A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• It’s like sharia is invading every American home
• “Gladly kill Arabs – even slaughter them”
• Australia does not have a refugee “issue”
• Rupert Murdoch gives Republicans 1 million bucks
• American liberals have problem with Israel (and it’s growing)
• American “freedom” means endless colonisation
• Iceland and Wikileaks see a happy future together
• Which Western hacks want free propaganda trips to Zionist central?
• Why Wikileaks shames most corporate media
• The wisdom of Jews utilising BDS

It’s like sharia is invading every American home 19 Aug 2010 America has a serious problem with Muslims: Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President — a slightly higher percentage than the 24% who mistakenly believe the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim.

“Gladly kill Arabs – even slaughter them” 19 Aug 2010 These “revelations” aren’t anything new for anybody who knows life in Israel; hatred of Arabs is endemic and growing: Eden Abergil, the former Israel Defense Forces soldier who has been criticized for publishing controversial images on Facebook, allegedly wrote on her Facebook page on Thursday that she would “gladly kill Arabs – even slaughter them.” “In war there are no rules,” Abergil allegedly wrote on the wall of her profile page on the social network Facebook. Photographs uploaded by Abergil from Ashdod and labeled “IDF – the best time of my life,” depicted her smiling next to Palestinian prisoners with their hands bound and their eyes covered. A comment attached to one of the photos of the soldier smiling in front of two blindfold men and posted by one of Abergil’s friends read “That looks really sexy for you,” with Abergil’s response reading: “I wonder if he is on Facebook too – I’ll have to tag him in the photo.” Since the photos were published by blogger Ido Keinan earlier this week, dozens of people have uploaded images on to their own Facebook pages depicting similar situations. Abergil responded on Facebook to an image in which a women was pasted instead of the Palestinian prisoners in the original images, saying that it was not funny and that she would not let anyone ruin her “perfect life.” “I can’t allow Arab lovers to ruin the perfect life I lead,” she allegedly wrote. “I am not sorry and I don’t regret it.” “I am in favor of a Jewish-Zionist State,” she added. “I defend what has been rightfully mine for ages,” she wrote. During an Army Radio interview on Tuesday, Abergil repeatedly said that it had never occurred to her that “the picture would be problematic,” asking interviewer Ilana Dayan whether the media asked for detainees permission when they film them. Referring to the possibility that the images could injure Israel’s image in the international arena, Abergil said: “We will always be attacked. Whatever we do, we will always be attacked.” On Monday, the IDF spokesman issued its response to the photographs, saying that “on the face of it the behavior exhibited by the soldier is base and crude.” The head of the Public Committee Against Torture, Ishai Menuchin, also commented, saying that “these terrible photographs reflect a norm in the way Palestinians are viewed, as an object and not as humans. It is an attitude that ignores their feelings as humans and their individual rights.”

Australia does not have a refugee “issue” 19 Aug 2010 Remember these figures the next time an Australian politician talks about the asylum seeker “problem”: Immigration authorities have deported 156 failed asylum-seekers in two years. That figure is just 2 per cent of the 7000 boatpeople who have arrived in the present wave of boats. The revelation came after The Australian reported yesterday that more than 90 per cent of unsuccessful Afghan refugee claims were being overturned on appeal.

Rupert Murdoch gives Republicans 1 million bucks 19 Aug 2010 But as Jon Stewart says: I really think if anything the Republicans should be paying Fox News millions and millions of dollars. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c News Corp. Gives Money to Republicans www.thedailyshow.com   Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

American liberals have problem with Israel (and it’s growing) 19 Aug 2010 New poll findings are bad news for Israel. Looks like killing peace activists and ongoing occupation are bad for the image. Who knew? Less than half of all Americans believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is committed to peace, according to a new survey commissioned by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. The findings of the poll also point to a sharp decline in support for Israel in the United States, Germany, France and Sweden, and showed that Israel’s standing in German public opinion is at its lowest since 2008, Greenberg said. The poll also found a steady drop in the proportion of Americans who think the United States needs to support Israel. In August 2009, 63 percent of American respondents answered in the affirmative. In June of this year, just 58 percent said the United States needs to back Israel. In July, the percentage dropped to 51. Greenberg said the decrease could be attributed to the weakening of Israel’s standing in the eyes of American liberals.

American “freedom” means endless colonisation 19 Aug 2010 The New York Sun wishes the US occupation of Iraq (and anywhere, really) could last forever: We don’t make any predictions about what the Congress is going to do now that President Obama has withdrawn the last combat brigade from a country where, during his campaign, he insisted we never should have fought a war. We simply offer a lesson from history. When the Congress talks about bringing our GIs home, our enemies are emboldened and trouble lies around the corner. The fact is that the cause of freedom is less secure when American GIs come home than when they venture abroad.

Iceland and Wikileaks see a happy future together  19 Aug 2010 There’s must be something in the water in Iceland. This is brave, important, likely to cause many states to scream loudly and bloody necessary in an age of After Iceland’s near-economic collapse laid bare deep-seated corruption, the country aims to become a safe haven for journalists and whistleblowers from around the globe by creating the world’s most far-reaching freedom of information legislation. The project, developed with the help of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, flies in the face of a growing tendency of governments trying to stifle a barrage of secret and embarrassing information made readily available by the Internet. On June 16, a unanimous parliament, or Althing, voted in favour of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI), a resolution aimed at protecting investigative journalists and their sources. “We took all the best laws from around the world and pulled them together, just like tax havens do, in order to create freedom of information and expression, a transparency haven,” Birgitta Jonsdottir, the member of parliament behind the initiative, told AFP. Describing herself as an “anarchist,” the 43-year-old said she had decided to get into politics to seize the opportunities to change the system in Iceland following its dramatic financial collapse at the end of 2008. Jonsdottir was shocked to witness the attempts at censorship in her country, which had long been held up as a model democracy. In the most resounding example, a court injunction in August 2009 forced Icelandic public broadcaster RUV to back down at the last minute from transmitting a report on one of the country’s three largest banks that all went belly-up less than a year earlier, pushing Iceland to the verge of bankruptcy. Instead of its report on the Kaupthing bank’s loanbook, RUV broadcast images from whistleblower site WikiLeaks, which had published the incriminating documents, in an attempt to draw attention to the limits being put on freedom of expression in Iceland. “Freedom of information and freedom of speech are the pillars of democracy. Now, if you don’t have that, you don’t really have a democracy,” said Jonsdottir, wearing ‘Free Tibet’ and ‘Wikileaks’ pins on her jacket. Blaming the threat of terrorism, “all countries are facing new sets of laws which are making it more difficult in particular for investigative journalists and book writers,” she lamented. The aspiring ‘island of transparency’ aims to strengthen source protection, encourage whistleblowers to leak information and help counter so-called “libel tourism,” which consists in dragging journalists before foreign courts in countries with laws that best suit the prosecution. The idea is to imitate and combine the existing most far-reaching laws in countries renowned for their freedom of expression, like the United States, Sweden and Belgium. “I don’t think that there is anything radical in (IMMI). The radicalism around it is to pull these laws together,” Jonsdottir said. “We have seen that really (such protections) are necessary,” said WikiLeaks founder Assange, whose name became legend after his site last month published nearly 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan. “That’s our experience in the developing world and in most developed countries: that the press is being routinely censored by abusive legal actions,” he said recently in a video posted on Youtube. Assange, who spends much of his time in Iceland and other countries where the legislation is more in his favour, created WikiLeaks’ first global scoop in Reykjavik earlier this year. Locked up for weeks at a time in a house in the Icelandic capital with the curtains constantly drawn, he and a handful of other WikiLeaks supporters managed to decrypt and post online a military video showing a US military Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad in 2007 that killed two Reuters employees and a number of other people. WikiLeaks along with a number of non-governmental organisations and international celebrities like European member of parliament Eva Joly have contributed to developing IMMI. Journalists in Iceland and abroad have applauded the initiative. “By offering tight protection to the sources, it will be a lot safer to report on abuses in the government or in the corporate community,” said Wikileaks insider and Icelandic freelance reporter Kristinn Hrafnsson. “When you know you can pass on information safely, you’re more prone to do it,” he told AFP. But the resolution will also have implications beyond Iceland’s borders. “In countries where they are oppressed such as China and Sri Lanka, journalists risk their lives,” Jonsdottir declared. “We can’t help them with that, but at least we can ensure that their stories won’t be removed” from the Internet, by posting them on servers located in Iceland where the censors cannot get at them, she said. According to Jonsdottir, it will take about a year and a half — the estimated time required to change at least 13 existing laws — before IMMI will go into effect.

Which Western hacks want free propaganda trips to Zionist central? 19 Aug 2010 Remember these details when prominent commentators are given plush trips to Israel, conveniently avoiding the real West Bank occupation and Gaza (and not having the tenacity to go there themselves): The Foreign Ministry plans to target leading social media figures as part of a new public relations campaign. The ministry will soon launch the NIS 60 to 70 million initiative, which constitutes a large chunk of a NIS 100 million publicity budget approved by the Finance Ministry this week. The Foreign Ministry had initially requested NIS 300 million for efforts to cultivate Israel as a “brand,” but the treasury ultimately approved NIS 100 million. The campaign will focus on hosting figures the ministry has identified as having significant influence on public opinion. The first step in that effort was seen in ministry involvement in coordinating Arianna Huffington’s visit to Israel. She is the co-founder of the prominent Huffington Post political blog. The ministry says it will work to cover the visits of many other opinion makers next year. The focus will be on people involved in lifestyle issues, culture and art, as well as leaders of specific population segments such as the gay community. The Foreign Ministry also plans to fund activities already underway online. For example the site “I am Israel,” which features video clips and articles about the average Israeli. The project, part of an effort to change the world conception of Israelis, was initiated by individual Israelis. While the ministry is not currently involved in this site, in the future it intends to fund such projects.

Why Wikileaks shames most corporate media 19 Aug 2010 John Pilger defends Wikileaks and rightly so: The WikiLeaks revelations shame the dominant section of journalism, devoted merely to taking down what cynical and malign power tells it. This is state stenography, not journalism. Look on the WikiLeaks site and read a Ministry of Defence document that describes the “threat” of real journalism. And so it should be a threat. Having skilfully published the WikiLeaks exposé of a fraudulent war, the Guardian should now give its most powerful and unreserved editorial support to the protection of Assange and his colleagues, whose truth-telling is as important as any in my lifetime. I like Julian Assange’s dust-dry wit. When I asked him if it was more difficult to publish information in Britain, with its draconian secrecy laws, he replied: “We haven’t found a problem. When we look at Official Secrets Act labelled documents, we see that they state it is an offence to retain the information and an offence to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome is to publish the information.”

The wisdom of Jews utilising BDS 19 Aug 2010 While increasing number of groups globally embrace the BDS agenda – a non-violent way to pressure Israel to abandon apartheid or pay a deep price – the Australian Zionist lobby is fearful: Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) President John Searle has strongly denounced The Australian Jewish Democratic Society’s (AJDS) recent decision that some boycotts of Israel may be justified…and clarifies the link between the organisations. Searle has firmly stated: “The AJDS seeks to legitimate its views by describing itself as a ‘community-affiliated Jewish organisation’.  However while the AJDS is an affiliate of the JCCV, this is a tribute to the latter’s inclusive nature rather than an acceptance of the AJDS’ views. Indeed this decision to support certain boycotts is totally out of step with the vast majority of Jewish and general opinion, both in Victoria and world-wide’, Searle stated. “Most responsible trade unions, governments, leading universities and the like reject BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] out of hand as counter-productive.  It is not only that boycotts are reminiscent of the 1930s when various Fascist movements undertook such action in order to demonise Jews.  There is also tremendous irony that organisations such as the AJDS supposedly support dialogue as a means of resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict, yet resort to such crude victimisation of Jewish Israeli organisations, institutions and individuals.  Most importantly of all, there is simply no evidence whatsoever that BDS activity actually has any effect in achieving peace.  On the contrary, it will only harden attitudes, particularly those of Hamas and Hezbollah and their Iranian puppet-masters, whose sole intention is the destruction of Israel and the establishment of another hardline Islamist State”. Searle continued, “If the AJDS were serious about justice, then why did it give a platform to pro-Palestinian activist Samah Sabawi at the meeting where this decision was made without allowing a countering point of view?  Sabawi defines Israel as an apartheid State and advocates the Right of Return which of course would mean no possibility of a two-State solution.  It is indicative of what the AJDS stands for when it gives such ideologues a voice and makes a mockery of the AJDS’ claims to be ‘Jewish’ and ‘Democratic’”. Searle concluded, “In accord with almost all Jewish institutions and organisations around the world, the JCCV is committed to a balanced solution that meets as best as possible the aspirations of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples.  This can only be achieved a by a genuine commitment to peace and dialogue and the recognition of the rights of all.  Finger-pointing and victimisation as advocated by the AJDS are designed to frustrate the Jewish People’s legitimate national aspirations and can only take us backwards.” The AJDS are stepping cautiously. It’s a welcome beginning.