A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

Some oh-so-handy advice to Zionist activists wondering how to defend Israel from allegations of racial discrimination, occupation etc etc:

Israel’s friends on campus cannot abandon efforts to promote Israel’s remarkable success as a high-tech democracy, a “start-up nation.” We must continue to represent the true Israel as a country that shares America’s Western values and contributes to the world in a variety of fields, not the least of which are industry, medicine and the arts.

An Haaretz editorial about the ways in which the IDF likes to find ways to isolate Palestinians. It’s in their DNA, you see:

In less than three weeks, the portion of Route 443 that runs through the West Bank is due to open to Palestinian traffic. That’s what the High Court of Justice ordered, but as the deadline approaches it seems – as Amos Harel reported in Haaretz yesterday – that the Israel Defense Forces only intends to open part of the highway to Palestinians and will erect an additional roadblock at its entrance, at which Palestinian cars will be scrupulously checked.
Route 443 has become a symbol of a policy of separation – a highway limited to Israeli use. When the road was built, partly on expropriated Palestinian land, the state explicitly said that it would also serve the residents of the Palestinian villages whose land was taken to build it.
Since 2001, after several shooting incidents on the road, the IDF has placed mounds of dirt and garbage and installed concrete barriers and steel gates in order to block all access from the villages and environs. The many Israelis who turned the road into another main route to Jerusalem mostly ignored the fate of the villagers who lived just adjacent to it. They also ignored the state’s violation of its explicit commitment to allow free movement on the road to Palestinians.
About five months ago the High Court of Justice ruled that a permanent, total restriction of Palestinian traffic on the road was not permissible, and gave the IDF five months to open the road. The IDF was obligated to fulfill the court’s directives without playing games. Now it turns out that the army is trying to deceive both the court and the public by ensuring that opening the highway to Palestinian use will not make a substantial difference, continuing the policy of blocking their access.
There are many roads in the West Bank that are traveled by both Israelis and Palestinians. Route 443 must become just like these roads. The IDF must protect the road, but it has no less of an obligation to protect the character of the state.
The state must maintain the letter and spirit of the High Court’s rulings and not maintain separate road systems for Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Last night it was announced that, in the wake of reports on the odd way in which the IDF decided to carry out the court’s directives, another High Court petition on the matter was filed. It is to be hoped that the court will speak decisively about the army’s conduct.

An important CNN report (simply being in the mainstream media is key) that highlights growing birth defects in Iraq:

A large and growing number of Iraqi children are suffering from severe birth defects, as shown in the heartbreaking CNN segment embedded below, and their parents blame alleged U.S. chemical-weapons attacks.
Lawyers representing the families have sued the British government for complicity in the alleged war crimes. But Iraq’s deputy minister of health tells CNN there isn’t enough evidence to prove causality, and in any case, the U.S. boycott of the International Criminal Court makes direct prosecution of the case unlikely, as do the nation’s federal immunity laws.

The ghosts of Israel’s past are far from resolved. But who really wants to address this today? The Jewish Diaspora? Hardly:

More than one unwitting visitor to Jerusalem has fallen prey to the bizarre delusion that they are the Messiah. Usually, they are whisked off to the serene surroundings of Kfar Shaul psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of the city, where they are gently nursed back to health.
It is an interesting irony that the patients at Kfar Shaul recuperate from such variations on amnesia on the very spot that Israel has sought to erase from its collective memory.
The place is Deir Yassin. An Arab village cleared out in 1948 by Jewish forces in a brutal battle just weeks before Israel was formed, Deir Yassin has come to symbolise perhaps more than anywhere else the Palestinian sense of dispossession.
Sixty-two years on, what really happened at Deir Yassin on 9 April remains obscured by lies, exaggerations and contradictions. Now Ha’aretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper, is seeking to crack open the mystery by petitioning Israel’s High Court of Justice to release written and photographic evidence buried deep in military archives. Palestinian survivors of Deir Yassin, a village of around 400 inhabitants, claim the Jews committed a wholesale massacre there, spurring Palestinians to flee in the thousands, and undermining the long-held Israeli narrative that they left of their own accord.
Israel’s opposing version contends that Deir Yassin was the site of a pitched battle after Jewish forces faced unexpectedly strong resistance from the villagers. All of the casualties, it is argued, died in combat.
In 2006, an Israeli arts student, Neta Shoshani, applied for access to the Deir Yassin archives for a university project, believing a 50-year embargo on the secret documents had expired eight years previously. She was granted limited access to the material, but was informed that there was an extended ban on the more sensitive documents. When a lawyer demanded an explanation, it emerged that a ministerial committee only extended the ban more than a year after Ms Shoshani’s first request, exposing the state to a legal challenge. The current embargo runs until 2012.
Defending its right to keep the documents under wraps, the Israeli state has argued that their publication would tarnish the country’s image abroad and inflame Arab-Israeli tensions. Ha’aretz and Ms Shoshani have countered that the public have a right to know and confront their past.
Judges, who have viewed all the archived evidence held by the Israeli state on Deir Yassin, have yet to make a decision on what, if anything, to release. Among the documents believed to be in the state’s possession is a damning report written by Meir Pa’il, a Jewish officer who condemned his compatriots for bloodthirsty and shameful conduct on that day. Equally incriminating are the many photographs that survive.

And a direct line to the Zionist state’s behaviour today:

The Israeli authorities finally revealed yesterday that they had been holding a prominent Israeli-Arab human rights activist for several days and had accused him of spying for Lebanon’s Hizbollah guerrillas.
Israel appeared to buckle under intense domestic pressure to release details of the case against Amir Makhoul after a gagging order issued by the courts had prevented the media from reporting details of the case. The order, which covered details including his identity, riled democracy advocates in Israel after a similar case last month involving the secret house arrest of an Israeli journalist.
Mr Makhoul, the director of Palestinian non-governmental organisation (NGO) Ittijah, was arrested in a dawn raid on his home in the Israeli town of Haifa on Thursday last week.
Israeli police said yesterday that they suspected Mr Makhoul and Omar Sayid, a member of the Arab political party Balad who was arrested on April 24, of spying for Hizbollah. Israel views Lebanon as an enemy state and fought a devastating month-long war against Hizbollah in 2006. In recent weeks, Israel has accused Hizbollah of obtaining Scud missiles from Syria.
A lawyer acting for the two men said the charges had “no basis” and were merely a tool to clamp down on outspoken Israeli-Arabs, Palestinians who have taken Israeli citizenship. “Contacts with foreign agents has become a serious [tool] for criminalising Arabs in Israel,” said Hasan Jabareen, general director of the Adalah human rights organisation, and part of Mr Makhoul’s legal defence team.
“Any contact, whether it is with human rights organisations or just social contacts, can be perceived by Israel as contact with foreign agents,” Mr Jabareen said, adding that lawyers had not been allowed to meet with Mr Makhoul.
Mr Makhoul, whose brother Assam is a former member of Israel’s parliament, is a leading advocate on Palestinian rights issues, particularly within the Israeli-Arab community. Assam Makhoul told Ha’aretz newspaper that the family believed that Mr Makhoul had angered the Israeli authorities with his campaigns that fought the government’s “racist and discriminatory policies” towards Israeli-Arabs.

A personal tour inside the Jewish settlements of Hebron.

The great man takes some time out:

Describing himself as “terribly exhausted,” famed linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky said Monday that he was taking a break from combating the hegemony of the American imperialist machine to try and take it easy for once.
“I just want to lie in a hammock and have a nice relaxing morning,” said the outspoken anarcho-syndicalist academic, who first came to public attention with his breakthrough 1957 book Syntactic Structures. “The systems of control designed to manufacture consent among a largely ignorant public will still be there for me to worry about tomorrow. Today, I’m just going to kick back and enjoy some much-needed Noam Time.”
“No fighting against institutional racism, no exposing the legacies of colonialist ideologies still persistent today, no standing up to the widespread dissemination of misinformation and state-sanctioned propaganda,” Chomsky added. “Just a nice, cool breeze through an open window on a warm spring day.”
Sources reported that the 81-year-old Chomsky, a vociferous, longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy and the political economy of the mass media, was planning to use Monday to tidy up around the house a bit, take a leisurely walk in the park, and possibly attend an afternoon showing of Date Night at the local megaplex.
Sitting down to a nice oatmeal breakfast, Chomsky picked up a copy of Time, a deceitful, pro-corporate publication that he said would normally infuriate him.
“Yes, this magazine may be nothing more than a subtle media tool intended to obfuscate the government’s violent agenda with comforting bromides, but I’m not going to let that get under my skin,” Chomsky said. “I mean, why should I? It’s absolutely beautiful outside. I should just go and enjoy myself and not think about any of this stuff.”
Added Chomsky, glancing back over at the periodical, “Even if it is just another way in which individuals are methodically fed untruths that slowly shape their perceptions of reality, dulling their ability to challenge and defy a government bent on carrying out its own selfish and destructive—no, no Noam, not today, none of that today.”
According to sources close to the thinker, Chomsky also considered taking time to “plop down on the couch in [his] boxers and watch TV,” but grew suddenly enraged when The Price Is Right came on, commodifying the lie of American consumer satisfaction in a pseudo- entertainment context.
“Just change the channel, just relax and switch to something that isn’t mindless pabulum for the masses,” said Chomsky, reaching for the remote control. “No need to get furious.”
Chomsky, who often defines himself as a libertarian socialist, then changed the channel to ESPN, taking a moment to acknowledge the role of professional sports as a “weapon of mass distraction,” keeping the American people occupied with trivial competitions so they do not focus on opposing the status quo with grassroots movements against foreign and domestic policies that ultimately harm them.
“Stupid NBA playoffs,” Chomsky said. “At least it’s better than that NCAA March Madness crap. A university is supposed to be a center of learning that questions the state’s crafted messaging, not an entertainment factory.”
Sources said Chomsky took what was supposed to be a refreshing drive in the countryside, only to find himself obsessing over the role petroleum plays in the economic and military policies that collude with multinational corporate powers.
After stopping at a roadside McDonald’s, Chomsky was unable to enjoy the Big Mac he purchased, due to the popular restaurant chain’s participation in selling “a bill of goods” to the American people, who consume the unhealthy fast food and thereby bolster the capitalist system rather than buying from local farmers in order to equalize the distribution of wealth and eat more nutritiously.
Chomsky also found the burger to be too salty.
“All right, all right,” the noted critic and philosopher said, “I’m going back home, writing one—just one—reasoned, scathing essay, and getting it out of my system. But then I’m definitely going back to the park to walk around and just enjoy the nice weather. I’m serious.”
“Because there’s got to be more to life than the way that wage slavery strips the individual of his or her inherent dignity and personal integrity,” Chomsky continued. “Right?”