Antony Loewenstein

Earlier in the year, after the ABC broke a massive story about an Australian man Ben Zygier spying for Mossad and dying in an Israeli jail, there was a great deal of media coverage that questioned the ways in which some Jews saw their relationship with the Israeli state. I was interviewed on ABC Radio AM and predictably elements within the Zionist lobby complained that I was invited and allowed to breath on the air.

The ABC has rejected the complaint and it’s posted below. The fact that the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, a supposedly serious organisation, thinks it’s appropriate to try and censor perspectives that challenge Israel and its policies indicates a profound arrogance and insecurity about its role in society and how it believes its key responsibility is dedication to the Israeli government. Media groups should be well aware of this and act accordingly:

A complaint to the ABC by The Executive Council of Australian Jewry following a radio interview with journalist Antony Loewenstein dealing with the activities of the late Ben Zygier has been dismissed by the national broadcaster.

In a statement released this week, the ECAJ said:

The ABC has dismissed a complaint made by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) about an interview on ABC Radio’s ‘Saturday AM’ program on 13 February 2013 conducted by presenter, Elizabeth Jackson, with commentator Antony Loewenstein.
The ECAJ complained that false claims were made about the supposed ‘dual loyalties’ of Jewish Australians, and that the interviewee making those claims was doing so without evidence, qualifications, expertise or representative status in any part of the Jewish community.

According to ECAJ Executive Director, Peter Wertheim, “During the interview, without evidence or substantiation of any kind, the entirely baseless suggestion was made that there is a relationship between ‘the Jewish establishment in Australia’ and ‘the Mossad, and indeed Israeli intelligence’ which facilitates and encourages Jews from a young age to join up and fight with the IDF and the Mossad.”

Wertheim was especially critical of the Saturday AM program. “It is supposed to be a fact-based news program, not a chat show with entire segments devoted merely to uncontested expressions of opinion. Where were the tough questions, or any questions, asking Loewenstein to provide evidence for his completely unfounded assertions? Isn’t that what fact based program interviewers are supposed to do? Isn’t it their role to elicit the factual basis of opinions expressed by their guests, if any exist?”

“The ABC’s answers to our complaints are either not responsive to the specific matters we raised, or evaded the issue, or were disingenuous”, Wertheim said. “The answers consist for the most part of simple denials that anything untoward was being implied, and irrelevant assertions that Loewenstein has a right to express his opinions”.
Wertheim does not believe there would be any point in the ECAJ pursuing an appeal to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, but noted that this would not be the end of the matter. “The ABC launched a baseless attack on Australian Jews, with insinuations of disloyalty, by interviewing someone who the ABC itself describes as a ‘provocateur’. The ABC has now demonstrated that the process whereby one section of the ABC investigates another does not work”, he said.

The ABC response to the complaint as reported in J-Wire…

Max Brenner is a chocolate shop that deserves all the protests it receives, namely because it supports the Israeli military.

Here’s the latest development in Australia in a story by Ammy Singh in Tharunka newspaper from the University of NSW:

The probable opening of a Max Brenner chocolate store at UNSW this year has prompted concerned students to question the decision to allow on campus a corporation affiliated with elements of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), who are accused of war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Acting President of Students for Justice in Palestine UNSW, Ali Hosseini, told Tharunka that he was disappointed that a respected academic institution such as the university would “stoop so low as to do business with Max Brenner”, demanding the university withdraw from working with the company.

Concerns with Max Brenner stem from the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, formed in 2005 by 171 Palestinian non-government organisations, with the aim of securing the self-determination of the Palestinian people by exercising non-violent punitive measures against the Israeli state.

The owner of the Max Brenner chain, the Israeli conglomerate Strauss Group, supports and provides “care rations” for the Israeli military, including the Golani and Givati brigades of the IDF. Both brigades stand accused of war crimes in the Palestinian territories during the 2008/09 Gaza War, which saw the deaths of over 1300 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians.

Israel has refused to cooperate with a United Nations investigation into the war, and has also refused entry into Israel to Richard Falk, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, since his appointment in 2008.

According to Hosseini, it is this link to the Strauss Group that implicates Max Brenner, and in turn UNSW, in the human rights abuses of the Israeli state. “Support for a company like Max Brenner is support for military occupation and settlement expansion on Palestinian land,” he said.

“UNSW hosts a wide range of students from around the world who are very much concerned with the ethical and humanitarian issues surrounding the business deals UNSW engages in.”

However, the move to allow a Max Brenner store on campus comes after the chocolate shop was identified in the top three food and beverage outlet suggestions by students and staff in the 2011 Retail Survey conducted by UNSW.

The survey was completed by nearly 7000 students and staff, the most successful participation rate of any survey conducted by UNSW.

Neil Morris, Vice-President of University Services, told Tharunka the results of the 2011 Retail Survey “drove almost 100 per cent” the eventual decisions as to which food outlets to allow on campus.

Steven Tropoulos, Property Services Manager at Facilities Management, also cited experiential and commercial concerns as deciding factors in addition to the survey results, but added, “It wasn’t an autocratic decision; it was a democratic process.”

Morris agreed, “Did everybody get a vote? Obviously not. But was everybody asked to have a vote? Yes.”

Morris confirmed Max Brenner had placed a tender to lease retail space at UNSW, and was selected by the university due to — amongst financial considerations — the ability of the company to fulfil the demand for a chocolate store as indicated in the 2011 Retail Survey.

“I think it’s a very big jump to say the university is implicitly condoning the actions of war criminals by doing business with Max Brenner,” Morris said, while acknowledging students are entitled to hold a different opinion on the BDS campaign against the company.

“We’re not doing anything different to what many [local] councils do in letting Max Brenner stores open. Our view would be that we’re putting a provider of chocolate on campus; a provider that people are happy to have on campus.”

Sabina Baunin, President of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students UNSW, also contended the Max Brenner store will be a popular addition to campus food outlets.

“I think members of the UNSW community at large might be a bit disappointed if fringe groups turn this into something political, when the students really just want to enjoy some incredible chocolate.”

Antony Loewenstein, co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, told Tharunka such views ignore the political positions of corporations, and fail to acknowledge the complicity of Max Brenner in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

“The reality is this is not just a chocolate shop. There has been a deliberate attempt by the organisation to normalise the shop, but corporations don’t operate in a moral, legal and ethical vacuum,” he said. “Max Brenner has made a determined effort for a number of years to be directly connected to the IDF.”

“I would say to university management that if you open a Max Brenner on campus, you are guaranteeing legitimate peaceful protest against that shop. And if that’s the kind of attraction you want to have at the university, then go right ahead.”

SRC Ethnic Affairs Officer, Charlotte Lewis, expressed scepticism at the likelihood of a BDS campaign against Max Brenner succeeding at UNSW.

“As university students in Sydney, I feel we should be focussing more on university life and life in Australia, rather than protesting things that are really beyond anyone’s control in Australia,” she said. “However, it’s good to protest if students want to get their voices heard.”

UNSW student Bec Hynek, member of the Palestine Action Group Sydney and Jews Against the Occupation, said Australian university students have a history of protesting global concerns.

“Students have often been at the forefront of being opposed to apartheid in South Africa and being involved in anti-war movements. It’s students especially who have a stake in not accepting [Max Brenner] on our campus.”

Loewenstein agreed. “Having spent a lot of time in Palestine, it does make a difference to people there under occupation to feel like individuals or groups on the other side of the world are providing political and moral support to their cause.”

Noted American political critic and author, Noam Chomsky, told Tharunka that participation in the BDS campaign is a valid means of protest for individuals worldwide against corporations, such as Max Brenner, affiliated with the Israeli state.

“There is no serious doubt that all Israeli settlements and development in the occupied territories are in violation of core principles of international law. This has been determined by every relevant authority: the United Nations Security Council, the International Court of Justice and, in the case of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem, Security Council resolutions specific to those cases. Israel’s leading legal authorities advised the government that all settlements programs are in violation of international law in late 1967, when the programs were being initiated.

“Human Rights Watch has urged the US government to withhold funding to Israel ‘in an amount equivalent to its expenditures on settlements and related infrastructure in the West Bank’, and to bar tax exemption from organisations ‘that support settlements and settlement-related activities’.

“The same considerations hold for individuals. It is their responsibility to avoid any support for Israel’s illegal activities in the occupied territories. Individuals can meet this responsibility by participating in such activities as boycotts, and pressures for sanctions and divestment.

“These are entirely legitimate and demonstrably effective methods of non-violent action to oppose severe criminal acts, which are causing immense suffering and standing in the way of hope for a peaceful diplomatic resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

Max Brenner Australia declined the opportunity to comment on this issue, instead directing Tharunka to General Manager Yael Kaminski’s comments in The Australian, which staunchly deny any connection beyond brand ownership between the Strauss Group and Max Brenner Australia.

During the recent Prisoner X story about Israel’s covert and often illegal terrorism in the Middle East, I was interviewed by ABC Radio AM on the related issues.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, a leading Zionist lobby group, sees its role as enforcing public debate over Israel/Palestine. They miserably fail at this, of course, but that won’t mean they won’t try. Really hard.

Their latest comedy routine involves sending a massive complaint, via its clearly exhausted head Peter Wertheim, to ABC about my appearance, accusing me of anti-Semitism and worse. It’s worth looking through their reasons for feeling hurt, upset, obsessed, damaged, punished and sore. What these pro-occupation “leaders” fail to understand, as public debate across the West is turning against apartheid Israel, is that their energy would be much better spent on actually addressing the myriad of issues in Palestine and Israel, like, um, an ever-expanding occupation, instead of trying to bully the public broadcaster. If nothing else, this plays into the worst stereotypes of under-handed Jewish behaviour. Another own goal; well done lobby.

The complaint:

Audience and Consumer Affairs
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

I write to express my concern about the segment on ABC Radio’s ‘Saturday AM’ program on 13 February 2013, comprising an interview by presenter,Elizabeth Jackson, of another journalist, Antony Loewenstein. A transcript of the interview is attached. An MP3 recording is accessible on the ABC website.
I consider that the segment involved gross breaches of the ABC’s Code of Practice 2011, which I will detail below.

The themes of the interview are encapsulated in a series of assertions in the introduction and in the interview itself. The principle assertions are itemized below. Our comments in response to these assertions appear in square brackets after each item.
1. “The most secretive workings of the Jewish state”. [Every State, including Israel, has “most secretive workings”. But to juxtapose the words “most secretive workings” with the word “Jewish”, instead of referring to “Israel” by name, appeals subliminally to notorious anti-Jewish stereotypes about the supposed power of Jews as a collective, and about Jews supposedly being engaged in a world conspiracy. Later in the interview other stereotypes are introduced impliedly accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations. These stereotypes are internationally recognized as among the hallmarks of anti-Jewish racism and prejudice – see Working Definition of Antisemitism as adopted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights
(http://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2011/working-definitionantisemitism) and the UK All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Antisemitism (http://www.antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/AllParty-Parliamentary-Inquiry-into-Antisemitism-REPORT.pdf) among others].

2. There are many perplexing elements to this story; one of them is the deafening silence.
Silence and gag orders from Israel, silence from the Australian Jewish community, and perhaps most perplexing of all, silence from Ben Zygier’s family. [The claim of “silence from the Australian Jewish community” was a blatant falsehood.
In point of fact, the previous day presenter, Fran Kelly, had conducted a detailed interview of the President of the Zionist Federation of Australia, Philip Chester, on ABC Radio National about the entire subject.1 Ms Jackson should have challenged Mr Loewenstein, with the fact of that interview, which also aired on the ABC. Further, silence from Ben Zygier’s relatives is a dignified and understandable response from a grieving family. To describe their silence as “perhaps most perplexing of all”, implies that the family’s response is in some sense aberrant and unnatural. In our view this was an unwarranted and disgraceful attempt to reflect adversely on a family in mourning.
3. Co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, Antony Loewenstein, says he believes the Jewish community in Australia is embarrassed. [The reference to Independent Australian Jewish Voices implies that Loewenstein has some kind of constituency within an identifiable section of the Australian Jewish community. On its website, Independent Australian Jewish Voices admits2 that it is not an organization with membership, decision-making procedures and a political platform, and that the small number of people who signed their original statement in March 2007, “probably won’t agree on anything else besides that statement they signed”. It is therefore misleading to suggest that Lowenstein has any constituency at all. Nor does he have any academic or scholarly credentials whatsoever, or any particular real-life experience that might explain why the ABC seeks him out so frequently as a commentator about Israel. Indeed, Antony Loewenstein published a grossly antisemitic ‘poster’ on his website on 11 and 12 July 2010 (Attachment AF).

The ECAJ sent an informal complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission at 1:00pm on July 12 (Attachment AG). Later that day, Loewenstein removed the ‘poster’ from his website and published a retraction (Attachment AH).
4. The journalist says the case involving Ben Zygier should be a wake-up call to the community in Melbourne and Sydney to re-examine the way young Jewish youths (sic) are educated at religious schools in Australia.
[Without evidence or substantiation of any kind, or indeed any attempt to examine what “young Jewish youths” are in fact taught at Jewish schools in Australia, the assertion is made that there is some connection between the Ben Zygier case and what they are taught. Not only is this inaccurate, it feeds into the propagation of anti-Jewish stereotypes as referred to in our response to 1 above. I understand that Loewenstein never attended a Jewish school, “religious” or otherwise, and has no direct knowledge, let alone expertise, concerning their curricula or teachings.]
1 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/prisoner-x-philip-chester/4520472
2 http://iajv99.wordpress.com/about/

5. He says Australian Jews need to re-think the wisdom of a culture (sic) which encourages young men and women to join the Israeli military.
[Again, without evidence or substantiation of any kind, or indeed any attempt to examine the “culture” of the Australian Jewish community, the assertion is made that that culture encourages young men and women to join the Israeli military. Not only is this inaccurate, it feeds into the propagation of anti-Jewish stereotypes as referred to in our response to 1 above].
Then, in the body of the interview, Loewenstein makes the following assertions without contradiction or challenge from the presenter:

6. The Jewish community in Australia has taken the position of complete lockdown, where there has basically been virtually no comment about the details of the case. [See our response to 2 above].
7. There’s been virtually no comment about the relationship between the Jewish establishment in Australia and the Israeli government, and indeed Mossad, and indeed Israeli intelligence and the Israeli embassy.
[Yet again, without evidence or substantiation of any kind, the implication is made that there is a relationship between “the Jewish establishment in Australia” and “the Mossad, and indeed Israeli intelligence”. Not only is this inaccurate, it feeds into the propagation of anti-Jewish stereotypes as referred to in our response to 1 above].

8. The “Jewish communities in Sydney and Melbourne” facilitate and encourage Jews from a young age “to not just be involved with Israel, visit Israel, [but also] incredibly often fight with the IDF (Israeli Defence Force)… and indeed for that matter sometimes joining Mossad. [Yet again, without evidence or substantiation of any kind, the assertion is made that Jewish communal organisations in Australia facilitate and encourage Jews from a young age to join up and fight with the IDF and the Mossad. Not only is this inaccurate, it feeds into the propagation of anti-Jewish stereotypes as referred to in our response to 1 above].
At this point in the interview, the presenter, Elizabeth Jackson, chimes in, not to probe or challenge the interviewee, but to add her own unsubstantiated innuendo:
9. “perhaps it even happens in the synagogues, I don’t know – but how do they facilitate this kind of mentality”.
[Apparently not content with her interviewee’s denigration of the Jewish community, Ms Jackson now invites him to denigrate observance in synagogues generally of the Jewish faith. This is a particularly disturbing and disappointing feature of the interview.
Not only is the assertion inaccurate, it invites uninformed speculation by Loewenstein,who has more than once admitted that he does not attend synagogue, and it feeds into the propagation of anti-Jewish stereotypes as referred to in our response to 1 above].
Loewenstein then continues:
10. Many Jews are sent to Israel, often after school, for a year or six months or whatever. Not that many Jews are moving to Israel – some do. There’s definitely an encouragement to do so – in other words, to be the best kind of Jew you can be, so the thinking goes, some people argue the only way you can do that is to go to Israel and live there.
If you’re a young Jew, you’re likely to have to do military service, it’s compulsory in Israel for three years normally. And you potentially – although this is obviously far less  people – could be recruited by Mossad.
Now this sort of stuff I’m not saying is regularly discussed openly in synagogues in Sydney or Melbourne – it’s not.

[Nowhere does Loewenstein attempt to explain how programs in which young people travel to Israel and live there for a short time actually work. No-one is “sent” to Israel. Those who wish to visit are given assistance by Zionist organisations in Australia. Nor was Loewenstein asked whether he has any direct personal knowledge of these matters. Not only are his assertions unfounded, they feed into the propagation of anti-Jewish stereotypes as referred to in our response to 1 above. In point of fact these programs are primarily aimed at educating young Jews about their heritage and about contemporary Israel, and have never had anything to do with recruiting people for military or intelligence organisations].
I submit that the airing of the interview resulted in the following grave breaches of the ABC’s Code of Practice:
(a) Principle 2 – Accuracy. The ABC requires that reasonable efforts must be made to ensure accuracy in all fact-based content. The ABC accuracy standard applies to assertions of fact. The standard was violated – see items 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 above and our responses to them. Loewenstein could not reasonably have been relied on as a “source with relevant expertise” – see our response to item 3 above.
(b) Principle 4 – Impartiality and diversity of perspectives. The ABC has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism. The ABC is guided by these hallmarks of impartiality:
• a balance that follows the weight of evidence;
• fair treatment;
Impartiality does not require that every perspective receives equal time, nor that every facet of every argument is presented.
In this case the standard was violated by the failure to ask the interviewee to refer to any supporting evidence or otherwise to substantiate his claims, or to probe the basis of his knowledge (if any) or to ask him any probing questions at all. Indeed the interviewer herself engaged in ill-informed anti-Jewish speculation. No attempt was made to put forward credible counter-propositions and seek the interviewee’s response. The
interviewee was not probed specifically about his (lack of) credentials, knowledge or experience to speak about Jewish schools. Nor did the interviewer put to the interviewee information that was already in the public domain that tended to contradict his views. For example, the interviewee was not asked to explain how he reconciled his views with the publicly-reported fact that Ben Zygier attended a non-Jewish school,
Wesley College, for all but the last 3 or 4 years of his school life, and only then attended a Jewish school. Nor was it put to the interviewee that Ben Zygier immigrated to Israeland in that respect is a rare exception amongst graduates of Jewish schools.

Standard 4.5 was breached not merely because the interviewee’s perspective was favoured over alternative perspectives but because alternative perspectives were omitted altogether. For example, the alternative perspectives put forward by Philip Chester in his interview with Fran Kelly the day before, were not put to the interviewee.
(c) Principle 7 – Harm and offence – a public broadcaster should never gratuitously harm or offend and accordingly any content which is likely to harm or offend must have a clear editorial purpose.

Standard 7.1 requires that content that is likely to cause harm or offence must be justified by the editorial context. This standard was breached by the gratuitous, negative reflection on Ben Zygier’s family for choosing to maintain their silence to the media.
Standard 7.7 requires avoidance of the unjustified use of stereotypes or discriminatory content that could reasonably be interpreted as condoning or encouraging prejudice. This standard was breached several times – see our response to items 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

I was interviewed this morning by ABC Radio’s World Today:

ELEANOR HALL: Now to the latest from Israel on prisoner X.

The Israeli parliament is planning to carry out what it calls an “intensive” inquiry into the death of the Australian-Israeli who was found dead in a secret prison near Tel Aviv in 2010.

The Israeli authorities have confirmed that 34-year-old Ben Zygier was prisoner X but it is still only speculation that he was also a spy for Mossad.

Lindy Kerin has our report.

LINDY KERIN: A week after the story broke on the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program, the mystery surrounding the case of Ben Zygier continues.

The 34-year-old was found hanged in a specially designed, suicide proof cell. After his death, Israel imposed a total media ban on the case but was forced to ease the restrictions after the story gained international headlines.

Today a statement by the Israel parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee said:

ISRAELI PARLIAMENT’S STATEMENT (voiceover): We’ve decided to conduct an intensive examination of all aspects of the incident involving the prisoner found dead in his prison cell in December 2010.

LINDY KERIN: News of the parliamentary inquiry follows calls by the prime minister for restraint from those seeking answers over the case of prisoner X

Benjamin Netanyahu has strongly back the Israeli security forces and has warned that shining too much light on intelligence activities could jeopardise national security.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU (translation): I completely trust the security forces of the state of Israel. They are acting with endless devotion and commitment in order to enable us to live in this country. I also completely trust the law authorities in the state of Israel.

LINDY KERIN: As well as the Israeli parliament investigation, Australia will also prepare a report on the Ben Zygier case.

Journalist and Co. founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, Antony Loewenstein, is a well known critic of the Israeli government. He’s worried the inquiry will whitewash the case.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: History shows unfortunately that Israel is an incredibly opaque society when it comes to these kind of investigations, the fact that the government itself in other words is investigating itself is highly problematic for self evident reason, and in fact it’s a society in Israel over many, many years, over many, many cases, not least in relation to Palestinians who are routinely held in jail and tortured and many other horrible crimes that the Israeli state often refuses to be transparent about that.

So why this would be any different – the only way this could be different is if there is serious pressure from outside forces and there’s not much indication that the Australian Government’s going to put much if any pressure on the Israeli government to do so because of our unhealthily close relationship with the Jewish state.

LINDY KERIN: The World Today has contacted many organisations for comment including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, and the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, but nobody wanted to talk about the case.

The president of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, Nina Bassat, responded to our request saying “The family of Ben Zygier is grieving and have clearly expressed their desire to do so in private. I intend to respect their feelings and do not propose to add to their pain by making any comment.”

LINDY KERIN: Antony Loewenstein says he’s not surprised the community is reluctant to talk.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: The Jewish community and the establishment and the Zionist lobby likes to be in lock-step with the Israeli government. In other words the Israeli lobby in Australia is not an independent bodies, they’re simply a propaganda for the Jewish state.

So when a case like this happens, we don’t know all the facts, no-one knows all the facts, and rather than coming out and saying something which they fear will embarrass Israel, they’d rather say nothing at all.

But of course, the effect of that is that it shows to the wider community, who is not Jewish, obviously the vast majority of the Australian population, the Jewish establishment is incapable or unwilling of actually questioning its master so to speak, which is Tel Aviv and the government in Israel.

And I think that’s very unhealthy for the Jewish community and it’s a shame and quite revealing that very, very few, in fact, if any members, of the establishment in the Jewish community are willing to say anything of note apart from platitudes.

ELEANOR HALL: That’s Antony Loewenstein from the Independent Australian Jewish Voices group, speaking to Lindy Kerin.

The following story appears in Israel’s leading online news service, Ynet:

Australian Jews express concern over Zygier affair; ‘this is our Pollard affair,’ says Jewish lawyer. Jewish activist Antony Loewenstein: This is a wake up call, Jews should reexamine stance on Israel, IDF service

MELBOURNE – The “Prisoner X” affair has raised concerns in the Jewish-Australian community and some fear anti-Semitism is rearing its head in their once peaceful country.

“Now anyone who supports Israel will be accused of dual loyalty, maybe even treason,” says Robert, a Jewish lawyer from Melbourne, “this is our very own Pollard affair.”

Robert, like all the Australian Jews interviewed in this report, asked Ynet not to reveal his last name, saying that “the situation is sensitive.”

The son of Polish Holocaust survivors, Robert said that the Jewish community in Australia is going through exactly what his parents came to Melbourne to avoid.

“My mother and father went through hell to find shelter in Melbourne, the farthest place in the world from Europe, so their children would not suffer anti-Semitism,” he said.

“But it seems you can’t run away from it. It comes up everywhere, whatever chance it gets.

“Today, some colleagues who never cared for news before, asked me if I’d seen today’s papers, and every comment they made held hidden criticism of Israel and of us, Australian Jews. This affair will haunt us for a long time.”

The Jewish community is worried that after the use Israel made of Australian passports in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in 2010, the diplomatic relations between the two countries cannot be remedied.

“I’m afraid the Zygier affair will damage the long-term relations between Israel and Australia,” said a Melbourne resident who wished to remain anonymous.

“Australia has already banished an Israeli diplomat after the passports affair and didn’t vote in favor of Israel in the UN like it had in the past. Who knows if it will remain a loyal friend as it was until now?”

Alex, an Israeli citizen who immigrated to Melbourne, said the deterioration in relations is already felt.

When he tried renewing his Australian passport, previously a formality, he ran into unexpected difficulties.

“The authorities are suspicious, especially when it comes to Israelis,” he said.

“It didn’t interest them that I already have an Australian passport. I had to bring my original birth certificate, translated by a government approved translator.

“They didn’t accept my daughter’s translated birth certificate, and I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Far from mourning the lost relations between Israel and Australia, an Australian Jewish journalist said the affair should encourage the Jewish community to reexamine its uncritical stance on Israel.

Antony Loewenstein, founder of the Independent Australian Jewish Voices organization, said in an interview to Australian radio program “AM” that the big question is the Jewish community’s promotion of bias in favor of Israel.

Loewenstein cited the community’s pressure on young Jews to be involved with Israel, visit the country and enlist in the IDF, which according to him, should not be tolerated by Australia.

The Mossad’s actions are not considered controversial by the Jewish community, Loewenstein said, and if an Australian Jew is involved in actions of this sort, it will not be seen, as it should, as an ethical or legal problem.

Lowewenstein’s urgings may already be realized: Some of Melbourne’s Jews have already declared that they would avoid going to Israel, and deter their children from visiting, as well.

“There’s no way I’ll let my kids fly to Israel now,” clarifies Brenda. “I’ll definitely not encourage them to do so.”

Even the once widely-accepted service in the Israeli army is now being reconsidered.

Richard, Brenda’s neighbor, remembers the glorious return of one soldier. His name was Ben Zygier.

“He came back with the aura of a hero,” he said. “But now his family doesn’t dare show their faces around the community out of remorse and shame,” he said.

I was interviewed by ABC AM Radio this morning (which has already generated some hate mail, so thank you Australian Jewry):

ELIZABETH JACKSON: The revelation this week by the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program that Melbourne man Ben Zygier was Israel’s “prisoner X” have thrown light on some of the most secretive workings of the Jewish state.

There are many perplexing elements to this story; one of them is the deafening silence.

Silence and gag orders from Israel, silence from the Australian Jewish community, and perhaps most perplexing of all, silence from Ben Zygier’s family.

Co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, Antony Loewenstein, says he believes the Jewish community in Australia is embarrassed.

The journalist says the case involving Ben Zygier should be a wake-up call to the community in Melbourne and Sydney to re-examine the way young Jewish youths are educated at religious schools in Australia.

He says Australian Jews need to re-think the wisdom of a culture which encourages young men and women to join the Israeli military.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: Well I think the Jewish community in Australia has taken the position of complete lockdown, where there has basically been virtually no comment about the details of the case.

There’s been virtually no comment about the relationship between the Jewish establishment in Australia and the Israeli government, and indeed Mossad, and indeed Israeli intelligence and the Israeli embassy.

There’ve been a few very vague comments, there’s been a few denials, there’s been a few statements suggesting that we don’t know all the information and therefore we can’t comment.

So overall, on two levels: one, clearly the family is grieving for a lost son – understandable, completely. But the broader question I think is the role the Jewish community in Sydney and Melbourne particularly – the biggest communities in the country – have towards Israel. And the facilitation often that they use of encouraging from a young age Jews to not just be involved with Israel, visit Israel, incredibly often fight with the IDF (Israeli Defence Force), which is something that the Australian Government, in my view should not be tolerating but does, and indeed for that matter sometimes joining Mossad.

Now this is obviously a murky world, but that happens not that uncommonly, and I think a lot of Australians might not be aware of that.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: So what are your observations about the way that Jewish institutions, and perhaps it even happens in the synagogues, I don’t know – but how do they facilitate this kind of mentality?

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: It starts at a relatively young age. Not all Jews, but quite a few. It’s something pretty common, whether you’re religious or my family was pretty liberal, quite progressive.

Israel is not the only focus of that, of course, but it’s certainly part of it – that you’re expected and grown up to support Israel in a way that in my view is unhealthy, which is uncritical. The occupation of Palestine doesn’t really exist.

And many Jews are sent to Israel, often after school, for a year or six months or whatever. Not that many Jews are moving to Israel – some do. There’s definitely an encouragement to do so – in other words, to be the best kind of Jew you can be, so the thinking goes, some people argue the only way you can do that is to go to Israel and live there.

If you’re a young Jew, you’re likely to have to do military service, it’s compulsory in Israel for three years normally. And you potentially – although this is obviously far less people – could be recruited by Mossad.

Now this sort of stuff I’m not saying is regularly discussed openly in synagogues in Sydney or Melbourne – it’s not. But the reality of what moving to Israel might involve, and I think the lack of conversation within the Jewish Zionist establishment about what actually being a so-called ‘good Jew’ means if you sign up for Mossad.

And the role of Mossad in the Middle East is pretty known, it’s quite legendary. But the reality of what Mossad does – in the last few years there have been numerous allegations which have been backed up by a great deal of evidence that, for example, Mossad has been behind the murder, the illegal murder, of Iranian scientists in Iran, nuclear scientists. There was a hit a few years ago of a Hamas operative in Dubai, which was captured on CCTV (Closed Circuit TV).

In the Jewish community itself, those acts are not seen as controversial. They are seen as something as what Israel has to do to survive, they’re justified, they’re defended. In other words, if there’s an Australian Jew who was involved in that, and if this gentleman was, it would not be seen as a problem ethically or legally, when in fact frankly it should be.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Journalist and co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, Antony Loewenstein.

Following the avalanche of media coverage in the last 10 days of Sydney University’s Dr Jake Lynch about his brave stand to oppose any institutional links with Israeli universities, he’s written two pieces in New Matilda that outline some of the issues.

One:

Journalist Christian Kerr recently filed a series of critical articles in The Australian about me over my support for an academic boycott of Israel, and then boasted to friends about using the paper to further his own views on the subject.

Kerr posted on his personal Facebook page that he was “proud of breaking the story” about my refusal to host a visiting academic from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem because, in his opinion, the boycott amounted to “institutionalised racism masquerading as a statement of liberty” and was ”contemptible”.

The next day, the Canberra-based correspondent reported that the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS), which I head, “may be breaching the Race Discrimination Act”.

Equating support for the boycott with racism is a contested question at the heart of Kerr’s story. Peter Slezak, of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, described it as a “slur” calculated “to demonise those who speak out publicly in support of Palestinian human rights and international law”.

Professor Wendy Bacon of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism told NM:

“When reporters have a personal stake or interest in a story, they should be very careful to give someone against whom they are making allegations the right to respond. Otherwise you can end up doing hatchet jobs, getting things wrong or creating stories to meet your own agenda”.

I was not quoted in Kerr’s article about the Race Discrimination Act.

In emailed replies to questions from NM, Kerr attributed his Facebook page entry to his excitement at “the feeling of breaking a story that generates an enormous amount of comment and interest”.

The Australian is known for its strong editorial lines, but its mission statement, issued on the publication of its first edition in 1964, promises “impartial information”. A profile of editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell, published last year in The Monthly, said “Mitchell and his staff take this credo seriously. They refer to it often and cite it in their defence when criticised”.

In a telephone interview with NM, Mitchell said he was not concerned about Kerr’s own political views tilting his reporting: “Any reporter is influenced by their own personal views … you try to obtain some sort of internal balance” by using a range of sources.

Asked how this could be reconciled with the Australian’s commitment to impartial news, Mitchell added: “After 40 years as a journalist and 21 years as a national newspaper editor, I wouldn’t get into the idea that any reporter has ever been completely unbiased”.

Peter Fray, former Managing Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, told NM, “journos obviously do have personal views and they should keep them out of news reporting”, although Kerr, he believes, had “every right to get excited… I am not sure [he] was biased”.

Another of Kerr’s articles quoted Opposition Deputy Leader Julie Bishop, calling on Foreign Minister Bob Carr to “reveal” whether AusAID knew of CPACS’ support for the boycott before granting it $47,000 under the International Seminar Support Scheme in 2010. The ISSS pays conference expenses for delegates from a list of developing countries — not Israel, which is a high-income country so it is assumed Israelis can pay their own way. As an open, competitive scheme, ministers have no role in determining the outcome of individual applications.

Professor Stuart Rees, Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation, told New Matilda: “Julie Bishop’s comments appear to make no sense. Either she was speaking with her foot in her mouth, or the reporter failed to spell out the nature of the grant [to get the quote]“.

Two:

The University of Oslo announced this week it is ending its contract with the security company G4S, which runs prisons in Israel. As a victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, it is richly symbolic. Oslo was the city where the “peace process” bore fruit, with theaccords of 1993 and 1995. However, nothing in them stopped the continued landgrabs or illegal settlement building that have marked the long years of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territory. G4S services the occupation, providing equipment and services to checkpoints, as well as Israel’s so-called separation barrier, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004.

It should cause us in Australia to raise our eyes from a debate that is often little more than half-baked parochialisms. A couple of years ago, I took on some of them directly, along with Stuart Rees of the Sydney Peace Foundation. We contributed letters to a website called Galus Australis, on which Philip Mendes of Monash University had issued a number of ill-informed criticisms of the foundation and the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

One of those who posted a response, “Akiva,” observed:

“It’s pretty apparent that Mendes is punching considerably above his own weight here. Inaccuracies such as Stuart Rees points out are unacceptable and evidence of the sort of ‘sheltered-workshop’, closed-community approach to this sort of discussion. What may reassure one’s own (already convinced and paranoid) mainstream community just may not be good enough on a wider scale.”

According to a large scale opinion survey, carried out in the UK and six other western European countries in 2010 by the polling company ICM, public understanding of the realities of the conflict has become much stronger over recent years. Fully 49 per cent of respondents could successfully identify Israel as an occupying power, compared with earlier surveys suggesting the proportion was much lower. Daud Abdullah of the Middle East Monitor, which commissioned the poll, linked this increased level of understanding, in turn, with “a growing rejection of Israeli policies,” after a long period in which Israel enjoyed a “high level of support … because it was perceived as a progressive democracy in a sea of Arab backwardness”.

This transition has probably travelled still further since the poll was conducted, as the world has witnessed another attack on Gaza, involving what Human Rights Watch called “serious violations of the laws of war,” along with the fatal shooting of activists on board an aid vessel bound for the territory. The materials on board were needed because Israel keeps Gaza under a state of siege, designed — according to US diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks — to “keep its economy on the brink of collapse”.

That, by the way, makes it a collective punishment and therefore, according to the distinguished international jurist, Richard Falk, another war crime. The effects include the poisoning of Gaza’s water supply, declared undrinkable earlier this year because authorities there cannot import the parts they need to repair sewage systems damaged in the 2008-9 attack Operation Cast Lead.

These are among the reasons why, elsewhere in the world, there has been a steady growth in the BDS movement. Activists in civil society take matters into their own hands when their governments appear to condone such excesses on Israel’s part. The double standards are frequently outrageous. The European Union has accorded Israel full trading rights, the obsession over Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions is seldom matched by calls for Tel Aviv to declare its own arsenal and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and so on.

The following email has just been sent to our email list:

Hi all,

We would like to remind you of the upcoming speaking tour by the Israeli historian and social activist Professor Ilan Pappe, which IAJV has co-sponsored. He will be speaking in Sydney (at the Opera House’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas and elsewhere), Wollongong (where he will be a keynote at the Collaborative Struggle Conference), Adelaide (where he will be giving the Edward Said Memorial Lecture), Canberra (where he will address the National Press Club), and in Melbourne. We encourage you to attend these events if any are in your city.

In other news, Peter Slezak’s tour earlier this year of the Palestinian Occupied Territories is now the subject of a radio documentary on ABC’s Radio National (you can listen to it here). The documentary is called Breaking the Silence, and its details are as follows:

How are Palestinians living under the Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza?

Academic, writer and commentator Peter Slezak took a tour of the Palestinian Occupied Territories earlier this year and met with a range of Palestinians and Israelis including members of the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, who take tours around hotspots in the West Bank and Gaza.

His journey, as the son of holocaust survivors, was confronting and harrowing as he witnessed what this Occupation means in terms of the human rights abuses that occur routinely, and the annexation of Palestinian lands to large Israeli settlements and to the 700 km long Separation Wall.

Peter was also involved in the recent Beyond the Last Sky symposium, which explored the representation of Palestine in Australia. Beyond the Last Sky is a photographic exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney’s Paddington. It is the first exhibition in Australia solely dedicated to contemporary Palestinian photography and video. The details of the exhibition, which is free and open until the 18th of November, are here.

As we have mentioned in the past, the book Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists is now published. There is a recent two-part radio interview with the editor of the book (Avigail Abarbanel) and three of its contributors (Peter Slezak, Vivienne Porzsolt and Nicole Erlich). The interview is from 3CR Community Radio’s Palestine Remembered show and can be downloaded here.

Another book we’ve mentioned in the past, co-edited by Antony Loewenstein, is After Zionism. It discusses the one-state solution and features new writings from some of the key thinkers on the Israel/Palestine conflict, including John Mearsheimer, Sara Roy, Joseph Dana, Ghada Karmi and many others. Antony recently went on a book tour of Israel and Palestine, here are some of the details of the tour.

As always, the IAJV website is being constantly updated with the latest news and views about the Middle East, as are our twitter and facebook accounts.

And we would be grateful for support for our ongoing efforts, without which we would not have been able to continue our various activities including helping to sponsor Professor Pappe’s tour. Donations can be made in the following ways. You may use the “Donate” button on our website www.iajv.org

Or use the following bank details for making an electronic transfer:

Unicom Credit Union
BSB: 802-396
Name: IAJV
Account Number: 26241843

Cheques can be written to “IAJV” and posted to:

IAJV
PO Box 6128
UNSW Sydney, NSW 1466
Australia

Thank you in advance,

Independent Australian Jewish Voices
Peter Slezak
Antony Loewenstein
Eran Asoulin
James Levy
http://www.iajv.org/

The following newsletter was just sent to the Independent Australian Jewish Voices email list:

Hi all,

There are a number of IAJV-sponsored and related events coming up that we would like you to know about. The first event begins in Sydney this weekend; it features Sahar Vardi and Micha Kurz, two Israeli activists and former IDF soldiers.

Sahar Vardi is a 21 year old peace activist and refusenik from Jerusalem who was imprisoned in 2008 for refusing her mandatory military service.  She was released in January 2009 and has been working since with the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity movement and speaking at international forums promoting equal rights for Palestinians.

Micha Kurz is a co-founder of Breaking the Silence and Grassroots Jerusalem,  Micha has been an outspoken critic of Israeli policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since he finished his military service. Currently co-director of Grassroots Jerusalem, Micha maps social inequalities, justice issues and environmental problems in and around the Jerusalem area.

Here’s the link to their Australian dates.

The second event is the visit to Australia of Professor Ilan Pappe. As well as speaking at the Opera House’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas, he will speak in Sydney’s Leichhardt on Sunday September 16th and at UNSW on the 17th of September. The details for the latter talks will be finalised very soon.

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and socialist activist. He is currently a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa. He was formerly a leading member of Hadash, and a candidate on the party list in the 1996 and 1999 Knesset elections.

Apart from helping to organise and sponsor events such as the above, IAJV has continued its involvement with APAN through Peter Slezak’s position on the Executive Committee, including a delegation lobbying Federal MPs including Foreign Minister Bob Carr and several public lectures in Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Wollongong. Bob Carr blogged about meeting APAN here.

Recently, Peter Slezak and Avigail Abarbanel were guests on Radio National’s Late Night Live speaking about Jewish peace activists. Peter also has a forthcoming Radio National feature on his trip to Palestine titled ‘Breaking the Silence’.

Antony Loewenstein is the co-editor of a new book, After Zionism, on the one-state solution. It features new writings from some of the key thinkers on the Israel/Palestine conflict, including John Mearsheimer, Sara Roy, Joseph Dana, Ghada Karmi and many others.

Lastly, two recent articles may be of interest to you. One, from the Guardian, discusses the fact that Israel is losing mainstream international political support, due to the expansion of the settlements and the continued restrictions on Gaza. The second, by Jonathan Cook, argues that “Israel has barely put a foot right with the international community since its attack on Gaza more than three years ago provoked global revulsion.”

As always, the IAJV website is being constantly updated with the latest news and views about the Middle East, as are our twitter and facebook accounts.

And we would be grateful for support for our ongoing efforts. Specifically this time we are asking for help with the above two events, especially the visit to Sydney by Ilan Pappe, which IAJV is sponsoring. Donations can be made in the following ways. You may use the “Donate” button on our website www.iajv.org

Or use the following bank details for making an electronic transfer:

Unicom Credit Union
BSB: 802-396
Name: IAJV
Account Number: 26241843

Cheques can be written to “IAJV” and posted to:

IAJV
PO Box 6128
UNSW Sydney, NSW 1466
Australia

Thank you in advance,

Independent Australian Jewish Voices
Peter Slezak
Antony Loewenstein
Eran Asoulin
James Levy

Here’s a very interesting profile, by Dan Goldberg in JTA, on famed philosopher Peter Singer. Despite the almost obligatory disparaging comment about dissident Jews – feeling insecure much, Zionists? – I’m pleased the group I co-founded, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, continues to elicit debate:

He’s been brandished “the most dangerous man on earth,” accused of being a “public advocate of genocide” and likened to Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi “Angel of Death.”

Yet he’s also been hailed as “one of the world’s 100 most influential people” and “among the most influential philosophers alive.”

Welcome to the contradictory world that surrounds Peter Singer, the Australia-born moral philosopher who has been a professor of bioethics at Princeton University in New Jersey since 1999. Loved and loathed, one thing cannot be refuted: Singer, 65, has provoked debate about controversial issues such as infanticide, euthanasia, eugenics and animal rights.

Earlier this month, the Jewish-born, Melbourne-raised ethicist was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation’s highest civilian honor. The citation noted his “eminent service to philosophy and bioethics as a leader of public debate and communication of ideas in the areas of global poverty animal welfare and the human condition.”

Singer, who lost three of his grandparents in the Holocaust, also has stirred debate on key issues that affect Jews, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the ritual slaughter of animals, freedom of speech and charity as a means of combating global poverty.

On the ethics of Israel’s establishment, he told JTA, “Clearly there were moral flaws in the setting up of the State of Israel without proper consultation and participation by Palestinians. But that was a long time ago now, and I think that instead of looking backwards, we should try to work out the best solution for all those living in Israel and the occupied territories.”

In 2010 he signed a petition renouncing his “right of return” to Israel because it is “a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.”

The petition, issued by the far-left Independent Australian Jewish Voices, an offshoot of a British group, said that “It is not right that we may ‘return’ to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.”

Singer says he does not subscribe entirely to the views of the dissenting Jewish group, which has been marginalized by the Australian Jewish establishment.

“I take my own stance on what I judge to be right,” he said. “I have sometimes declined to sign statements from IAJV, for example, because I thought they were too one-sided, and while rightly criticizing actions taken by the Israeli government, did not also criticize actions taken by Hamas.”

The following was sent yesterday:

Dear friends,

We are sending out our occasional newsletter and we would like to express our gratitude for the support we have received. In particular, we are grateful to various generous benefactors without whom our activities would not be possible.

We have recently joined the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), which “has been formed by civil society groups to give a national voice to the Palestinian experience, with the aim of bringing balance and truth to the public debate in Australia about the Israel-Palestine conflict.” APAN “was officially established as an Incorporated Association in May 2011 and its founding membership base includes representatives of Palestinian groups, unions, churches, existing Palestinian solidarity organisations, and Jewish groups.” Peter Slezak is on the Executive, and we are encouraging both individuals and organisations to join. Please visit www.apan.org.au for more information.

Miko Peled, the grandson of one of the signers of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and the son of a general in the 1967 war, visited Australia recently for a number of talks and public events, sponsored by the Melbourne-based Australian for Palestine (AFP). Peter Slezak joined him and others for a Parliamentary dinner at the NSW Parliament. There is a good interview with Peled here.

The Leichhardt Friends of Hebron sponsored a forum recently on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Speakers included Peter Slezak  Samah Sabawi (from Australians for Palestine) and Joseph Wakim (founder of the Arabic Australian Council). The forum was moderated by Peter Manning, senior lecturer at Monash University.

Also on the topic of the BDS movement, late last year Marrickville council in Sydney endorsed the BDS as a policy. There followed months of intense public debate, political attacks and misinformation about the BDS movement and the alleged costs to the council. In April of this year the council met to discuss whether to rescind their support for BDS. Antony Loewenstein and Peter Slezak, among others, spoke at the council meeting in support of BDS and the council’s decision of December 2010. Here is the the video of Antony’s speech. The council decided at the meeting to revoke their earlier decision to support BDS. For more information about the BDS movement, visit their website: www.bdsmovement.net

In May, the annual Jewish Limmud-Oz festival held at the University of New South Wales cancelled two speakers from their program following complaints that the two supported Marrickville council and BDS. The two speakers were Vivienne Porzsolt (from Jews Against the Occupation) and Peter Slezak. Here’s a Sydney Morning Herald article with more details of what happened, and here’s an article by Peter Slezak in which he discusses his removal from the Limmud-Oz program.

A forthcoming book may be of interest. It is edited by Avigail Abarbanel and called ‘Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Stories of Jewish Activists’ (in the Cambridge Scholars series), with a Foreword by Harvard’s Sara Roy and including chapters by Ilan Pappe, Jeff Halper, Anna Baltzer, and Peter Slezak and Vivienne Porszolt among others.

Here is an article by Antony discussing Palestine’s bid for UN statehood, and this piece, published on September 11, examines the Israeli/American relationship since 9/11.

In a significant development towards enhancing our efforts, we have hired Eran Asoulin as a part time executive officer to supplement the work he has been doing on a volunteer basis.

Among current plans, we hope to support Peter Slezak’s inclusion in the 2012 APHEDA tour of the Palestinian territories to report back in the form of public lectures, blogs and articles. APHEDA is the overseas humanitarian aid agency of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).

Finally, IAJV now has a facebook page and a twitter page, “like” or follow us if you use those services. We will be increasing our online presence with regular updates on many relevant issues, so please visit our website.

As always, we are grateful for funding support which has allowed us to undertake our various activities. To make a contribution you may either use the “Donate” button on our website or use the following bank details for making an electronic transfer:

Unicom Credit Union
BSB: 802-396
Name: IAJV
Account Number: 26241843

Thank you in advance.

Best wishes for now,

—

Independent Australian Jewish Voices
Peter Slezak
James Levy
Antony Loewenstein
Eran Asoulin
http://www.iajv.org/

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.