Antony Loewenstein

Typically brilliant Slavoj Žižek from last week in the London Guardian:

Breivik is antisemitic but pro-Israel, as the state of Israel is the first line of defence against the Muslim expansion – he even wants to see the Jerusalem temple rebuilt. His view is that Jews are OK as long as there aren’t too many of them – or, as he wrote in his manifesto: “There is no Jewish problem in western Europe (with the exception of the UK and France) as we only have 1 million in western Europe, whereas 800,000 out of these 1 million live in France and the UK. The US, on the other hand, with more than 6 million Jews (600% more than Europe) actually has a considerable Jewish problem.” He realises the ultimate paradox of a Zionist Nazi – how is this possible?

A key is provided by the reactions of the European right to Breivik’s attack: its mantra was that in condemning his murderous act, we should not forget that he addressed “legitimate concerns about genuine problems” – mainstream politics is failing to address the corrosion of Europe by Islamicisation and multiculturalism, or, to quote the Jerusalem Post, we should use the Oslo tragedy “as an opportunity to seriously re-evaluate policies for immigrant integration in Norway and elsewhere”. The newspaper has since apologised for this editorial. (Incidentally, we are yet to hear a similar interpretation of the Palestinian acts of terror, something like “these acts of terror should serve as an opportunity to re-evaluate Israeli politics”.)

A reference to Israel is, of course, implicit in this evaluation: a “multicultural” Israel has no chance to survive; apartheid is the only realistic option. The price for this properly perverse Zionist-rightist pact is that, in order to justify the claim to Palestine, one has to acknowledge retroactively the line of argumentation which was previously, in earlier European history, used against the Jews: the implicit deal is “we are ready to acknowledge your intolerance towards other cultures in your midst if you acknowledge our right not to tolerate Palestinians in our midst”.

…

The standard Zionist argument against the critics of the policies of the state of Israel is that, of course, like every other state, Israel can and should be judged and eventually criticised, but that the critics of Israel misuse the justified critique of Israeli policy for antisemitic purposes. When the Christian fundamentalist supporters of the Israeli politics reject leftist critiques of Israeli policies, their implicit line of argument is illustrated by a wonderful cartoon published in July 2008 in the Viennese daily Die Presse: it shows two stocky, Nazi-looking Austrians, one of them holding in his hands a newspaper and commenting to his friend: “Here you can see again how a totally justified antisemitism is being misused for a cheap critique of Israel!” These are today’s allies of the state of Israel.

The shameful legacy of Iraq should never be forgotten (via the Daily Mail):

The exhausted secret intelligence officer was heading home after a heavy session analysing reports from Iraq. As he stepped out through the high-security air-lock exit from MI6’s grand headquarters beside the Thames in London, a newspaper-seller’s placard caught his eye — ‘45 minutes from attack,’ it proclaimed.

Alarm bells rang in his head. It was September 2002, and Prime Minister Tony Blair had that day unveiled with great fanfare the government’s dossier detailing Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, as a justification for going to war.

He knew, in a way the public did not, the precise background to that headline. His first thought was that this was not what the original intelligence report had said. ‘If this goes wrong, we’re all screwed,’ he muttered to himself.

It did go wrong, spectacularly so, as a new history of MI6 by the BBC’s well-informed security correspondent Gordon Corera recounts. It’s a disturbing story of how tiny sparks of dubious information picked up in the backstreets of Baghdad and elsewhere were fanned into giant flames.

The result was a firecracker of a dossier which was pivotal in the run-up to the deeply divisive British and American invasion of Iraq. For many people, the scary information it disclosed — that Saddam was so advanced with his chemical and biological weapons that he could fire them with a mere 45 minutes notice — was a tipping point.

…

The ending of the Cold War and MI6’s legendary cat-and-mouse tussles with the KGB seemed to herald that redundancy. Then the post-9/11 era offered a new mission.

Out to prove it still had a vital use in the modern world, MI6 set to work.

Early drafts were begun of a dossier on Saddam’s weapons programmes.

Some MI6 officers were unhappy with the idea of working to so precise an agenda. ‘All our training, all our culture, bias, is against such a thing,’ one complained.

But there was no stopping what quickly became a juggernaut as Britain’s two most senior spies — Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, and John Scarlett, chairman of the government’s Joint Intelligence Committee, whose job was to sift and assess MI6’s information — became central to the build-up to war.

Dearlove in particular became one of the Prime Minister’s closest advisers and, according to officials, enjoyed a ‘privileged relationship’. Blair was open about his reliance on him to provide the central plank of the argument for intervening in Iraq. At one point he turned to his spy chief and said: ‘Richard, my fate is in your hands.’

Meanwhile, Scarlett was working closely with Downing Street, to the extent that Alastair Campbell, Blair’s all-powerful media director, would talk of him as a ‘mate’ and ‘a very good bloke’.

The JIC’s brief was to make its dossier suitable for publication to the public, in itself an unprecedented step in the publicity-shy world of spies. Campbell called for it to be ‘revelatory’. As the drafting process continued, Scarlett attended meetings chaired by Campbell to look at the presentation.

Intelligence was being sucked closer to policy than it had ever been before in MI6’s history.

Scarlett disputes this, maintaining that he was just putting information in the public domain not taking sides. Subordinates disagree.

‘We knew the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war,’ one senior military intelligence officer later complained. ‘Every fact was managed to make it as strong as possible.’

Direction and pressure were being applied on the JIC and its drafters, he maintained. A line had been crossed. Intelligence was being used as a tool for political persuasion.

More here on the new research by Israeli academic Nurit Peled-Elhanan.

Following the appearance today of a story in Murdoch’s Australian about BDS, one of those interviewed, Kim Bullimore, sent me the following details of her interview with the paper’s reporter, Cameron Stewart:

Stewart (the reporter) wanted to know when was our next action.  I told them Sept 9.  He wanted to know if we would be picketing Max Brenner.  I told him our upcoming action would once again be a non-violent peaceful rally which would highlight Israel’s human rights abuses and that we would be continuing to highlight Max Brenner and Strauss’ complicity with Israeli apartheid and occupation.[ Strauss is Max Brenner's parent company.  Strauss gives direct support to the Israeli military by providing care packages, spending money, games, books and sporting equipment to Israel's Golani and Givati Brigades, two of the key military brigades which were active on the ground in Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009, which resulted in the killing of more than 1300 Palestinians, including 350 children].

Stewart asked if other companies had been protested against as part of the BDS campaign in Austrlaia – I pointed out that protests had been held against Israeli owned companies, Seacret and Jericho. Both companies sell Dead Sea products and while Israeli companies profit from exploiting the Dead Sea, Palestinians living under occupation and living around the area of the Dead Sea are regularly prevented access to not only their lands but also the Dead Sea because of Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies.

Stewart wanted to know if there were other actions happening around the country, I pointed out that there were solidarity actions being organised in several states with those arrested and that there would also be a protest in Brisbane later this month. And I also pointed out that there had been protests in Sydney outside of MB.

He asked me what I thought of Ted Lapkin (former AIJAC staffter) saying that it was hypocritical for us to protest at Max Brenner, when we oppose the blockade of Gaza!  I pointed out while we are holding a non-violent peaceful demonstration which lasts for an hour or so, once a month to highlight the complicity of MB/Strauss (via their support for the Israeli military) in Israel’s human rights abuses, as well as occupation and apartheid policies, the Israeli state has been conducting a 4 long year blockade of Gaza, which ensured that medical equipment, building equipment, foods supplies etc can not get in to Gaza.  To try and compare the two is hypocritical and outrageous.

Stewart also asked what I thought about the fact that both sides of politics have come out and condemned the protests. I said I thought it was quite telling that both sides of politics felt the need to condemn our legitimate non-violent civil resistance (and that boycotts had long been a legitimate form of civil dissent in liberal democratic society), but did not have a word to say about Israel’s ongoing human rights abuses, Israel’s continued building of illegal settlements in violation of International law or that the fact Israel killed more than 1300 people during Operation Cast Lead, the majority of whom were civilian, including 350 children.

He also asked about the ACCC being called in. Again, I pointed out that it was appalling that politicians are trying to set up investigations into a legitimate non-violent civil resistance movment but fail to say a word about Israel’s human rights abuses, occupation and apartheid policies or that it was in violation of the 4th Geneva convention and rulings by the International Court of Justice.

I pointed out that non-violent civil resistance has long been a legitimate and acceptable part of liberal democratic practice. That it has been used by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr, as well as many others.   I pointed out that the campaign was a Palestinan initiative and that was supported by Palestinian civil society.

When I raised the issue of MB/Strauss’ connect to the Israeli military, he asked me (to paraphase) “well what about the fact that there are many companies in the US who have supported the US military”. I pointed out that there has been in fact boycotts and protests around companies involved in the wars in Iraq and that non-violent civil resistance is a legitimate form of dissent.

Welcome to the state of Australian “journalism”.

Today’s article in Murdoch’s Australian discusses the current controversy over peaceful protests for Palestine against an Israeli business in Sydney, Melbourne and beyond. Reporter Cameron Stewart writes in a classic “balanced” way. One side says that but the other argue something else. If he actually used Google he would easily find that in fact Max Brenner supports elements of the IDF who have been accused of serious violations of human rights in Gaza and beyond.

That task was clearly too difficult for Stewart. After all, he does work for a paper that loves the smell of bombed Muslims in the morning (who are being liberated, of course):

Max Brenner says he is a man of peace who hates all forms of violence. So how has this chocolate maker become the target of anti-Israeli protesters in Australia who accuse him of being complicit with the Israeli military?

It’s a claim which has outraged many who see the campaign against the 24-store Max Brenner chocolate chain in this country as an ugly echo of the anti-Semitism of 1930s Germany when Jewish businesses were targeted.

Anti-Israeli activists counter that the current global campaign of protests against international Israeli retail chains like Max Brenner are a legitimate means of highlighting what they say is the deeply flawed human rights record of Israel and its military.

But the activists are under growing pressure to abandon their campaign since 19 people were arrested following violent clashes with police outside the Max Brenner store in Melbourne’s CBD on July 1.

The protests have been condemned by both sides of Victorian politics.

This week, the Baillieu government asked the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission to examine whether the protesters could be prosecuted for alleged secondary boycotts.

“We remember the precedent of the 1930s,’ says Jewish federal MP Michael Danby. “My father came from Germany and (at) any sign of this kind of behaviour, we have to draw a line in the sand.”

Kim Bullimore, a spokesperson for the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, vows that the campaign against Max Brenner will continue, with more protests planned in Brisbane on August 27 and Melbourne on September 9.

But it seems Max Brenner, the company’s founder, is perplexed and dismayed at finding himself as an unwitting symbol of the Palestinian-Israel conflict.

A Max Brenner spokesman said Mr Brenner, who lives in New York, was on leave and was unavailable for interview. But when asked in July 2009 about protests against his Sydney stores, Mr Brenner said he was no more than a chocolate-maker.

“Everything that has to do with conflict seems stupid (to me),’ he said. “Whether it is in Israel or not, anything to do with violence, aggressiveness or appearing at protests or boycotts seems silly (to me). But then again, I am just a chocolate-maker.”

The link between the 43-year-old Mr Brenner and the Israeli military is accidental and indirect, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Brenner, like other Israeli-born men, had to complete mandatory military service as a young man.

In 2001, the Max Brenner chain became part of the much larger Strauss Group, Israel’s second-largest food and beverage company. But Strauss also provides food and care packages to Israeli soldiers. This, in the eyes of anti-Israeli activists, justifies a boycott.

Ms Bullimore, the co-ordinator of the protest campaign in Australia, denies that activists are simply targeting an innocent chocolate-maker.

“We are trying to highlight Israel’s human rights abuses,’ she told The Weekend Australian.

In a statement last night, the general delegation of Palestine to Australia said it was aware of the recent incident at the Max Brenner shop in Melbourne but that it did not dictate positions or actions to such civil society initiatives “either within Palestine or in other countries”.

Meanwhile, the Australian political establishment alongside the Zionist community are very pleased that protests against Israel may be criminalised.

Bravo:

The U.K. Border Agency is prohibiting fundamentalist Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, co-author of the controversial book “The King’s Torah” (“Torat Hamelech” ), from entering Britain, the Jewish Voice website reported on Wednesday.

Elitzur received a letter last month from the U.K. Border Agency, signed by the home secretary, informing him that he could not enter Britain for the next three years.

The July 20 letter, which appears on the website, cites the British law forbidding entry to anyone who writes, publishes or distributes material “fomenting or justifying terrorist violence … and seeking to provoke others to commit terrorist acts.” The book says Jews may kill gentiles, among other things.

The site says Elitzur was banned from Britain because of the book, published in 2009, and cites Elitzur’s statement, “If the Jews don’t have quiet, the Arabs won’t have quiet. If the Arabs win because of violence against the Jews, the Jews will win by violence against the Arabs.”

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has the facts:

CIA drone strikes have led to far more deaths in Pakistan than previously understood, according to extensive new research published by the Bureau. More than 160 children are among at least 2,292 people reported killed in US attacks since 2004. There are credible reports of at least 385 civilians among the dead.

In a surprise move, a counter-terrorism official has also released US government estimates of the numbers killed. These state that an estimated 2,050 people have been killed in drone strikes – of whom all but an estimated 50 are combatants.