Antony Loewenstein

This week’s New York Times featured an investigation about sourcing future energy needs. The world is open, so we’re told, and human beings, indigenous groups or the environment are ignored. That’s “business journalism” in a nut shell:

Brazil has begun building its first nuclear submarine to protect its vast, new offshore oil discoveries. Colombia’s oil production is climbing so fast that it is closing in on Algeria’s and could hit Libya’s prewar levels in a few years. ExxonMobil is striking new dealsin Argentina, which recently heralded its biggest oil discovery since the 1980s.

Up and down the Americas, it is a similar story: a Chinese-built rig is preparing to drill in Cuban waters; a Canadian official has suggested that unemployed Americans could move north to help fill tens of thousands of new jobs in Canada’s expanding oil sands; and one of the hemisphere’s hottest new oil pursuits is actually in the United States, at a shale formation in North Dakota’s prairie that is producing 400,000 barrels of oil a day and is part of a broader shift that could ease American dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

For the first time in decades, the emerging prize of global energy may be the Americas, where Western oil companies are refocusing their gaze in a rush to explore clusters of coveted oil fields.

“This is an historic shift that’s occurring, recalling the time before World War II when the U.S. and its neighbors in the hemisphere were the world’s main source of oil,” said Daniel Yergin, an American oil historian. “To some degree, we’re going to see a new rebalancing, with the Western Hemisphere moving back to self-sufficiency.”

The hemisphere’s oil boom is all the more remarkable given that two of its traditional energy powerhouses, Venezuela and Mexico, have largely been left out, held in check by entrenched resource nationalism. Venezuela is now considered to have bigger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, putting it at the top of OPEC’s rankings. If it opened up more to foreign investment, it could tip the scales further in the hemisphere’s direction.

Exactly how the Americas’ growing oil clout might rebalance energy geopolitics remains an open question. The Middle East can still influence oil prices greatly, its oil fields are generally cheaper to develop, and some countries in the region are endowed with great reserves.

One (via Politico):

U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice briefed a dozen top American Jewish leaders on an “all out,” if likely doomed, American effort to derail the Palestinian bid for a vote on statehood at the United Nations, according to three people at the meeting.

Rice met with the leaders at her apartment at the Waldorf Astoria in New York this morning in the run-up to a Palestinian effort that could include a vote in the Security Council or in the General Assembly, or both, next week. The U.S. has pledged to veto the former, and is also — Rice told the leaders — working to convince European and African countries to abstain from the vote, denying it the nine of fifteen votes required to pass the Security Council. 

The U.S. is also whipping votes in the General Assembly in hopes of, at least, cutting into its margin of victory, Rice told attendees. Israel and the U.S. formally back Palestinian statehood, but oppose passing it through the United Nations while negotiations are stalled in the region, a measure they argue could destabilize the region and delegitimize Israel.

“She didn’t have a starry-eyed approach,” one of the Jewish leaders told POLITICO. “There’s an awareness both on her part and on our part that assuming that the Palestinians go ahead with the resolution it’s going to pass the General Assembly and it’s going to pass by a comfortable margin.”

Two of the leaders of Jewish organizations in the room described it as a warm meeting, with attendees expressing their gratitude for the Administrations work. Malcolm Hoenlein, who runs the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and has at times been an Administration critic told Rice the Administration gets less credit than it deserved, another guest said.

“Everybody recognized that it does make a difference what that ultimate vote looks like, and every negative or abstention you get is going to be helpful and is going to be valuable,” the first source said. The Europeans, in particular, are a crucial bloc: There has been discussion of their pushing for a watered down resolution and a formal statement from the “Quartet” of key international actors in exchange for their support, and failing that, the U.S. hopes it can win their “no” votes or abstentions.

The attendees, according to one of the people in the room, were AIPAC’s Lee Rosenberg; World Jewish Congress chief Ron Lauder; the American Jewish Committee’s David Harris; the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman; Hoenlein; Daniel Mariaschin of B’Nai B’rith; Rabbi Steve Gutow of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs; Peace Now’s Martin Bresler; J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami; Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Union for Reform Judaism;  Rabbi Julie Schonfeld of the Rabbinical Assembly; and Rabbi Steven Weil of the Orthodox Union.

Two (via JTA):

At the United Nations, where Israel has become the favorite target of condemnatory resolutions, committees and debates, the United States remains Israel’s most steadfast and dependable ally.

So when I sat down last week with Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, there was one question on my mind: How much of your job is spent on Israel?

“This week?” she said. “A hundred percent.” She laughed, saying she was only being a little bit facetious.

Then she turned serious.

“It’s a significant part of my job. It’s not the majority of my time, because I am the U.S. permanent representative,” Rice said. “But it is never the smallest piece. It is always there.”

One week it might be the Goldstone report on the Gaza War, another week it might be the report on the Turkish flotilla to Gaza or Israel’s Operation Cast Lead or the Durban review conference, she said.

“It’s a lot.”

That’s fodder for detractors who accuse the United States of doing Israel’s bidding, or worse. But Rice says it’s nothing of the kind.

“We’re doing what we think is right,” she told me.

Yesterday I received the following email from Daniel Pipes:

Please join me on a visit to Israel on March 7-15, 2012. Heritage Study Programs, a leading tour company, has asked me to lead a one -time only informative, enjoyable, and inexpensive week.

Our focus will be on my special interest – the nearly 20 percent of Israel’s population who are Muslim, often called Israeli Arabs. The trip will offer special insight into current problems: Are Israeli Arabs integrating or isolating themselves? Are they Palestinians? What is the role of Arab immigration to Israel? How does this growing population affect the long-term welfare and survival of the Jewish state?

Shin Bet calls the Israeli Arab population a “genuine long-range danger to the Jewish character and very existence of the State of Israel.” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman questions its citizenship. I have called it Israel’s “existential danger.”

With current attention on other matters (Middle Eastern upheavals, Palestinian statehood, Turkish bellicosity, the Iranian nuclear buildup), this topic tends to get brushed aside. But when the other problems have been resolved, Israel must deal with its Muslim community.

Khaled Abu Toameh, the Jerusalem Post’s distinguished West Bank and Gaza correspondent, will co-lead with me an unprecedented first-hand exploration of this and related subjects.

The trip will include travels to key locations, informative meetings, and lively discussions. You will meet with Israeli-Arab leaders, academics and researchers, with intelligence, police, military officers, high government officials, policy makers and counterterrorism experts. We will participate in a conference at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center on Muslim attitudes toward Jerusalem.

I hope you will come with me to Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Galilee, and Jerusalem. You will visit some of Israel’s most renowned sites, including the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee, the Western Wall, and areas around the Temple Mount.

Neither tour nor mission, this intimate fact-finding expedition will challenge and change your understanding of Israel.

Let’s be clear. Here we have a fusion between a Zionist fundamentalist, Pipes, and a Palestinian journalist with the pro-settler Jerusalem Post, Abu Toameh, helping to “expose” the supposedly existential threat of Arabs inside Israel.

Abu Toameh was recently in Australia as a guest of the Zionist lobby.

War! Money! Capitalism! Exploitation!

Yes, as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald writes, privatisation is bringing goodness to the peaceful land of Afghanistan:

As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.  Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for “the construction of Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), Bagram, Afghanistan” which includes “detainee housing capability for approximately 2000 detainees.”  It will also feature “guard towers, administrative facility and Vehicle/Personnel Access Control Gates, security surveillance and restricted access systems.”  The announcement provided: ”the estimated cost of the project is between $25,000,000 to $100,000,000.”

The arms industry is a massive global market of Western nations, willing dictatorships and heaps of money.

New Statesman reports on the world’s largest arms fair recently held in London:

The two main exhibition halls have previously hosted concerts by Roxy Music, Alice Cooper and UB40. But today they are crammed with around 1300 exhibits, selling guns, bombs and the latest in security technology. A handful of stalls are devoted to life-saving equipment. Most of the space, however, is reserved for displays featuring 100lb hellfire missiles, AK47 rifles, stealth tanks and even gold-plated handguns.

The quiet dissipates and is replaced by the sound of chatter. Business cards change hands, and multi-million pound contracts are being negotiated. At a large stand run by the defence arm of SAAB, a Swedish company more renowned for its cars, Håkan Kappelin is showing off a laser-guided missile system to delegates from India. It has a range of 8km and can travel at speeds of up to 680 metres per second.

“It could be deployed inside a city like London. And you can engage any type of target,” he says. “Not like when you use an infra-red system, where you have problems with houses in the background. Just reload in five seconds and engage the next target.”

The delegates nod approvingly. “680 metres per second,” one repeats to another.

Upstairs, in a briefing room, Defence Secretary Liam Fox delivers a speech. Anti-arms campaigners have levelled criticism against the government for doing deals with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of crackdowns on protesters across the Arab world. Fox is dismissive. “I am proud that the UK is the second biggest defence exporter in the world,” he says. “This is fundamental part of the coalition government’s agenda for economic growth, but it is also part of our strategy of enlightened international engagement.”

As the UN vote on Palestine nears, opinion in much of the Western media is to support the bid. A sense of ‘about time’ and ‘Palestine deserves to be a state’ permeates the coverage. Predictably, Murdoch’s Australian shows its ingrained hatred of Arabs in today’s editorial (with no mention of the occupation, which for the paper is merely a few houses scattered on empty land).

Palestinian Ali Abunimah writes in Foreign Affairs that in fact the two-state solution is so dead and buried that the world supporting the UN vote don’t even acknowledge they are signing its death warrant:

More fundamentally, though, the entire discussion of statehood ignores the facts on the ground. For starters, the PA fails the traditional criteria for statehood laid out in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: it controls neither territory nor external borders (except for the tiny enclaves it polices under the supervision of Israeli occupation forces). It is prohibited under the 1993 Oslo Accords from freely entering into relations with other states. As for possessing a permanent population, the majority of the Palestinian people are prohibited by Israel from entering the area on which the PA purports to claim statehood solely because they are not Jews (under Israel’s discriminatory Law of Return, Jews from anywhere in the world can settle virtually anywhere in Israel or the occupied territories, while native-born Palestinian refugees and their children are excluded). The PA cannot issue passports or identity documents; Israeli authorities control the population registry. No matter how the UN votes, Israel will continue to build settlements in the West Bank and maintain its siege of Gaza. As all this suggests, any discussion of real sovereignty is a fantasy.

Nor is the strategy likely to produce even formal UN membership or recognition. That would require approval by the Security Council, which the Obama administration has vowed to veto. The alternative is some sort of symbolic resolution in the UN General Assembly upgrading the status of the existing Palestinian UN observer mission — a decision with little practical effect. Such an outcome will hardly be worth all the energy and fuss, especially when there are other measures that the UN could take that would have much greater impact. For example, Palestinians would be better off asking for strict enforcement of existing but long ignored Security Council resolutions, such as Resolution 465, which was passed in 1980 and calls on Israel to “dismantle the existing settlements” in the occupied territories and determines that all Israel’s measures “to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity” and are flagrant violations of international law.

Ultimately, any successful strategy should focus not on statehood but on rights. In its statement on the UN bid, the BNC emphasized that regardless of what happens in September, the global solidarity struggle must continue until Israel respects Palestinian rights and obeys international law in three specific ways: ending the occupation of Arab lands that began in 1967 and dismantling the West Bank wall that was ruled illegal in 2004 by the International Court of Justice; removing all forms of legal and social discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel and guaranteeing full equal rights; and offering full respect for Palestinian refugee rights, including the right of return. Palestinians and Israelis are not in a situation of equals negotiating an end to a dispute but are, respectively, colonized and colonizer, much as blacks and whites were in South Africa. This truth must be recognized, and pushing for such recognition would resonate far more with the Palestinian public than empty statehood talk.

Following last weekend’s first investigative journalism conference in Australia, Pacific Media Watch have highlighted some of the key points discussed by yours truly:

Freelance journalist and author Antony Loewenstein, speaking about Wikileaks, said Julian Assange’s efforts were miles ahead of the mainstream media, as he was not concerned about corporate pressures, and delivered maximum information to the public.

“The power the mainstream media has is to choose the agenda,” he said. “[Wikileaks] shows the public the stories we aren’t seeing. It threatens the power that has lasted so long.”

He said journalists needed to give up that power of having the information they were privy to, and to be open to more interaction with citizens on their websites.

The death last year of British historian Tony Judt was a deep loss for those of us who crave intelligent debate of world affairs and especially the Middle East.

The Atlantic has just published his last interview and Judt is shown, despite his last years being afflicted with a horrible disease, with a clarity of thought about Zionism and what Judaism has become:

You advocated for a binational state. What does your binational state look like? How does it work?

I don’t know. What I do know is that since I wrote that in 2003, everyone from Moshe Arens through Barak to Olmert has admitted that Israel is on the way to a single state with a potential Arab majority in Bantustans unless something happens fast. That’s all that I said in my essay.

But ok, since it looks as though Israel is determined to give itself this future, what will it look like? Hell. But what could it look like? Well, there could be a federal state of two autonomous communities — on the Swiss or Belgian model (don’t tell me the latter doesn’t work — it works very well but is opposed by Flemings led by people very much like [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman). This could have crossover privileges and rights for both communities, but each would be autonomous. I think this would work better than a mixed single-state, and it would allow each community to set certain sorts of religious and other regulations according to its taste.

If it could look so good, why would it be hell?

Because it would start from a very bad place. It would begin with Jews running the place in the name of a Jewish state, defined by Orthodox Rabbis and controlled by an army whose officer core is increasingly permeated by religious and settler communities. No Arab would feel remotely safe, much less equal or a citizen in such a “single state”. The Arabs’ lack of property, rights, status and prospects would either make them a sullen and potentially violent underclass or else the best of them would try to leave. This is no good basis for integration, though it is of course what some of Israel’s present leaders privately desire. And then there would be Gaza…

…

Can you see or understand why Israelis are afraid?

Yes, but only in the sense that someone who has been brought up to fear and hate his neighbors will have good reason to be frightened at the thought of living in the same house with them. Israelis have created a generation of young Palestinians who hate them and will never forgive them and that does make a real problem for any future agreement, single- or two-state.

But Israel should be much, much more afraid of the Israel it’s creating for itself: a semi-democratic, demagogic, far-right warrior state dominated by racist Russians and crazed rabbis. In this perspective, an internationally policed and guaranteed federal state of Israel, with the same rights and resources for Jews and Arabs, looks a lot less frightening to me.

Can you see why American Jews are fearful as well of that?

No. This is the fear of the paranoid hysteric – like the man at the dinner table in the story I wrote in the New York Review who had never been to Israel but thought I should stop criticizing it because “We Jews might need it sometime.” American Jews — most of whom know nothing of Jewish history, Jewish languages or Jewish religion — feel “Jewish” by identifying unthinkingly with Auschwitz as the source of their special victim status and “Israel” as their insurance policy and macho other. I find this contemptible — they are quite happy to see Arabs killed in their name, so long as other Jews do it. That’s not fear, that is something between surrogate nationalism and moral indifference.

…

After your binational state proposal, many felt the need to publicly denounce you, even famous liberals. How hard was this for you?

Not at all. Since people took to calling me “Belgian” as a synonym for “anti-Semitic European,” or “Self-Hating Jew,” I assumed that they had nothing very interesting to say. Since liberals would often say one thing to me in private but something different in public for fear of being thought “anti-Semitic”, I never much cared about their criticisms either.

On the whole I don’t mind taking a minority view: I’ve always done this. And many of the people who slapped me down for my criticisms of Israel were enthusiastic supporters of the Iraq war. So I suspect I was on the right side twice-over. The only criticisms I took seriously came from Israel, from reasonable people who had good grounds for disagreement. I suspect ground is starting to open up in America, as people gently put their heads above the parapet and risk criticizing Israel without getting shot.

In recent writing and interviews, you relate a lot to your unique sense of a limited future. How has this changed the way you see history and current politics?

I don’t think it’s changed it at all, though it may have shifted the balance of my writings and interests. I don’t think I have altered my views on history or politics, though of course given my circumstances I have to ration my contributions and try to focus on the things that either matter most or that I have the best chance of influencing.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights releases a timely statement that reminds the world that justice for Israeli crimes won’t be forgotten:

On Thursday, 15 September 2011, the United Kingdom modified its universal jurisdiction legislation as a direct result of political pressure exerted by the Government of Israel, following the issue of arrest warrants for Doron Almog in 2005, and Tzipi Livni in 2009. The legislative change grants the Director of Public Prosecutions the power to veto the issue of arrest warrants for universal jurisdiction offences. This is a purely political move designed to block the arrest of war criminals from ‘friendly’ countries.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) affirms that this effort intends to grant impunity under the veil of law. Rather than fulfilling its obligation to pursue accountability, the United Kingdom has enacted legislation establishing an effective ‘safe-haven’ for war criminals.

States’ obligation to prosecute suspected perpetrators of international crimes – such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, and genocide – is a norm of customary international law. It is also a direct obligation arising from Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which the United Kingdom is a High Contracting Party.

Universal jurisdiction exists to ensure that those suspected of committing international crimes do not escape accountability. It grants States the jurisdiction to prosecute such individuals, regardless of where the crime was committed. Universal jurisdiction aims precisely to ensure that there can be no safe havens for suspected international criminals.

In changing the law, the United Kingdom has chosen to pursue impunity and protectionism, not accountability. The U.K. is subject to a duty to apply the criminal law uniformly: the amendment could breach both that obligation, and the UK’s legal obligations arising from the ratification of, inter alia, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the UN Convention against Torture.

PCHR notes that this move evidences a blatant double standard and hypocrisy on the part of the Government of the United Kingdom. The U.K. recently voted to refer the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court, ensuring that Qadaffi and members of his regime are held to account. The Government has repeatedly issued public statements highlighting its commitment to justice, the rule of law, and the spirit of the Arab spring.

However, at the same time, they have chosen to disregard the rule of law with respect to ‘friendly’ States. The United Kingdom has chosen to place Israel, and individual Israelis suspected of committing international crimes, beyond the reach of the law. Such actions are an insult to innocent victims around the world who rely on international law for protection, and justice in the event of a violation.

In condemning the United Kingdom’s actions, PCHR Director Raji Sourani stated that “the U.K. has violated its obligation to uphold the rule of law and voted for the rule of the jungle. This hypocritical action shows a clear double standard. The UK has chosen to reward the criminal and ignore the victim.”

The upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas is taking place at the Sydney Opera House in October. Feel threatened.

I’m involved in the following event on 2 October at 6pm:

In Egypt and Tunisia we have seen ordinary people come together to claim democracy and human rights in the face of oppressive regimes, with Twitter and Facebook the other heroes of the revolution. Are social media and Al Jazeera instrumental in what happened, or are they just the latest communication tools? Can anyone with a mobile phone foment revolution or do the punitive regimes in Syria, Bahrain and Libya show that it takes a whole lot more?

Join our panel: Mona Eltahawy, columnist; Simon Sheikh, international public speaker and national director of the community advocacy group GetUp!; and Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

Salil Shetty appears with the support of Amnesty International.

Chaired by Antony Loewenstein;

We may speak about this, this, this, this or this.