A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

 

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• BDS will soon start biting in Australia

• Settler leaders think about Palestinians but continue to build illegal colonies

• Corporate media giving narrow view on post Mubarak Egypt

• The deep insecurity of Murdoch press and Zio lobby over Palestine

• “Fox [News] is one of the only places you will find truth”

BDS will soon start biting in Australia    Posted: 07 Apr 2011   Dismiss this global movement at your peril (and BDS is in a growth phase, acknowledges this Jerusalem Post editorial): The visiting head of the Business Council of Australia says the boycott campaign against Israel is “a complete and utter joke” that is being ignored by the Australian business community. “It has no credibility,” Graham Bradley, who is leading one of the highest-level Australian trade delegations ever to visit the country, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday. “None of it has any traction in senior government or business circles in Australia.” The campaign against Israel has hit the headlines in Australia in recent weeks, after federal senator-elect Lee Rhiannon, of the left-wing Greens Party, pushed for a boycott to become Greens national policy. Bradley, who is in Israel for the first time, said Australian trade delegations to Israel, which are sponsored by the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, typically come to learn about Israeli technological innovation. Nevertheless, he said he was also interested in learning about how Israel had managed its urban planning and immigration policies.

Settler leaders think about Palestinians but continue to build illegal colonies    Posted: 07 Apr 2011   How touching that some settler heads actually spend a few minutes considering the rights of Palestinians before continuing to oppress them. Farcical: Danny Dayan, the chairman of the Yesha Council of West Bank settlements, told U.S. officials that some settlers would be willing to move to Israel proper in exchange for financial compensation, according to confidential State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks. Dayan also said he was opposed to some of the tactics employed by Israeli settlers and that he was in favor of removing roadblocks and checkpoints to ease conditions for the Palestinians. His statements, which were made in closed-door meetings with U.S. diplomats in Israel in recent years, came in response to questions about a potential evacuation-compensation bill in the Knesset. When asked about the issue, Dayan replied: “I’m an economist, and I know that some people will take it if the price is right.” Dayan also told U.S. Embassy officials that he was aware of the Palestinians’ attachment to the West Bank. He acknowledged that he was “shamed and embarrassed” by the desecration of Palestinian mosques and the vandalism of Muslim gravestones. Dayan added that settlers were guilty of “morally horrific” things, including attacks on Palestinian property as retribution for Israeli government efforts to rein in settlement construction, also known as the “price tag” policy. The WikiLeaks cables report that Dayan told the U.S. officials that this policy was “a mistake that will not serve the interests of the settlement movement.” According to the documents, Dayan’s sentiments were echoed by Elyakim Haetzni, a founder of the Yesha Council. Haetzni expressed concern that settler rabbis were not doing enough to dissuade the so-called hilltop youth in the West Bank from harming Palestinians. Dayan also supported the removal of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank so Palestinians could enjoy greater economic prosperity and human rights. During one meeting with U.S. diplomats, Dayan said he was “deeply attached” to the West Bank, adding that the settlers had a “moral right” to settle there. Dayan said he understood why the Palestinians felt a similar tie to the land. Another new Wikileaks release on Israel: Israeli left-wing non-government organization Peace Now has urged the U.S. to pressure Israel into evacuating West Bank outposts, according to an American diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, adding that the group regularly updated both Washington and the Defense Ministry on ongoing settlement construction. A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable quoted Peace Now head Yariv Oppenheimer as telling U.S. embassy officials that Israel may “evacuate a few outposts to show the U.S. that it is doing something, but in exchange it is trying to co-opt the settlers by retroactively approving some outposts and giving them a freer hand in building in the West Bank.” … The documents also reveal that the Defense Ministry used Peace Now’s services to track West Bank settlement construction, with Eitan Broshi, an aide to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in 2008 as being “eager” to meet Peace Now representatives to discuss the issue. A Peace Now representative reportedly told U.S. embassy officials that Broshi “did not appear to be aware of the recent construction in some settlements and questioned the legality of construction in some others.”

Corporate media giving narrow view on post Mubarak Egypt    Posted: 07 Apr 2011   A pretty average report from Australia’s Channel 10 on Egypt’s supposed move to democracy. Thank God all the people interviewed are friendly looking and not openly Islamist:

The deep insecurity of Murdoch press and Zio lobby over Palestine    Posted: 06 Apr 2011   Who knew that anti-Semitism was everywhere? Jews are currently hiding in their houses for fear of being attacked by crazed anti-Zionists. Or not. Murdoch’s Australian newspaper wants to create an image of rampant anti-Israel sentiment everywhere because growing numbers of people are recognising the deep racism within Israeli society. The paper has been running a daily campaign for a while now claiming the Australian Greens are really the new Communists, secretly bringing Arab propaganda into the mainstream; the kind of message accepted by millions of Australians (who vote for the Greens). It’s like the crazy old soldier uncle banging on about the mad Japanese…back in 1944. Today the paper leads with this hilariously “shocking” piece on the Greens talking about Palestinian human rights (what will come next, abiding by international law?): Two Greens senators have publicly supported calls for Australian sanctions against Israel over the Middle East conflict, putting them at odds with party policy and their leader Bob Brown. West Australian senator Scott Ludlam last year demanded an arms embargo on Israel, which he described as “a rogue state”, while South Australian colleague Sarah Hanson-Young addressed a rally where protesters called on Australia to sever ties with the Jewish state. The stance by the two senators conflicts with Senator Brown’s assurance last week that his federal party was not anti-Israel and did not support the NSW branch of the party advocating sanctions against Israel. The Coalition last night labelled the Greens “reds”, while the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council called on Senator Hanson-Young to visit Israel before jumping to conclusions. Senator Brown yesterday refused to comment on the activities of his senators and directed The Australian to his party’s policy on Israel, which clearly advocated a peaceful two-state solution. Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan, whose care of human rights can be determined by whether he’s been wined and dined by Western-friendly dictators, thinks the Greens are mad: The depth and longstanding nature of the Greens’ visceral hostility to Israel reveals something very unpleasant about the nature of the Greens themselves. They are essentially a party of extremists. Like most extremists operating in a democratic space, they try to garner support on broadly populist issues while still servicing their extremist activist base with extremist positions and campaigns. The language of a number of the Greens senators about Israel – rogue state, apartheid, should be boycotted – is the language of political sectarianism and prejudice. It is, of course, too much to expect that the Greens should actually display any knowledge of this subject, but are they aware of the rapid economic growth in the Palestinian West Bank territories? Do they think this could be maintained in the face of widespread boycott of Israel? Would the Greens wish to boycott the Israeli power station which provides electricity for Gaza? Would the Greens like to boycott the Israeli hospitals that routinely treat patients from the West Bank? Would the Greens like to boycott Israeli-funded schools in East Jerusalem? Would the Greens like to boycott the Peres peace centre Aussie rules team that brings together Jewish Israelis and Palestinians to play Aussie rules in a single team? Do the Greens propose that the government should ban the annual Israeli film festival in Australia? Do the Greens support dialogue with every government in the world except the Israeli government? The madness of the boycott policy is not an aberration by the NSW Greens. It reflects the political culture of the Greens. The astonishing thing this time is that someone has actually called the Greens to account for that political culture. And then the paper’s editorial continues the onslaught: The Greens’ anti-Israel posturing is wrong and dangerous. Anti-Americanism was a fundamental tenet of the Left in Australia and around the world during the Cold War and some of it continues to this day, often expressed through the proxy of antipathy towards Israel. This is the only plausible way to explain the foolish and dangerous anti-Israel posturing of the Greens, exposed in our pages again today. For many years the Labor Party was forced to quash this sort of theatrical railing against Israel but it has been largely relegated to the past because leaders such as Bob Hawke, Kim Beazley, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have demonstrated a solid commitment to the US alliance and a healthy respect for the democracy of Israel. Sadly, the Greens have been all too willing to take up the ground vacated by Labor’s lunar Left. Former NSW Labor premier Bob Carr warned about this trend recently, saying the conservationists in the Greens are being “overtaken by the hardline leftist Greens”. Labor and the Coalition are longstanding, robust and bipartisan supporters of a two-state solution and harsh critics of the Hamas extremists. If the Greens are to be taken seriously as responsible contributors to federal governance they will have to develop a credible and consistent attitude to foreign policy rather than have senators and state MPs free-ranging. The Greens need to inform themselves and contribute to an intelligent debate.   This daily campaign against the Greens and its rational and sensible policy on the Middle East isn’t because Murdoch and his merry mates are feeling confident about Israel. It’s because they see world debate is shifting and less people buy the line that the Zionist state is a “democracy” – colonisation of land makes you anti-democratic by definition – and they want to make sure nobody speaks out of line here in Australia. Mature people who believe in something welcome public debate. Israel isn’t a protected species, it’s a rogue state that occupies and kills Palestinians. That’s something to be rejected, but then again this is from a media empire who loves every Western-led war that targets Muslims.

“Fox [News] is one of the only places you will find truth”    Posted: 06 Apr 2011