Antony Loewenstein

Via the Guardian:

The owner of a Jewish newspaper in Atlanta has said he deeply regrets writing a column suggesting that Israel consider “a hit” on Barack Obama if he stands in the way of the Jewish state defending itself.

Andrew Adler told the Guardian he wrote the column in the weeklyAtlanta Jewish Times ”to get a reaction” from the paper’s readers.

“The headline for the column was: ‘What would you do?’ That’s what I wanted to see,” he said. “It’s got like a Dr Phil reaction: what were you thinking? I feel really bad it did that.”

The column, first brought to light by Gawker, asks readers to imagine that they are the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, confronting the threat posed by Hezbollah and Iran’s nuclear programme while also under pressure from a US president with an “Alice in Wonderland” belief in diplomacy over force.

Adler lays out what he says are the three options available to Netanyahu: attack Hezbollah and Hamas; defy the US – which is willing to let “Israel take a lethal bullet” – by striking against Iran’s nuclear facilities; or a third option.

“Three, give the go-ahead for US-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice-president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States‘ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies,” Adler wrote in a column that appeared in print by not online.

“Yes, you read “three” correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?”

Adler went on to ask: “How far would you go to save a nation comprised of 7 million lives – Jews, Christians and Arabs alike? You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.”

Adler said he understood why readers might interpret his writing as suggesting that Israel is seriously considering assassinating the US president but that is not what he meant.

“No, no, no. It’s unfathomable, unthinkable,” he said, adding: “I’m definitely pro-Israel to the max.”

OccupaZION إحـتلال صهيـون ©Jerusalem First Films from Enas I. aL-Muthaffar on Vimeo.

Following the ongoing pressure by the Australian Zionist establishment to censor The Promise, a wonderful letter appeared in yesterday’s Age which was spot-on:

A leading Jewish body, in an effort to suppress DVD sales of the SBS series The Promise, has likened the program to Nazi propaganda. This shameful attempt at censorship is bad enough without the use of such loaded language. If the Executive Council of Australian Jewry thinks the show is unbalanced, fine; if they think it is bad television, say so; but to label it Nazi propaganda diminishes the credibility of the council and the dignity of Jews everywhere. I have no doubt that the council would have had no trouble at all with the program if the “consistently negative portrayals” were of Palestinians or British characters or if the “historical inaccuracies” fell in their favour. You may call the program propaganda; I call your public-relations efforts hypocrisy.

Jeremy Kenner, Mordialloc

Think about this for a moment. The average Australian citizen barely hears about the Zionist lobby except when it’s whinging about supposed anti-Semitism and suggesting an acclaimed British TV compares Jews to Nazis. The hyperbole of these Jews would be laughable if it didn’t seriously frame all us Jews as victims. And Israel, of course, is the eternal angel, bravely fighting for its existence by occupying Palestinians and using white phosphorous on civilians in Gaza. The Sydney Morning Herald today:

A leading Jewish body is seeking to halt promotion and DVD sales of SBS series The Promise, a drama set in Israel and the occupied territories that it likened to Nazi propaganda.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry said the British-made drama, inspired by accounts of British soldiers who served in Palestine during the 1940s, was anti-Semitic and in direct violation of the SBS code covering prejudice, racism and discrimination.

The four-part series, which screened late last year, depicts a young British woman retracing the footsteps of her grandfather, a soldier in the final years of the British Mandate in Palestine.

In its 31-page complaint to the SBS ombudsman, the council said historical inaccuracies and ”consistently negative portrayals” of the central Jewish characters made the series comparable to the 1940 Nazi film Jud Suss.

It contended that identifiably Muslim characters would not be similarly portrayed by SBS.

In a letter to the broadcaster, the council’s executive director, Peter Wertheim, said the complaint also related to any marketing or sale of the DVD, which would be ”inappropriate” while the determination was pending.

The TV drama prompted a similar reaction following its screening in Britain last year. The UK’s Office of Communications received 44 complaints about the series, none of which were upheld.

In an online question-and-answer session after the final episode aired in Britain, its Jewish writer-director, Peter Kosminsky, said 80 British veterans had been interviewed during research for The Promise.

”If criticism of Israel becomes entirely synonymous with anti-Semitism, it becomes almost impossible to attempt any kind of reasoned analysis of what is clearly one of the saddest and most intractable conflicts facing the human race today,” he said.

The General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, which represents the Palestinian Authority, said the council’s complaint was ”an attempt to silence legitimate historical investigation, recollection and representation”.

An SBS spokeswoman said the broadcaster had received a high level of positive and negative viewer feedback on the series. She said that as the complaint was expected to be resolved before the February 8 DVD release, ”it is unnecessary to provide any undertaking regarding the DVD release”. ”SBS will assess its position in relation to the sale of DVDs once the complaint has been resolved,” she said.

Many letters have been written to SBS showing support for its decision to screen The Promise. Here are two selections (here and here).

American blogger Richard Silverstein features a revealing figure from a leading Israeli newspaper:

Yisrael HaYom published today one of the more stark and telling statistics about the ‘success’ of the Occupation: in 2011, 722,000 Israelis lived beyond the Green Line, including in settlements and East Jerusalem.  This was a 5% increase over 2010.  That means that 1 in every seven Israelis lives outside of 1967 borders and explains why the country is rapidly becoming a unitary state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.  Bibiton and the settlers themselves are overjoyed with this development because it means they can continue pursuing their Apartheid Jews-only State.

In that case, it becomes critical to begin thinking, indeed demanding that if Israel refuses to end the Occupation and cede almost all territory outside the 1967 borders to a Palestinian state, then it must accord all individuals living in “greater” Israel full citizenship and rights.  We must stop talking about this as a possibility or eventuality, but as a reality.  Israel must be given a stark choice.  Either it’s one state from river to sea in the old Jabotinskyean anthem or the Occupation must end now.

The Magnes Zionist:

Yesterday, the State of Israel became the first western state whose High Court ruled that some citizens have fewer fundamental rights than other citizens based on their ethnicity. Actually, it had done so before, but yesterday it rejected  the most sustained challenge to the “Citizenship Law,” which bars the non-Israeli spouses of Israeli Palestinians from becoming citizens. So while an Israeli Jew from Brooklyn has the right of marrying anybody she likes, and having her spouse naturalized, a native Palestinian Israeli citizen cannot marry  a distant relative who lives in a town five minutes from her house – unless that relative was a Palestinian collaborator, working for the Israelis, and then, only by special approval of the Minister of Interior.

Ben White, Al-Jazeera:

The Israeli government has repeatedly demanded that Palestinians recognise Israel as a “Jewish state”. Recent developments in the Knesset and High Court are exposing exactly what this means, and in doing so, throw the spotlight on the issue that the ‘peace process’ – and Western governments – refuse to tackle.

On Wednesday, Israel’s High Court rejected a legal challenge to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, by a six to five vote. The law, first passed as a ‘temporary’ measure in 2003 and renewed ever since, prevents Palestinians from the Occupied Territories (and those from ‘enemy states’) from living with their spouses in Israel.

For thousands of Palestinian families, Israel’s law means a choice between moving abroad, living apart, or living in Israel illegally. No wonder that the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) condemned what it described as a “racist law” for the way it harms “the very texture of the lives of families whose only sin is the Palestinian blood that runs in their veins”.

Legal rights centre Adalah, who have been deeply involved with challenges to the law, said that the High Court had “approved a law the likes of which do not exist in any democratic state in the world, depriving citizens from maintaining a family life in Israel only on the basis of the ethnicity or national belonging of their spouse”.

As around 50% of Israelis allegedly support the right of Orthodox Jews to segregate bus lines – what is this, rural Iran? – but a number of women are fighting back against growing intolerance inside the Zionist state. If only there was the same kind of passion directed towards the Palestinians who suffer under Israeli occupation every day:

On Friday, Jan 6th, 2012, a group of 250 women from Bet Shemesh decided to raise their voices against the exclusion of women from the public domain by holding a mass public dance in the city square. The women, residents of the city from all ages and sectors, religious, traditional and secular, gathered together in a flashmob dance, in the city square and started dancing towards a change.

The rise and rise of Jewish extremists in Israel – funded, backed, endorsed and often armed by the Zionist state – brings the issue of a Jewish Hizbollah upon us. Mark Perry writes in Foreign Policy:

“I don’t want to exaggerate, but it’s time to call this what it is,” a veteran IDF officer noted in a recent telephone conversation on the Nablus incident. “It might be news in America, but it’s no secret in Israel. This is a very real crisis. What we have here is the birth of a state within a state. The birth of a kind of Jewish Hezbollah.” This former officer went on to speculate that “what is emerging in the West Bank” is “a three-state solution: Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and, standing between them, a radical settler state.” Yehuda Shaul, an organizer of Breaking The Silence — a group of IDF soldiers committed to publicizing the reality of being an Israeli soldier in the West Bank — is unwilling to go that far, though he confirms that the series of escalations between settlers and the IDF has roiled the Israeli military. “The IDF is in the West Bank to control tens of thousands of Palestinians,” he notes, “but they’re having the most trouble controlling the settlers. It’s quite an irony.”

Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer tells Al-Jazeera that a genocidal-minded, minority groups of Jews have the potential to cause havoc:

A Sydney-based friend wrote the following letter to members of the Labor Party in early November 2011:

Dear Member

I wake this morning to hear once more, with dismay, of the craven obeisance of the Australian Labor government to the wishes of the United States in voting against the recognition of Palestine at UNESCO.  At least a vast majority of other member nations were not so pathetic and self-interested, and voted to recognise and hopefully speed an end to one of the most heinous human rights abuses currently being perpetrated on the planet.

I spent 10 days in the West Bank earlier this year, and as one of (very) few Australians who has thus witnessed first hand the nature of the oppression and discrimination being inflicted on the Palestinian people, I find it incumbent to inform as many people as possible of the actual situation in the Occupied Territories.  Naturally this includes informing Australian voters of the disgraceful track record of the Australian Labor Party in backing every policy and opinion of the Israeli government.

The ALP is in sufficient trouble without further alienating what is a core constituency, those informed and decent people who regard human rights as pre-eminent in the conduct of its foreign policy.  Especially those ALP members currently sitting in marginal inner city electorates in Australia should be aware that such policy decisions as that enacted overnight at the UN force all thinking Australian voters to direct their attention to the only party with a principled policy position on Palestine, the Greens, whatever misgivings we may have about other aspects of their policy-making.

I have recently given a presentation to group of interested Australians about my trip to the West Bank.  I would be very happy to give a similar presentation to ALP members and anyone else who is interested in what is really happening in Israel.  It might offer some balance to the views proffered to those ALP members who are so quick to accept Israeli-government sponsored junkets to the Middle East.

Regardless, I hope some realistic understanding of the oppressive policies of the Israeli government might inform future ALP decision making, and that voters interested in human rights will be able to look to the ALP once more as a party who can be trusted to defend the rights of suffering people around the world.

With the release of Gilad Shalit (and his subsequent call for peace and reconciliation) the ALP could begin with one small step and push Israel to lift its illegal blockade of Gaza.

A few days ago The Hon. Tanya Plibersek MP, Federal Member for Sydney and Federal Health Minister, responded and her comments show just how utterly compliant Canberra is with Washington on Middle East policy. We aren’t independent. We don’t think for ourselves. We parrot talking points given to us by DC. We don’t truly care for Palestinians and their freedom. And for that reason, Australia, along with America, will never bring peace to Palestine and they should both be shunned as honest peace-brokers:

Dear ****,

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding Palestinian statehood.

Australia strongly supports a negotiated two-state solution that allows a secure Israel to live side-by-side with a secure and independent future Palestinian state.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Kevin Rudd MP, underlined to both sides Australia’s strong support for a negotiated two-state solution during his visits to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in December 2010 and March and April 2011, and urged parties to return to negotiations.

I have raised this issue with the Foreign Minister who assures me that Australia’s decision to vote against the Palestinian resolution reflected Australia’s strong concern that consideration of Palestinian membership in UNESCO was premature.

The matter of Palestinian membership of the United Nations (UN) had only recently been placed before the UN Security Council (UNSC). 

Australia believed we should allow the process of UNSC consideration of Palestinian membership of the UN to run its course, rather than pre-empt it by seeking to address this question in different UN forums.

The Foreign Minister assures me that if a Palestinian resolution is introduced to the UN General Assembly the Australian Government will consider it carefully before deciding how to vote.

The Australian Government strongly supports the aspirations of the Palestinian people for their own state and is providing practical support for Palestinian institution-building in support of a future state.

On 18 September 2011 in New York Mr Rudd signed with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad a five-year, $120 million development partnership with the Palestinian Authority. 

This partnership includes regular budget support delivered through the World Bank. It is part of more than $300 million in development and humanitarian assistance Australia will provide to the Palestinian people over the next five years.

This increase is expected to place Australia in the top ten donors to the Palestinian Territories next year.

Australia has also launched a scholarship program focusing on disciplines critical to institution building including law and public sector management. Under this program Australia will provide up to 50 post-graduate scholarships to public officials and legal academics. The first scholars under the program will commence study next year.

Australia is also the 10th largest donor to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – the main provider of social services to the 4.7 million Palestinian refugees.

Thank you for taking the time to write to me and letting me know your views on this important issue. Regarding federal issues in the future, it would be best for you to contact your Federal Member of Parliament, the Hon. Anthony Albanese MP and Member for Grayndler, as Kingston Rd Camperdown is outside the electorate of Sydney. 

Best wishes,

Tanya