Australia has a federal election on 7 September. We’re looking at a change of government to Liberal leader Tony Abbott; a period of neo-conservatism awaits us. I agree with Wikileaks head Julian Assange who argues that one of the key issues is liberating ourselves from genuflecting towards Washington on every issue. Israel/Palestine has barely featured…
Showing all posts tagged Palestine
Weekly reminder to assist my documentary on disaster capitalism
A week after launching my Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 for my documentary with New York colleague Thor Neureiter, on the subject of disaster capitalism and Profits of Doom, we’re close to 30% of our target with many more pledges still to come, I’m told. Thanks for all your support thus far. But we have…
Direct call for whistle-blowers to reveal what state shamefully denies
My following article appears in today’s Guardian: Revelations of British government intrusion of legitimate media reporting of… American-led, global surveillance… is a call to arms for journalists everywhere. Australian attorney general Mark Dreyfus recently claimed that Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden… weren’t whistle-blowers… because they were “politically motivated”, and neither man exposed government wrong-doing (in fact, both did in…
Centre for Public Christianity discusses For God’s Sake
The new book… For God’s Sake… is a discussion between an Atheist, a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim about the big questions of life. CPX invited Jane Caro, Antony Loewenstein and Simon Smart to discuss their reasons for writing the book and to debate some of the questions that are raised in it.
Zionist rabbi tackles “For God’s Sake” (and gets confused)
My recent book For God’s Sake is reviewed by Rabbi John Levi, ironically the former rabbi at my family synagogue in Melbourne where I grew up. Suffice to say, we have no contact today, and haven’t for years, and he’s one of the classic Zionist Jews who places tribal loyalty above commitment to human rights…
“The Act of Killing” documentary challenges history, reality, genocide
How we remember history and the violence within it is one of the great challenges of our age. From the Holocaust to Cambodia and Rwanda to Palestine, we are all haunted by holding power to account. Last night I watched one of the most remarkable documentaries I’ve ever seen, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing:…
Israel’s less than silent cleansing of Bedouins
Forget all the media babble about a “peace process” in the Middle East. It’s a distraction from the main game. US journalist Ben Ehrenreich, writer of the wonderful recent New York Times magazine cover story on non-violent Palestinian resistance in the West Bank, reports for the Los Angeles Review of Books: It would be a…
Australia’s behaviour towards Papua New Guinea akin to vulture capitalism
My following article appears today in the Guardian: The Australian government’s decision to… send all refugee boat arrivals… to Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a… political earthquake. It has nothing to do with alleviating the suffering of asylum seekers – if Canberra cared about it, a regional solution would allow processing of claims in Indonesia – and will…
Imagining a different Israel, one less abuse at a time
A stunning piece by Gideon Levy in Haaretz that imagines a Jewish state that completely challenges its history and institutional racism: In my dream I see Benjamin Netanyahu giving the speech of his life, which is the speech of our lives: thanking Secretary of State John Kerry for his efforts and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas…
What is the EU now saying about illegal Zionist colonies
It’s a small step, far too little, but a significant symbolic move. Noam Sheizaf explains in +972 magazine: The European Union’s new guidelines regarding the settlements were… the talk of the day in Israel yesterday… (Tuesday), and they are still the leading story in all the morning papers. The feeling is that for the first time, an…