A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

My following article appears in today’s New Zealand Herald:

The day after the Australian Government announced it was expelling an Israeli diplomat over the forging of its passports in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai, the Murdoch press was incensed.
The Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, last week condemned Kevin Rudd’s “over-reaction” to Israel’s “mistake” in the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
For blind defenders of the Jewish state, Israel is engaged in a war on terror that justifies every offensive action.
For Sheridan and many others, Hamas is a terrorist organisation and its members are legitimate targets. But imagine the outcry if Tehran viewed American and Israeli officials, who regularly condemn and threaten the country’s very existence, as enemies of the state and systematically killed them across the globe. The world would respond with outrage and rightly so.
But Israel and its proxies are simply asked to forgive and forget. In the words of Australia’s Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, Israel “is under existential threat”. End of conversation.
Zionist spokespeople in Australia were distressed that the Government had made an “unhelpful” decision over the passports affair and argued that there was no evidence Israel was even behind the assassination; denial mixed with delusion and a dash of arrogance.
The Jewish community is used to getting its way in the halls of power through the canny mix of financial backing, arm-twisting and brutal realpolitik.
Australia’s decision to remove a Mossad agent from Canberra was slightly surprising. Although the British, in the dying days of Gordon Brown’s leadership, expelled an Israeli agent in retaliation for its passports also being forged – alongside countless other affected nations, including France, Germany, Ireland and New Zealand but notably not the United States – Canberra remains one of Israel’s staunchest backers.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd once said that Israel was “in my DNA” and since his election in 2007 has provided diplomatic and political cover for the ongoing siege on the Gaza Strip and continued colonisation in the occupied West Bank, both illegal under international law.
It is seen as political suicide to even mildly chastise the Zionist entity in most Western states, despite Israel’s growing intolerance of free speech, discrimination against Israeli Arabs and forced removal of Palestinians from the West Bank into Gaza, all in direct violation of countless United Nations resolutions.
This week’s massacre by Israel of protesters on the flotilla heading to break the illegal blockade on Gaza is simply the latest example of Israeli arrogance.
For many politicians in the West, Israel is a thriving democracy amid a sea of dictatorships. In reality, it’s a democracy for Jews only, illegally occupying millions of Palestinians and funding Jewish-only roads in the West Bank and Jewish, settler-only infrastructure. I saw last year in the Hebron Hills the running of raw sewage from Jewish settlements directly into Palestinian villages. Furthermore, I witnessed the Israeli Army refusing to allow Palestinian farmers access to their own lands because fundamentalist Jewish settlers blocked the path.
These truths are never seen by the free trips organised by the Zionist lobby for politicians and journalists. Instead – and I heard this during my meeting with senior MPs on a recent visit to New Zealand for a speaking tour – Palestine is visited briefly at best and then only with the Palestinian Authority, the corrupt body armed, funded and backed by the Western powers.
I was pleased to hear, however, that every politician told me that the last five years had seen a seachange in public opinion on the Israel/Palestine question with vastly more letters of concern arriving worried about Israeli actions across the Palestinian territory. This has nothing to do with anti-semitism or anti-Israel sentiment but legitimate outrage over Israel’s flouting of international law and decency.
Such shifts are not yet reflected in the conservative John Key Government. I have obtained a letter sent by Foreign Minister Murray McCully to the Palestine Human Rights Campaign that detailed the reasons New Zealand backed Israel’s recent ascension to the OECD. Although he acknowledged the “number of areas where Israel is failing to meet its international obligations … a lack of a dialogue does not advance solutions to these failings”.
Such weasel words belie the complicity of New Zealand in Israel’s economic development while ignoring its behaviour in the occupied territories.
The recent announcement by musician Elvis Costello to not perform in Israel because of his concerns over treatment of Palestinians is just the latest example of a growing global movement to isolate Israel until it abides with humanitarian law.
The daily breaches of international law are just one reason why virtually every human rights group in the world now calls Israel’s policy of separation and discrimination apartheid in the occupied territories.
Many members of the African National Congress visit the West Bank and argue the situation for Palestinians today is far worse than anything they ever experienced under apartheid South Africa. A new book released last month, The Unspoken Alliance, details extensive connections between Israel and apartheid Pretoria right up until 1994, including the sharing of nuclear technology, arms and methods of oppressing the blacks and Palestinians.
Israel’s relationship with apartheid South Africa remains relevant today because one regime recognised the errors of its way and reformed while the other merely accelerates the colonisation process.
In many ways, therefore, the killing of the Hamas official is a convenient distraction from the wider issue of Israeli actions in the Middle East. Australia has not condemned the murder but merely the use of its passports in the action. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said relations between the two countries will “cool” for a short period then resume normal proceedings.
The fact that the Arab states are uniformly repressive – most of them backed by Washington, of course – should not distract us from the status of the Middle East’s only self-styled democracy. Hamas and Hizbollah are both facts of life, born in the fire of resisting Israeli actions. Iran, meanwhile, is not an irrational player and must be rationally engaged to avoid further regional strife. A country such as New Zealand could play a productive role in highlighting the profound disconnect between rhetoric and reality in the Middle East conflict.
Antony Loewenstein is an independent Australian journalist who has published in the Guardian, Washington Post and Haaretz and is the author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.

I can sleep well now; a neo-con writes:

America is still the best guarantor of freedom and prosperity

Alongside a huge turn-out in Sydney last night, the group wasn’t just from a Muslim background. I saw some Jews (well, a handful but hey, better than nothing) and many others, including Tamils:

Thousands of protesters from Sydney’s Middle Eastern communities have rallied in Sydney’s CBD over humanitarian aid deaths near Gaza.
The noisy protesters crammed into Sydney Square between the Town Hall and St Andrew’s Cathedral on Tuesday night after the deadly high seas attack by Israeli commandos on a flotilla of aid ships bound for Gaza.
Nine people died in the attack at dawn on Monday, many of them Turkish.
A 20-year-old Australian man has undergone surgery after being shot in the leg.
“Down Down Israel,” protesters in Sydney chanted on Tuesday night.
The chant was alternated with calls to “Free Free Gaza”, “Free Free Palestine” and “Shame Shame Israel”.
Many wore black-and-white keffiyeh scarves, a symbol of Palestinian heritage.
Others waved Palestinian flags, while some were draped in Turkish flags.
One of the many banners read “Freedom and autonomy for Palestine”.
A man who only identified himself as Abdullah told AAP he was furious some media had reported the flotilla of aid ships was approaching an Israeli barricade at the time of the attack.
“In reality, they were in international waters,” he said.
The protest was organised by the Social Justice Party and attended by up to 4000 people, organisers said.
About three dozen police watched on.
Sydney Peace Foundation spokesman Stuart Rees urged the crowd to take up their cause with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and local MPs.
“Ring up Mr Rudd’s office, ring up your local member of Parliament,” he said.
“The Australian government has to find the courage to say no to violence in the Middle East.”
There was a ripple of cheering after NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon spoke.
“The Australian Jewish community needs to add their voice to your voice,” she said.
The protest included a march up Bathurst, Pitt and George streets.

A warning that most Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora should hear:

Mossad chief Meir Dagan is concerned by the change in US positions and influence on Israel. “There are fewer Israeli assets in the US,” he said in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting on Tuesday. “Israel’s importance was greater when there was conflict between the blocs, while this year there has been a decrease (in Israel’s importance).”
“But we must take future steps into account, particularly after the mid-term Congress elections,” he warned. “An imposed solution will be a last option and not the preferred option – but this option exists and is used as a whip to goad the two sides. Events such as (the lethal flotilla affair) are likely to go out of control and the situation could deteriorate to extreme scenarios.”

Dagan gave an overview of the situation to MKs and noted, “If in the 90s the US was a ‘global policeman,’ a power that could solve conflicts, in the first decade of the millennium the US’s power to solve conflicts is limited. The election of (US President Barack) Obama was a declaration that it was adopting a softer approach and did not want to use force to solve conflicts. It has been viewed as weakness and influences Israel’s difficulty in diplomatic maneuvers.”
According to Dagan, the US ability to create processes of change is limited. “It is possible to see that during the last few years there has been less cooperation in the political arena between Israel and the US,” he said. “The current administration certainly thinks that Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue does not suit the present US approach, which says the solution to the conflict must be according to the Clinton vision, within the 67 borders.” Answering a question about the possibility of an imposed solution, raised by rightwing MKs, Dagan said that such a solution has already arisen between Israel and the US, but then disappeared.

A small but welcome step (considering Egypt is a client state) and a slap in the face to Israel’s insane, cruel and counter-productive siege on Gaza:

Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, letting Palestinians cross until further notice amid a storm of international criticism of Israel’s blockade of the enclave, officials in Egypt and Gaza said.
The move, urged by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against whom the embargo has been directed, prompted dozens of people to race to the crossing point in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, though the gates appeared still to be closed.
It is the only point on Gaza’s borders that is not fully controlled by Israel. Cairo, coordinating with Israel, has opened it only sparingly since Hamas Islamists, who are allied to Egypt’s opposition, seized control of Gaza three years ago.

More violence please, we’re Israeli:

Israel will use more aggressive force in the future to prevent ships from breaking the sea blockade on the Gaza Strip, a top Navy commander told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
“We boarded the ship and were attacked as if it was a war,” the officer said. “That will mean that we will have to come prepared in the future as if it was a war.”

This front page story in today’s Washington Post indicates the real flaws in so much corporate reporting on the Middle East. What’s the angle and who’s affected? Not the people under occupation in Palestine (or elsewhere) but the diplomatic act between two major powers:

The worldwide condemnation of the deadly Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla will complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to improve its tense relations with Jerusalem and will probably distract from the push to sanction Iran over its nuclear program.
The timing of the incident is remarkably bad for Israel and the United States. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Obama were scheduled to meet Tuesday in Washington as part of a “kiss and make up” session. The United Nations, meanwhile, was set to begin final deliberations on Iran in the weeks ahead.
Now the White House talks have been scrubbed, Israel’s actions were the subject of an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Monday and the administration increasingly faces a difficult balancing act as Israel’s diplomatic isolation deepens.

Nice angle. Perhaps a little less time in the halls of power (as interesting as this is) and more on the ground in the lands actually living under siege. Crazy idea, I know.

Just in case you weren’t sure the real agenda behind the Gaza flotilla, loony neo-con Zionist Melanie Philips tells all:

‘Peace convoy’? This was an Islamist terror ambush

While Israel continues to hold two senior Australian journalists, including reporter Paul McGeough, in detention – wonderful media management there, Zionist state, just jolly, imagine what they’ll say about you when they leave – Deakin University’s Scott Burchill wants us to question the very nature of the current Israeli government:

The humiliation of pro-Zionist Biden after the Vice President’s grovelling and sycophantic speech in Israel, open defiance of US calls for a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s breach with Obama at the White House and his betrayal at AIPAC, public humiliation of the Turkish ambassador by Israel’s foreign ministry, passport fraud and identity theft using the nationals of allies, refusing to allow Chomsky to lecture at Bir Zeit and now the terrorist attack on the Gaza flotilla and the collapse of relations with Turkey (previously Israel’s best friend in the Muslim world and a military connection highly valued by the IDF). What’s the pattern here?

For the moment, let’s put aside the long standing crimes of the occupation and its attendant issues. And let’s ignore the imminent, nauseating apologias from the usual suspects in the Murdoch press.

These are signs of increasingly irrational behaviour by the Netanyahu government. In each case their action was premeditated. They must have surely known that they would be exposed and cast in an unfavourable light. It seems they are so arrogant and self-righteous, they don’t care – even about alienating long-standing friends. “To hell with the world,” they seem to be saying.

There needs to be much greater focus on this Israeli government. Rarely has there been a more unstable, self-isolating and, incredibly, self-destructive government in Tel Aviv.

Naomi Klein, on the advisory board of the Free Gaza Movement, spoke in Toronto yesterday: