Antony Loewenstein

As I wrote last week, it makes me extremely uncomfortable that the law can tell us, as writers, journalists or citizens, what may be offensive. Should we not have the right to offend and be offended?

It’s a point well raised by Dr Tad on the essential Left Flank site today:

Andrew Bolt is just one reason there is so little trust in the mainstream media in Australia today. But the media is but one of a series of social institutions that has come under increased questioning in recent times. The political class has suffered just as seriously, constantly searching for ways to regain authority lost as its social base has deserted it. The collapse has been most spectacular for the official Left, but such problems bubble beneath the surface for the Right also.

This verdict unfortunately creates a space for the Right to (falsely) claim it is against the unwarranted incursion of state power into people’s lives while simultaneously backing much more destructive state action against Indigenous people. As the global crisis deepens, states will become increasingly assertive in their use of coercive measures to enforce the interests of the ruling elites. When they come after their opponents they will use all the powers they have at their disposal, including those that carry a “progressive” gloss.

Rather than focusing on legislation and judicial recourse, the Left needs to start thinking about how we create facts on the ground that will delegitimize and sideline the likes of Bolt. How can we change the editorial policies of the major media outlets from below, to force social change and accompanying shifts in the terms of debate? Such pressure must come not just from outside the media, but be part of the struggle of media workers against their employers. For too long, too many dedicated, honest journalists — those who want to speak truth to power — have been hamstrung by their bosses’ editorial and business prerogatives. Change can only be won through self-activity, by forcing governments and media organisations to cede their control — a struggle most vividly seen in Egypt today.

These are policies that must be enacted by people themselves, as real democracy demands ordinary people putting their minds and bodies on the line. We should not kid ourselves that laws that gives the courts power to suppress journalism, arbitrate as to what acceptable “facts” are, and use abstract legal notions of racism to silence dissent won’t be potential facets of the elite backlash to such struggles.

What is there to stop a group of Jewish Australians from suing the Greens for their boycott of Israel and arguing that the boycott is anti-Semitic?

Really:

American arms merchants enjoyed a dominant year in 2010 as the United States was responsible for selling more than half of all weapons worldwide.

Although U.S. arms exports actually declined last year, compared to 2009, the dramatic drop in global arms deals resulted in American suppliers controlling 53% of the market (up from 35% in 2009). Altogether, the U.S. inked $21.3 billion in new weapons orders with foreign countries in 2010. These figures do not include arms deals made directly between commercial weapons makers and other countries outside of the U.S. government program known as the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system.

Only 49% of all U.S. deals were with developing countries, which usually account for the vast majority of international military purchases. These nations accounted for 70% of all new arms agreements with American suppliers last year. In 2010, U.S. companies led the world in arms sales to developing countries, controlling 40% of the market.

The United States overwhelmingly dominates arms sales to the Near East, with the bulk of sales in the last four years going to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Iraq.

Among developing countries, India was the top buyer overall, concluding about $6 billion in new deals. Next were Taiwan ($2.7 billion) and Saudi Arabia ($2.2 billion).

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.

The Middle East is changing before our very eyes and this of course worries the Western powers that have become used to dictating terms to Arab dictatorships.

The New York Times has the official view. Can you feel the loss of power and prestige?

While the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring created new opportunities for American diplomacy, the tumult has also presented the United States with challenges — and worst-case scenarios — that would have once been almost unimaginable.

What if the Palestinians’ quest for recognition of a state at the United Nations, despite American pleas otherwise, lands Israel in the International Criminal Court, fuels deeper resentment of the United States, or touches off a new convulsion of violence in the West Bank and Gaza?

Or if Egypt, emerging from decades of autocratic rule under President Hosni Mubarak, responds to anti-Israeli sentiments on the street and abrogates the Camp David peace treaty, a bulwark of Arab-Israeli stability for three decades?

“We’re facing an Arab awakening that nobody could have imagined and few predicted just a few years ago,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a recent interview with reporters and editors of The New York Times. “And it’s sweeping aside a lot of the old preconceptions.”

It may also sweep aside, or at least diminish, American influence in the region. The bold vow on Friday by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to seek full membership at the United Nations amounted to a public rebuff of weeks of feverish American diplomacy. His vow came on top of a rapid and worrisome deterioration of relations between Egypt and Israel and between Israel and Turkey, the three countries that have been the strongest American allies in the region.

Diplomacy has never been easy in the Middle East, but the recent events have so roiled the region that the United States fears being forced to take sides in diplomatic or, worse, military disputes among its friends. Hypothetical outcomes seem chillingly present. What would happen if Turkey, a NATO ally that the United States is bound by treaty to defend, sent warships to escort ships to Gaza in defiance of Israel’s blockade, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to do?

Crises like the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador in Turkey, the storming of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo and protests outside the one in Amman, Jordan, have compounded a sense of urgency and forced the Obama administration to reassess some of this country’s fundamental assumptions, and to do so on the fly.

“The region has come unglued,” said Robert Malley, a senior analyst in Washington for the International Crisis Group. “And all the tools the United States has marshaled in the past are no longer as effective.”

…

“Things are so fluid,” said Robert Danin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “They’re not driving the train. They’re reacting to the train, and no one knows where the train is going.”

Let me get this straight. Washington spends the last decades backing any dictator who could be bought or bribed. Its image in the Muslim world couldn’t be lower. And now it wants to “help” the move towards democracy (via The Cable)?

The State Department has opened a brand-new office to manage U.S. policy toward countries attempting democratic transitions in the Middle East.

William Taylor, senior vice president for conflict management at the U.S. Institute of Peace, has moved over to Foggy Bottom to lead the new office, called the Middle East Transitions office, which began operations this week. His deputy is Tamara Cofman Wittes, who is now dual hatted, also continuing on deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. Taylor’s chief of staff is Karen Volker, who is leaving her job as director of the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) to join the new office. MEPI also falls under Wittes’ portfolio. Taylor reports up to Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman.

In a Monday interview with The Cable, Taylor said his office will begin by leading State Department coordination on policy toward Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, the three Middle East countries that are trying to make the shift from dictatorship to democracy.

“The idea is we want to focus energy and policy attention on how we support these three transition countries,” he said. “The idea is to be sure this gets top-level attention in the department.”

Taylor’s office will have about 10 to 12 people, and he said he hopes to soon add a resident senior advisor from both USAID and the Pentagon. The office is meant to be permanent, and would expand its operations to cover countries like Syria and Yemen — if and when those countries attempt a democratic transition.

Taylor’s first job will be to lead an effort to develop support strategies for Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Then, his office will go about trying to implement those strategies by working within State, around the interagency process, and then with international financial institutions, non-governmental organizations, and stakeholders on the ground. Taylor said he will attend National Security Council meetings on issues related to his brief.

In President Barack Obama’s May 19 speech on the Middle East, he promised to work on establishing enterprise funds for Egypt and Tunisia, which are accounts meant to support start up programs and activities abroad, and said that U.S. support for democracy will “be based on ensuring financial stability; promoting reform; and integrating competitive markets with each other and the global economy — starting with Tunisia and Egypt.”

Taylor said that the administration was still eager to pursue enterprise funds for these countries, but that legislation would be needed to get it done.

The Middle East is in flux like rarely before. Only a fool would try to make accurate predictions but here’s one view by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley in the New York Review of Books:

For all this uncertainty, there seems little doubt—as protesters tire and as the general public tires of them—in what direction the balance will tilt. After the dictator falls, incessant political upheaval carries inordinate economic and security costs and most people long for order and safety. The young street demonstrators challenge the status quo, ignite a revolutionary spirit, and point the way for a redistribution of power. But what they possess in enthusiasm they lack in organization and political experience. What gives them strength during the uprising—their amorphous character and impulsiveness—leads to their subsequent undoing. Their domain is the more visible and publicized. The real action, much to their chagrin, takes place elsewhere.

The outcome of the Arab awakening will not be determined by those who launched it. The popular uprisings were broadly welcomed, but they do not neatly fit the social and political makeup of traditional communities often organized along tribal and kinship ties, where religion has a central part and foreign meddling is the norm. The result will be decided by other, more calculating and hard-nosed forces.

Nationalists and leftists will make a bid, but their reputation has been sullied for having stood for a promise already once betrayed. Liberal, secular parties carry scant potential; the appeal they enjoy in the West is inversely proportional to the support they possess at home. Fragments of the old regime retain significant assets: the experience of power; ties to the security services; economic leverage; and local networks of clients. They will be hard to dislodge, but much of the protesters’ ire is directed at them and they form easy targets. They can survive and thrive, but will need new patrons and protectors.

That leaves two relatively untarnished and powerful forces. One is the military, whose positions, as much as anything, have molded the course of events. In Libya and Yemen, they split between regime and opposition supporters, which contributed to a stalemate of sorts. In Syria, they so far have sided with the regime; should that change, much will change with it. In Egypt, although closely identified with the former regime, they dissociated themselves in time, sided with the protesters, and emerged as central power brokers. They are in control, a position at once advantageous and uncomfortable. Their preference is to rule without the appearance of ruling, in order to maintain their privileges while avoiding the limelight and accountability. To that end, they have tried to reach understandings with various political groups. If they do not succeed, a de facto military takeover cannot be ruled out.

And then there are the Islamists. They see the Arab awakening as their golden opportunity. This was not their revolution nor was it their idea. But, they hope, this is their time.

My following essay is published today on ABC online:

The 9/11 attacks had barely happened and the smouldering wreckage in New York and Washington was still shocking America and the world.

Israel already saw an opportunity. Then former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked to express his feelings about the terrorist action in the immediate aftermath.

“It’s very good,” he said. He quickly added: ”Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.”

He argued that the attack would “strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive haemorrhaging of terror.”

In 2008 the Likud leader hadn’t changed his views. He told an audience at Bar Ilan University that 9/11 remained a positive for Israel.

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” Netanyahu said. The events had “swung American public opinion in our favour”.

Israel’s ambassador to America, Michael Oren, continued this deluded thinking last week.

The logic was clear; as long as Washington could be convinced (or hoodwinked) that Israel was fighting the same battle, Zionist expansion in the occupied, Palestinian territories and constant intransigence in the region would be rewarded by American largesse.

This symbiotic relationship has led both nations to share similar foreign policy goals but the results have been disastrous; America and Israel have contributed to a decade of unprecedented decline and imperial overreach, despite some wishful thinking within academia.

Not that such views are ever heard in the American Congress or Australian Parliament; our politicians are obsessed with displaying loyalty to Zionism at every conceivable opportunity. By their actions, they are killing any chance of Israel surviving as a Jewish state into the future without expanding apartheid against the Palestinians.

Witness the increased isolation of Israel in the Middle East, with traditional allies Turkey and Egypt turning away from the Zionist state’s arrogance. It is a welcome realignment. America’s ability to shield Israel from the consequences of its actions has diminished. Israel faces, in the words of Israeli editor of Haaretz Aluf Benn, a “political tsunami“.

Not that this has stopped Israeli leaders praising the deep and expanding backing offered by the Obama administration towards Israel. Defence minister Ehud Barak recently told Fox News that, “I can hardly remember a better period of support, American support and cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us than what we have right now”.

Although many American Jewish voters are reportedly concerned with the occasional criticisms uttered by Obama against the Zionist colonies in the West Bank (comments almost immediately retracted once Israel rejects the pressure), the US president has essentially followed the script written by previous American leaders; Israel is a nation that must be endlessly indulged.

There are a host of examples of this backing but a WikiLeaks cable confirms that the US actively assisted Egypt and Israel in its brutal siege of the Gaza Strip in the last years. One and a half million people in the Gaza Strip are being punished for daring to elect Hamas in the 2006 elections. This collective punishment is illegal under international law.

The catastrophe of the Israeli and American relationship over the last decade has been its wilful inability to engender any respect for its actions. Military might has actually caused wholesome rejection of decades of established order. There is a collective crisis of confidence despite overwhelming military might. Israel has never been better armed and protected by its super-power boss and yet almost daily in the Israeli press one reads paranoia about the country’s current direction. Even the massive recent Israeli tent protests largely chose to ignore the Palestinians. Clearly a desire for social justice only goes so far.

Despite this, however – and the sentiment is blindly repeated in the Zionist Diaspora, including Australia – there’s little awareness of why Zionism is on the ropes. Nobody dares mention the West Bank occupation – with houses rapidly expanding at twice the rate inside Israel proper – or how to be welcomed into the civilised group of nations without bullying friends into support.

The Middle East after the Arab Spring has changed but perhaps nobody sent the memo to the Israeli political elite.

September 11 offered a seductive narrative that allowed Israel and its backers to hitch a ride on the escalating war machine unleashed by America in the vein hope that the world would finally understand its own “war against terror”. The opposite has occurred, with the strongest and most publicly proud backers of Israeli wars today the global, fascist Right.

Revealingly, such adulation is welcomed in many circles within Israel itself. Orthodox Jewish Knesset member Nissim Zeev told Newsweek in February: “At the end of the day, what’s important is their [the fascists] attitude – the fact they really love Israel.”

We are now seeing this fused nexus between the far Right and Zionist supporters in Australia, backing the Israeli-owned chocolate shop Max Brenner, accusing the backers of Palestinian rights of Nazism. This is coming from individuals and groups that loathe Muslims and love Israel for its racially discriminatory policies towards Arabs.

Shamefully some Greens MPs, such as Jeremy Buckingham in New South Wales and leader Bob Brown, are unwilling to wholeheartedly support Palestinians. Instead, they befriend those who abuse them.

Boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) is a worldwide campaign that deserves support – the effectiveness of such moves are apparent when the Murdoch press, Labor and Liberal parties, Zionist heads and union leaders continually and offensively accuse backers of anti-Semitism – and yet only NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon bravely endorses the non-violent movement without shame.

Unlike many other Greens in the public arena, she recognises that it isn’t enough to simply mouth platitudes about human rights; action is required that may well upset the Zionist lobby and conservative media. Bob Brown should understand this, as one of the legacies of 9/11 is the importance of giving voice to those victims suffering under our repression. Palestinians are the perfect candidates.

While most of the corporate media prefers to ignore the ramifications of blindly backing every military misadventure by America and Israel – Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian last weekend comically referred to Western “values” being secure 10 years after 9/11, preferring to forget the millions of dead Muslims caused by unquestioning neo-conservatism – the Arab world doesn’t forget. Perpetual war remains the default setting of Washington, rightly damned by Tariq Ali as reaching its climax with the cheering execution of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Non-accountable executive power is unquestioned by many in the years since 9/11 and even challenging its validity invites verbal and physical threats.

I should know, having been at the receiving end of this bile for daring to ask why “they” really hate us (it’s not about our supposed Western freedoms) as well as refusing to believe that Israel is at the forefront of this “war on terror” and must be supported.

In reality, Zionist actions have made us Jews less safe than one decade ago.

In Palestine itself, the effect of the 9/11 attacks have been undeniably grim. Amira Hass, a journalist from the Israeli paper Haaretz, reflected on this week’s anniversary:

“My routine reporting laboured to remind the Israeli readers about our repressive military domination, and make visible the spiralling number of Palestinian civilian casualties, killed by the Israeli army. A doomed attempt. The Israeli vocabulary had space for Israeli pain and bereavement only. It made no causal link between supremacy and revolt, repression and revenge.”

Her despairing words ring true today. Too many Jews remain incapable of acknowledging the disastrous legacy of our religion being hijacked by fundamentalist Zionists who craved the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, endless occupation of Palestine, drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and never-ceasing threats against Iran.

The Jewish community has neither rejected destructive neo-conservatism from its ranks nor acknowledged that supposed protection of Israel was a stated reason for causing chaos in the Middle East and the 9/11 attacks.

Furthermore, Israeli public opinion has moved far rightward in the last decade, adopted and defended anti-Arab and anti-democratic legislation and justified brutal tactics against Palestinians in the West Bank.

The US and Australia support this apartheid in Palestine because their actions contribute to an atmosphere of unquestioning Zionist love.

A viable two-state solution is long dead and buried with the upcoming UN vote on Palestine mere window-dressing and desperation from a Western-funded and corrupt Palestinian Authority wanting to appear relevant.

This is our legacy and this is our responsibility.

When the American government, followed by dutiful Western allies such as Australia, crush any chance of Palestinian self-determination, we shouldn’t be surprised that faith in Obama and Israel is rock bottom.

Working against Western exceptionalism and not excusing criminal behaviour of our supposed friends and allies is a great challenge of our age. If 9/11 taught us anything, it is that state terror always dwarves the actions of a committed bunch of extremists.

The victims know this well.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist currently working on a book about disaster capitalism

Well after Barack Obama came into power, this cable from August 2008 proves that Washington had every intention of helping its close friends; the dictatorship of Egypt and occupying Israel:

Since the Egyptian-brokered “tahdiya” (“calming”) between Israel and Palestinian groups in Gaza took effect June 19, rocket attacks from Gaza have decreased, and Israeli public pressure on the GOE to stop smuggling via tunnels into Gaza has relaxed. However, smuggling remains an important security issue. We are working closely with Egypt to develop a comprehensive counter-smuggling strategy. Assisting the GOE with deployment of a U.S.-supplied counter-tunneling system on the Egypt-Gaza border provides Egypt with an opportunity to more fully exploit tunnels and break up smuggling rings. As Egypt moves forward into a new phase of counter-smuggling efforts, we will continue our cooperation in a variety of areas: helping interdict smuggling on Egypt’s western, southern, and eastern borders; economic development in the Sinai; border security assistance; and de-mining. End summary.

The times they are a changing. Decades of Zionist arrogance, paying off dictatorships and expanding an illegal occupation is starting to bite. Finally. Violence against Israelis is utterly pointless and counterproductive, and should be condemned, but after years of Israel literally getting away with murder, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Welcome to the new Middle East (today’s New York Times page one story):

With its Cairo embassy ransacked, its ambassador to Turkey expelled and the Palestinians seeking statehood recognition at the United Nations, Israelfound itself on Saturday increasingly isolated and grappling with a radically transformed Middle East where it believes its options are limited and poor.

The diplomatic crisis, in which winds unleashed by the Arab Spring are now casting a chill over the region, was crystallized by the scene of Israeli military jets sweeping into Cairo at dawn on Saturday to evacuate diplomats after the Israeli Embassy had been besieged by thousands of protesters.

It was an image that reminded some Israelis of Iran in 1979, when Israel evacuated its embassy in Tehran after the revolution there replaced an ally with an implacable foe.

“Seven months after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, Egyptian protesters tore to shreds the Israeli flag, a symbol of peace between Egypt and its eastern neighbor, after 31 years,” Aluf Benn, the editor in chief of the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote Saturday. “It seems that the flag will not return to the flagstaff anytime soon.”

Egypt and Israel both issued statements on Saturday reaffirming their commitments to their peace treaty, but in a televised address on Saturday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned that Egypt “cannot ignore the heavy damage done to the fabric of peace.”

Facing crises in relations with Egypt and Turkey, its two most important regional allies, Israel turned to the United States. Throughout the night on Friday, desperate Israeli officials called their American counterparts seeking help to pressure the Egyptians to protect the embassy.

President Obama “expressed his great concern” in a telephone call with Mr. Netanyahu, the White House said in a statement, and he called on Egypt “to honor its international obligations to safeguard the security of the Israeli Embassy.”

Washington — for whom Israel, Turkey and Egypt are all critical allies — has watched tensions along the eastern Mediterranean with growing unease and increasing alarm. And though the diplomatic breaches were not entirely unexpected, they prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity in Washington.

The mayhem in Cairo also exacted consequences for Egypt, raising questions about whether its military-led transitional government would be able to maintain law and order and meet its international obligations. The failure to prevent an invasion of a foreign embassy raised security concerns at other embassies as well.

The Egyptian government responded to those questions Saturday night, pledging a new crackdown on disruptive protests and reactivating the emergency law allowing indefinite detentions without trial, one of the most reviled measures enacted under former President Hosni Mubarak.

Since the start of the Arab uprisings, internal critics and foreign friends, including the United States, have urged Israel to take bold conciliatory steps toward the Palestinians, and after confrontations in which Israeli forces killed Egyptian and Turkish citizens, to reach accommodations with both countries.

Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador a week ago over Israel’s refusal to apologize for a deadly raid last year on a Turkish ship bound for Gaza in which nine Turks were killed. The storming of the embassy in Cairo on Saturday was precipitated by the killing of three Egyptian soldiers along the border by Israeli military forces pursuing terrorism suspects.

Israel has expressed regret for the deaths in both cases, but has not apologized for actions that it considers defensive.

The overriding assessment of the government of Mr. Netanyahu is that such steps will only make matters worse because what is shaking the region is not about Israel, even if Israel is increasingly its target, and Israel can do almost nothing to affect it.

“Egypt is not going toward democracy but toward Islamicization,” said Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Cairo who reflected the government’s view. “It is the same in Turkey and in Gaza. It is just like what happened in Iran in 1979.”

A senior official said Israel had few options other than to pursue what he called a “porcupine policy” to defend itself against aggression. Another official, asked about Turkey, said, “There is little that we can do.”

Critics of the government take a very different view.

Mr. Benn, the Haaretz editor, acknowledged that Mr. Netanyahu could not be faulted for the events in Egypt, the rise of an Islamic-inspired party in Turkey or Iran’s nuclear program. But echoing criticism by the Obama administration, he said that Mr. Netanyahu “has not done a thing to mitigate the fallout from the aforementioned developments.”

Daniel Ben-Simon, a member of Parliament from the left-leaning Labor Party, said the Netanyahu government was on a path “not just to diplomatic isolation but to actually putting Israelis in danger,” he said. “It all comes down to his obsession against a Palestinian state, his total paralysis toward the Palestinian issue. We are facing an international tide at the United Nations. If he joined the vote for a Palestinian state instead of fighting it, that would be the best thing he could do for us in the Arab world.”

Angry Arab:

While watching the scenes in Egypt today [protestors breaking into the Israeli embassy in Cairo], [New York Times columnist] Thomas Friedman, should have tweeted this to himself: I am so clueless.  I have no idea what is going on in the Middle East.  I was sitting in my suite at the Marriott and insisting that the Egyptian uprising has no foreign policy goals.  I feel like a fool, really.  Wait: what if I am.  cc To [Zionist lobbyist] Abraham Foxman.
PS Let me guess.  Friedman will write that extremist radicals exploited by an Iranian conspiracy hijacked the glorious Egyptian uprising.