Antony Loewenstein

I’ve moved to a new website. This site will remain alive, but will not be updated. New comments will no longer be accepted.

My new blog can be found here.

The Guardian’s Israel correspondent, Chris McGreal, has produced some of the best reporting from the region. His latest reports (part one and part two) discuss the long-standing relationship between South Africa and the Jewish state and the similarities between apartheid South Africa and present day Israel. This series is some of the finest journalism I’ve read in months.

Meanwhile, as US Zionists are concerned about the Hamas win – and seem to believe that the US should undermine democratic elections if the desired party won’t win – and complain about an awarded film from Palestine, facts on the ground continue to prove the devastation of the occupation. Amira Hass reports:

“While the international community busied itself with the disengagement from the Gaza Strip last summer, Israel completed another cut-off process, which went unnoticed: in 2005, Israel completed a process of cutting off the eastern sector of the West Bank, including the Jordan Rift Valley, from the remainder of the West Bank.

“Some 2,000,000 Palestinians, residents of the West Bank, are prohibited from entering the area, which constitutes around one-third of the West Bank, and includes the Jordan Rift, the area of the Dead Sea shoreline and the eastern slopes of the West Bank mountains.”

Last, but not least, yet more confirmation that the Israeli security services always knew that the 2000 Intifada was not a premeditated move by Arafat.

When it comes to Israel, it’s usually best to avoid official versions of every event. Lying has become a full-time business.

- Craig Murray – the UK’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan and now critic of the “war on terror – is facing hurdles in publishing his forthcoming book. The letter from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office is a shameless attempt at censorship and intimidation.

- Dick Cheney accidentally misses his intended target – himself.

- Uri Avnery explains the power of Israel’s Kadima party.

- While an Australian Federal MP doesn’t seem to know the difference between Papua New Guinea and West Papua and the Australia’s Greg Sheridan believes the Indonesian military doesn’t engage in war crimes in West Papua, it is worth reading the 2003 report by Yale University that reveals the extent of the devastation by the Indonesian military in the Indonesian province:

“Although no single act or set of acts can be said to have constituted genocide, per se, and although the required intent cannot be as readily inferred as it was in the cases of the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide, there can be little doubt that the Indonesian government has engaged in a systematic pattern of acts that has resulted in harm to-and indeed the destruction of-a substantial part of the indigenous population of West Papua.”

UPDATE: A leading Chinese blogger explains the ways in which Microsoft is censoring material in China.

John Pike, a military analyst at GlobalSecurity.Org, argues that the Bush administration should rename its ideological struggle, The Forever War.

“‘We’re in the 17th year of The Long War,’ he says, arguing the U.S. has been in perpetual combat since it intervened in Panama to remove Manuel Noriega from power in 1989.

“‘Since then, we have been blowing somebody up, or getting ready to blow somebody up or coming back from blowing somebody up. It is so normal, people don’t even notice any more.

“It’s not about bin Laden any more. People aren’t scared of him any more.

“My fear is that it is really the inauguration of the second Republic here because if you look closely at where this president is claiming his legal powers, it completely redefines the powers of the American government.”

David Frost, The Observer, February 12:

“But I think when viewers watch al-Jazeera International, they will be closer to watching CNN.”

While Israel’s supposed leftist Labor Party prove their dedication to the extreme Zionist cause, the UN releases a report on the ongoing trauma of the occupation:

“Israel’s separation wall and its network of checkpoints and roadblocks across the occupied West Bank have led to a ‘de-development’ of the Palestinian economy, a report by the Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator (UNSCO) said on Thursday, February 9.

“Francine Pickup, author of the report, said poverty and unemployment in the West Bank were expected to increase because of denying Palestinian workers access into Israeli markets.”

As the Israeli state continues to demolish Palestinian homes in the name of upholding the law, the director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University in Ramallah writes about the fall-out of the Hamas win:

“Palestinians are watching the post-election discussions rather calmly. For the time being, liberal Palestinians are dealing with the victory of the conservative Hamas with little more than jokes. Behind this jokes is an expectation, or hope, that Hamas politicians will be shaped by a stark reality they did not have to face in the past. This, along with Hamas’s fear of being voted out in the next elections, is reassuring Palestinians that whatever happens will be an improvement.

“As many people are saying, it can’t get much worse.”

China’s insatiable appetite for natural resources is taking the growing superpower to predictable places in Africa. For example, Sudan and China are increasingly close on military issues. Such behaviour is familiar to Western governments, fond of arming and supporting dictatorships throughout the continent. Black Looks blog, a Nigerian living in Spain, explains:

“I see no difference between the actions of the Chinese government and those of other Western governments and their multinationals except to say the Chinese seem to be far more open about the way they operate than Western governments and corporations.”

John Bunzl, Haaretz, February 10:

“It was the late Edward Said who thought differently. He argued convincingly that recognizing the Holocaust for what it was (a genocide of the Jewish people) would increase the moral validity and legitimacy to demand recognition of the (very different) Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe of 1948), and that such recognition would make it easier to understand some features of Israeli society that genuinely reflect consequences of trauma and cannot be reduced to effects of political instrumentalization.

Iranian Jews deserve support for their courageous stand:

“Iran’s Jews have sharply criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust, saying his remarks have sparked fears in their ancient but dwindling community.

“Haroun Yashayaei, the head of Iran’s Jewish community, sent a letter of complaint to Ahmadinejad two weeks ago.

“‘How is it possible to ignore all of the undeniable evidence existing for the exile and massacre of the Jews in Europe during World War Two?’ said a copy of Yashayaei’s letter faxed to Reuters on Sunday.

“‘Challenging one of the most obvious and saddening events of 20th-century humanity has created astonishment among the people of the world and spread fear and anxiety among the small Jewish community of Iran,’ the letter added.

“A Jewish community leader said he preferred not to comment on whether Ahmadinejad had sent a reply to the letter, penned on behalf on the entire Jewish community.

“Jews occupy an awkward position in Israel’s arch-foe Iran, often speaking out against Israeli treatment of Palestinians.”

While reports suggest that the US is planning military strikes against Tehran, the international community should be rallying around individuals or groups expressing dissent from the official government line, such as Iranian Jews.

Saree Makdisi, Counterpunch, February 10:

“…There can be no doubt that the Hamas charter is not only xenophobic, sectarian, and racist, but also ill-conceived, inaccurate, retrograde, and intellectually vacuous. Nevertheless, the obsessive attention being paid to this document in the US in recent weeks forces one to ask not merely what purposes such an obsession serves, but also what equally (or even more) important issues it elides or covers up.

“First, one has to marvel at the interest being paid to the racism of the Hamas charter, given the extraordinary lack of interest here in Israel’s own racism, which is executed not merely on paper and in theory but actually, practically, materially.

“Israel’s Basic Laws, for example, discriminate between Jews and non-Jews in ways that many of those Americans who object most loudly to the mixture of religion and politics strangely don’t seem to find objectionable. And Israel’s unique existence as a country that expressly claims to be not the state of its actual citizens but rather of a globally dispersed people manifestly privileges the (non-Israeli) Jews of New York and Chicago over Israel’s actually existing non-Jewish citizens. Although they amount to some twenty percent of the state’s population, the latter are literally written into second class status by virtue of their non-Jewishness in what loudly proclaims itself to be the Jewish state.”

Conservative US commentator Andrew Sullivan publishes some “liberal” thoughts on the Danish cartoon controversy. Take this example:

“I’m honestly starting to suspect that, before this is over, European nations are going to have exactly four choices in dealing with their entire Moslem populations – for elementary safety’s sake”:

(1) “Capitulate totally to them and become a Moslem continent.”
(2) “Intern all of them.”
(3) “Deport all of them.”
(4) “Throw all of them into the sea.”

Such hysterical, racist nonsense may occupy the minds of supposed internationalists, but calmer heads must, and will, prevail.