Antony Loewenstein

Welcome to “democratic” Israel. +972 magazine reports:

Reports started flowing in at around 22:30 p.m. through text messages and phone calls. Some 15 activists from Zochrot (“Remembering”), an Israeli NGO dedicated to preserving the memory the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) among the Hebrew-speaking public, had gathered in the group’s offices on Ibn Gabirol Street in central Tel Aviv. They were planning a quiet symbolic action entailing placing placards with the names of villages demolished in the 1948 war on the ground in Rabin Square, the epicenter of Independence Day festivities. Actions very much like it have been carried out by the group every year on the same day for at least seven years.

However, this time the activists were surprised to see riot police forces building up a barricade around the building while they were inside. When they tried to leave for their quiet ceremony, activists were told by high ranking officers on the site that they are forbidden to do so, and that anyone trying to skip over the fences would be immediately arrested. “They said their goal was to prevent us from disturbing the peace,” says Liat Rosenberg, Zochrot director. “We were held captive for about four hours, and were told we could only leave if each and every one of us shows an ID, turns in all [protest-related] materials, and goes through an interrogation and a physical search. Attorney Gabi Lasky told police that they are unlawfully imprisoning the activists, but they refused to stand down.”

After last week’s interview with the Hizbollah leader, Julian Assange returns to his series The World Tomorrow with philosopher Slavoj Zizek and hardliner conservative David Horowitz. It’s all rather chaotic but fascinating nonetheless:

Short but powerful piece by Paul Krugman on his New York Times blog:

Something I’ve been meaning to do — and still don’t have the time to do properly — is say something about Peter Beinart’s brave book The Crisis of Zionism.

The truth is that like many liberal American Jews — and most American Jews are still liberal — I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide — and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world. But I have other battles to fight, and to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism.

But it’s only right to say something on behalf of Beinart, who has predictably run into that buzzsaw. As I said, a brave man, and he deserves better.

The role of mainstream media in the West to shield the public from the realities of Israeli occupation is legendary. Occasionally there is a breakthrough, such as this 2010 piece on American 60 Minutes on East Jerusalem.

Yesterday the same program and the same reporter, Bob Simon, returned to the subject and covered Christians leaving the Holy Land. Israeli occupation is primarily to blame.  Importantly, notes MJ Rosenberg, Israel’s Ambassador to Israel, Michael Oren, tried to censor the program, a typical Zionist tactic. But the program called him on it:

Now this is interesting. Forward is granted an “unprecedented” five hour interview with Mousa Abu Marzook, Hamas’s second-highest-ranking official. Here’s one explanation from an Israeli journalist:

What [Abu Marzook] really wants is for Jewish Americans to convince the Israelis that Hamas is not like an animal.

Perhaps, but the content is revealing. This is not, despite the mountains of Western and Zionist propaganda over the years, an irrational terrorist organisation. There are goals, whether we agree with them or not, and legitimate resistance to Israeli occupation. Some highlights:

“Let’s establish a relationship between the two states in the historic Palestinian land as a hudna between both sides,” he said. “It’s better than war and better than the continuous resistance against the occupation. And better than Israel occupying the West Bank and Gaza, making all these difficulties and problems on both sides.”

Pressed regarding concerns that Hamas’s goal during a hudna would remain the destruction of Israel as a state, and that a truce would give Hamas time to build up its arms toward that end, Abu Marzook said: “It’s very difficult to say after 10 years what will be on both sides. Maybe my answer right now [about recognizing Israel] is completely different to my answer after 10 years.”

But asked if, offered guarantees for his physical security, he would be prepared to go to Jerusalem to negotiate with Israel for exactly the kind of hudna he seeks, Abu Marzook replied bluntly, “No.”

Hamas has rejected negotiating with Israel directly. Abu Marzook said that under a previous understanding with Fatah, the faction controlling the P.A. in the West Bank, Hamas allows the P.A. to negotiate with Israel, despite its objections to the process. But Abu Marzook repeated his organization’s demand that any result must be approved in a referendum that includes all Palestinian refugees, not just those in the West Bank and Gaza. “All of the Palestinians should vote about this,” he said.

Interesting and disturbing sign that racism against Arabs is a normal affair in Israel:

My friend and I posed as ignorant tourists in the Old City of Jerusalem and asked an ex-IDF soldier some questions about the current situation in Israel/Palestine. Just to emphasise we are not ignorant on the conflict nor do we indorse the ex-soldier’s views. This video is attempt to show how this Israeli is indoctrinated into believing racist fallacies and how the de-humanistation of the Palestinians is the real obstacle to peace:

Ilan Pappe writes in the Electronic Intifada about irrational hysteria that envelops today’s Israel:

Being part visitor and part inmate in the ward [Israel] I found solace in three books, each one of which tells us how best to keep our wits even when the most armed and aggressive state in the region has replaced diplomacy and national strategy with hysterical brinkmanship that could easily transform into real war and greater bloodshed.

The first is an old classic, George Orwell’s 1984. In despotic Oceania, the leadership, the Inner Party, depends on a constant war with the other two global powers. The leaders manufacture hysteria to keep it going, but begin to believe in it themselves:

“It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink.”

The second book is Miko Peled’s The General’s Son. Peled’s research in the Israeli military archives exposed how the generals of Israel on the eve of the June 1967 war manufactured mass hysteria in Israel and spun a tale of an imminent second Holocaust — as did David Ben-Gurion in 1948 — knowing very well, in both historical instances, they were facing a weak, disarrayed opponent more willing to compromise than to fight.

The third is Jay Feldman’s Manufacturing Hysteria, a compact history of how the leadership in the US manufactures collective hysteria whenever faced with real or imagined crises that had the potential to cost them their seat of power. Going to unnecessary wars, scapegoating minorities in the United States, oppressing other peoples around the world and the poor at home, are only some of the unavoidable outcomes of such hysteria (I dedicate this brief reading list to Wall Street Occupiers whose library was brutally destroyed and to whom I promised to recommend a reading list for a new future library, which I never managed to do).

Unlike in the Jack Nicholson movie, the hysteria is not kept within the ward, and it is not the inmates who are the problem but those who run the prison-hospital and want to intern even more people in their zone of hysteria, control and violence.

The current trial in Norway of far-right murderer Anders Breivik is a disturbing reminder of his horrific crimes last year.

I was involved in an e-book in 2011, On Utoya, that aimed to deconstruct the event and place it into context of the growing connection between hardline, Zionist supporters and the European racist Right.

This latest news, via Richard Silverstein’s blog, merely adds yet more evidence to the idea that hating Muslims and loving Israel, for many in the mainstream Jewish community, are perfectly acceptable:

Stephen Sizer reports that the UK national Jewish community’s Jewish Chronicle has offered a regular column to Carlos Cortiglia, a leader of the British National Party, the nation’s leading white supremacist political party.  Cortiglia is the BNP candidate in the London mayoral race.

I asked Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley to put BNP’s politics in a U.S. context, and whether it could be compared to the Tea Party.  He replied that BNP carries more political weight, but its politics are more extreme:

“Although they have moved towards a focus on Islamophobia and the counterjihad movement in recent years, their background is in the more traditional European neo-Nazi context and the National Front…

“They used to be solidly anti-Semitic and it’s said [their national leader, Nick] Griffin used to deny the Holocaust. In recent years and especially since 9/11, they’ve decided they hate Muslims more than Jews or blacks so have put the focus on agitating against Muslims…

“As part of their appeal to unite against Islam, they’ve made more recent attempts to distance themselves from anti-Semitism (although it can’t be far underneath the surface). Interestingly they are also now very pro-Israel.”

This seems part of the growing convergence of the European far-right and pro-Israel ultranationalists.  A perfect representative of this is of course Anders Breivik, who’s just gone on trial for murdering 77 young Norwegians.  I’ve also written here about a group of Russian neo-Nazis who were welcomed to the Knesset by two far-right Jewish MKs. The operative concept here seems to be that the enemy of my Muslim enemy is my friend, even if he’s a Nazi.

But white supremacists?  Is this how low the mainstream UK Jewish leadership are prepared to go?  To make common cause with those who only a decade or so ago admired Adolf Hitler and denied the Holocaust?

On a somewhat related subject, Electronic Intifada reports that the faux progressive UK Jewish rights group, Engage, surreptitiously accepted funding from the UK Jewish Board of Deputies in order to mount an anti-BDS campaign.  All the while Engage touted itself as an independent Jewish progressive voice when it was a paid shill of the monied pro-Israel interests of the UK Jewish leadership.  When you’ve been doing this as long as I have you develop a sense of smell about groups like this.  They make a pretence of believing one thing and do something entirely different.  Engage is one, as is StandWithUs.

The role of private security companies operating globally is a massive problem that is rarely addressed in the media. I investigated the role of G4S in Pakistan recently. The BDS movement in Palestine is also going after the same firm for very good reasons:

Today, on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, we the undersigned Palestinian civil society and human rights organisations salute all Palestinian political prisoners, especially those engaging in brave civil disobedience through ongoing hunger strikes in protest to the ongoing violations of human rights and international law. Emphasizing imprisonment as a critical component of Israel’s system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid practiced against the Palestinian people, we call for intensifying the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to target corporations profiting directly from the Israeli prison system. In particular, we call for action to be taken to hold to account G4S, the world’s largest international security corporation, which helps to maintain and profit from Israel’s prison system [1], for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law.

Imprisonment of Palestinians is a form of Israeli institutionalized violence encompassing all stages of the incarceration process. Palestinian political prisoners face systematic torture and ill-treatment during their arrest and detention at the hands of the Israeli military and are frequently and unjustifiably denied family and lawyer visits. Wide-ranging and collective punishments, including prolonged periods of isolation, attacks on prisoners by special military forces and denying access to education are used against Palestinian prisoners in an attempt to suppress any form of civil disobedience within the prisons. As of April 2012, there were 4,610 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons, including 203 child prisoners, 6 female prisoners and 27 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. 322 Palestinians are currently held in administrative detention, without charge or trial.[2]

The severity of injustice and abuse suffered by Palestinian political prisoners has been the drive for many prisoners to begin hunger strikes at different intervals in protest against harsh prison conditions, torture and ill treatment and Israel’s arbitrary use of administrative detention. While the recent hunger strikes of Khader Adnan, who ended his hunger strike after 66 days, and Hana Shalabi, who ended her hunger strike after 43 days, resulted in individual agreements, Israel and the Israeli Prison Service’s policies therein remain unchanged and are now aimed at containing the hungers strikers through punitive measures as well as cutting off their contact with lawyers and family. Today, an estimate of over 1,000 Palestinian political prisoners are reported to have joined in an open hunger strike in addition to at least 8 others already engaged in an open hunger strike, including Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh, on hunger strike since 29 February 2012.

In light of this increasing campaign of civil disobedience from within the prisons, we demand accountability for all corporations that both enable and directly profit from Israel’s continued violations of Palestinian prisoners’ rights being committed with impunity. Specifically, we call for action to hold to account G4S, the British-Danish security company whose Israeli subsidiary signed a contract in 2007 with the Israeli Prison Authority to provide security systems for major Israeli prisons.[3] G4S provided systems for the Ketziot and Megiddo prisons, which hold Palestinian political prisoners from occupied Palestinian territory inside Israel in contravention of international law.[4] The company also provided equipment for Ofer prison, located in the occupied West Bank, and for Kishon and Moskobiyyeh detention facilities, at which human rights organisations have documented systematic torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners, including child prisoners.[5] G4S continues to provide equipment to Israeli prisons.[6]

Moreover, G4S is involved in other aspects of the Israeli apartheid and occupation regime: it has provided equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank that form part of the route of Israel’s illegal Wall and to the terminals isolating the occupied territory of Gaza. G4S has also signed contracts for equipment and services for the West Bank Israeli Police headquarters and to private businesses based in illegal Israeli settlements.[7] A panel of legal experts concluded that G4S may be criminally liable for its activities in support of Israel’s illegal Wall and other violations of international law.[8]

We welcome the news that the European Union has announced that it has not renewed its contract for security services with G4S [9] following pressure from groups campaigning for Palestinian rights, and salute the previous decision of the Edinburgh University Student Association to block its contract with G4S.[10] We call upon other public and civil society institutions and also on private companies to follow suit and end their relationships with this company that acts in service of Israeli apartheid and other violations of international law. We demand that the Palestinian leadership bans G4S from private and public tenders, and ask for the strict application of the boycott legislation in the Arab world against companies cooperating with the Israeli prison system.

A brave first call. Julian Assange speaks to Hassan Nasrallah and doesn’t take the position, as so much of the corporate media, that he’s one of the world’s greatest terrorists (which he clearly is not). They discuss Syria, Assad, Israel, Palestine, religion, God, technology, Wikileaks and the US. Assange could be more forceful with his questioning but it’s an encouraging start. And frankly, Nasrallah hasn’t done a Western interview for years so it’s a real coup:

Israel has a rather massive image problem that won’t be solved by more money on PR. This Haaretz editorial says such violence isn’t an aberration, it’s part of the occupying system:

From time to time the news media or human rights groups film an Israeli in uniform using excessive force against human rights or peace activists protesting the wrongs of the occupation.

This week it was the turn of IDF Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner, deputy commander of the Jordan Valley Brigade, to be caught by the camera, in this case striking a helpless Danish national in the face with an M-16 rifle. Following the event’s widespread coverage, the officer was widely criticized by the public – not for using excessive force, but for granting human rights groups a photo op serving their interests. He also ruined the celebrations over the successful operation that prevented human rights activists from entering Israel and the territories via Ben Gurion International Airport (and grounded several people who had nothing to do with the fly-in ).

In an effort to minimize the damage to Israel’s image, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz swiftly suspended Eisner while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hastened to denounce the offending officer’s misdeed.

Such reactions are necessary, but certainly not sufficient. Use of violence against peace activists is not an image problem that can be swept aside with a suspension and denunciation. A political and military leadership that incites the public against peace and human rights activists bears responsibility for the conduct of hot-tempered officers like Eisner.

When the prime minister and foreign minister label left-wingers “anarchists,” “provocateurs” and even “terror supporters,” they are sanctioning attacks on civilians implementing the right to protest.

Instead of using, even by implication, the Damascus regime’s conduct toward its opposition as a yardstick for the expected behavior of the Israel Defense Forces, the prime minister should memorize the verdict Jerusalem Magistrate Judge Haim Li-Ran handed down in a recent hearing over the request to arrest Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity activists in Jerusalem.

“The right to demonstrate or express an opinion is deeply rooted in the foundations of democratic government. … Thousands of human beings have paid and are paying with their lives on its altar,” the judge said.

His words are doubly true when it comes to the right to demonstrate against the wrongs of occupation and to get home in one piece.

I was interviewed this morning by Radio Adelaide on the issue below and modern Zionist politics:

The April/May period marks a very important time in the Jewish calendar – it is Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In Hebrew, Yom HaShoah directly translates to the ‘day of calamity, devastation or ruin’; and since 1953, it is a day that Israelis and in fact Jewish people from all around the world commemorate the 6 million people who tragically perished at the hands of the Nazis in the Second World War.

Tim Brunero spoke to journalist, author and blogger, Antony Loewenstein, to find out what this day means for the Jewish people.

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