of freedom and dignity, enslaved neither to fear, nor to feelings of ethnic entitlement.

…

The only liberal Zionists who can oppose the move, in my opinion, are the ones who are more Zionist than liberal, and indeed, their self-perceived “liberalism” is nothing more than a delusion.

It’s time for liberal Zionists to get off the fence and start heading towards the tent with the one-staters and the BDSer’s – without, necessarily, accepting those ideologies. This move will come first, in Palestine/Israel, and then throughout the world.

As growing numbers of citizens across the world rise up and challenge the pro-war, race-baiting that the Murdoch press perpetuates, we learn that the empire still doesn’t understand how to respond appropriately:

Just when we were beginning to wonder when The Wall Street Journal would actually start to cover the meltdown at its proprietor’s company with all the zest that the world’s best business newspaper ought to muster for the world’s biggest business story, Rupert Murdoch picked up the phone to his own paper and gave it an exclusive interview.

In the interview with the Journal’s London bureau chief, Murdoch made the revelation that he would establish an independent committee, to be led by a “distinguished nonemployee” to “investigate every charge of improper conduct” that has been swirling around News Corp. in recent weeks. These charges include hacking by his reporters into the phones of celebrities, politicians, 9/11 victims, and a murdered English child, as well as bribes to British policemen for scoops and information.

Although Murdoch said that his company had handled the crisis “extremely well in every possible way” (conceding only that “minor mistakes” were made), the setting up of the independent committee makes all previous assertions by Murdoch managers look ludicrous. Both Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones & Co., and Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, have insisted that satisfactory (and comprehensive) internal inquiries into reportorial criminality have been conducted at Murdoch’s tabloid titles. In setting up a new committee, Murdoch has made it clear that those previous exercises were b.s.

Governments know this and embrace it. As our “brave boys” come home from war zones, mercenaries replace them. Accountability? What’s that?

With U.S. and Western military forces planning to gradually withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, there will be an increasing demand for private military contractors to provide security in both politically-troubled countries.

As a result, the number of military contractors is set to reach 5,500 in Iraq alone, according to a U.N. Working Group on Mercenaries, prompting demands for a specific international instrument to regulate their activities.

The members of the Working Group have stressed the importance of establishing international guidelines and legislation when dealing with Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs).

Three of the five members of the Working Group on Mercenaries held a press conference Friday to discuss new legislation and the need for an international instrument to regulate PMSCs.

The Working Group has already submitted legislation on the subject, to the General Assembly and the U.N. Human Rights Council. The issue is settling on a set of regulations that countries will agree on in a timely manner.

Established in July 2005, the Working Group keeps track of mercenaries and mercenary-related activities. Its mandate is to make suggestions to protect human rights in the face of such activities.

José Luis Gómez del Prado, chair of the Working Group, spoke of necessary change, and participation of member states.

What a paranoid and fundamentalist regime looks like:

Iran has stepped up online censorship by upgrading the filtering system that enables the Islamic regime to block access to thousands of websites it deems inappropriate for Iranian users.

The move comes one month after the United States announced plans to launch new services facilitating internet access and mobile phone communications in countries with tight controls on freedom of speech, a decision that infuriated Tehran’s regime and prompted harsh reactions from several Iranian officials.

The upgrade had at first appeared as a relaxation of the censorship machine. Iran’s online community said on Monday that filtering was temporarily lifted for the entire country, giving users access to banned websites such as Twitter and Facebook. But hopes for an end to censorship were dashed when news agencies reported later in the day that the respite was due to the process of making the upgrade.

Despite the filtering, many Iranians access blocked addresses with help from proxy websites or virtual private network (VPN) services. The upgrade is aimed at stopping users bypassing censorship.

More than 5 million websites are filtered in Iran. Media organisations including the Guardian, BBC and CNN are blocked, though access to the New York Times website is allowed. On Google, the Farsi equivalents for words such as “condom”, “sex”, “lesbian” and “anti-filtering” are filtered out.

Iran is believed to be worried about the influence of the internet and especially social networking websites as pro-democracy activists across the Middle East use them to promote and publicise their movements.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency quoted an unnamed official as saying: “The ministry of communications and information technology is strengthening the filtering system and recent disruptions were the result of this upgrade.”

At the same time, Nasimonline.ir, an agency that publishes short Twitter-style bursts of news, said it had received information that “a new filtering system that targets Google and Yahoo search engines” had been installed and tested on Monday.

“I think that the new upgrade in the filtering system is a signal from Iran that the regime is prepared to stop any attempt by the US to challenge the country’s online censorship,” said an Iranian who spoke to the Guardian by phone from Tehran on condition of anonymity.

Confused Jew (aren’t we all?) John Safran:

There’s this unspoken thing among Jews ‘that no matter whether you’re kosher or not, you always ask for kosher meals on aircraft to help keep the demand up.

British multinational Serco, the company that runs Australia’s immigration detention centres, is facing constant fines from the government. A story in yesterday’s Australian (headlined in the paper edition, “Breaches sending detention firm bust”, which is completely untrue) shows the dysfunctional nature of the relationship between contractor and government. No transparency exists:

The company running Australia’s immigration detention centres is incurring unsustainable fines from the Department of Immigration for breaches of its $712 million contract, according to a leaked email from Serco’s senior operations manager at the Christmas Island detention centre.

An escape on July 1 — about three months after Australian Federal Police were sent to bolster the security at the centre and insist that electric perimeter fences be switched on — is the latest in a string of breaches that will cost Serco dearly.

The company last week appointed a full-time security manager to prevent further escapes. Guards are now stationed on the perimeter of the centre under beach umbrellas on 12-hour shifts, complaining it is too hot and that shade falls on the other side of the fence for several hours each day.

Serco’s senior operations manager for the detention centre, Steve Southgate, addressed colleagues about continued breaches in an email last Monday.

“We can no longer remain where we are,” he said. “We are getting fined for things that should have been completed. We are getting fined for not paying attention to the detail. We are getting fined for not doing what we have said we will do. We need to change our culture to a proactive culture and get ourselves out of this reactive blame culture.”

…

The Immigration Department does not reveal the amount of any fines to Serco. But the 729-page contract spells out strict terms on breaches that can lead to abatements, including time limits for reporting incidents as well as paperwork requirements. The Australian has been told a single escape can incur a $100,000 fine.

The five-year contract for the running of immigration detention services has been made more difficult because of a blowout in the number of detainees prompted by a surge in boat arrivals that began in late 2008. There were fewer than 1000 detainees in the network when Serco took over from G4S while yesterday there were 5649.

The paper also ran a powerful feature about the detrimental effect of detention on both refugees and Serco staff. This unaccountable and privatised system cares little for human beings when the profit motive is paramount in the minds of company executives. Governments, meanwhile, simply want the problem to go away and believe a corporation will offer one less level of public scrutiny:

…There are fears at the highest levels of the company [Serco] that many staff are offside.

Some of the guards contacted by The Australian are exhausted by the constant conflict in their workplace and spoke with jarring hostility towards the detainees as well as their employer.

“Don’t rush home,” one guard emailed a colleague who was off work and on a holiday late last year. “All the f . . king arseholes are sewing their lips up and getting on the roof and bashing each other and hanging themselves.”

The guard told his friend how he had feared for his safety during a brawl. “There were seven of us . . . with 300 of them during the big group fight,” he wrote.

“[A fellow guard, name removed] cut down someone and was attacked by a guy with his lips sewn up.”

Staff are furious this week to be forced to sit around the perimeter of the detention centre under beach umbrellas as a result of an escape on July 1.

It was hot and the shade fell on the other side of the fence for much of the day, they complained.

While the work at the remote centres in Queensland, WA and Christmas Island can be harrowing, boring, uncomfortable or dangerous, for many it is the best money they have made.

Serco’s guards, or client service officers, say they get about $10,000 a month after tax if they are on a sought-after fly-in, fly-out contract from the mainland.

Many are ex-prison guards but that sort of experience is not necessary; the company’s contract with the Immigration Department stipulates only that they obtain a certificate level II in security operations within six months of starting work. That takes four weeks, according to a recent Serco recruiting drive, though The Australian has been told some new arrivals on the island trained for 12 days in a Perth hotel, followed by a few more days of training on Christmas Island, then a graduation ceremony.

Their training included learning the company’s computer system and watching videos on how to restrain people with appropriate force. They also practised restraints and other techniques.

All Serco employees must also do cultural awareness and mental health awareness training.

Sigh:

A number of key members of the family which controlled The Wall Street Journal say they would not have agreed to sell the prestigious daily to Rupert Murdoch if they had been aware of News International’s conduct in the phone-hacking scandal at the time of the deal.

“If I had known what I know now, I would have pushed harder against” the Murdoch bid, said Christopher Bancroft, a member of the family which controlled Dow Jones & Company, publishers of The Wall Street Journal. Bancroft said the breadth of allegations now on the public record “would have been more problematic for me. I probably would have held out.” Bancroft had sole voting control of a trust that represented 13 percent of Dow Jones shares in 2007 and served on the Dow Jones Board.

Lisa Steele, another family member on the Board, said that “it would have been harder, if not impossible,” to have accepted Murdoch’s bid had the facts been known. “It’s complicated,” Steele said, and “there were so many factors” in weighing a sale. But she said “the ethics are clear to me — what’s been revealed, from what I’ve read in the Journal, is terrible; it may even be criminal.”

What does Washington expect when Israel is allowed to brutalise the Palestinians, drone attacks are killing countless civilians and Arab dictatorships are warmly embraced?

The hope that the Arab world had not long ago put in the United States and President Obama has all but evaporated.

Two and a half years after Obama came to office, raising expectations for change among many in the Arab world, favorable ratings of the United States have plummeted in the Middle East, according to a new poll conducted by Zogby International for the Arab American Institute Foundation.

In most countries surveyed, favorable attitudes toward the United States dropped to levels lower than they were during the last year of the Bush administration. The killing of Osama bin Laden also worsened attitudes toward the United States.

In Saudi Arabia, for instance, 30 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the United States (compared with 41 percent in 2009), while roughly 5 percent said the same in Egypt (compared with 30 percent in 2009).

“The very high expectations that were created in 2009 – there’s been a letdown since then,” said James Zogby, the president and founder of the Arab American Institute, of which the foundation is an affiliate.

Fewer than 10 percent of respondents described themselves as having a favorable view of Obama. The president’s ratings were the lowest on “the Palestinian issue” and “engagement with the Muslim world,” as the categories were described in the survey.

The poll was conducted over the course of a month among 4,000 respondents in six countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. Pollsters began their work shortly after a major speech Obama gave on the Middle East, in which he spoke broadly of his vision in the Middle East and pressed Israel, in unusually frank terms, to reach a final peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The findings are largely in line with those of a poll conducted in the spring of 2010 by the Pew Research Center, which also found favorable views of the United States and Obama slipping. As with the new poll, Obama got his worst ratings for dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Zogby said he saw the president about a month ago and mentioned that he was conducting another poll of views in the Arab world. The president, Zogby said, predicted that views of the United States would remain unfavorable because of the intractable nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Bravo:

According to various news reports, two ‘air flotilla’ activists who arrived in Israel last Friday have been allowed to remain in Israel (and travel to the West Bank freely) on the condition that they ‘refrain from disrupting the peace.’ The activists were part of the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ campaign which sent hundreds of European tourists to Israel last week with the intention to freely and openly visit the West Bank.

The two activists, former Australian Green MP Sylvia Hale and New Zealand national Vivienne Porzsolt, were brought before an Israeli district court this morning. There are conflicting reports as to where these woman were detained. Ynet is reporting that they were detained after after reportedly yelling “free Gaza” during passport inspection at Ben Gurion International airport. Organizers of the “Welcome to Palestine” movement claim that the two woman were detained trying to enter Bethlehem after successfully entering Israel on Friday.

Regardless of where they were detained, the ruling that they are allowed to remain in Israel after openly stating their intention to travel to the West Bank sets a new legal precedent for traveling to the occupied Palestinian territories. There are still over 40 ‘air flotilla’ passengers in Israeli detention waiting deportation and/or hearings on their status in Israel.

When a country such as Sri Lanka proudly flaunts its human rights abuses against the Tamils and refuses to investigate war crimes, the world has a responsibility to act.

The Australian cricket team is soon to travel to the country and voices are growing that such a trip should be cancelled, to send a strong message to Colombo that it is not welcomed into the civilised world unless it changes its ways.

Leading Australian cricket writer Peter Roebuck has written two recent pieces outlining the issues and bravely stating that sport is never just about entertainment. Politics is central to everything. And Sri Lanka will be made to understand that it’s a pariah.

Here’s Roebuck:

The recent expose´ of the systematic execution, rape and abuse of Tamils in the closing stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka has provoked deep consternation among cricketers. One prominent player has been having nightmares since Four Corners aired the Channel 4 report this week, and the Players Association has been asked to intervene. Australia is due to visit Sri Lanka in August.

When it comes to making a stand, sport has mostly preferred to bury its head in the sand. Claiming it was none of its business, it ignored the state-sponsored slaughter of the Tamils in Sri Lanka and of the Ndebele in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Few condemned the West Indies’ refusal to appoint a black captain, a policy that lasted deep into the 1950s. People preferred to talk about the lbw rule. Patronising images were conveyed of happy-go-lucky West Indians and hospitable Sri Lankans. The truth is always more complex.

It’s not good enough. Sportsmen and women can no longer pretend lack of knowledge. Facebook, YouTube and so forth have denied them that luxury. Sport is not a trivial distraction but part of our daily lives, not an escape but an embrace. Cricket, especially, has an opportunity to advance racial and religious tolerance. Have not these causes united all great men and women? Teams from Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian heritages reached the semi-finals of the recent World Cup. Sport has an obligation to help different peoples cross the bridge.

Not that any game ought to involve itself in local matters. Legitimate politics provides a choice between legitimate parties. Sovereign nations are entitled to determine their own fates. Tyranny is another matter.

…

Cricket is obliged to confront another matter that reaches far beyond its ordinary jurisdiction. Already the former England cricket captain, Michael Atherton, has urged his country to consider its position before undertaking its tour to Sri Lanka next year. Atherton described the Channel 4 footage as the most shocking seen on television since the Ethiopian food crisis. Evidently the ruling regime carried out these atrocities, chased away reporters and now blocks the United Nations’ attempts to establish the facts.

Clearly the Australian players are entitled to have as much information as possible before making any decision to visit any country. In this case, it is not a straightforward matter because the government appears to have popular support. After decades of civil war, the country is ostensibly at peace. And let’s not pretend the Tamil Tigers were saints. On the other hand, the leader of the opposition is behind bars and a small family clique around the presidency seems intent on controlling the economic and political levers.

It’s hard to know where sporting boycotts ought to start and stop. Iraqi civilians have suffered terribly from bombs dropped in an illegal war. Are the perpetrators to be isolated? If not, why not? Perhaps the difference lies between wicked actions and evil systems. That is poor consolation to the victims.

And more Roebuck:

Following a devastating documentary, recently aired in Australia, Michael Atherton wrote that England ought to consider its position before undertaking its tour to Sri Lanka. Footage was shown of soldiers executing Tamils, prisoners of war and civilians alike. Women were raped, children abused, hospitals bombed, and no questions asked.

The former England captain described the sights as the most shocking seen on television since the Ethiopian food crisis.

The regime in Colombo carried out these atrocities, chased away reporters and blocked the UN’s attempts to investigate. Sri Lanka is dangerous for journalists. Not so long ago a friend of mine, the editor of The Sunday Leader, was assassinated.

Atherton compares the Sri Lankan regime to that of Robert Mugabe and challenges his community to reflect upon its differing responses. Inconsistency is widespread. My African contingent includes a Congolese student who saw soldiers burning alive defeated opponents. Yet his country mostly escapes scrutiny.

Now Sri Lanka is in the spotlight. The next step is to insist upon an independent inquiry. It is vital to establish the facts. Clearly the Australian players are entitled to have as much information as possible at their disposal before making any decision to visit any country. They are scheduled to tour Sri Lanka next month. I will be going to Sri Lanka because that is the job of journalists.

Already one leading player has said the documentary made him feel sick and that he had been having nightmares since. Another observer has raised the issue of a boycott.

It’s not a straightforward matter because the government appears to have been legitimately elected. After decades of civil war the country is ostensibly at peace.