A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• When Christian and Jewish fundies get together to make sweet love
• The Holocaust survival dance
• Jewish colonist rabbi says why the land should bloom only with Jews
• Castro on Washington’s ambitions
• Murdoch would like to hang with Muslims in space
• How do you smoothly sell occupation and a blockade?
• Of course life must go on in Gaza
• Remote-control killing in Palestine
• How many people are still locked up at Gitmo?
• The hype against Saddam was false, part 8642

When Christian and Jewish fundies get together to make sweet love Posted: 13 Jul 2010 New neo-con group The Emergency Committee for Israel have some charming friends on-board. Aside from king-maker William Kristol – a Jew with a lot of time to make war against the Muslim world – there’s Gary Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate. Here’s Bauer a few years ago: God granted the Land of Israel to the Jewish people and there is an absolute ban on giving it away to another people.

The Holocaust survival dance Posted: 13 Jul 2010 How to best commemorate the Holocaust? What about a survivor with his family dancing to “I Will Survive” at Auschwitz and other death camps?

Jewish colonist rabbi says why the land should bloom only with Jews Posted: 13 Jul 2010 Rabbi Gideon Perl, Regional Rabbi of illegal settlement Gush Etzion, explains the supposed right of Jews to live in the West Bank. God gave us the land, didn’t you know?

Castro on Washington’s ambitions Posted: 13 Jul 2010 Fidel Castro during his first TV appearance in many years: US foreign policy is better described as the policy of total impunity.

Murdoch would like to hang with Muslims in space Posted: 12 Jul 2010 Fox News discover the secret pro-Islam agenda of Barack Obama: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Wish You Weren’t Here www.thedailyshow.com   Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

How do you smoothly sell occupation and a blockade? Posted: 12 Jul 2010 Israel’s leading spokesman Mark Regev spends his days defending Israeli government policy. Just like the Zionist spokespeople who occupy our media space. Israel has a siege on Gaza. Israel slightly lifts the siege on Gaza. A new position will be defended as quickly as the old one. Credibility isn’t exactly likely to follow. So how did Regev go on a recent webcast interview with the press?

Of course life must go on in Gaza Posted: 12 Jul 2010 Despite the ongoing hardships in Gaza caused by Israel’s blockade, Palestinians continue to innovate in very difficult circumstances. Gaza journalist Rami Almeghari, whom I met last year in the Strip, reports: The relentless Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip has squeezed many things, but it hasn’t robbed people of their ability and desire to innovate and invent.      At the Rashad al-Shawa cultural center in heart of Gaza City, dozens of local companies and individuals recently demonstrated hi-tech products and inventions at an exhibition sponsored by government and nongovernmental bodies. Munther al-Qassas, who holds a diploma in political science and works as a cab driver, stood behind his own invention — a device that helps those who are paralyzed or who have lost the use of limbs to operate a TV set. The TV remote controller is placed into the device. “As you observe, a person can then use his head, tongue or shoulder to control the TV,” al-Qassas explained as he demonstrated the interface which has two small balls on it that respond to movements from the user. Thousands in Gaza have suffered grievous injuries or permanent paralysis as a result of Israeli military attacks over many years. The Israeli blockade prevents most electronic and electrical parts from being imported to Gaza, but al-Qassas explained that he was able to make his device using recycled materials including parts of pens, electrical plugs and wires, and toy balls. The entire project cost just $100, which al-Qassas said, “makes it efficient and affordable, and people who use it can fix it if it breaks.”

Remote-control killing in Palestine Posted: 12 Jul 2010 What is an occupying army to do when people are simply not as keen to kill Palestinians anymore? It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick. The aim: to kill. Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army. Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people – Palestinians in Gaza – who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick. The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza. The system is one of the latest “remote killing” devices developed by Israel’s Rafael armaments company, the former weapons research division of the Israeli army and now a separate governmental firm. According to Giora Katz, Rafael’s vice president, remote-controlled military hardware such as Spot and Shoot is the face of the future. He expects that within a decade at least a third of the machines used by the Israeli army to control land, air and sea will be unmanned. The demand for such devices, the Israeli army admits, has been partly fuelled by a combination of declining recruitment levels and a population less ready to risk death in combat.

How many people are still locked up at Gitmo? Posted: 12 Jul 2010 The running sore of Guantanamo Bay shows no sign of abating: In a comprehensive recent study, Physicians for Human Rights alleges that healthcare professionals experimented on human subjects in order to hone the torture techniques authorized by the Bush Administration. The Department of Justice’s retracted torture memoranda advise that doctors should be involved at every stage in the application of torture techniques—to provide a defense against criminal prosecution. And anecdotal evidence suggests that healthcare professionals were regularly present, sometimes in the torture room and sometimes offsite observing remotely. But the involvement of healthcare professionals in such practices is a violation of rules of medical ethics, and the Bush and Obama Administrations have kept the identities of those involved rigorously secret. And now, in the middle of 2010, very few people seem to care that there are still hundreds of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay never having faced trial. British writer Andy Worthington is a notable exception and his coverage is invaluable.

The hype against Saddam was false, part 8642 Posted: 12 Jul 2010 This story isn’t old news and remains key to understanding any possible military strike against Iran: Former UK diplomat Carne Ross claimed that the [British] Government ”intentionally and substantially” exaggerated its assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in public documents. ”Most of the unanswered questions derived from discrepancies in Iraq’s accounting for its past stocks and the destruction of these stocks.” Mr Ross, who was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the UK’s mission to the United Nations from 1997 to 2002, alleged that nuanced intelligence was ”massaged” into ”more robust and terrifying” statements about Saddam’s supposed WMD. He said in a statement to the inquiry: ”It remains my view that the internal Government assessment of Iraq’s capabilities was intentionally and substantially exaggerated in public Government documents during 2002 and 2003. ”Throughout my posting in New York, it was the UK and US assessment that while there were many unanswered questions about Iraq’s WMD stocks and capabilities, we did not believe that these amounted to a substantial threat. ”At no point did we have any firm evidence, from intelligence sources or otherwise, of significant weapons holdings.