A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

“I know he was extremely hurt by the reaction to the report,” said Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Foundations, who has known Mr. Goldstone for years and remains close to him. “I think he was extremely uncomfortable in providing some fodder to people who were looking for anything they could use against Israel.”

On Friday night [in Washington], a favorite cafe among progressives, Busboys and Poets, gathered letters to Gazans; the next aid flotilla in May will deliver the messages to the Gaza residents. A separate room in the cafe hosted a meeting of around 250 activists with Omar Barghouti, founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. Barghouti, who recently released a book on BDS, was winding up a book tour that included Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis and other universities.
The evening began with a moment of silence for actor Juliano Mer-Khamis, murdered earlier this month in Jenin, and Italian journalist Vittorio Arrigoni, murdered in recent days in Gaza. Barghouti then quoted U.S. President Barack Obama’s justification for the NATO attacks on Muammar Gadhafi’s forces in Libya.
“Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked. Supplies of food and fuel were choked off. Water for hundreds of thousands of people was shut off. Cities and towns were shelled, mosques were destroyed and apartment buildings reduced to rubble,” Barghouti said, reading out a statement.
“This is about Libya, but you would say the same logic should be applied to Gaza. Unfortunately, it is not. Revolutions are shaking the Middle East, and one big loser is Israel. As Arab governments become more democratic they will reflect peoples’ opinions, which are very much opposed to the Israeli apartheid.”
“Some people say BDS is not fair and not effective – Israel is a democracy. On almost every level, Israel is only a democracy for one ethnic group. The Palestinian-led BDS movement is calling Israel an apartheid state, and the main refutation of this is that Israel allows Palestinians to vote,” Barghouti said.
“Apartheid is not defined according to whims of this or that scholar. Apartheid is when the discrimination is legalized. Now there are commissions to accept new residents into communities. Imagine an Irish white guy saying: ‘We don’t accept this Latino guy, his food smells funny, he doesn’t fit.’ But in Israel now it’s legal.”
“I think calling Israel a fascist state is an exaggeration, but there are fascist tendencies. When they get mad, Liberal Zionists tend to exaggerate,” he added. “Israel is losing the battle for hearts and minds at the grassroots level. It maintains connections with the elite, but competes with Iran and North Korea as the most hated countries in the world.”
Barghouti said it was impossible to predict what the Israelis would do in response to the next flotilla, saying they continue to shoot themselves in the foot, but highlighting Israel’s reactions only helps raise awareness of the siege on Gaza. After the event, Barghouti recommended everyone, including Zionists, to read his book, but declined to be interviewed by Haaretz. “We’re being very careful about giving interviews to the Israeli media,” he said.

Plans to exploit Iraq’s oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world’s largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.
The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain’s involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair’s cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.
The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as “highly inaccurate”. BP denied that it had any “strategic interest” in Iraq, while Tony Blair described “the oil conspiracy theory” as “the most absurd”.
But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.
Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq’s enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair’s military commitment to US plans for regime change.
The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP’s behalf because the oil giant feared it was being “locked out” of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: “Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis.”
The minister then promised to “report back to the companies before Christmas” on her lobbying efforts.
The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq “post regime change”. Its minutes state: “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity.”
After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office’s Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: “Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future… We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq.”

The NSW Greens have vowed to continue championing Palestinian human rights after a Sydney council’s boycott of Israel collapsed in the face of overwhelming political pressure.
Marrickville Council, in Sydney’s inner-west, on Tuesday night dumped its boycott of Israeli products and services after widespread criticism from the federal and state governments, business leaders and the Jewish community.
Despite the setback, Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne on Wednesday said the sanctions had achieved some success in the face of an “avalanche” of pressure and criticism.
“Council has put the human rights of the Palestinian people on the national agenda. That’s success to me,” she said.
“This is an ethical purchasing policy. Every organisation, every individual has a right to decide, by whatever criteria, who they’ll do business with.”
NSW Greens MP John Kaye said the party’s support for the “rights” of Palestinians would not be weakened.
“The Greens were unable to sustain the boycotts, divestments and sanctions motion but our support for the rights of the Palestinian people will not weaken,” he told reporters in Sydney on Wednesday.
“We will continue to campaign in whatever way we can to make sure the world understands that the Palestinian people are being deposed and their human rights are being denied on a daily basis.”
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Meanwhile, the Greens-controlled Leichhardt Council has voted down a motion designed to prevent the authority ever introducing a similar boycott of Israel.
Labor councillors tried to introduce the motion at a meeting on Tuesday night and now claim it could lead to another Israeli boycott.
“Why would council have voted down that motion last night unless they were hoping that a little way down the track, when the public outcry had died down, they could slip a boycott through quietly?,” Labor councillor Darcy Byrne told AAP on Wednesday.
Leichhardt Greens councillors said they were happy with an existing policy, which is designed to promote Israeli-Palestine relations and had no plans to introduce another Israel boycott.

TONY EASTLEY: It’s unusual that a local council should get involved with world affairs, especially something as fraught as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
But the inner-city Marrickville Council in Sydney created a storm of controversy when, last December, it adopted a proposal to boycott Israeli goods and services.
But now the council has had a change of heart and last night voted against supporting the boycott.
Michael Edwards has this report.
COUNCIL LEADER: Order please, order please!
MICHAEL EDWARDS: Planning approvals and petitions for park benches are usually debated at Marrickville Council meetings, but last night world peace was on the agenda.
COUNCIL MEMBER: This is the example of decent people taking a stand for justice, human rights and international law.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: After months of controversy, the council’s decision to place a ban on Israeli products was up for debate.
The meeting dragged on for four hours and 30 people spoke on the issue.
Some powerful emotions surfaced.
COUNCIL MEMBER 3: I support the Palestinians, I support their right in everything, and I went…
COUNCIL LEADER: Order please, order!
COUNCIL MEMBER 4: There is no one in here, I’m sure, that does not want peace in the Middle East or everywhere else in the world, but if we continue to separate and carry that baggage to separate, they will never be appeased.
COUNCIL MEMBER 5 [This is me!]: There are not two equal sides in this conflict, there is an occupier and an occupied.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: Eventually after much vitriol and name calling from the public gallery, the majority of councillors voted to end the council’s support for the ban.
There are claims the Labor Party pressured its members on the Marrickville Council to withdraw their support for the boycott.
Marrickville’s Mayor, Fiona Byrne staked a lot of political capital on supporting it. It may have cost her the seat of Marrickville in last month’s state election. It also made her the focus of a lot of media attention, not all of it favourable.
FIONA BYRNE: We have created a little egg which is support for the plight of the Palestinian people and a sledgehammer is being used to break that.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: Even though she lost the vote, Fiona Byrne says she doesn’t regret supporting the boycott.
FIONA BYRNE: Certainly we have put BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) on the national agenda, whatever that means.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: Many opposed to the boycott say it’s just not the place of a local council to weigh into international politics.
But there were many Palestinians among those watching the debate. They say the boycott would be an effective method of protest.
Samah Sabawi is a Palestinian human rights activist.
SAMAH SABAWI: There is a lot of support and there is a lot of interest in the boycott, divestments and sanctions campaign and it is a growing campaign and this is just the beginning in Australia. I don’t think that this is a loss, in fact I think it really has put BDS on the agenda and it’s put it in newspapers and people are talking about it and we’re getting lots of questions about what it is, so it’s an educational opportunity.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: But many among Marrickville’s Jewish community say they’re relieved the boycott isn’t proceeding.
Uri Windt is a spokesman for the Inner-west Jewish community.
URI WINDT: The nature of the global boycott is universal and has no end point or political demand that can possibly met. That leads you to the conclusion that it is so broad and so universal as to be distinctly hostile to Israel or the Jewish people per se.
That is not a way in which to advance the cause of the Palestinian people.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies was unavailable for comment due to the festival of Passover.
In a statement, it says it’s against the boycott and a reversal of it would be a welcome victory for commonsense.
TONY EASTLEY: Michael Edwards with that report.