A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• Poll: half of Israeli teens don’t want Arab students in their classroom
• Wasted dollars and lives in Iraq
• The nation that discriminates on the basis of religion
• Yes sir, no sir, of course you control and pay me, sir
• Just how many in government are in the pocket of Murdoch?
• Eyal Weizman in Sydney; decolonising architecture

Poll: half of Israeli teens don’t want Arab students in their classroom  06 Sep 2010 Hello, apartheid state: Sixty four percent of Israeli teens aged 15 to 18 say that Arab Israelis do not enjoy full equal rights in Israel, and from that group, 59 percent believe that they should not have full equal rights, according to a special survey prepared for the “Education in the Digital Age” conference held in Haifa on Monday. The survey also revealed that 96 percent of the respondents want Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state, but 27 percent believe that those who object should be tried in court, and 41 percent support stripping them of their citizenship. In answer to a question if they would be willing to learn in a classroom with one or more students with special needs, 32 percent answered in the negative. When the question was asked regarding Arab students, 50 percent of respondents answered in the negative. In addition, 23 percent said that they wouldn’t want gays or lesbians in their class. The survey was conducted by Professor Camil Fuchs from the Statistics Department of Tel Aviv University, in cooperation with the company Sample Project. The poll included about 500 people between the ages of 15 and 18. The conference has been sponsored by “Reshet Shocken,” in cooperation with Haifa City Council. The poll also revealed that 40 percent of Jewish youth have never been a part of a youth group, and 45 percent have never volunteered in any capacity. In regard to motivation to serve in the IDF, 83 percent said that they don’t doubt that they will serve, but about half said that they have friends that do not plan on enlisting. More than half of the survey’s respondents, 59 percent, said that they did not want to serve in combat units of the army. In response to a question of whether they would refuse to serve in the territories, 24 percent said they would refuse, 47 percent said that they would not refuse, and the remainder had not yet decided.

Wasted dollars and lives in Iraq  06 Sep 2010 The latest estimate by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes is that the Iraq war has cost US$3 trillion and beyond.

The nation that discriminates on the basis of religion  06 Sep 2010 What kind of state only allows a right of return for one religion and people and not another indigenous population?

Yes sir, no sir, of course you control and pay me, sir 06 Sep 2010 How to speak to your ruler and master:

Just how many in government are in the pocket of Murdoch? 06 Sep 2010 Thank God for the non-Murdoch press because without them we would never have known about the ongoing scandal at the News of the World. Ethics at News Limited? Somewhere in the offices of the Crown Prosecution Service, there is a file that will be of great interest to any independent inquiry that attempts to tell the truth about the behaviour of the Metropolitan police in the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World. The Guardian has read it. The police were dragged into the centre of the scandal last week when the New York Times quoted unnamed detectives claiming that Scotland Yard’s “close relationship” with the News of the World had hampered the inquiry. Essentially, the Met is charged on two counts: first, that it cut short its investigation; second, that it then failed to tell the truth to the press, public and parliament. The police insist that they are innocent on both counts. The unpublished CPS file shows the inquiry started well. In December 2005, Buckingham Palace complained that someone seemed to be listening to royal household voicemails. Five months later, detectives had tracked the activity to the News of the World’s royal reporter, Clive Goodman, and, beyond, to the paper’s contracted private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire. The detectives had analysed a mass of telephone data and, in a briefing paper dated 30 May 2006, they presented the results to prosecutors. They wrote: “A vast number of unique voicemail numbers belonging to high-profile individuals (politicians, celebrities) have been identified as being accessed without authority. These may be the subject of a wider investigation in due course. A number of the targets of this unauthorised access have been informed.” That day, there was a case conference between prosecutors and police, and a file note records an interesting suggestion: “The appropriate strategy is to ringfence the case to minimise the risk of extraneous matters being included.” The file makes it clear that this was a reference to suppressing the names of particularly “sensitive” hacking victims, and that it was the police who were suggesting this unusual tactic. We still do not know which victims were to be concealed. We do now know that Prince William and Prince Harry had their voicemail intercepted, and that this was never mentioned when the case came to court. We now know that members of the military, the government and the police also were victims. None of those was mentioned in court. Scotland Yard has refused to name them, or even to say how many there were in each category. UPDATE: Charlie Brooker wonders in the Guardian why most of the British press have ignored this scandal.

Eyal Weizman in Sydney; decolonising architecture 05 Sep 2010 Please join us for the upcoming lecture series by Eyal Weizman titled “Political Plastic”. The lecture series is hosted by the School of Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney and the MAA Urban Design. decolonizing architecture” in Beit Sahour/Palestine. Since 2008 he is a member of B’Tselem board of directors. Weizman has taught, lectured, curated and organised conferences in many institutions worldwide. Eyal Weizman is an architect and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. He studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and completed his PhD at the London Consortium/Birkbeck College. Since 2007 he is a member of the architectural collective “ His books include The Lesser Evil [Nottetempo, 2009], Hollow Land [Verso Books, 2007], A Civilian Occupation [Verso Books, 2003], the series Territories 1,2 and 3, Yellow Rhythms and many articles in journals, magazines and edited books. Weizman is a regular contributor and an editorial board member for several journals and magazines including Humanity, Cabinet and Inflexions. Weizman is the recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Prize for 2006-2007 and was chosen to deliver the Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Warwick 2010. I’ll be appearing with Weizman during his final Sydney event on 15 September: