A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

At least one Australian politician stands up for Palestine

Posted: 28 Aug 2011

Bravo Lee Rhiannon and as always the Murdoch Australian is incapable of framing this movement as anything other than outright anti-Semitism:

Greens senator Lee Rhiannon has again refused to back away from the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, despite opposition from her leader, Bob Brown.
Her comments came as a group of federal MPs from both sides of politics, including Wayne Swan, gathered in a Max Brenner chocolate shop in Brisbane’s Southbank last night to show their opposition to the BDS campaign.
Max Brenner’s parent company, the Strauss Group, has its headquarters in Israel and has voiced its support for the Israeli Defence Forces.
The Southbank store was the target of a protest by BDS supporters on Saturday.
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“I see the value of that tactic as a way to promoting Palestinian human rights,” Senator Rhiannon told Sky News’s Australian Agenda yesterday.
She compared the movement to the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa.
“I am quite aware Bob Brown has a different view on this,” she said, but claimed there was growing understanding in the community for the campaign.
A spokesman for the Treasurer said: “The vast majority of Australians would think boycotts of individual business, like the rally . . . in Brisbane on the weekend, are misguided.”
The 40 or so BDS protesters on Saturday encountered a larger force of about 60 counter-protesters on Saturday. The two sides exchanged insults, separated by police.
One counter-protester, Logan City councillor Hajnal Black, said BDS supporters shouted anti-Semitic slogans.
“It’s shocking, the sort of things they were saying — that Jews kill babies, Jews are terrorists . . .” she said.
The BDS rally’s organisers, Kathy Newnam and Hamish Chitts, declined requests to be interviewed.

Dick Cheney backs war crimes and corporate media loves him for it

Posted: 28 Aug 2011

 
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
More here.

Why Palestinian children rightly hate Israel

Posted: 28 Aug 2011

An occupying nation that loves colonisation of Palestinian land needs to continuously find new ways to humiliate the “natives”. Read on:

The boy, small and frail, is struggling to stay awake. His head lolls to the side, at one point slumping on to his chest. “Lift up your head! Lift it up!” shouts one of his interrogators, slapping him. But the boy by now is past caring, for he has been awake for at least 12 hours since he was separated at gunpoint from his parents at two that morning. “I wish you’d let me go,” the boy whimpers, “just so I can get some sleep.”
During the nearly six-hour video, 14-year-old Palestinian Islam Tamimi, exhausted and scared, is steadily broken to the point where he starts to incriminate men from his village and weave fantastic tales that he believes his tormentors want to hear.
This rarely seen footage seen by The Independent offers a glimpse into an Israeli interrogation, almost a rite of passage that hundreds of Palestinian children accused of throwing stones undergo every year.
Israel has robustly defended its record, arguing that the treatment of minors has vastly improved with the creation of a military juvenile court two years ago. But the children who have faced the rough justice of the occupation tell a very different story.
“The problems start long before the child is brought to court, it starts with their arrest,” says Naomi Lalo, an activist with No Legal Frontiers, an Israeli group that monitors the military courts. It is during their interrogation where their “fate is doomed”, she says.
…
In the case of Islam, the boy in the video, his lawyer, Ms Lasky, believes the video provides the first hard proof of serious irregularities in interrogation.
In particular, the interrogator failed to inform Islam of his right to remain silent, even as his lawyer begged to no avail to see him. Instead, the interrogator urged Islam to tell him and his colleagues everything, hinting that if he did so, he would be released. One interrogator suggestively smacked a balled fist into the palm of his hand.
By the end of the interrogation Islam, breaking down in sobs, has succumbed to his interrogators, appearing to give them what they want to hear. Shown a page of photographs, his hand moves dully over it, identifying men from his village, all of whom will be arrested for protesting.
Ms Lasky hopes this footage will change the way children are treated in the occupied territories, in particular, getting them to incriminate others, which lawyers claim is the primary aim of interrogations. The video helped gain Islam’s release from jail into house arrest, and may even lead to a full acquittal of charges of throwing stones. But right now, a hunched and silent Islam doesn’t feel lucky. Yards from his house in Nabi Saleh is the home of his cousin, whose husband is in jail awaiting trial along with a dozen others on the strength of Islam’s confession.
The cousin is magnanimous. “He is a victim, he is just a child,” says Nariman Tamimi, 35, whose husband, Bassem, 45, is in jail. “We shouldn’t blame him for what happened. He was under enormous pressure.”

Israel was on verge of yet another futile war against Gaza last week

Posted: 28 Aug 2011

Israel’s biggest newspaper has the story. And what will be the global reaction to this? Silence, because after all, if Israel would have attacked Gaza it would have been seen as “defensive” even if white phosphorus was used, like during Operation Cast Lead. This is the Holocaust excuse, used time and time again, and yet many citizens globally simply no longer accept Israeli violence:

When Defense Minister Ehud Barak arrived at the Defense Ministry Headquarters’ meeting room last Saturday, a thick war book titled “Operation South” was already awaiting his approval on his desk. In those hours, Israel was on the verge of embarking on war in the Gaza Strip.
The book did not pertain to a limited operation. The selected targets would have certainly prompted a major flare-up, including difficult regional implications. Just like in Operation Cast Lead, the political leadership granted immunity to no one in the Strip, regardless of his position or stature.
The detailed plans – the targets, scope, power and timing – would have left Hamas no breathing space and time to debate its response. It would have gone for the jackpot, right away. Indeed, Israel’s war plan included preparations for massive rocket fire from Gaza, including long-range missiles aimed at central Israel in general, and at Tel Aviv in particular.
Last weekend, the General Staff Headquarters looked like on the eve of war. Officials were working around the clock and sleeping in their offices. While formulating the plans, top officials recalled the curse of arrogance of the Second Lebanon War. Back then, the decision to launch a war was taken without sufficient preparation. The military and political leadership decided to deliver a blow, immediately, without taking into account the implications, the enemy’s response, the home front’s condition and the ability to counter rocket barrages. This time around, a full, detailed plan was drafted; it also included the IDF Home Front Command’s deployment. Only then was the scheme presented to the political echelon.
Another lesson learned from the miserable confrontation vis-à-vis Hezbollah is to start such assaults with great fire power, in order to minimize as much as is possible the home front’s suffering. This lesson was already implemented in Operation Cast Lead; in other words, the power utilized during Cast Lead was to constitute the starting point of the next operation.
Most of Israel’s regular army was to be enlisted, at one point or another, for the operation. Hence, last Saturday all regular army units were placed on alert. Air Force squadrons undertook their final preparations. The time given to the army for preparations also gave international parties – namely the United States and Egypt– time to examine alternatives to the war.
Thursday afternoon, a few hours after the terror offensive on the road leading to Eilat, officials started to formulate the operational doctrine. At that point, the targets were only Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC.) Hamas was not yet a clear target, with the exception of several symbolic hits meant to signal to the group that it holds the responsibility to prevent attacks from the Strip.
A short while after the PRC’s top brass was eliminated by the IDF in a surgical strike, Hamas’ entire leadership, both military and political, disappeared to various hideouts. They quickly realized where Israel’s response was headed to; hence, junior spokesmen were sent to address the cameras.
The next phase of Israel’s operation included the extension of the assault to Hamas as well. The assumption was that Hamas’ chiefs must have been aware of the PRC terror cell that headed to the Sinai to carry out attacks from there. A week before the Eilat offensive, PRC terrorists fired Grad Missiles at Kiryat Gat, and Hamas proceeded to detain the shooters, further demonstrating that it is deeply familiar with what goes on among “rogue groups” in Gaza.
In retrospect it turned out that not everything works by the book: To the great amazement of Israel’s experts, Hamas was truly surprised by the Eilat-area attacks.
Zero hour for the large, comprehensive facet of the operation was set. The countdown began. The manpower numbers at some units were complemented with reservists. Less than 24 hours remained before a war broke out. Yet then, Saturday night, a diplomatic opportunity to end the escalation emerged. Hamas initiated a ceasefire.
Officials quickly discovered that Hamas was embarrassed and confused by the fact that someone in the organization assumed responsibility for ending the lull and firing rockets at Ofakim and Beersheba that caused casualties. As it turned out, Hamas did not fire the rockets, and even sent police officers in an attempt to curb the shooters. Hamas heads directly approached the Americans and Egyptians and sought a ceasefire. Israel was aware of these inquiries virtually in real time.
Hamas chiefs did not plan or want this confrontation; not now. They were concerned about being blamed that they are pulling the rug from under Mahmoud Abbas ahead of the September independence bid. Moreover, the economic situation in Gaza is worsening. The government is having trouble paying salaries, with the amount of money pouring into the Strip at this time being a fraction of past fund transfers.
At this time, officials in the Strip need calm and support from Cairo in the contacts on the Gilad Shalitswap. Hamas also fears that Egypt would close the Rafah Crossing. Furthermore, Hamas leaders in Gaza realized that what Israel characterized as a “disproportional response” to the rocket fire was merely the groundwork for a large-scale operation.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh dared leave his hideout only on Tuesday, some 24 hours after the ceasefire. Top Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders are still huddled in bomb shelters, for good reason apparently. On Wednesday, an Islamic Jihad member was killed. Another one was assassinated early Thursday. This pattern will continue. The message in the wake of the Eilat-area offensive is unequivocal: Pinpoint eliminations are back, even if the price of each surgical strike is a night of mortar shells and Grad rockets aimed at southern Israel.
As September approaches, the IDF is being stretched beyond its means, and there will apparently be no escaping the need to call up reservists. Our leadership is navigating through a minefield. Just like we were on the verge of war Saturday night, with most of the public being completely oblivious to the unfolding drama, it can happen again tomorrow morning. The war book is ready.

Paying for anti-Islam hate

Posted: 27 Aug 2011

An important report but shame that there isn’t more public discussion about the kind of people who are spreading this message against Muslims are also some of Israel’s biggest backers:
 

How America has no clue about the wars it is fighting, part 75432

Posted: 27 Aug 2011

From Wired:

It’s no secret that the U.S. Army has a language barrier to overcome in Iraq and Afghanistan. A decade of war has led an English-constrained military to seek all kinds of quick fixes, from translator gadgets to private contractors — something Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lamentedthis week. But more galling is the fact that the few soldiers who do speak Arabic, Pashto and Dari are still being wasted, even in the warzones where they’re needed the most. I know — because I was one of them.
The Army spends years and hundreds of thousands of dollars training each of its foreign-language speakers. At the same time, it uses costly contractors to work the same jobs for which its own linguists have trained. In Iraq and Afghanistan, private-sector linguists are largely replacing their military counterparts rather than augmenting their numbers, an expensive redundancy.
In the fall of 2006, I enlisted in the Army as a cryptologic linguist, one of the soldiers who translate foreign communications. A year of college Arabic hadn’t been enough to persuade intelligence-agency recruiters of my James Bond potential. The military, spook agencies assured me during a string of polite job-fair letdowns, was the place to start getting real-world experience. So off I went to boot camp.
Over two years of training followed, both in Arabic and the specific intelligence duties I’d need to perform in-country. In March 2009, I stepped off of a Blackhawk at Forward Operating Base Delta, a large base near al-Kut in southeastern Iraq. I figured I’d be translating captured Arabic communications to alert combat troops of danger.
So imagine my surprise when my new team sergeant picked me up at the airfield and mentioned he was a Korean linguist. It turned out that our five-man team had as many Korean speakers as Arabic ones — you know, for all the Korean spoken in the Iraqi desert. It was my first sign that the deployment wouldn’t be the one I trained for.

PressTV interview on BDS, Palestinian rights and faux anti-Semitism

Posted: 27 Aug 2011

The debate around Israel/Palestine in Australia has descended into calling critics (and backers of BDS) Nazis. Yes, that dignified. And the Zionist establishment is leading the charge, completely undermining its argument that the memory of the Holocaust should be holy. For them, Israel must be protected no matter what, even if dead Jews must be used as fodder.
I was interviewed last week on Press TV about this issue, discussing the apparent attempts to criminalise the legitimate civil call for boycotts against occupying Israel.