Cultural boycott gathers steam

Another day, another brave move to isolate Israel in the only language it understands: Author Iain Banks called for a cultural and educational boycott on Israel Thursday following its deadly raid on a flotilla of ships carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. The author, well known for his science fiction novels and other works,…

” Everyone thinks the same thing”

How many Israeli “leftists” and usually apathetic Israelis joined patriotic fervour over the last week to defend their country and praise the actions of the IDF: “I’m not anti-Palestinian,” said Chen Ben Dori. “I want peace. I want a country for the Palestinians. I know the blockade is the last resort and not the best…

The desperate need to recognise failure in the Middle East

The following letters appear in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: Peter Wertheim (Letters, June 4) is right to say the Geneva Conventions are ”an expression of customary international law and are universally applicable”. The whole civilised world agrees, except the Israeli Supreme Court, which said they did not apply to the occupied Palestinians because without a…

Never trust the IDF. Ever

What’s a little lying by the Israelis to bolster their case that the murdered activists (and all on-board) were Jew haters? Free Gaza explains: The IDF admitted today in a press release that it doctored audio footage from its exchanges with the Gaza flotilla in order to paint the flotilla passengers as anti-Semites. However, their…

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…

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