Antony Loewenstein

The latest report by Reporters Without Borders finds the ever-increasing numbers of journalists being murdered around the world.

It is therefore the responsibility of reporters who work in challenging environments – and that includes me, who’s just returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan and needs to become more familiar with protecting sources who work in dangerous conditions – to remember who we are dealing with; repressive states. A timely investigation by Matthieu Atkins in the Columbia Journalism Review:

Last fall, “Kardokh,” a 25-year-old dissident and computer expert in the Syrian capital of Damascus, met with British journalist and filmmaker Sean McAllister. (Kardokh is his online pseudonym, used at his request.) McAllister, who’s made award-winning films in conflict zones like Yemen and Iraq, explained that he was shooting a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 about underground activists in Syria, and asked if Kardokh would help him.

At the time, the situation in Syria was deteriorating rapidly, as protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s repressive regime turned violent following a vicious crackdown by security forces. The Syrian government had drastically curtailed visits by foreign journalists, but McAllister had managed to get in undercover. Kardokh was grateful for a chance to tell his story. “Any journalist who was making the effort to show the world what was happening, that was a very important thing for us,” he told me in February.

At the time, Kardokh was providing computer expertise and secure communications to the resistance. He agreed to be interviewed about his work on camera by McAllister, who filmed his face, telling Kardokh that he would blur it out before publishing the footage. McAllister also asked Kardokh to put him in touch with other activists.

But some of McAllister’s practices made him uneasy, Kardokh said. He worried that the filmmaker didn’t realize how aggressive and pervasive the regime’s surveillance was. Kardokh and his fellow activists took elaborate measures with their digital security, encrypting their communications and using special software to hide their identities online. “I started to feel that Sean was careless,” Kardokh told me. He said he had urged McAllister to take more precautions in his communications and to encrypt his footage. “He was using his mobile and SMS, without any protections.”

Then, in October, McAllister was arrested by Syrian security agents. He wasn’t harmed, but was held for five days and said that he could hear the cries of prisoners being tortured in nearby rooms. Eventually, he was released and returned to the UK. “I didn’t realize exactly what they were risking until I went into that experience,” McAllister said in an interview on Channel 4 after his release.

The Syrians had interrogated McAllister about his activities, and seized his laptop, mobile phone, camera, and footage. All of McAllister’s research was now at the disposal of Syrian intelligence. When Kardokh heard that McAllister had been arrested, he didn’t hesitate—he turned off his mobile phone, packed his bag, and fled Damascus, staying with relatives in a nearby town before escaping to Lebanon. He said that other activists who had been in touch with McAllister fled the country as well, and several of those who didn’t were arrested. “I was happy that I hadn’t put him in contact with more people,” Kardokh said.

…

It’s easy to argue that McAllister should have taken stronger precautions, but what, exactly? How many reporters are familiar enough with the technical aspects of digital security that they could protect their computers and phones from the Syrian intelligence service? The fact that McAllister, an experienced and committed journalist, jeopardized his sources with inadequate digital precautions is indicative of a broader problem in journalism today: We haven’t kept pace with technological advancements that have revolutionized both information-gathering and surveillance.

After researching the subject of digital security, I realized that there have been occasions in my own work as a freelancer covering the conflicts in Libya and Afghanistan when I’ve exposed myself and my sources by carrying unencrypted data or e-mailing sensitive information over insecure channels. It’s unclear what, if anything, major news organizations are doing about it.When CJR’s Alysia Santo recently tried asking outlets like The New York Times, she got a firm “no comment.” Curious, I e-mailed an informal survey to journalist friends and colleagues, and several who’ve worked as senior correspondents in Afghanistan for major US news outlets said they’d had little-to-no formal training or assistance from their organizations in digital security.

In a positive review of Peter Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism in Rolling Stone, this telling quote:

Another anonymous source is a “senior State Department official,” who recently traveled with Secretary Clinton from Jerusalem to Ramallah in the West Bank: “There was a kind of silence and people were careful, but it was like, my God, you crossed that border and it was apartheid.”

A truly remarkable story that reads like a thriller but reveals a dark side of Chinese repression that we should never forget. The New York Times reports:

Injuries suffered in the course of a daring nighttime escape. A covert appeal from underground activists to top State Department officials for humanitarian protection. A car chase through the streets of Beijing to spirit a dissident to safety inside the fortified American Embassy.

Those are among the new details that emerged Wednesday from the 10-day saga of Chen Guangcheng, the blind rights lawyer who escaped house arrest in rural Shandong Province, and then, after managing to reach Beijing and come under American protection, was the subject of a series of highly unusual secret negotiations with the Chinese government.  

The story involved intrigue, heroics and ultimately what some of the people involved called a betrayal. And it is a tale, related by activists, friends of Mr. Chen’s and embassy officials, that so far does not have a clear ending, with Mr. Chen expressing new fears about his safety if he remains in China.

But regardless of the ultimate outcome, the tale of what happened to Mr. Chen and how he was handled by the Americans is likely to be remembered for years to come as one of the most dramatic episodes in the long, torturous history of relations between the United States and China.

 “Chen’s triumphant escape from his barbaric confinement is inspiring to all of us,” said Li Fangping, a lawyer who represented Mr. Chen during the trial in 2006 that led to more than four years of imprisonment on what he said were legally dubious charges. “Whatever the eventual outcome, it can only have a positive influence on China’s human rights situation.”

The seeds of Mr. Chen’s remarkable flight were planted months ago, friends and supporters said, when he and his wife began plotting his escape from the farmhouse where they had been confined since his release from jail in September 2010.

Although there were no legal charges pending against the couple, local officials had decided to turn their home into a makeshift prison with high walls, well-paid guards and sheets of metal to cover their windows.  The local government’s goal was twofold: to prevent Mr. Chen from engaging in his legal work against coercive family-planning policies and to keep the couple cut off from the outside world.

When the Chens broke the rules — by trying to sneak out messages or secretly detailing their mistreatment in a homemade video — they were viciously beaten.

As part of the plan, Mr. Chen feigned sickness for weeks, tricking his minders into thinking he was bedridden. Then, on a moonless night on April 22, he began his mad dash from Dongshigu village, heaving himself over the first of several walls while the guards slept. It was during the first few minutes of his scramble that Mr. Chen severely injured his foot. In all, he told friends he fell 200 times as he made his made his way to a predetermined pickup point.

Once there, he slid a battery into the cellphone he had in his pocket and called He Peirong, a former English teacher from the distant city of Nanjing. Ms. He was part of a loose network of freelance rights advocates who had been trying to draw attention to his plight for more than a year. She had tried in previous months to visit Mr. Chen and his wife several times. Each attempt was repelled by the guards at Dongshigu’s entry points. Sometimes they beat her, and on one occasion the men robbed her of her money and cellphone and then dumped her in a faraway field.

Civil disobedience, she had told friends, was having little impact.

With Mr. Chen in her car, a decision had to be made: try to surreptitiously leave the country through the help of Christian activists, or stay in an attempt to establish an independent life within China. “Chen made it clear that he had no interest in becoming an exile,” said Bob Fu, an exiled Chinese dissident whose organization, ChinaAid, has helped others make the overland escape. “He wanted to stay in China and try to make things better.”

Following two weeks of intriguing interviews, this week’s episode of The World Tomorrow features Moncef Marzouki. The role of democracy in post-dictatorships is raised and how to transform a nation after years living under repression. The fact that such a man is rarely seen or heard in the Western media shames us all, considering Tunisia was the birthplace of the Arab Spring:

Powerful piece to persuade the Methodist Church to divest from companies that support the Israeli occupation:

A quarter-century ago I barnstormed around the United States encouraging Americans, particularly students, to press for divestment from South Africa. Today, regrettably, the time has come for similar action to force an end to Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory and refusal to extend equal rights to Palestinian citizens who suffer from some 35 discriminatory laws.

I have reached this conclusion slowly and painfully. I am aware that many of our Jewish brothers and sisters who were so instrumental in the fight against South African apartheid are not yet ready to reckon with the apartheid nature of Israel and its current government. And I am enormously concerned that raising this issue will cause heartache to some in the Jewish community with whom I have worked closely and successfully for decades. But I cannot ignore the Palestinian suffering I have witnessed, nor the voices of those courageous Jews troubled by Israel’s discriminatory course.

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If we do not achieve two states in the near future, then the day will certainly arrive when Palestinians move away from seeking a separate state of their own and insist on the right to vote for the government that controls their lives, the Israeli government, in a single, democratic state. Israel finds this option unacceptable and yet is seemingly doing everything in its power to see that it happens.

Many black South Africans have traveled to the occupied West Bank and have been appalled by Israeli roads built for Jewish settlers that West Bank Palestinians are denied access to, and by Jewish-only colonies built on Palestinian land in violation of international law.

Black South Africans and others around the world have seen the 2010 Human Rights Watch report which “describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians.” This, in my book, is apartheid. It is untenable. And we are in desperate need of more rabbis joining the brave rabbis of Jewish Voice for Peace in speaking forthrightly about the corrupting decadeslong Israeli domination over Palestinians.

These are among the hardest words I have ever written. But they are vitally important. Not only is Israel harming Palestinians, but it is harming itself. The 1,200 rabbis may not like what I have to say, but it is long past time for them to remove the blinders from their eyes and grapple with the reality that Israel becoming an apartheid state or like South Africa in its denial of equal rights is not a future danger, as three former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and David Ben Gurion — have warned, but a present-day reality. This harsh reality endured by millions of Palestinians requires people and organizations of conscience to divest from those companies — in this instance, from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard — profiting from the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.

Such action made an enormous difference in apartheid South Africa. It can make an enormous difference in creating a future of justice and equality for Palestinians and Jews in the Holy Land.

Read this stunning story by Ken Silverstein in Foreign Policy. It’s about corporate power, energy needs, corruption, immunity from prosecution, Bill Clinton, the company Glencore and how our world is increasingly ordered:

When Glencore, the world’s biggest commodities brokerage firm, went public in May 2011, the initial public offering (IPO) on the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges made headlines for weeks in theFinancial Times and the trade-industry press, which devoted endless columns to the company’s astonishing valuation of nearly $60 billion — higher than Boeing or Ford Motor Co. The massive new wealth turned nearly 500 employees into overnight multimillionaires and made billionaires of at least five senior executives, including CEO Ivan Glasenberg. “We are not going to change the way we operate,” vowed Glasenberg, who had started as a lowly coal trader for the Swiss firm nearly three decades earlier and, with the IPO, immediately became one of Europe’s richest men. “Being public will have absolutely no effect on the business.”

And what a business it is. The firm was forced to pull back the curtain on its famously secretive doings to go public, and what it revealed shocked even seasoned commodities traders. Glencore, which Reuters once called ”the biggest company you never heard of,” turned out to be far more globally dominant than analysts had realized. According to its 1,637-page IPO prospectus, the company controlled more than half the international tradable market in zinc and copper and about a third of the world’s seaborne coal; was one of the world’s largest grain exporters, with about 9 percent of the global market; and handled 3 percent of daily global oil consumption for customers ranging from state-owned energy companies in Brazil and India to American multinationals like ExxonMobil and Chevron. All of which, the prospectus said, helped the firm post revenues of $186 billion in 2011 and employ some 55,000 people in at least 40 countries, generating an average return on equity of 38 percent, about three times higher than that of the gold-standard investment bank Goldman Sachs in 2010. Since then, the company has only gotten vaster in scale. It recently announced a $90 billion takeover of Xstrata, a global mining giant in which it already holds a 34 percent stake; if the deal goes through, Glencore will rule over an “empire stretching from the Sahara to South Africa,” as the Africa Confidential newsletter put it. As it is, Glencore already trades, manufactures, refines, ships, or stores at least 90 commodities in some three dozen countries. “Glencore is at the center of the raw material world,” said Peter Brandt, a longtime commodities trader. “Within this world there are giants, and Glencore is becoming a giant among giants.” 

The position of BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] in Australia remains highly relevant. Debating Israeli apartheid in Palestine is necessary. This case starts today:

On May 1, 19 Melbourne activists will be put on trial for their political activity. In a precedent-setting case, these pro-Palestine activists will be fighting a variety of charges designed to criminalize dissent in Premier Ted Baillieu’s state of Victoria and to intimidate supporters of Palestine in Australia.

On July 1, 2011, Victoria police attacked a peaceful demonstration in Melbourne’s central business district. In one of the largest political arrests in a decade, 19 activists were detained during a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) action against the Max Brenner store. The chocolate shop is owned by Israeli conglomerate, the Strauss Group, a company that provides “care rations” for the Israeli military, including the Golani and the Givati brigades.

These were two of the key Israeli military brigades involved in Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians. In more recent times, the Golani brigade has been noted for its enforcement of Israeli colonization of Palestinian Hebron in the West Bank.

After a series of peaceful demonstrations against Max Brenner, the July 1 action was kettled by police, and then activists were individually targeted in an unprovoked attack. The police used pressure point tactics on some of the demonstrators; others reported bruising and rough treatment. One woman had her shoulder dislocated.

I was asked by some of the key activists involved in the case to record a message of solidarity:

Gideon Levy in Haaretz writes a provocative essay that proves how Zionism has become a word and ideology that largely represents occupation and exclusion:

Zionism is already 115 years old; it should have retired long ago. If on Independence Day we’re concerned about the future of a state approaching retirement age (presuming it’s a man, not a woman, who would have retired two years ago ), then we should call for the replacement of Zionism with something younger, more energetic and more relevant. Zionism should have become a rank-and-file pensioner shortly after the state was established or, at most, when the movement turned 62 or 67.

A state does not retire, but a national liberation movement must, like every elderly citizen – knowing when its time has passed. It must be consigned to history. These things are even more true if the movement has already fulfilled its mission, achieved its goals and now everyone is beating up on it, misusing it, decking themselves in its feathers and taking its name in vain.

…

Who is a Zionist? All the answers are wrong, even if they are more plentiful (and more ridiculous ) than the answers to the other existential question of who is a Jew.

The truth is that there is no answer. Not because Zionism was not a just cause – it was, even if it was tainted by unnecessary injustices, and not because it didn’t succeed. It was the greatest national success story of the 20th century. But that century is over and its greatest success story has been established. The national home arose, and now it is a regional power. Anyone who wanted to – about one-third of the Jewish people – has joined it, and the door remains open to the rest.

All the remaining, disturbing questions and all the challenges are matters for the state and the society that have arisen, as with every state and society. Their connection to the founding movement is no longer relevant. Yes, Zionism is no longer relevant, and its place is in the history books alone.

But the Jewish people lives, as they say, and therefore Israel has tried to invent a new Zionism for itself, far more totalitarian than its predecessor. Alongside the religion of security, Zionism has become the state’s second recognized religion, forcing itself recklessly on all its subjects. We have room only for “Zionists.”

Anyone who serves in the Israel Defense Forces is a “Zionist”; anyone who settles far from Tel Aviv is also a “Zionist”; anyone who volunteers to help the other, the poor, the weak, the blind, the sick and the lame – a “Zionist”; anyone who donates something to someone – a “Zionist”; anyone who sings the national anthem and hangs the national flag, and anyone who stands to attention when necessary (and when it’s not necessary ), anyone who settles and unsettles, anyone who justifies every state injustice, anyone who immigrates and even emigrates is a Zionist. Anyone who tyrannizes another people and anyone who looks away is a Zionist and a son of a Zionist. All of us are Zionists; well, nearly all of us.

All the positives also lead to negatives, and that negative is illegitimate, traitorous, hated and a hater of Israel. Anyone who doesn’t do any of the things mentioned above is post- or anti-Zionist. In Israel 2012, a pursuer of justice and human rights is by definition not Zionist. Even to talk about morality, law or international law is blatantly “not Zionist.”

We have given world Jewry grades in Zionism. Anyone who donates to settlements – Zionist; anyone who donates to human rights organizations – anti. Anyone who belongs to the nationalist, rapacious, right-wing Jewish establishment – Zionist. Anyone who seeks a fairer, more enlightened alternative – post. Anyone who blindly supports all of Israel’s misdeeds – Zionist; anyone who dares to criticize it – anti-Semites, even if they are Jewish. A former Israeli who lives in Vegas and gambles on his former country’s future, urging it to blow up, bomb, crush and destroy – Zionist. Anyone worried about its justice – post-Zionist.

The world, too, has invented some new Zionisms for itself. In the eyes of the Arab world, every Israeli is a Zionist; in the eyes of most of the Western world, any supporter of the Israeli occupation is a Zionist. Both of these see Zionism as negative epithet and a mark of shame. The new Zionism has only acquired a bad international reputation.

I don’t agree with all the points made here by Mona Eltahawy about gender repression in the Muslim world but it’s an important discussion:

Step by step, BDS grows:

Palestine human rights campaigners today welcomed news that the UK’s fifth biggest food retailer, The Co-operative Group, will “no longer engage with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements”.

The Co-op’s decision, notified to campaigners in a statement, will immediately impact four suppliers, Agrexco, Arava Export Growers, Adafresh and Mehadrin, Israel’s largest agricultural export company.  Mehadrin sources produce from illegal settlements, including Beqa’ot in the Occupied Jordan Valley.  During interviews with researchers, Palestinian workers in the settlement said they earn as little as €11 per day.  Grapes and dates packaged in the settlement were all labelled ‘Produce of Israel’.

Mehadrin’s role in providing water to settlement farms and its relationship with Israeli state water company Mekorot makes the company additionally complicit with Israel’s discriminatory water policies.  Other companies may be affected by the Co-op’s new policy if they are shown to be sourcing produce from Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories.

Hilary Smith, Co-op member and Boycott Israel Network (BIN) agricultural trade campaign co-ordinator, said “we welcome this important decision by the Co-op to take steps toward fully realising their policy of support for human rights and ethical trading.  The Co-op has taken the lead internationally in this historic decision to hold corporations to account for complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights.  We strongly urge other retailers to follow suit and take similar action”.

The announcement by the Co-op came just before their Regional AGMs, due to take place over the next two weeks,  and where motions on this issue have been submitted for discussion.  For months Co-op members have been highlighting their concerns about trade with complicit companies through co-ordinated letter-writing and discussions with local offices.

A spokesperson from the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works to improve the conditions of Palestinian agricultural communities, said:

“Israeli agricultural export companies like Mehadrin profit from and are directly involved in the ongoing colonisation of occupied Palestinian land and theft of our water. Trade with such companies constitutes a major form of support for Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people, so we warmly welcome this principled decision by the Co-Operative. Other European supermarkets must now take similar steps to end their complicity with Israeli violations of international law.  The movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law is proving to be a truly effective form of action in support of Palestinian rights”.

This is a pretty remarkable set of comments by a former senior member of the Israeli elite. No commentary required:

Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin expressed harsh criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Friday in a meeting with residents of the city of Kfar Sava, saying the pair is not worthy of leading the country.

“My major problem is that I have no faith in the current leadership, which must lead us in an event on the scale of war with Iran or a regional war,” Diskin told the “Majdi Forum,” a group of local residents that meets to discuss political issues.

“I don’t believe in either the prime minister or the defense minister. I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings,” he added.  

Diskin deemed Barak and Netanyahu “two messianics – the one from Akirov or the Assuta project and the other from Gaza Street or Caesarea,” he said, referring to the two politicians’ places of residence.

“Believe me, I have observed them from up close… They are not people who I, on a personal level, trust to lead Israel to an event on that scale and carry it off. These are not people who I would want to have holding the wheel in such an event,” Diskin said.  

“They are misleading the public on the Iran issue. They tell the public that if Israel acts, Iran won’t have a nuclear bomb. This is misleading. Actually, many experts say that an Israeli attack would accelerate the Iranian nuclear race,” said the former security chief.  

In March, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan also spoke out publicly against a military option on Iran, telling CBS’ 60 Minutes that an Israeli attack would have “devastating” consequences for Israel, and would in any case be unlikely to put an end to the Iranian nuclear program.

Regarding relations between Israeli Jews and other groups, Diskin said, “Over the past 10-15 years Israel has become more and more racist. All of the studies point to this. This is racism toward Arabs and toward foreigners, and we are also become a more belligerent society.”

Diskin also said he believed another political assassination, like that of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by a Jewish extremist, could occur in the future. “Today there are extremist Jews, not just in the territories but also inside the Green Line, dozens of them who, in a situation in which settlements are evacuated… would be willing to take up arms against their Jewish brothers.”