The Australian Zionist lobby gets a necessary history lesson in the finer points of Jewish terrorism.
Of course current events don’t exactly suggest behaviour has much changed.
Archive for July, 2006
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:
It is hard to imagine a less appropriate context in which to read Gerard Henderson’s latest opinion piece. At a time when we’re being inundated by grim reports of escalating carnage in Lebanon and Israel, Henderson has launched an extraordinary attack on the notion that a pro-Israel lobby influences US or Australian foreign policy towards the Middle East. Washington and Canberra support Israel, he argues, because it is in their strategic interests to do so. To suggest anything else is a “conspiracy theory”.
Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel, recently begged to differ. On ABC TV’s Lateline last week he noted that the US Zionist lobby wields significant influence, threatening congressmen should they dare to cast an “anti-Israel vote.” Similar tactics are directed at journalists, editors and their boards in many Western nations, including Australia, in an attempt to stifle dissenting views on Israel and the US.
Henderson conveniently ignores the primary source of much anti-Israel disquiet: the continued occupation of Palestinian territory. In what ways are Australia’s strategic interests served by supporting a state that occupies land internationally recognised as Palestinian? John Howard incorrectly claimed this week that, “Israel doesn’t want more territory.” How are Australia’s interests served by the uncritical support for a state that builds roads only Israelis are allowed to use and which isolates Palestinians inside walls, military cordons and their own towns. Any visitor to the West Bank will confirm this experience. As a Jew, it is shocking to see fellow Jews treat Palestinians with the contempt historically reserved for Jews.
Precisely because both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in peace, it is vital to discuss the complex relationship between Israel and the US in an open and frank manner. How the pro-Israel lobby influences the political process and the consequences of that influence are important questions in any democracy.
Last year Labor MP Michael Danby, the only Jewish member of Federal parliament, proclaimed that my publisher, Melbourne University Publishing (MUP), should drop my book on Israel and urged the Australian Jewish community to “treat it with dignified silence. That is our best response. If, God forbid, it is published, don’t give them a dollar. Don’t buy the book.” Danby hadn’t read the book. Indeed, I hadn’t finished writing it.
His defence? In an email he has since circulated widely and addressed to host Tony Jones the day after my recent appearance on Lateline, Danby claimed he “didn’t need to read Mr Loewenstein’s book to know what it would contain” and suggested MUP’s decision to commission my book was “like commissioning Pauline Hanson to write a book about multicultural Australia.” So much for an elected parliamentarian’s respect for the concept of democratic dialogue. Never mind the profound philistinism of condemning a book one hasn’t read.
I am proud to be Jewish and particularly proud of our ancient tradition of debate, dissent and inquiry. Jews have always questioned and challenged the status quo. Israel’s conduct should be an issue on which we are all entitled to be heard, whether as partisan advocates or sceptical critics. It is heartening that vibrant debate exists within Israel itself. Surely the Jewish community in Australia can handle robust discussion about Israel’s policies. A sustainable Israel and Palestine requires nothing less.
Antony Loewenstein is author of My Israel Question, published by Melbourne University Publishing
Read it and spread the news.
The following article appears in today’s Daily Telegraph newspaper:
Atone for remarks, leaders demand - MEL’S DRUNKEN MELTDOWN
JOE HILDEBRAND
Australian Jewish groups are furious at Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic outburst, with calls for him to show his remorse by making a donation to a Jewish charity.
Jewish leaders from around the country condemned the actor’s drunken rant about “f…g Jews” and his absurd claim they started every war in history.
They have also branded as ludicrous reported claims by senior Los Angeles police officers the comments should be struck from police records because they were “too inflammatory”.
Australian Union of Jewish Students president Greg Weinstein said it was ludicrous to suggest anti-Semitism should be covered up because of the situation in the Middle East.
“If anyone has something like that to say I think the opposite should be done,” he said. “It should never be tolerated or sanitised in any circumstances.”
Jewish author and commentator Anthony Lowenstein said it beggared belief someone who had worked in a Jew-dominated industry like Hollywood for so long could be so anti-Semitic.
He said Gibson’s apology did not atone for his action and he ought to make a donation to a Jewish charity as a gesture of regret.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief David Knoll said it needed to be examined whether Gibson had breached any US racial vilification laws and if so he should be punished accordingly.
“If a person in NSW calls for violence or humiliation against other people by reason of their race or ethnicity that’s a criminal offence and should be prosecuted,” he said.
Despite the outrage, many were not surprised at the outburst given the charges of anti-Semitism levelled at Gibson over his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ.
Gibson’s father, an extreme Catholic whose religion his son shares, has also been accused of being an anti-Semite.
“Regrettably it’s not surprising,” Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein said. “There’s a whole history with regard to him.”
(For more on Gibson’s behaviour, see here.)
A writer. A famous book. An ethnic community. A film. Extreme controversy. A challenge for multiculturalism.
The UK Bangladeshi community debates.
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, July 30:
In war as in war: Israel is sinking into a strident, nationalistic atmosphere and darkness is beginning to cover everything. The brakes we still had are eroding, the insensitivity and blindness that characterized Israeli society in recent years is intensifying. The home front is cut in half: the north suffers and the centre is serene. But both have been taken over by tones of jingoism, ruthlessness and vengeance, and the voices of extremism that previously characterized the camp’s margins are now expressing its heart. The left has once again lost its way, wrapped in silence or “admitting mistakes.” Israel is exposing a unified, nationalistic face.
The devastation we are sowing in Lebanon doesn’t touch anyone here and most of it is not even shown to Israelis. Those who want to know what Tyre looks like now have to turn to foreign channels - the BBC reporter brings chilling images from there, the likes of which won’t be seen here. How can one not be shocked by the suffering of the other, at our hands, even when our north suffers? The death we are sowing at the same time, right now in Gaza, with close to 120 dead since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, 27 last Wednesday alone, touches us even less. The hospitals in Gaza are full of burned children, but who cares? The darkness of the war in the north covers them, too.
Lebanon, which has never fought Israel and has 40 daily newspapers, 42 colleges and universities and hundreds of different banks, is being destroyed by our planes and cannon and nobody is taking into account the amount of hatred we are sowing. In international public opinion, Israel has been turned into a monster, and that still hasn’t been calculated into the debit column of this war. Israel is badly stained, a moral stain that can’t be easily and quickly removed. And only we don’t want to see it.
Read the whole piece. Levy’s essay is one of the finest I’ve read in weeks.
As the carnage continues in Lebanon - and Israel kills more civilian “terrorists” - it is unsurprising to read this:
While Israel fights Hezbollah with tanks and aircraft, its supporters are campaigning on the internet.
Israel’s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.
In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special “megaphone” software that alerts them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.
Israel and its supporters need more than better PR. They need to support a nation that doesn’t celebrate the death of innocents. A country that understands how military strength alone never brings security and safety. And a homeland, formed after the Holocaust, that cannot continue to act like it’s 1949. The days of Jewish absolutism and blind US-support are coming to a close.
And for those of us who see a vicious, egotistical and criminal Zionism, that day is never close enough.
Western exceptionalism, racism and extremism in Rupert Murdoch’s leading New York tabloid (not helped by the fact that it’s written by an individual who gives Jews a bad name.)
A perfect example of why so-called Western “values” deserve to be challenged and overthrown.
Israel’s Justice Minister proves why Israel is a terror state:
Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hizbollah.
Obviously any civilians remaining should be eliminated. So many terrorists, so little time.
Freedom of speech is far from guaranteed in Turkey. A recent case highlighted the fickle nature of the state:
A court in Istanbul yesterday acquitted Turkish author and journalist Perihan Magden of charges of turning people against military service by defending the rights of a conscientious objector in a weekly magazine column.
The judge ruled that Magden’s article amounted to “heavy criticism conveyed within the scope of freedom of expression” and did not constitute a crime.
Magden was among a string of writers and journalists to stand trial for expressing opinions, despite pressure from the European Union - which Turkey hopes to join - to scrap repressive laws and improve freedoms.
Famed author Orhan Pamuk faced similar charges last year but was acquitted.
While the Israeli army and air force break the Geneva Convention on a daily basis in Lebanon, Western tactics are unsurprisingly failing:
The ferocity of Israel’s onslaught in southern Lebanon and Hizbullah’s stubborn battles against Israeli ground forces may be working in the militant group’s favour.
“They want to shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility,” says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a leading Lebanese expert on Hizbullah. “Being victorious means not allowing Israel to achieve their aims, and so far that is the case.”
Still, the intensity of the Israeli bombing campaign appears to have taken Hizbullah aback. Mahmoud Komati, the deputy head of Hizbullah’s politburo told the Associated Press, “the truth is - let me say this clearly - we didn’t even expect [this] response … that [Israel] would exploit this operation for this big war against us.”
The stakes are high for Hizbullah, but it seems it can count on an unprecedented swell of public support that cuts across sectarian lines.According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah’s fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah’s resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.
Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead.
The latest poll by the Beirut Center found that 8 percent of Lebanese feel the US supports Lebanon, down from 38 percent in January.
Of course, if you’re an Israeli/Australian dual national and you fight for the Jewish state, you’re a patriot. If you’re a Lebanese/Australia and you fight for Hizbollah, you’re a terrorist. It’s good to see the Howard government supporting the good guys in the struggle.
The following review appears in today’s Australian newspaper:
Scrutinising the conduct of the modern Israeli state raises uncomfortable but necessary questions, writes Peter Rodgers
My Israel Question
By Antony Loewenstein
Melbourne University Press, 340pp, $32.95
There is no better illustration of the cancerous nature of much discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than federal Labor MP Michael Danby’s advice to Melbourne University Press in mid-2005 that it “should drop this whole disgusting project”. Not that Danby had read a word of the book at the time and if he makes good his promise he won’t.
Danby formed his view on the basis of a six-part questionnaire Loewenstein sent him during the book’s research stage. The questions showed an unremarkable if decidedly critical bent towards the policies of Ariel Sharon’s government and the support it received from Australia, both at government and Jewish community level.
Danby’s attack was bizarre, given the vigour of dissent about Israeli policies within the Jewish state. Israel has long dined out on being the Middle East’s only democratic nation. Some of that gloss was taken off last January when the Palestinians freely elected a Hamas government but, that unpalatable fact aside, few countries anywhere can match Israel’s no-holds-barred political life.
The mentality that drove Danby’s outburst is similar to the one that conflates all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism in a desperate effort to bludgeon non-Jewish critics of Israeli actions into silence. Loewenstein is a harder target as he’s discourteous enough to be Jewish. So he has to be labelled a “self-hating Jew”, whatever that ridiculous term means.
Fortunately, MUP head Louise Adler - also publicly lambasted by Danby - ignored his advice. The result is a highly readable and thought-provoking examination of the nature of the Israeli state and its supporters abroad.
Reared in Melbourne in a liberal Jewish family, Loewenstein supports the right of Israelis “to live in peace and security but not at the expense of the Palestinians”. Those seemingly innocuous words mask a cruel reality. Long before a Hamas Government in the Palestinian territories gave Israel even more reason to dislike its neighbours, Israeli-Palestinian dealings had the mentality of a cockfight: only one party could walk out of the ring alive.
Loewenstein rightly decries the absolutism of such thinking. Among his various targets are the Zionist lobby in Australia and the Australian Government’s “Israel-first doctrine”. The former “patrols the boundaries of public debate, aiming to silence anyone who occasionally strays from the accepted line”. The latter was on display in July 2004, “when Australia became just one of six countries that voted against a UN resolution ordering Israel to destroy the security wall through the West Bank”. The other five nay-sayers were the US and Israel, plus the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
Defending Australia’s vote, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said it was reasonable for Israelis to protect themselves from suicide bombers. That fair comment is seriously weakened by the fact that, snaking around illegal Israeli settlements, the security barrier lops off 9per cent of the territory of the West Bank.
It is also not helped by remarks such as that by Isi Leibler, one of Australia’s most prominent Jewish leaders, that Palestinian society was “no less suffused with evil than were the people of Germany under Hitler”. Mutual contempt and dehumanisation clearly should be ranked with terrorism and settlements as one of the great impediments to any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Loewenstein observes that neither side “has a monopoly on suffering”, arguing that denying Palestinians “their dignity and humanity is one of the great failings of contemporary Judaism and no historical calamity justifies it”.
Loewenstein, who visited Israel for the first time in researching this book, is profoundly disillusioned with the Jewish state. So are some Israelis and others in the Jewish Diaspora. A former member of the Israeli Defence Force recently wrote that anyone who believes that the IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel’s internal intelligence agency) do their best to minimise violations of human rights “is naive, if not brainwashed. One need only read the testimonies of soldiers to be convinced of the depth of the immorality of our actions in the territories.”
How, Loewenstein asks, “could one still have blind faith in a country that enacts citizenship laws to prevent Palestinians who marry Israelis from living in Israel with full rights? How could one idealise a nation with an army that, despite Sharon calling it ‘the most moral in the world’, frequently engages in war crimes in the occupied territories, collectively punishes the Palestinian people, and destroys and steals Arab land for expansion of settlements”?
Towards the end of the book, Loewenstein argues that the creation of an independent Palestinian state is inevitable. Sooner or later, he writes, Israel and the Palestinians will have to meet face-to-face and negotiate with honesty: “Only then - and on the condition that both Israel and the Palestinian states achieve safety and security - will this conflict be resolved.” Unfortunately, the past and the present give no cause for any optimism about the future.
MUP has used as a marketing ploy Danby’s injunction to the Australian Jewish community that if “God forbid” the book is published, don’t buy it. We can only hope - pray may be a better word - that the book-buying public, Jewish and non-Jewish, will treat that demand with the contempt it deserves.
Now that it is out, the book will draw fire from others besides Danby. In a recent television debate with Loewenstein, Ted Lapkin from the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council accused him of falsely describing Israeli-only roads in the West Bank as “Jewish-only” ones. Lapkin pointed out, correctly, that Israeli Arabs also can travel on these roads.
Lapkin also noted that the map early in the book has serious errors.
Despite this, My Israel Question still deserves a strong readership, precisely because it makes us uncomfortable.
* Antony Loewenstein will be a guest at the Melbourne Writers Festival (August 25 - September 3).
* Peter Rodgers is a former ambassador to Israel and author of Herzl’s Nightmare: One Land, Two Peoples.
The Sydney Morning Herald profiles one “dissenter” in Sydney.
Robert Fisk, The Independent, July 27:
Is it possible - is it conceivable - that Israel is losing its war in Lebanon?
From this hill village in the south of the country, I am watching the clouds of brown and black smoke rising from its latest disaster in the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil: up to 13 Israeli soldiers dead, and others surrounded, after a devastating ambush by Hizbollah guerrillas in what was supposed to be a successful Israeli military advance against a “terrorist centre”.
To my left smoke rises too, over the town of Khiam, where a smashed United Nations outpost remains the only memorial to the four UN soldiers - most of them decapitated by an American-made missile on Tuesday - killed by the Israeli air force.
Indian soldiers of the UN army in southern Lebanon, visibly moved by the horror of bringing their Canadian, Fijian, Chinese and Austrian comrades back in at least 20 pieces from the clearly marked UN post next to Khiam prison, left their remains at Marjayoun hospital yesterday.
In past years, I have spent hours with their comrades in this UN position, which is clearly marked in white and blue paint, with the UN’s pale blue flag opposite the Israeli frontier. Their duty was to report on all they saw: the ruthless Hizbollah missile fire out of Khiam and the brutal Israeli response against the civilians of Lebanon.
Is this why they had to die, after being targeted by the Israelis for eight hours, their officers pleading to the Israeli Defence Forces that they cease fire? An American-made Israeli helicopter saw to that.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s Prime Minister displays a modicum of independence on Israel’s war in Lebanon and he’s labelled an “anti-Semite” by the Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean (heading a party on the road to irrelevance). “We don’t need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn’t have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah”, he said.
What an ungrateful little puppet.
In late 2005, I was appointed to Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle East and North African Studies. We organised the Robert Fisk lecture in early 2006, the largest event ever held on campus. We are currently planning a conference in early December, titled “The Journalist and Islam: competing agendas, political correctness and the war on terror.” A mix of local and international journalists, academics and business figures will debate the most pressing issues of the early 21st century.
I have just been appointed an Honorary Associate at Macquarie University’s Department of Politics and International Relations. I will participate in some academic activities (lectures, seminars and the like) as well as other university events.
I thank the university for the opportunity.
Workers in Venezuela get assistance from a master:
In his classic 1936 film, “Modern Times,” Charlie Chaplin has to work so fast tightening bolts in a steel factory that he finally goes crazy.
In one scene that has become a metaphor for labour exploitation, the Little Tramp is run through the factory’s enormous gears.
For President Hugo Chavez’s socialist government, the film is more than entertainment: It has become a teaching tool. Since January, in a bid to expose the evils of capitalism, the Labour Ministry has shown the Chaplin film to thousands of workers.
Once the showings at factories or meeting halls end, Labour Ministry officials use Chaplin’s plight to spell out workers rights under new occupational safety laws.
Personally, I would be screening Days of Heaven to the workers at my non-existent workplace. Aside from the fact that it’s the finest movie ever made, it’s a compelling story of love, misguided responsibility and exploitation. Workers, fire up.
The following letter appears in this week’s Australian Jewish News:
I write to express my disgust at the destruction of Lebanon by Israel’s armed forces. This is a war crime.
Let us look at the chain of events. For 16 months, the Hamas Government in Gaza maintained a cease-fire, with constant provocation from Israel, economic sanctions and shelling from across the border.
I have read (yes, on Noam Chomsky’s website) that on June 24, two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother, were abducted and taken, presumably, to Israel. It was on the following day, June 25, that Gilad Shalit, a member of a tank battalion, was abducted by Hamas.
The answer to that was to invade Gaza, and for the IDF to do its worst. The abductions and killings by Hezbollah were obviously an act of solidarity, perhaps to take the heat off Gaza. I do not defend it, but that is what the action surely was. Now we have Israel dropping bombs on civilians and civilian infrastructure. There is massive destruction and loss of life in Lebanon, out of all proportion to what is being suffered in Israel. As I, and many others, say, it is a war crime – collective punishment on a grand style.
You would not guess it from my name, but my father was a Jewish refugee from Vienna. My mother is not Jewish. So you can call me a self-hating Jew, or an antisemite, whatever you like. But many other people, including that brave journalist Antony Loewenstein, have woken up to the brutal ugliness of what Israel has come to stand for. It is time to, in all humility, stop the killing, stop the propaganda and negotiate. Because there will be no peace without
justice.
STEPHEN LANGFORD
Paddington, NSW
For all the latest media coverage of My Israel Question, see here.
The Australian media and the current Middle East crisis. Discuss.
The following letter appears in today’s Australian newspaper:
Mark Steyn’s article (”If only they had refused to indulge Arafat“, Opinion, 26/7) demonstrates that anti-semitism has not disappeared from the mindset of sections of the Right – it has simply transformed into a malignant bigotry against Muslim Arabs.
Of course, not all the features of classic anti-semitism are present in this new anti-Arab bigotry. Steyn and his ilk do not argue that Arabs control international finance, for example. However, his allegation that Palestinian terrorists drank the blood of the assassinated Jordanian prime minister in 1971 has an eerie parallel in the persistent medieval belief that Jews slaughtered Christian children and drank their blood in accordance with their own depraved rituals.
Like anti-semitism, the new bigotry makes no distinction between Arabs. Whether they be Palestinian or Lebanese, Shiite or Sunni, in essence they are all the same. They all share the same murderous and unappeasable bloodlust towards Jews. It is pointless to try to negotiate with them because they have no interest in compromise, only in total victory. Their genocidal jihadism is ineradicable and can only be countered with violence.
Like his fellow anti-Arab bigots, Steyn has no interest in the historical or political context except where it supports his position. He amply demonstrates Cardinal Newman’s remark that although some people’s opinions may radically change, their casts of minds remain fundamentally the same.
Nick Laffey
Oxley, ACT
Meanwhile, Australia’s Foreign Minister thinks that supporters of Israel “don’t get out and make their arguments enough.” He adds:
“ ‘Israel is at fault’, ‘Israel should use proportionate force not disproportionate force’, ‘Israel is breaching international standards of human rights’, hang on, what have these people got to say about Hezbollah, about Syria, about Iran? Why do they single out Israel all the time?
“So our position is just based on an objective analysis of the facts, look if people think we are pro-Israel fair enough. I don’t mind being called pro-Israeli, I wouldn’t wear that as a badge of shame by the way. I’ve been to Israel on several occasions and it is a laudable and impressive country.
Finally, a Lebanese Australian writes in the New York Times about the current war in the Middle East:
More is at stake now than the fate of Lebanon. If the West does not persuade Israel to stop its attacks, that failure will add to a creeping sense that, in its fight with Islamic fundamentalism, the West has abandoned its claim to moral superiority based on respect for human rights and international law, and is pursuing instead a war based increasingly on tribal solidarity. What a tragedy this would be, especially for those of us who crave a modern, peaceful Middle East. And what a triumph for the varied strains of bin Ladenism — Muslim, Christian and Jewish alike.
Propaganda, Sydney Morning Herald-style.
