Antony Loewenstein

Gideon Levy in Haaretz:

We always knew that a few years without an external threat could strain the delicate seams: When the guns go silent, the demons roar. But no one predicted such an outburst of demons of every kind, all at once. The assault on the existing order is an all-out war, on every front; a political tsunami, a cultural flood and a social and religious earthquake, all still in their infancy. Those who call this an exaggeration are trying to lull you to sleep. The defeats and the victories up to now will determine the course of events: In the end, we will have a different country. The pretension of being an enlightened Western democracy is giving way, with terrifying speed, to a different reality – that of a benighted, racist, religious, ultranationalist, fundamentalist Middle Eastern country. That is not the kind of integration into the region we had hoped for.

The ferocious combined assault is highly effective. It targets women, Arabs, leftists, foreigners, the press, the judicial system, human rights organizations and anyone standing in the way of the cultural revolution. From the music we listen to, to the television we watch, from the buses we ride to the funerals we attend , everything is about to change. The army is changing, the courts are in turmoil, the status of women is being pelted with rocks, the Arabs are being shoved behind a fence and the labor migrants are being forced into concentration camps. Israel is barricading itself behind more and more walls and barbed-wire fences as if to say, to hell with the world.

There is no single guiding hand mixing this boiling, poisonous potion; many hands stir the revolution, but they all have something in common: the aspiration to a different Israel, one that is not Western, not open, not free and not secular. The extreme nationalist hand passes the antidemocratic, neofascist laws; the Haredi hand undermines gender equality and personal freedoms; the racist hand acts against the non-Jews; the settler hand intensifies the hold not only on the occupied territories but also deep into Israel; and another hand interferes in education, culture and the arts.

You can’t see the forest for the trees, and the forest is dark and deep. Take, for example, Friday’s paper. The news pages of Haaretz reported on a few such rotten trees: the managers of dozens of businesses in Sderot have begun requiring their workers to dress modestly; in Mea She’arim, the polling places are gender-segregated; nonobservant Jews in Jerusalem have been asked to wear a kippa at work; Carmiel’s Palmach School has been turned into a religious school; discrimination against Sephardic girls at schools in Jerusalem, Modi’in Ilit, Betar Ilit and Bnei Brak; withdrawal from a physicians’ training program for Palestinians as a condition for tax relief; the government’s new plan to fight illegal immigration. And one final touch: The foreign minister gave his imprimatur to the Putinist election in Russia. All in a single day, one ordinary day.

Amira Hass in Haaretz:

Hillary Clinton had not yet finished voicing her concern about what is happening in Israel before that industrious Knesset member from the Likud, Danny Danon, started rattling off another version of the list of bills about loyalty to the state (which have meanwhile been dropped ): “Every certificate issued by the state will oblige [the recipient] to sign a document with a clause declaring loyalty to the State of Israel.”

An explanation was offered by Arutz Sheva, the settlers’ news website: No declaration – then no driver’s license, no identity card, no passport. Speaking to Razi Barka’i on Army Radio, Danon explained that this was indeed not enough for – watch out! – “the total solution.” Even Barka’i almost choked at the phrase.

For one optimistic moment it was possible to think that Danon does not make distinctions on the basis of religion or nationality. “There are many people who act against the State that protects them,” he said. “Anyone who is not faithful to the State should not be a citizen.” That is to say, even kosher Jews whose loyalty is in doubt. However, a second later he clarified his intention: “The data about crime make it clear without any doubt that the Arabs in Israel treat the laws of the country with contempt. They have much higher crime rates than any other segment of the population.”

It is not important what this bill teaches us about Danon as a person – that he did not study history, for example, or that he did but he knows very well that in fascist regimes the State is above all else; or that as an experienced demagogue he knows just how close a connection there is between the level of discrimination against a certain ethnic group and the claims about crime among its members.

The media, dizzy from these bills that make Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter look like amateurs, has stopped noticing the difference between an old bill and an amended one. Since the current bill is targetted at Arabs, it is not causing a stir. But what about the Jewish History departments at the universities, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial institute, or the museum at Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta’ot? Their silence is no different from the general disregard of the issue, but it is deafening.

“Moderate Greens” must be so pleased that Murdoch’s Australian is praising their stance to not fully embrace BDS against Israel:

Moderate Greens in NSW have welcomed the party’s decision to ditch its official support for the “destructive” international campaign to isolate Israel.

A meeting of the NSW Greens state council on Sunday resolved to rescind a motion committing the state party to the boycotts, divestment and sanctions campaign. It passed a motion that recognised “there is a variety of views within the community, NSW Greens and the Australian Greens on the BDS”.

The move brings the NSW division closer to the position of federal Greens leader Bob Brown but is being widely interpreted in party circles as a defeat for NSW Senator Lee Rhiannon.

Former state Greens MP Ian Cohen – who belongs to the more environment-focused arm of the party – said last night the shift represented the “maturation of the Greens political organisation in NSW”.

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president Yair Miller said, “We welcome this small but significant step … but reiterate that they are still wrong to argue that BDS is a legitimate tactic.”

Meanwhile, the failed rhetoric of the two-state solution, mindlessly repeated by Labor, Liberal and Greens politicians, is once again demolished, this time by leading Palestinian Rashid Khalidi (in Haaretz):

A “one-state solution already exists,” he added, because “there is only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, in which there are two or three levels of citizenship or non-citizenship within the borders of that one state that exerts total control.”

Laying much of the blame for their situation on the Palestinians themselves, he called on them to “re-imagine” the way a Palestinian state would work. “Why not have a Palestinian state in which Jews live? What’s wrong with that?” And in what might sound as an echo of Israeli complaints about the “Tel Aviv state”, Khalidi said that Palestinian leaders need to mobilize their people and “get them out their expensive Audis and Mercedes and out of their bubble in Ramallah where everyone is prosperous and there is no unemployment.”

As ever, Gideon Levy in Haaretz nails the counter-narrative in the Zionist state:

Israeli journalism censors itself to the point of harm. Part of it has become a means of entertainment while inciting our more base passions. Part of it now appeals to emotions, not reason, and deals with trivial rather than important issues, taking part in the campaigns of denial and obfuscation. No one asked this of it, it did so on its own. It often turned propagandist, too. Journalism hasn’t been conscripted. It signed up itself.

The journalistic tom-toms were beating before the most recent wars, calling in unison for another ferocious assault. The media lined up in support of every war, offering no criticism. That came only afterward, when it was too late to repair the damage. Israeli journalists authorized nearly every transgression, and many forgot the difference between public diplomacy and journalism.

The images the world saw of Operation Cast Lead, for example, were not the ones shown to Israelis. Some of the military correspondents liken themselves to spokesmen. Nowhere else in Israeli journalism is criticism of the establishment so lax.

The version of events offered by the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Office is always victorious and often the only version available. Its delegitimization campaigns against such organizations as Breaking the Silence and Anarchists Against the Wall received full cooperation from the media. No Israeli journalists have been allowed into the Gaza Strip for five years, and no one utters a word in protest.

Israeli journalism is the senior partner to the delegitimization campaign against the Palestinians; it is the most important tool for maintaining the occupation. It isn’t an issue of right and left, it is a betrayal of its purpose. It broadcasts false fears, from “all of Gaza is booby-trapped” on the eve of Operation Cast Lead to “Iranian weapons are smuggled through the tunnels” to the lie of calling that one-sided assault a war.

Israeli journalism adopts every military euphemism in the book and collaborates with the distortion of reality. There’s nothing like Israeli journalism when it comes to saving people from moral qualms over what is being done in their name.

Journalists serve unholy goals with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, too: When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas presented his borders proposal to the Quartet last week, it was barely reported. Israeli journalism swallows whole the government’s claim of there being “no partner” for talks, and to hell with the truth.

Leading boycott, divestment and sanctions advocate (BDS) Omar Barghouti introduces this important piece:

Nothing new. BUT it comes from the publisher of one of Israel’s most influential newspaper. Other prominent Israelis from within the establishment (and the Israeli media is most certainly part of the establishment, by any objective standard) have used the term apartheid before in describing this or that dimension of Israeli colonial oppression and system of racial discrimination. Still, for the publisher of Haaretz to use the term, and now, is news–good news!

Worth mentioning that a previous publisher of Haaretz called for boycotting the Knesset after it passed the “Loyalty Oath.”

As all “liberal” Zionists, however, the author attempts to absolve Israel of its “original sin,” the planned and systematic uprooting and ethnic cleansing of most of the indigenous Palestinians in 1948, focusing instead only on the corrupting effect of “the occupation” and the colonial settlement enterprise in the 1967 territory. So the Nakba becomes the “War of Independence,” with a capital I. And Israel is portrayed as an innocent democracy up until 1967!

Typically, the author obfuscates the true definition of apartheid, making it an exclusively South African system of discrimination. But he still is obliged to use the term to describe Israel’s system towards the Palestinians, at least in the 1967 OPT. Again typically, the author ignores the dozens of Israeli laws, including “constitutional’ (Basic) laws, that discriminate between Jewish and “non-Jewish” citizens of the state in almost all vital aspects of life.

The fact that Israel’s system of what even the US Department of State calls “institutional, legal, and societal discrimination” against the indigenous Palestinian citizens of the state fits the UN definition of apartheid as per the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid is ignored by this otherwise knowledgeable author.

The fact that the recent Cape Town session of the Russel Tribunal on Palestine (which involved several world renowned authorities on apartheid) found Israel guilty of the crime of apartheid against the entire Palestinian people, (in 48, 67 and exile) is conveniently omitted by this opinion maker.

Still, it is welcome news that Mr. Schocken is finally acknowledging part of what we’ve known for decades. Better late than never; and better admit part of the guilt than none.

Here’s the piece by Amos Schocken:

Speaking in the Knesset in January 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, “Iran is in the initial stages of an effort to acquire nonconventional capability in general, and nuclear capability in particular. Our assessment is that Iran today has the appropriate manpower and sufficient resources to acquire nuclear arms within 10 years. Together with others in the international community, we are monitoring Iran’s nuclear activity. They are not concealing the fact that the possibility that Iran will possess nuclear weapons is worrisome, and this is one of the reasons that we must take advantage of the window of opportunity and advance toward peace.”

At that time, Israel had a strategy – which began to be implemented in the Oslo accords, put an end to the priority granted the settlement project and aimed to improve the treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens.

If things had gone differently, the Iran issue might look different today. However, as it turned out, the Oslo strategy collided with another, stronger ideology: the ideology of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful ), which since the 1970s, apart from the Oslo period and the time of the withdrawal from Gaza, has established the concrete basis for the actions of Israel’s governments. Even governments that were ostensibly far removed from the Gush Emunim strategy implemented it in practice. Ehud Barak boasted that, in contrast to other prime ministers, he did not return territory to the Palestinians – and there’s no need to point out once again the increase in the number of settlers during his tenure. The government of Ehud Olmert, which declared its intention to move toward a policy of hitkansut (or “convergence,” another name for what Ariel Sharon termed “disengagement” ) in Judea and Samaria, held talks with senior Palestinians on an agreement but did not stop the settlement enterprise, which conflicts with the possibility of any agreement.

The strategy that follows from the ideology of Gush Emunim is clear and simple: It perceives of the Six-Day War as the continuation of the War of Independence, both in terms of seizure of territory, and in its impact on the Palestinian population. According to this strategy, the occupation boundaries of the Six-Day War are the borders that Israel must set for itself. And with regard to the Palestinians living in that territory – those who did not flee or were not expelled – they must be subjected to a harsh regime that will encourage their flight, eventuate in their expulsion, deprive them of their rights, and bring about a situation in which those who remain will not be even second-class citizens, and their fate will be of interest to no one. They will be like the Palestinian refugees of the War of Independence; that is their desired status. As for those who are not refugees, an attempt should be made to turn them into “absentees.” Unlike the Palestinians who remained in Israel after the War of Independence, the Palestinians in the territories should not receive Israeli citizenship, owing to their large number, but then this, too, should be of interest to no one.

The ideology of Gush Emunim springs from religious, not political motivations. It holds that Israel is for the Jews, and it is not only the Palestinians in the territories who are irrelevant: Israel’s Palestinian citizens are also exposed to discrimination with regard to their civil rights and the revocation of their citizenship.

This is a strategy of territorial seizure and apartheid. It ignores judicial aspects of territorial ownership and shuns human rights and the guarantees of equality enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. It is a strategy of unlimited patience; what is important is the unrelenting progress toward the goal. At the same time, it is a strategy that does not pass up any opportunity that comes its way, such as the composition of the present Knesset and the unclear positions of the prime minister.

The term “apartheid” refers to the undemocratic system of discriminating between the rights of the whites and the blacks, which once existed in South Africa. Even though there is a difference between the apartheid that was practiced there and what is happening in the territories, there are also some points of resemblance. There are two population groups in one region, one of which possesses all the rights and protections, while the other is deprived of rights and is ruled by the first group. This is a flagrantly undemocratic situation.

Israel 2011 (via Haaretz):

About 10 days ago, a fish merchant in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda outdoor market noticed a young man with sidelocks and a skullcap trying to determine which of the stalls employ Arabs. The merchant, Saleh, called the police, who detained the man for questioning on suspicion that he was planning a terror attack.

But the interrogation revealed that Meir Ettinger, 19, had a completely different goal in mind. Ettinger, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar and a grandson of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, said he was investigating on behalf of a project called Hebrew Labor, whose goal is “to warn the public” against buying from businesses that employ Arabs.

Ettinger was released and ordered to keep away from Mahane Yehuda for two weeks. But last Thursday night, police detained four other young men from Yitzhar who were on the same mission.

Conversations with right-wing activists this week revealed that Ettinger and his comrades have been working on this project for several weeks now. Their goal is to map all of the businesses in Jerusalem that use Arab labor. They began in the northern neighborhoods of Pisgat Ze’ev and Neveh Yaakov, then moved to the western neighborhoods of Kiryat Moshe and Givat Shaul, and are now working on the downtown area, which includes Mahane Yehuda.

“They came to my boss and asked him if he has Arabs working for him,” related Yaakov Azaria, an electrician from Pisgat Ze’ev. “He said no, but I know they also went to others and asked them.”

About 20 people are working on the mapping project. Most are Yitzhar residents who were recently served with administrative orders requiring them to stay out of the West Bank, for fear that they might carry out attacks on Palestinians or soldiers, and are therefore living temporarily in Jerusalem. Their goal is to prevent people from patronizing businesses that employ Arabs.

“A booklet with a list of places that employ Arabs will be published soon,” said Moshe Ben Zikri, an extreme right-wing activist from Jerusalem. “That will be followed by hanging up posters and signs with these lists in the streets – just so that the public will know and be cautious.”

Are these captains of  the entertainment industry totally clueless, and have no idea that they’re being co-opted into selling the image of “cool Israel”? Haaretz reports:

Two delegations from Hollywood are visiting Israel to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one comprised of actors and another mainly featuring directors.

Today, both groups will meet with President Shimon Peres. The actors’ delegation is also slated to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the coming days, after having met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Tuesday.

Both groups are here as guests of the Jewish Federation’s Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership, The Creative Coalition and the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation.

The actors’ delegation, headed by Tim Daley, has 21 members, including Emmy award winner Joe Pantoliano (“The Sopranos” ), Andrea Bowen (“Desperate Housewives” ), Steven Weber (“Brothers and Sisters” ) and Giancarlo Esposito (“Once Upon a Time” ). The directors’ delegation also includes scriptwriters and senior studio executives, inter alia, Marta Kauffman, one of the creators of “Friends,” and Nina Tassler, who heads the CBS television network’s entertainment division.

Last night, the actors held a press conference at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv in which they detailed their itinerary, which includes visits to Sderot and Ramallah, a tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and a visit to an absorption center for Ethiopian immigrants. Actress Patricia Arquette (“Medium” ) said the goal of the trip was to learn about the “nuances” of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Actor Richard Schiff (“The West Wing” ) added that when they return to the United States, they plan to share what they have learned with their friends and others.

Actor Rob Morrow (“Northern Exposure” ) related that Fayyad had spoken of peace and reconciliation with Israel, but shortly after they left the meeting, they heard that Fatah and Hamas had agreed to form a unity government. That, he said, made them realize how fluid the situation here is.

Delegation members also said they were surprised to see how short a distance separates Jerusalem and Ramallah and likewise Sderot and the Gaza Strip.

CCH Pounder (“Avatar” ) was the only member of the group who said she encountered opposition to her visit here – in her case, from South African friends. Schiff, for his part, was upset upon leaving the hotel to encounter a small group of demonstrators holding signs telling the actors they should be ashamed of themselves and denouncing Israel’s “apartheid” policies.

The mainstream normalisation of anti-Muslim hatred is finding friends in the most predictable of places; Israel. This is something discussed in the new e-book On Utoya.

This piece in Israeli paper Haaretz offers a worrying new development:

Marine Le Pen hit the jackpot. She invited about 100 diplomats to a luncheon last week during a visit to UN Headquarters in New York. Four accepted: There were the envoys from Trinidad and Tobago, Armenia and Uruguay, who obviously are of no concern to her at all. But the entrance of the fourth guest, Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor, made the event a sensation and worth her whole trip.

No official American representative agreed to meet with France’s extreme-right leader. Neither did any leader of the Jewish community. She failed in her attempt to stage a photo op at the Holocaust Museum, and skipped the visit. The French ambassador to the UN sent a sharp message that she is persona non grata in the United Nations building. But the Israeli envoy? He shook her hand and spoke of the importance that must be accorded to a wide variety of opinions.

“We flourish on the diversity of ideas,” Prosor said. “We talked about Europe, about other issues and I enjoyed the conversation very much,” Prosor was quoted as saying. Even before he went into the hall where the luncheon was being held, he told shocked reporters that he was a “free man.”

The Foreign Ministry now claims there was a misunderstanding; the ambassador “thought he was attending an event hosted by the French UN delegation. When he realized his error, he skipped the meal and left.” User comments on leading French news websites over the weekend were derisive, including all the French equivalents of LOL and ROFL in response to the explanation.

No one believes it was a coincidence. Prosor is a proven professional. He would certainly want to forget the fact that he became the first representative of the Jewish state to meet with a leader of the National Front. He would probably be happy to smash the camera that documented the smiling encounter. But his mistake did not happen in a vacuum. It has the odor of a symptom. The odor of a very unholy alliance being formed between members of the Israeli right-wing and a number of the most nationalistic and anti-Semitic figures in Europe. Over the past year, among visitors to Israel were the populist Dutch leader Geert Wilders, the Belgian racist Filip Dewinter and the Austrian successor to Jorg Haider, Heinz-Christian Strache.

These politicians, like Le Pen, have exchanged the Jewish demon-enemy for the criminal-immigrant Muslim. But they have not really discarded their ideological DNA. The Israeli seal of approval they seek to get is intended to bring them closer to power. Le Pen herself has decided to leave behind the anti-Semitic scandals of her father, Jean-Marie. She wants to make the National Front a popular and legitimate party.

She is already popular (19 percent in the polls). Legitimate? In two interviews she gave to Haaretz in the past, she attacked President Jacques Chirac for his historic 1995 declaration in which he took, in the name of France, responsibility for Vichy war crimes. She adamantly refused to denounce French fascist crimes and showed that she cannot really disengage from her father, his heritage and her party’s Vichy and anti-Semitic hard core.

It is easy to guess what would happen to an Israeli ambassador if he found himself at an event hosted by the “disgraced” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – or, perish the thought, at a Hamas or Hezbollah event. The earth would tremble. Even tar and feathers would not be enough under such circumstances. But Le Pen is blonde and she has blue eyes. Oh, and she hates Muslims.

Hello Zionist lobby, any thoughts on why anybody with honesty would want to blindly support a state that proudly demonises the Palestinian people?

Haaretz reports:

It is getting increasingly difficult to persuade donors, especially younger ones, to give money for Israel – this was the main conclusion one could draw from a series of “round tables” held this morning at the GA in Denver.

“If you’re over 50 you talk about the Six Day War, the creation of Israel and the saving of Ethiopian Jews, but if you’re under 50 – you have no idea what we’re talking about,” said a representative of a Midwest community federation.

The round tables were held during a discussion of the JFNA’s “Global Planning Table”, a new JFNA blueprint for consultation about the allocation of contributions to the Federations, but as I’m not convinced that the participants were aware that a journalist was listening in, I will refrain fro naming them. But their description of the growing distance between the younger generation of Jewish donors – and we’re talking here of people that are connected to the Federation, not disaffected Jews who have no connection to the community – was almost unanimous.

There is a general unease about giving to Israel, because it’s hard to tell what its needs are these days, said one. The younger donors don’t understand why we need to be giving to Israel, which has its own rich people and which is described, after all, as having one of the healthiest economies in the world, said another. Political disagreements, said yet a third, are increasingly influencing people’s choices on where to direct their money.

The growing connection between the Far Right and Zionism is highlighted in my essay in the recently released e-book On Utoya.

This story in Haaretz is therefore fascinating, and makes me wonder if the “acceptable” face of the racist Right is viewed as a prospective ally of Israel because of the mutual loathing of Muslims:

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, said over the weekend that his attendance at a luncheon for Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s extreme right-wing party National Front and presidential candidate, at the UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday was a “mistake”.

“It was an event that I wasn’t supposed to be at to begin with, and I got there by accident. When I realized my mistake, I immediately left the event,” Prosor said after the event.

Marine Le Pen is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front party.

French media outlets reported widely on Prosor’s attendance at the UN event organized in Le Pen’s honor. French media noted that the Israeli ambassador shook Le Pen’s hand and remained at the event for 20 minutes. French newspapers also published a photograph of Prosor and Le Pen standing together.

Ambassador Prosor denied the contents of the French reports in a conversation with Haaretz. “After I saw Marine Le Pen there, I immediately realized that I had no place being there, and I left the room,” said Prosor.

The ambassador also said that no conversation took place between himself and Le Pen. “I didn’t remain there and I didn’t hear her briefing,” he said.

Prosor’s version of the events contradicts comments he made to reporters outside the event. Before he entered the hall, Prosor was asked by a French journalist if he is the “number one” Israeli diplomat at the United Nations. According to Prosor’s own recollection, he responded, “I replied to him that I am not a number, but a free man.”

When Prosor left the event, he was filmed by television cameras saying, “We spoke about Europe and other topics and I very much enjoyed the conversation.”

Le Pen herself was quoted by French news agencies on Saturday, saying that the Israeli ambassador’s presence at the event “was not an error.” According to Le Pen, “Please, no one actually imagines that the ambassador burst through the wrong door.”

The National Front leader added, “It is impossible to converse with Marine Le Pen for 20 minutes without knowing who she is.” According to Le Pen, “There was nothing unclear or ambiguous about our meeting.”

Leading boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) advocate Omar Barghouti introduces this important piece by the head of Haaretz:

Nothing new. BUT it comes from the publisher of one of Israel’s most influential newspaper. Other prominent Israelis from within the establishment (and the Israeli media is most certainly part of the establishment, by any objective standard) have used the term apartheid before in describing this or that dimension of Israeli colonial oppression and system of racial discrimination. Still, for the publisher of Haaretz to use the term, and now, is news–good news!

Worth mentioning that a previous publisher of Haaretz called for boycotting the Knesset after it passed the “Loyalty Oath.”

As all “liberal” Zionists, however, the author attempts to absolve Israel of its “original sin,” the planned and systematic uprooting and ethnic cleansing of most of the indigenous Palestinians in 1948, focusing instead only on the corrupting effect of “the occupation” and the colonial settlement enterprise in the 1967 territory. So the Nakba becomes the “War of Independence,” with a capital I. And Israel is portrayed as an innocent democracy up until 1967! 

Typically, the author obfuscates the true definition of apartheid, making it an exclusively South African system of discrimination. But he still is obliged to use the term to describe Israel’s system towards the Palestinians, at least in the 1967 OPT. Again typically, the author ignores the dozens of Israeli laws, including “constitutional’ (Basic) laws, that discriminate between Jewish and “non-Jewish” citizens of the state in almost all vital aspects of life. 

The fact that Israel’s system of what even the US Department of State calls “institutional, legal, and societal discrimination” against the indigenous Palestinian citizens of the state fits the UN definition of apartheid as per the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid is ignored by this otherwise knowledgeable author.

The fact that the recent Cape Town session of the Russel Tribunal on Palestine (which involved several world renowned authorities on apartheid) found Israel guilty of the crime of apartheid against the entire Palestinian people, (in 48, 67 and exile) is conveniently omitted by this opinion maker.

Still, it is welcome news that Mr. Schocken is finally acknowledging part of what we’ve known for decades. Better late than never; and better admit part of the guilt than none.

Omar

My following piece is published today on ABC’s The Drum:

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas returned from New York to occupied Ramallah on the weekend as “an Arab leader of significant standing“, according to writers from the liberal Israeli paper Haaretz.

The Abbas speech in front of the United Nations, calling for the international body to formally recognise the state of Palestine, allegedly slotted well into the narrative of the Arab Spring:

“Abbas succeeded in giving the Palestinians some hope”, the Haaretz journalists stated. “Following the failure of armed struggle and the freeze in negotiations, Abbas offered them a third way: a diplomatic struggle in parallel with peaceful ‘resistance’.”

The response inside Palestine was mixed but certainly a number of people welcomed the Palestinian Authority’s supposed robust defence of their rights. President Barack Obama’s speech at the UN was the exact opposite, endorsing indefinite paralysis.

Yet it was largely ignored that Palestine’s ambassador to Lebanon said last week that the millions of Palestinian refugees in the Diaspora would not automatically become citizens in a newly created state of Palestine.

Such a position fundamentally contradicts a just resolution of the conflict.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave his own speech at the UN last week but it was a cliché-ridden mish-mash of paranoia, bigotry and Holocaust insecurities, none of which befit a man leading the fourth largest army in the world.

It was rightly seen by Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy as the clearest indication yet that the Israeli leadership had absolutely no intention of establishing a two-state solution.

In fact, Netanyahu’s obsession with maintaining the illegal colonies in the West Bank is ensuring a one-state equation and the de-facto end of the Zionist “dream”.

This is something anybody who believes in the concept of equality before the law should celebrate; Zionism inherently discriminates against non-Jews and the Abbas statehood bid indulges the dangerous fantasy that Palestinians should accept a tiny fraction of historical Palestine to appease the nation with a nuclear weapon and super-power backing.

A number of progressive voices in America found the Abbas speech moving, a rare moment where the corporate media had little choice but to listen to a moment about ethnic cleansing, occupation and human dignity. And even I can’t deny the symbolic importance of seeing an Israeli leader so isolated internationally by belligerently declaring that colonisation was a natural right, even responsibility, of the Jewish people.

Not surprisingly, Murdoch’s Australian chastised Abbas for even raising his voice and calling for justice; those uppity Arabs should know their place, serving American and Israeli interests.

The world saw two, competing visions for a future Middle East, Netanyahu and Abbas, yet only one of them resides legally in office (and that person isn’t Abbas, his term in office expiring some time ago).

Whenever “saving” the two-state solution is discussed, an air of unreality permeates the discussion. It is a dangerous fantasy that argues the problems only emerged after the 1967 war and the establishment of settlements in the occupied territories. As Palestinian writer Ghada Karmi argued in the Guardian last week:

“As things stand, the danger is that international endorsement of the current statehood proposal will make it the benchmark for all future peace negotiators, and entrench the idea that partitioning Palestine unequally means justice. True friends of the Palestinians should oppose this application and support their struggle for real justice.”

Partition would merely entrench the discrimination.

In Sydney this week I heard a key spokesperson from the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, Rafeef Ziadah, who rightly explained that the struggle for equal rights for all citizens in Palestine – Jewish, Muslim, Christian, atheist or anything else – should threaten the concept of Zionist exclusion. BDS is the legitimate move, wholly backed by international law, to end the occupation, implement the right of return of Palestinian refugees and allow full rights of Arabs inside Israel.

A two-state solution would merely codify these inequalities and the Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas, has spent two decades negotiating (un)equally with a side that has no intention of granting the indigenous population even the most basic human rights.

Too often we refuse to examine what Israel and its Zionist Diaspora colleagues have created in the West Bank. A system of apartheid actively protects the interests of the colonist over the Palestinians in their own land (this recent video shows the kind of impunity enjoyed by settlers). Fundamentalist Zionism is one of the great achievements of the Israeli state and ultra-nationalists are funded, armed and defended by the full weight of the Zionist entity. Abbas has no plan to eradicate this threat.

Moreover, foreign Jewish militants are allowed to enter the West Bank to allegedly protect settlements. The extremist Jewish Defence League is just the latest bunch of bigots that Israel now attracts within its borders.

The Zionist Diaspora is silent over these abominations in an effort to provide “support” for Israel.

The thinking was revealed once again last week when I was approached on a bus by a Zionist lobbyist who used to send me hate emails. He asked if he could sit down and talk. I agreed and we engaged politely for a few minutes. He said he believed that any public criticism of Israel would weaken Zionism and I had to remember that anti-Semitism was everywhere, so in this logic a “weak” Israel was one that couldn’t handle critical comments from a Jew in Sydney.

It turned logic on its head – Israel has most of the world’s Western politicians on a string and yet paranoia in the Jewish community runs rampant – and displayed the increasing moral panic that only knows how to repeat tired mantras about Nazis under the bed (once again seen during this country’s sordid BDS “debate”).

This is the collapse of a moral, mainstream Jewish position on Palestinian self-determination.

The Western-backed PA, a corrupt institution reliant on foreign aid to survive, compounds it. Its economy, praised by ignorant Western visitors who enjoy the relative comforts of Ramallah, is a bloated privatised enterprise assisting very few. The Palestine Papers revealed the duplicity of PA leaders who were willing to give away the most sacred aspects of the Palestinian cause, including territory in East Jerusalem. The PA even wanted to block implementation of the Goldstone Report into Israel crimes against Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

The Netanyahu government wants American funding to the PA to continue because it knows full well that its American-trained shock troops are essential tools in the maintenance of the occupation. This is the PA “vision” for Palestine.

Instead of seeing the UN statehood bid as breathing new life into the moribund two-state solution, it should be seen as the death of it. These are the two issues of over 500,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied territories and an Israeli government that has enjoyed ever-deepening financial and military ties with Washington; Newsweek reports this week that soon after Obama came into office he sold Israel bunker-buster bombs designed to strike Iranian nuclear sites.

The only positive outcome of the statehood bid would be a global realisation that America (and its trusty lap-dog Australia) has no desire to fairly resolve the conflict. Internationalisation threatens the decades-old, cosy relationship between a crack dealer known as Washington and an addict known as Zionism.

We could do far worse than listen to the wise words of Israeli-born Miko Peled, son of a key Israeli military man, Matti Peled, who is currently in Australia explaining that his country of birth must radically reform its heart and soul. His thinking was transformed after finally meeting Palestinians under occupation.

“As an Israeli that was raised on the Zionist ideal of a Jewish state”, he says, “I know how hard it is for many Jews and Palestinians to let go of the dream of having a state that is exclusively ‘our own’.”

No US president, Zionist leader or Australian politician has come up with any coherent argument to counter the coming reality, due to Palestinian population growth and settlement expansion, of a minority Zionist leadership ruling over a majority Palestinian population in a land where just separation is incompatible with true democracy.

The PA statehood bid is the beginning of a longer struggle for recognising the rights of the Palestinian people in their entirety, a future to be secured through BDS and a local and international campaign of action that highlights the impossibility of partitioning a nation with a colonised, Zionist mindset.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and the co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices.