Antony Loewenstein

Isi Leibler on Australian political leaders and Israel:

John Howard was instinctively, as a conservative, a friend of Israel. Kevin Rudd is a remarkable personality but I didn’t think he would maintain the course as he has. I regard him as a Christian Zionist – he understands and has some sympathy for us. Australia gives me enormous pride.

As more information appears about the Bush administration’s use of torture, there is still much to learn about the role of Australia in this sordid process:

The Senate Armed Services Committee has just released an exhaustive review of torture under the Bush administration that, among other revelations, torpedoes the notion that the administration only chose torture as a last resort. Bush officials have long argued that they turned to coercive interrogations in 2002 only after captured al-Qaida suspects wouldn’t talk, but the report shows the administration set the wheels in motion soon after 9/11. The Bush White House began planning for torture in December 2001, set up a program to develop the interrogation techniques by the next month, and the military and the CIA began training interrogators in coercive practices in early 2002, before they had any high-value al-Qaida suspects or any trouble eliciting information from detainees.

Lebanese Chess is a fascinating blog written by a Lebanese Australian. His recent post is titled, “A week of speeches“:

Khatami, Halper and Loewenstein … three public speakers at Australia’s main political university, the Australian National University (ANU), in a week.

I went to see them all, and nothing much out of the three surprised me. Many Israeli and Jewish critics of Israeli policy only seem to be repeating what Arabs have been saying for 60 years, but we’re never going to convince the Israeli or Jewish public on our own. Indeed, a solution will never be found unless Israelis and Jews participate in finding a just peace.

Mohammad Khatami was eloquent and insightful about his program for dialogue among civilisations, and the need for the various civilisations to respect each other, something which he insists the West does not do vis-a-vis Islam or other cultures of the Third World.

He was able to steer clear of being dragged into discussion about the more controversial issues dominating Iran today, such as its stance towards Israel, the rights of women and minorities in the country etc.

The former Iranian President made the point that dialogue between civilisations had to be conducted by those that represent culture … artists, scholars, academics, scientists and not politicians. However, he managed the questions as professionally as a politician could. He retorted narrow questions that specified on a certain point by fluffing about grand schemes. For example, several Bahais in the audience repeatedly quizzed Khatami on the rights of the sect in Iran, and Khatami brushed them off as matters of crime and governance.

Having said that, those who posed such political questions could only have expected a political response. Anyone who attended the public lecture (and there were several hundred in the audience) and anticipated a Khatami tirade of his theocratic regime were kidding themselves. Khatami eloquently distanced himself from some of the harsh measures of the theocracy, whilst maintaining its integrity and dignity in his responses.

I enjoyed watching Khatami, it is always enjoyable to watch a statesman at his best, regardless of his political affiliation. Khatami was followed by Australia’s own statesman and former conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser – a harsh critic of Israel and Australia’s blind support for the country – who welcomed Khatami’s initiatives, and urged the West to open its eyes and do away with its superior-inferior complex when it comes to non-Western cultures. Indeed, perhaps their shared ideas of dialogue among civilisations and cultural co-existence might come into fruition some day.

Jeff Halper, the pro-Palestinian rights Israeli academic, was outstanding to say the least. Nothing he mentioned differed very much from the traditional Arab perspective, which is that the Palestinians have no rights, live in hell, and need help. The charismatic academic did well to outline the facts of Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank, and its intentions. What he revealed matched everything of what I and others have previously said about Israel’s strategy vis-a-vis the Palestinians.

Halper is now championing a one-state solution, something I too have long supported. I never considered the two-state solution to be feasible, essentially because it didn’t take into consideration all of the Palestinian concerns, which meant conflict would always result. Even when the Palestinian leadership seemed willing to accept this half-arsed compromise, the Israelis had no intention of giving an ounce of territory to them.

Although Halper did step a bit further by privately stating to me that Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan should move to create a single economic unit that mirrored the historical unit of the Levant. I put the question to him, “you mean a Greater Syria?”, followed by a few laughs. An Israeli advocating a Greater Syria? Who would’ve thought?

His essential point in the lecture was as follows: “For there to be a one-state solution, that would mean an end to the Jewish state. What’s wrong with that?”

Exactly! What is wrong with that? Why can’t Jews, Muslims and Christians share what is essentially the same country? If we are to approach this conflict from a human rights angle, there is nothing wrong with this proposal at all.

As for Antony Loewenstein, the Jewish-Australian and fellow pro-Palestinian rights activist/blogger/writer, I do feel for this guy. He is relatively young and has devoted an extraordinary amount of talent and effort to stand up to the Zionist powerhouse of his own community. He contributes far more to the Palestinian and Arab cause than do many of our own people. Activists like Loewenstein and Halper really put the Phalangists, Samir Geagea and their likes to shame.

Loewenstein also audaciously mentioned (to the humming of the audience) what is on all of our lips in the West that is seldomly spoken aloud … our entrenched racism.

A brilliant remark he made, something which even I have dared not mention, was a reference to Western attitudes reflected in the military’s treatment of indigenous populations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon/Palestine.

He stated that the horrors of Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Lebanon 2006, and Gaza 2009 were not simply lapses of military discipline, but rather a result of a widespread lack of “rules of engagement”. Western militaries, Israel included, have no rules of engagement, and often do not distinguish between occupied civilians and combatants. The recurring abuses and massacres perpretrated by Western armies and Israel is a consequence of our underlying racism, and the fact that – as Loewenstein beautifully put it – the West views the indigenous peoples of these countries as inferior, akin to German perceptions of the inferior and expendable Jew prior to and during WWII.

This ties in with, what I believe was, Khatami’s comments today that the West must respect the cultures and civilisations of the Third World, and cease viewing all that is non-Western as inferior.

Discussion on this core matter is virtually non-existent in the West because, as Loewenstein added, we in the West do not dare question our moral right, nor the possibility that we are in fact racist. We like to view ourselves as liberators, the bearers of modern civilisation and democracy, the beacon of human rights … not as racists.

Well if there was something glaringly obvious to me whilst in Lebanon 2006, it was that too few cared about 1200 civilians getting killed, or the fate of those stuck in the conflict. I recall clearly how there were many in Australia who called on the Howard Government to not send rescue ships to help us, thousands of Australian-Lebanese stranded in the conflict. The arguments ranged from ‘we weren’t Australian’, or ‘we were just using the country for its welfare benefits’ and so forth.

Indeed, the pro-Bush conservative government at the time acted to the tune of these arguments. I rang the embassy in Beirut, I registered online countless of times, I went down to see them face-to-face, only to be told I couldn’t see them. Nothing, there was no news, there was no action, no one from DFAT or the embassy bothered to contact me or my friends. The clear underlying belief from these calls and the subsequent lacklustre behaviour of the Australian Government was that we were inferior Arabs, we weren’t white and we weren’t worthy of rescuing.

Fortunately, my Australian-Lebanese friends and I organised our own sortie, and drove to Syria in a private vehicle, dodging Israeli warplanes, with two Australian flags on our vehicle. Funny that us so called non-Australians happened to have Australian flags on us at the time.

What appeared so clear to me from these three talks is that we are all speaking the same language. A former Iranian President, an Israeli academic, a Jewish Australian activist/blogger/journalist, me – a Lebanese Australian blogger – and hundreds, if not thousands, of others on the blogosphere, in academia, in refugee camps, are repeating the same lines:

- The Palestinians need to be given their rights, and Israel has to accept their existence and learn to share the land with them.

- The West must equally learn to accept and respect the many civilisations it once colonised. It colonises them no longer, and this century will see its former colonies rise above it.

Whilst all three speakers happened to be coincidentally scheduled in the same week, together they served a serious reality check for those who attended.

A few comments. The Australian visit of the former Iranian President continues to generate debate here (from rational to neo-conservative rantings). During my visit to Iran in 2007 I found a great deal of support for Khatami among the youth, a rejection of the extremism of Ahmadinejad. For some critics, however, it seems that unless a leader is a Zionist apologist they should be shunned.

And yesterday I spent the day with Jeff Halper, a wonderfully warm, articulate and passionate Jewish advocate for peace in Israel/Palestine. The faux controversy stirred by some Jews who refuse to hear his brutal message of apartheid in the West Bank – including a few Jewish students at UNSW last night, clearly unfamiliar with the actions of the IDF – suggests that many in the organised Jewish community continue to imagine an Israel in their minds, not reality.

The Jerusalem Post may mock the serious allegations of war crimes against the IDF in Gaza – in an editorial titled, “Purity of Arms” – but the image of the Zionist state is declining by the day. The Jewish establishment either accepts that there are fundamental flaws in a racially discriminatory nation or they pay a dear price, namely boycott, divestment and sanctions.

It seems most have already made their decision.

The world either embraces leaders and spokesmen who crave peace and engagement; or war and only conflict with the “other”.

Tom Switzer, former opinion editor of the Australian newspaper and research fellow at the conservative think-tank Institute of Public Affairs, redefines the term, ‘”getting too close to power“:

Tom Switzer in The Spectator has a close encounter of the ex-prime-ministerial kind

My wife Sarah and I recently had the wonderful experience of having John Howard and his wife Janette over for a barbecue. (Sorry for the self-promotion, but I figure if you can’t shamelessly boast in The Spectator diary, where can you?) The idea of hosting a small dinner for the former first couple and some close mutual friends was initially daunting. After all, we live in an apartment probably the size of just one of the 119 rooms in Washington’s presidential guesthouse. In the end, though, we were helped in this task by knowing that our guests have personalities precisely the opposite of those the media suggests: they’re warm, witty, charming and very good-natured, qualities not habitually found in our former political leaders. And they remain true-blue patriots. I thought I’d impress the ex-PM with my collection of imported European beers, but he insisted on an Australian beer instead.

Switzer clearly wants to be loved by “true-blue patriots” (a supposedly clearly marked group in society that enjoys gourmet sausages and fine, imported beer in inner Sydney, though not for “patriot” John Howard).

Beyond embarassing.

My following book review appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on November 29:

My Story: The Tale Of A Terrorist Who Wasn’t
By Mamdouh Habib; with Julia Collingwood;
Scribe, 272 pp, $32.95

Before tortured Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib was released in 2005, then prime minister John Howard said his government didn’t “have any apology to offer” and refused to consider compensation. Greens leader Bob Brown described Habib’s treatment as “one of the most shameful episodes in Australian political history”.

This book supports that statement. Habib writes that his “belief in Islam has guided me all my life … I’ve tried to be as straight and honest as possible, and help people whenever I could – sometimes to my own detriment.” Habib’s support for the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman (the Blind Sheik), is disconcerting yet his life, not unlike that of David Hicks, is one of searching for meaning.

The work begins in Egypt, the country of Habib’s birth, and he paints a moving picture of growing up in Alexandria and his experiences with various manual jobs and the army. The nation, he laments, “was all about who you knew, and bribing the right people”.

It wasn’t until 2001 – he was living in Sydney with his wife, Maha, and children – that he finally felt “optimistic” about the future after years of struggling with failed businesses. Alas, this sentiment didn’t last long as he was visited in Dubai by ASIO officials and asked to spy for them, reporting on any contact with suspected terrorists such as Jack Thomas and Rabiyah Hutchinson.

Habib endows this encounter with a beautiful, Monty Pythonesque quality. The authorities appeared to be amateurs, mimicking foreign accents and playing the “good cop, bad cop” routine.

It was reminiscent of the interview with innocent “terror” suspect Mohamed Haneef in 2007 and the gross ignorance of the Federal Police of even the simplest tenets of Islam. These are the people, after all, who are supposed to protect us.

The powerful passages of the book describe Habib’s capture in Pakistan in 2001 and more than three years of incarceration in Egypt and Guantanamo Bay with, he claims convincingly, the full knowledge of the Australian Government. He was tortured through sleep deprivation, the application of electric shocks “everywhere on my body” and multiple, unidentified drugs.

He alleges that Americans consistently beat him up in Cuba and mocked his hunger strikes. Reading these sections it’s hard to ignore evidence, revealed in The New Yorker journalist Jane Meyer’s book, The Dark Side, that the Bush Administration shunned warnings from the CIA six years ago that up to a third of the people held at Guantanamo Bay were imprisoned in error. Habib tells countless stories of fellow prisoners who were humiliated and broken in the care of the Americans.

It reads in parts too much like a casual conversation – and a more skeptical perspective would have been helpful when Habib discusses the role of al-Qaeda members – but this is an important contribution to the literature on the “war on terror”. Years after the establishment of a parallel legal and ethical framework, we barely know anything about its implementation.

War crimes were committed in our name.

My following talk was presented today to a full room at Harvard University:

Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government/Centre for Middle Eastern Studies
ME Forum, 24 November 2008

The Shifting Sands of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: An Australian Perspective

Antony Loewenstein

Australian Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, speaking in March this year at a United Israel Appeal fund-raiser in Melbourne, said he was “a friend of Israel” and referred to its creation in 1948 as “Australian Labor government handiwork.”

In the same month, in an unprecedented move in the country’s history, Rudd praised Israel’s democratic achievements as federal parliament commemorated Israel’s 60th anniversary and highlighted the need for an independent and economically viable Palestinian state.

The majority of parliamentarians supported the motion, but one Labor backbencher dissented. Julia Irwin could not “congratulate a nation which commits human rights abuses each day and shows blatant disregard for the UN.”

On the same day, a large advertisement appeared in the only national newspaper, signed by hundreds of Jews, Palestinians, unionists and concerned citizens, myself included, protesting the government’s obsequiousness towards the Jewish state. “Australia and Australians should not give the Israeli people and its leaders the impression that Australia supports them in their dispossession of the Palestinian people,” the Not In Our Name ad read.

For my relatively minor involvement in the protest, the leading Jewish newspaper in the country, the Australian Jewish News, labelled me the “enfant terrible of the Australian Jewish community…He would be well advised to leave the business of creating an alternative Jewish voice to those who at least support the existence of Israel as a viable Jewish state.”

Like many other Western countries, Australia’s Zionist establishment tolerates little dissent from uncritical support of the Jewish state. With around 100,000 Jews (and more than 300,000 Muslims out of a population of 21 million), there has long been bi-partisan agreement that Australia’s foreign policy should be directed to following Washington’s lead. Australia even wholeheartedly backed Israel’s disastrous 2006 war against Lebanon.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, former Prime Minister John Howard directed Australia to abstain in the UN General Assembly against resolutions that opposed illegal colonies in the West Bank and the application of the Geneva Convention in the Palestinian territories. We joined, alongside the US and Israel, the client states of Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands.

Prime Minister Rudd recently reversed this decision and supported the resolutions pressuring Israel to abide by international law. The Zionist establishment reacted with concern. It was a sorry sight to watch prominent Jews argue that the Jewish state should not apply the Geneva Convention in occupied territory. Israel’s “security” needs, so we were told, allowed Israel to behave as a rogue state.

Shamefully, it was reminiscent of leading American Zionist groups who remained silent during the Bush years as evidence mounted that authorities were committing torture in their name. Were they worried that critics would turn their gaze towards the abusive behaviour of Israel towards captured Palestinians?

Australia’s influence in world affairs is miniscule compared to the European powers, but Israel, despite literally being on the other side of the world, remains central to local media coverage and Jewish and Arab concerns. The Palestinian Diaspora is largely disorganised and politically impotent. The Jewish community – principally comprised of Holocaust survivors and their descendents – unhealthily affect public debate, attempting to neuter critical thinking.

Their success is decreasing, however, as evidenced by the best-seller status of my book, My Israel Question – despite attempts by the Zionist lobby to ban it and smear my publisher and me – and the ongoing profile of Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV), an initiative I co-founded in 2007 to empower Jews to challenge the dominant Zionist narrative. Around 500 Jews signed in support.

I compare our actions to an insurgency against an undoubtedly stronger opponent, but one whose positions are increasingly indefensible. I sense that many Jews, especially younger ones, are deeply uncomfortable about Israel’s ever-deepening occupation of Palestinian land but remain unsure how to express those sentiments. Recent studies in America bear this theory out, showing a much weaker connection by young Jews towards the Jewish state.

Throughout the months-long coverage of the IAJV launch in 2007, the Jewish press virtually ignored any discussion of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, preferring to quote various Zionist spokespeople who mouthed the usual platitudes about a “diverse” community that “welcomed debate” and “where disagreement is king – there are no fatwas.”

The reality, of course, was far different. One letter writer to the Australian Jewish News argued: “I have a sneaking suspicion that many Jews have left the Jewish community because they are not prepared to submit to the unelected ‘mainstream.’” Some Jews recognised that they had a primary moral responsibility not to remain silent about Israeli crimes committed in their name and on which they may have some direct effect.

Soon after the recent Australian visit of Sara Roy to Australia, the country’s leading Zionist lobby, AIJAC, wrote that, by detailing Israel’s shocking human rights record in the occupied territories, she expressed “ludicrous conspiracy theories, one-sided analysis and seeming disregard for the truth.” Roy had told a radio program that, “the occupation really is about denying people their dignity. It’s about humiliation and dehumanisation.” “Actually”, AIJAC countered, “it’s about security and accepting the Jewish right to self-determination, nothing more, and could have been over long ago had the Palestinians been willing to make peace, but I guess that’s not the paradigm Dr. Roy is interested in.”

The occupation isn’t an occupation. War is peace. George Orwell’s Doublespeak was pleased. It’s surely a sign of success that the establishment Jewish community is forced to defend an occupation that is condemned by the vast majority of the world. The national president of the Zionist Organisation of America, Morton Klein, wrote before the US presidential election that, “it is simply a flat-earth statement to describe Judea, Samaria and Gaza as occupied.” So who is really blocking the road to peace?

Away from parochial politics, however, lies the reality of the conflict on the ground in the Middle East. The facts remain startling. A report released in July by a group partly funded by the European Union found that Jews live longer and enjoy lower infant mortality and poverty rates in Israel than Arab citizens. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights released evidence in late October that Israel had already killed 68 children in Gaza this year. This report was largely ignored by the Western media, despite it claiming that Israeli forces “deliberately target unarmed civilians, including children, as part of their policy of collective punishment of the entire Palestinian civilian population.”

On Israel’s 60th anniversary, Yossi Alpher, senior advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the Camp David summit, wrote that the Israelis “have nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of.” He acknowledged the disastrous settlement movement but divorced the ongoing existence of the Jewish state with the colonial project in the West Bank. They are in fact inseparable after decades and Israel is increasingly known globally as a brutal oppressor. A shameful Jewish legacy into the 21st century.

I’ve written and researched the Israel/Palestine conflict issue for years and yet remain surprised with the lack of information reported by the Western media. Who knew that Switzerland in mid-November accused Israel of wantonly destroying Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and near Ramallah in violation of the Geneva Conventions’ rules on military occupation? Or that Israel’s transportation minister, Shaul Mofaz, a former IDF chief of staff and defence minister, recently suggested the return of “targeted killings” for democratically elected leaders of Hamas? How about a report in Haaretz that found Defence Minister Ehud Barak has approved dozens of construction projects in the West Bank contradicting Israel’s supposed commitment to the Road Map? Or that the chairman of Hebrew University’s Arab student body was apprehended by university personnel after he refused to shake the hand of visiting President Shimon Peres after calling it a “murderer of children”? Or that the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, again said recently that his group was willing to accept a Palestinian state within 1967 borders?

All of these facts are shocking yet uncontroversial; they are daily life in the Jewish state. A haze of misinformation, outright lies and Holocaust guilt cloud this issue the world over. The occupiers are the eternal victims. Critics tell me that the Palestinians deserve their fate, led by hateful leaders.

A recent leaked Red Cross report found that Israel’s siege on Gaza was leading to a steady increase in chronic malnutrition. “Survival levels” are now the standard phrase used to describe the desperate situation, an environment only permissible with the collusion of the world powers. The World Bank recently argued that the Palestinian economy has “incredible potential” if Israel eases its stranglehold.

It was therefore ironic to read former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s recent comments, in the light of Barack Obama’s win, that he suddenly realised the severe limitations of foreign intervention in the conflict. Here was a man who actively supported the 2006 Lebanon war and Israel’s disastrous policies for years and now wanted to talk about consensus politics. On the Arab street, after his enthusiastic backing of the Iraq war, Blair is easily dismissed as simply wanting to manage the occupation, rather than ending it.

British journalist Jonathan Cook, one of the finest chroniclers of the conflict, writes from Nazareth and has attempted to explain the real reasons behind the Israeli suffocation of Hamas. He wrote last week:

“…According to the daily Jerusalem Post, Israeli policymakers have sought to reinforce the impression that ‘it would be pointless for Israel to topple Hamas because the population [of Gaza] is Hamas’. On this thinking, collective punishment is warranted because there are no true civilians in Gaza. Israel is at war with every single man, woman and child.”

It is a view echoed by Haaretz journalist Amira Hass. She rightly chastises Hamas for its human rights abuses but wonders if Israeli policy towards the group is deliberately designed to bolster support, therefore justifying future military action to destroy them. Unlike virtually every other Israeli paper, Haaretz editorially supports the concept of engaging the Islamists.

I’ve long argued that Israel’s most vocal supporters imagine an Israel that doesn’t exist and never has. It’s a Zionism in their minds; noble, inspiring and humanist. Uncomfortable facts can be dismissed. Human rights abuses placed in context and defended. Anybody who challenges Zionism’s core tenets are terrorists. Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.

Perhaps it requires a latter-day prophet such as former Speaker of the Knesset and head of the Jewish Agency, Avraham Burg, to challenge these delusions. In his latest book, The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes, he writes that Judaism has to get past its obsessive cheapening of the Holocaust to mature as a religion. Burg argues that the everyday use of the word Shoah in Israeli life has left Israel “a nation of victims.” The Jewish state must abandon its “Judaism of the ghetto” and embrace a “universal Judaism.”

It’s a provocative diagnosis by a religious Jew. As an atheist Jew myself, I’m drawn to some of Burg’s ideas because they acknowledge the damage the physical and mental occupation is doing to both Arabs and Jews. Therefore debate must go beyond “what is good for the Jews?” towards “what is good for the peoples of the region?” Arguably traditional Zionism is incapable of acknowledging the difference.

I met a group of influential left-oriented Jews in Melbourne last year. They wanted to engage with me and discuss privately my ideas. It was a depressing affair, however, as one after the other detailed their “pain” and “trauma” over the occupation, expressed dedication to a two-state solution and pledged to work towards its implementation. Publicly, with a few notable exceptions, they refused to condemn Israel’s gross violations of human rights. It was simply a bridge too far. Talking passionately amongst themselves may have made them feel good but the situation in the Middle East requires more than hand-wringing. A fear of societal exclusion held these people back while the Palestinians suffered in silence.

Militant Palestinians are only part of the problem. Radical Jews are the cancer that Israel refuses to destroy (despite Ehud Barak recently calling these settlers “cancerous growths”). The aim of these extremists is to establish a Taliban-style, rabbinical state to replace the current “secular” Israel. It may seem like a pipedream to most — not least the vast majority of Israelis who allegedly oppose the occupation project — but the attempt to uproot any major settlement blocs will incur a vicious response. A civil war between the state and radical Zionists is not unlikely in the years to come.

The world is starting to finally acknowledge the danger. The New York Times editorialised in early November that “law-breaking settlers” must be stopped. The director of Israel’s domestic security service warned that Jewish extremists could kill Israeli leaders who attempt peace with the Palestinians. Settlers routinely desecrate Muslim graveyards in the West Bank. For the Jerusalem Post, though, it is “Palestinian intransigence” that hinders peace in the West Bank, not the presence of the settlers on illegally held land. Interestingly, a number of settlers recently told the New York Times that they believed in a two-state solution and many of their friends would leave the colonies with proper compensation.

Yossi Alpher, former advisor to Ehud Barak, recently commented that, “Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination continues to symbolize the rise of the violent messianic political right in Israel. They are still among us. They still threaten everything that is dear to rational, peace-minded Israelis. Here is one area where Rabin’s successors have failed miserably.”

The September pipe bombing by Jewish radicals of Israeli historian Ze’ev Sternhell’s home in Jerusalem – a long-time critic of the settler movement – signalled a profound shift in the struggle against Israel’s internal enemies, a point powerfully made by leading peace activist Uri Avnery. “Israeli fascism is alive and kicking”, Avnery warned. “It is growing in the flowerbed that produced the various religious-nationalist underground groups of the past.” And yet the vast majority of the international Jewish Diaspora is tellingly silent on these issues, preferring to protest against Hamas “terrorism” and Iranian “provocation”.

Sternhell, even more determined to warn the world against the Jewish state’s threats, has argued since the attack against him and his family that “If Israeli society is unable to muster the courage necessary to put an end to the settlements, the settlements will put an end to the state of the Jews and will turn it into a bi-national state”.

As a believer in this solution, I don’t fear Sternhell’s thesis, but settler violence undoubtedly challenges the (long-discredited) claim that Israel is a Jewish democracy. The departing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently declared, on the 13th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s murder, that unless the Jewish state returns occupied land, “we could lose support for a two-state solution.” Instead, he imagined a “Zionism that is practical, realistic, responsible and courageous.” Wise words, but after a lifetime of enabling the settler movement through direct action, they are devoid of meaning.

The election of Barack Obama opens a faint possibility of real change, not just the rhetorical kind. Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy echoed this sentiment, writing in early November that he hoped the new President would not be a yes-man for the status-quo in the region:

“When we say that someone is a ‘friend of Israel’ we mean a friend of the occupation, a believer in Israel’s self-armament, a fan of its language of strength and a supporter of all its regional delusions. When we say someone is a ‘friend of Israel’ we mean someone who will give Israel a carte blanche for any violent adventure it desires, for rejecting peace and for building in the territories.”

America’s position as a global super-power is slipping. It maintains an enviable ability to shape events across the globe, but the rise of the rest is something that should worry the Jewish state. China and India will never view Israel the same as Washington. The resurgence of Arab resistance – most potently displayed by the Hizbollah struggle against Israel in 2006 – signals a lessening fear of Israel’s military machine. Obama may even pressure the incoming Israeli government – currently looking like Likud’s Bibi Netanyahu, whose election, Gideon Levy wrote last weekend, would prove once and for all that, “an Israel that votes Likud does not want peace – no ifs, ands or buts” – to cease settlement construction and negotiate with a Hamas-Fatah leadership. We can live in hope.

I fear, however, that the dye has been cast. The occupation, in some form, will never disappear. How does a state remove nearly half a million settlers? The long-term plan of Zionism was to establish irreversible facts on the ground. On this definition, the ideology has been a raging success. The rights of the Palestinians were always secondary and remain so. Israel has mastered never-ending and never-progressing negotiations. Talks for the sake of talks, as colonies expand. The fact that the Arab League’s peace initiative has been largely ignored suggests a country that has deliberately chosen the path of confrontation. Peace is too difficult, too cumbersome, too problematic and too painful.  A fortified ghetto appears to be Israel’s future. History has a cruel way of repeating itself.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of the incendiary book The Israel Lobby, recently asked leading American Jewish blogger Phil Weiss that, despite polls consistently finding US citizens overwhelmingly supportive of the Jewish state, “do most Americans favour the ‘special relationship,’ where we unconditionally give Israel abundant material aid and firm diplomatic backing?” Furthermore, both men argue, most Americans “do not believe that the US should favour Israel over the Palestinians, even if they identify more with Israel than the Palestinians.”

Any resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict will only appear with major external pressure. It is difficult to see this happening any time soon.

A leading American Zionist lobby recently shamed itself by celebrating a criminal and a thug:

The American Jewish Committee honored Colombian President Alvaro Uribe last night with its Light unto the Nations Award.

“Despite many odds, President Uribe has remained committed to the pursuit of security, peace and broad-based economic growth for all Colombians,” Goodkind said. Indeed, while President Uribe and his family have personally suffered due to the violence that has long plagued Colombia, he remains committed first and foremost to curbing violence and restoring peace and security.

It’s perhaps not surprising that a Zionist group, so fond of celebrating Israeli violence against Arabs, would fawn over the Columbian equivalent.

After all, the AJC did present former Australian Prime Minister John Howard wih its “American Liberties Medallion” in 2004.

My following article appears in today’s ABC Unleashed:

Retired Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the onetime commander of US troops in Iraq, has recently released a book about his time in the country. In Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, he recalls a teleconference with US President George W. Bush soon after four contractors were killed in Fallujah in 2004. Bush said:

“If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.

“There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

This is the man whose war the former Australian Prime Minister John Howard said this week was his “personal decision” to join due to the September 11 attacks and the US alliance. Kevin Rudd’s belated move to remove the 550 Australian combat troops from the war-torn nation should be welcomed, along with his rationale for doing so.

He rightly chastised the war for inflaming terrorism and causing a humanitarian disaster in Iraq and the region. The exact death toll remains unclear, but well over a million lives is likely, according to Iraqi sources. The Age merely calls the conflict an “unwise military adventure”.

Predictably, Murdoch war boosters criticised Rudd for the withdrawal, praising the occupation as a success and endorsing a comment by Western Australian Liberal senator Dennis Jensen who said this week that the war was “essentially being won”.

The Australian editorialised that “the Iraqi people would be much worse off today had Australia and its coalition partners allowed al-Qa’ida and other jihadist forces to fill the void created by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.”

Unfortunately, US-backed militias are now in control of the country, bounty hunters who have been bought by the highest bidder. Equally forgotten is the fact that, according to author Jeremy Scahill, “without [defence contractor] Blackwater, the occupation of Iraq would be untenable.”

Notably absent from the media coverage of Australia’s partial withdrawal – many troops are remaining to allegedly protect Australian interests in Baghdad – are Iraqi voices. What do they think of the Western influence in their nation? Last weekend’s massive protest in Baghdad proved that a long-term US presence is opposed.

Moreover, a majority of citizens in the US, Australia and Britain oppose the war and want troops withdrawn as soon as possible. Instead, the corporate media publishes articles from “foreign policy advisors” who pontificate on the strength of the US/Australian alliance. The Iraqi people are invisible.

More than five years after the invasion, much of the mainstream media now ignores the war. According to a study by the US-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, “during the first 10 weeks of 2007, Iraq accounted for 23 percent of the news for network TV news. In 2008, it plummeted to 3 percent during that period. On cable networks it fell from 24 percent to 1 percent.”

What our media should be investigating is the real reason for the apparent fall in violence across the country (though still unacceptably high.) Paying off perceived enemies is clearly something to be praised, not questioned. Returned American soldiers continue to speak out publicly about the horrors inflicted by them in Iraq and yet their voices are shunned.

Seth Manzel, a vehicle commander and machine gunner in the U.S. Army, told around 800 people at the Seattle Town Hall in an event last weekend sponsored by the Northwest Regional Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), that, “I watched Iraqi police bring in someone to interrogate. There were four men on the prisoner… one was pummelling his kidneys with his fists, another was inserting a bottle up his rectum. It looked like a frat house gang-rape.” Liberation, indeed. Racism, dehumanisation and random violence were daily occurrences.

The proper role of the media is scepticism and critical thinking. Sadly, the Iraq war has shown the majority of journalists either capitulated to government pressure or saw their role as simply enabling the conflict. With Germany’s former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer this week warning that he feared an American or Israeli attack on Iran before the end of the Bush administration, the Middle East could soon become even more chaotic.

Australia’s relatively insignificant withdrawal from Iraq should be placed in the appropriate context.

Back in 2004, I interviewed a stateless refugee housed on Manus Island by the former Australian government. Aladdin Sisalem was a kind, quietly-spoken man who simply craved a better life for himself, but John Howard’s system wanted him to suffer for this desire.

I met with Aladdin a few times in Melbourne after his release. He seemed to be struggling with his new life, unsure what he would do and without a clear directive from the government on his legal status.

But now life has apparently turned the corner:

Coming to Australia after 18 months held in the Manus Island detention centre — 10 of them by himself — Aladdin Sisalem felt he had finally found a new beginning.

Instead, the stateless Kuwaiti-born Palestinian found that he had merely exchanged one form of living in limbo for another. He was placed on a temporary protection visa that banned him from applying for permanent protection for five years.

He has spent the past four years not knowing if he would have to uproot himself and try all over again to find another country to take him at the end of next year.

It is only now, after a change of government, that a relieved Mr Sisalem has been told his wait has been cut short by a year. He can apply immediately for permanent residency in Australia.

For the first time since he fled persecution after a backlash against Palestinians in Kuwait on November 15, 2000, the United Nations-certified refugee may have somewhere to call home.

“They called me last week as promised and told me the office of the Minister of Immigration has agreed to specify a shorter period to process your application,” he said.

The wait to apply for permanency, and its accompanying right to visit overseas, has come at a heavy personal cost for him.

The recklessness and cruelty of the Howard government towards asylum seekers will shame Australia for years to come.

I was recently interviewed by Peshawa Muhammed of the Kurdistani Nwe Newspaper, the publication of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Iraqi Kurdistan (Noam Chomsky was also interviewed recently.) The article ran on May 4:

Peshawa Muhammed: Five years on, how do you assess the current US policy in Iraq? Which option do you think can finally put an end to the ongoing fiasco; partition or keeping Iraq united?

Antony Loewenstein: The Iraq war is one of the greatest crimes of my lifetime. After more than five years, the death of over 4000 American troops, over a million Iraqis and millions of displaced refugees, the decision to invade and occupy the nation remains a disaster on all levels. The majority of polls in Iraq since 2003 find citizens believe life under Saddam, as brutal as it was, remains preferable. Foreign troops must leave the country as quickly as possible and the future of Iraq decided by Iraqis alone. I am against partition because it appears most citizens oppose it. The international community has a responsibility to assist the Iraqi government to get back on its feet. The current regime in Baghdad’s Green Zone is an illegitimate puppet of Washington, creating Shia death squads to obliterate potential enemies. Ethnic cleansing must stop.

Muhammed: Previously, Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has admitted that securing oil supplies is a key factor behind the presence of Australian troops in Iraq. How do you explain the Australian objectives in the Iraq War?

Loewenstein: Australia, like many so-called allies in the war against Iraq, joined the Bush administration out of compulsion, fear and gutlessness. The previous Australian government, led by Prime Minister John Howard, was an unashamed fan of Bush and his “war on terror” policies – by pure coincidence, he was in Washington on September 11, 2001 – and believed that “democracy” should be imported by bombing and occupying a nation. Oil was certainly a key reason for the war as was securing a new, post-Saudi Arabia staging post in the Middle East. The US embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world, indicates that America never had any intention of leaving.

Muhammed: If Iraq eventually fails as a state, what alternatives are there for the future of Iraqi Kurdistan and what assumptions are made by each alternative? Will Independent Iraqi Kurdistan be a viable option?

Loewenstein: The idea that Iraq is a state is clearly the invention of the Western powers just under one hundred years ago. Iraqi Kurdistan has the right to autonomy and independence, if a fair and free vote is taken. Of course, Turkey and the central Iraqi government oppose such a move, but it is probably inevitable. It is encouraging that Iraqi Kurdistan has benefited from the invasion and largely prospered. A ray of light in a sea of darkness.

Muhammed: Nothing or little is known about Australian-Kurdish relations. To the best of your knowledge, how does Australia view the Kurdish question in Iraq?

Loewenstein: There is a stable Kurdish population in Australia that receives little media coverage or discrimination, as far as I know. When the largest protest in the country’s history took place in 2003 against the Iraq war, the Kurds here were one of the few groups, aside from the Howard government, to encourage America to invade. In terms of Australian attitudes towards the Kurdish question, this is a difficult question. There is general sympathy for groups that are legitimately calling for a homeland – such as the Palestinians – but the issue receives little attention. My gut feeling is that there would be concern over creating a Kurdish state and increasing instability in the region.

Muhammed: What will happen of the coalition forces withdraw from Iraq prematurely? Regardless of the causes of the war and its eligibility, don’t you think it is the responsibility of the invading forces to restore peace and order before leaving Iraq?

Loewenstein: The international community certainly have a responsibility to assist the Iraqis, but poll after poll has found since 2003 that a majority of Iraqi people want foreign troops to leave. Indeed, much of the insurgency is directed at foreign troops. I fear that the Western powers will continually say that the country is too unstable to withdraw troops, therefore ensuing an endless occupation (something seemingly suggested by Republican presidential nominee John McCain.) There are other ways to support the country other than American troops, such as food aid, infrastructure support, financial compensation and the UN.

Muhammed: What are your general recommendations and advice for the future US Policy in Iraq?

Loewenstein: The US operates under the delusion that it had and continues to have the right to occupy Iraqi indefinitely. The countless examples of abuse committed by US troops against the Iraqi people must be compensated. Lessons must be learned, namely that the mentality that led the country to invade a nation that didn’t threaten it in any way has been counter-productive, weakened Israel, emboldened Iran and allowed China and India to continue to challenge Washington’s dominance of the globe, not a bad thing, in my opinion.

My following book review appeared in the Melbourne Age on April 19:

Scott Burchill, Senior Lecturer in International Relations in the School of International & Political Studies at Deakin University, comments on a Murdoch mouthpiece:

Quote of the week goes to Liberal Party lunchalot and honorary Republican Party ambassador, Greg Sheridan.

According to the Foreign Editor of The Australian, “Rudd will be a tremendous disappointment to the ideological Left in Australia“.

As is so often the case, Sheridan couldn’t be more wrong. No sane observer of Kevin Rudd from either end of the ideological spectrum expected Rudd to be anything other than a craven and uncritical supporter of Washington’s reckless foreign adventures.  Rudd was always going to be as pro-American as Howard, and anyone who claims otherwise is being disingenuous. Anyone who says there are people who believed anything other than this is simply nuts.

Rudd is the same on Israel. Same on China. Same on Indonesia. Same on everything that counts (Kyoto doesn’t). Why else would he give Bush an open-ended commitment to Afghanistan as a quid pro quo for a partial withdrawal from Iraq, when the war is hopelessly lost, has no coherent strategic objectives and only imperils Australia’s strategic position? Bipartisanship was never in doubt.