Talking BDS post flotilla massacre

My following interview with Green Left Weekly appears today: Sydney-based journalist and author Antony Loewenstein is an outspoken critic of Israeli policies and author of the best-selling 2006 book My Israel Question. He is the co-founder of advocacy group Independent Australian Jewish Voices and is a board member of Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle East…

Australia’s Zionist lobby demands government loyalty

So the New York Times features a story this week headlined, “Washington Asks: What to Do About Israel?” Its opening sentence: Some topics are so inflammatory that they are never discussed without first inserting a number of caveats. Of course in Australia any serious discussion about Israeli policy or Australia’s relationship with the Jewish state…

“I did not speak out because…”

Yossi Sarid in Haaretz on a Jewish state that has left liberal Zionism behind (arguably a long time ago but some are starting to wake up): In the beginning, he was a gazelle whose neck the hunters were seeking. With time, he tried to become a seagull in the hope that if he was in…

Erdogan sailing soon to Gaza?

Imagine that: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is weighing the possibility of traveling to the Gaza Strip in order to “break the Israeli blockade,” the Lebanese newspaper al-Mustaqbal reported on Saturday, according to Army Radio. Erdogan reportedly raised the idea in conversations with close associates and even informed the United States of his intention…

Moving from watching Fox News to understanding Palestine

During my experience with the Gaza Freedom March in late 2009 in Cairo, I spent time with a remarkable American woman and mother, Debbie Mardon. She once was a right wing, Fox News watcher but is now a fiercely passionate activist for Palestine. Her transformation was documented in New York’s Indypendent newspaper last week and…

Israel needs a mass movement of sanity (which is sadly lacking)

The peace movement, anti-occupation, anti-Gaza siege and rational Israelis do exist and they made their voices heard this weekend. If only more of them existed: Thousands of demonstrators from across the left-wing of Israeli politics held a rally in Tel Aviv Saturday afternoon to protest 43 years of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and…

Rachel Corrie is illegally boarded

Looks like Israel’s trigger-finger was on holiday this Sabbath: Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Saturday boarded the Gaza-bound aid ship “Rachel Corrie,” and directed it toward the the Israeli port city of Ashdod. The move came after warnings that Israel would not allow the vessel to reach Gaza, which is under blockade by Israel, and…

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