A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• ElectionWire interview on Australian election
• Crocodile tears for Israel
• Washington fails in the Middle East and people notice
• Murdoch says what goes and politicians ask if they jump through hoops
• Aborigines are invisible in Australia
• The how and why a rabbi backs BDS
• More on the Wikileaks/Israel/Afghanistan connection

ElectionWire interview on Australian election 05 Aug 2010 Election Wire is an online youth portal covering the Australian election campaign (here’s their recent report about detention centres). Journalist Austin G. Mackell yesterday interviewed me about the issues in the country, including foreign affairs, the Greens, the web filter, Wikileaks and the Middle East:

Crocodile tears for Israel  05 Aug 2010 A sign of the times. Online newsletter Bitterlemons features a series on “Israeli’s growing international isolation“. A combination of fear and arrogance permeates the collection, as Zionists either realise that Israel is on a path towards greater panic or more arrogance. Then there is Ghada Karmi, leading Palestinian writer: Can Israel survive its recent battering in public opinion? Many believe that this may be a defining moment in a long history of Israeli impunity. Hitherto, Israel’s record of recovery from international censure has been impressive. A string of past misdeeds–the 1982 Lebanon invasion and siege of Beirut, the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres, the 2006 Lebanon War, the interminable occupation of Arab land, even the 2008-9 war on Gaza that should have been decisive–failed to tarnish Israel’s reputation irreparably. Despite strong international condemnation each time, Israel was always able to shrug off its critics.   The Israeli attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla on May 31 is the current object of international censure. But, going by the past, there is no reason to suppose this time will be different. Speculation about a growing international isolation that will damage Israel may be just that. This May, Israel gained membership in the prestigious OECD, unprecedented for a state of its size. An upgrade of relations with Europe, already most favorable to Israel, is delayed but not cancelled. The fuss over the Gaza flotilla assault is already fading, and Israel may feel it has succeeded in facing down international condemnation yet again. Yet it may not turn out so well this time. Bravado, the flaunting of Israeli power over the US Congress and the recent success in apparently restoring cordial relations with the US president cannot disguise a tide of rising panic among Israelis. For a state so wedded to the idea of itself as legitimate, reputable and a worthy member of the world community, the battering this image has received in recent months must be worrying. The international climate of opinion has never been so hostile toward Israel.

Washington fails in the Middle East and people notice  05 Aug 2010 The Arab world realises that Barack Obama is George W. Bush with a better speech-writer: A new poll of Arab public opinion finds a significant drop in Arab world views of President Obama from a year ago. The 2010 Arab Public Opinion poll will be released Thursday at the Brookings Institution by Shibley Telhami, of the University of Maryland and Brookings’ Saban Center for Middle East Policy. The annual survey, conducted in conjunction with Zogby International, polled 3,976 people in six countries — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates — in June and July. The most striking finding is that while early in the Obama administration, in April and May 2009, some 51 percent of those polled expressed optimism about American policy in the Middle East; in the 2010 poll, only 16 percent were hopeful, while a majority, 64 percent, were discouraged. Hopes in the Arab world about how much Obama might transform U.S. foreign policy may have been unrealistically high as he came into office, and considerable disappointment has set in as the administration encounters difficulties in making significant progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, among other issues. “The data leaves little doubt that the deciding factor in the shift of opinion toward the Obama administration is disappointment on the Israeli-Palestinian issue,” Telhami said by e-mail. “Basically, Arabs have concluded that he can’t deliver on his promises at best, or that he’s just like Bush at worst,” George Washington University Middle East specialist and ForeignPolicy.com writer Marc Lynch said. “But there’s still considerable residual hope at this point that they’re wrong and that he’ll come through in the end.”

Murdoch says what goes and politicians ask if they jump through hoops Posted: 05 Aug 2010 A handy reminder, via Jonathan Holmes on the ABC, why the Murdoch press in Australia is about as honest and transparent as mud: On Sunday March 15 2009, The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney and several other News Ltd Sunday papers around the country published pictures of a semi-naked young woman whom they identified as a young Pauline Hanson, allegedly taken by her lover during a naughty weekend in the mid 1970s. Within days it emerged that the pictures were not of Ms Hanson, and the next Sunday the Tele had to issue a humiliating apology. But that first Monday, Media Watch asked what conceivable public interest was served by publishing the pictures – even if they were genuine. To which Sunday Telegraph Deputy Editor Helen McCabe – now the editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly – responded: “That’s for our readers to tell. That will be determined by the number of people that buy the paper.” That a senior News Ltd editor could be so profoundly ignorant of the meaning of the phrase ‘public interest’ was a worry. And the Murdoch press still believes it has the right to call the shots (something that successive political leaders have indulged).

Aborigines are invisible in Australia Posted: 04 Aug 2010 This is how Australia is being reported in the UK Independent: Aboriginal disadvantage has not rated a mention during the Australian election campaign – there are few votes in it. But as the party leaders criss-crossed the country this week, shocking evidence emerged at a government inquiry: children in remote indigenous communities are starving. The claims were made by child protection workers, who said the situation was so dire that an international aid-style programme was needed – an extraordinary state of affairs in one of the world’s most affluent nations. The workers called for essential food to be delivered by an organisation such as Oxfam or the Red Cross to ensure that children got enough to eat.

The how and why a rabbi backs BDS Posted: 04 Aug 2010 The recent decision by Olympia co-operative in the US to boycott Israeli goods was an American first. Progressive Rabbi Lyn Gottlieb backs the decision: Boycott is a time honored method which was the catalyst that ended legal segregation in the United States. Boycott is the primary tool of those engaged in nonviolent resistance to systematic injustice. Boycott targets unjust policies. It is not about ‘the right to exist’; Everyone has the right to ‘exist’. Rather, boycott is a tool that focuses on the right to live a life free from a policy of land seizure, internal transfer, administrative detention and other forms of violent and harmful actions levied against people who do not want to give up their land.

More on the Wikileaks/Israel/Afghanistan connection Posted: 04 Aug 2010 Mondoweiss follows up my investigations on the Israel-connection in the Wikileaks dump (and curiously, searching for “Israeli” brings some different results to “Israel“): I’m poking around the Afghan war diaries from Wikileaks (inspired by Antony Loewenstein) and it looks like one element of our nationbuilding effort in Afghanistan is working: the people there have demonstrated a lot, and peacefully, against Israel. Judging by the cable traffic, many of the demonstrations in Afghanistan in 2009 seem to have been against Israel’s attack on Gaza. Here’s a demo in northern Baghlan on January 1, 2009: 1000 people. The same day an Israeli flag is burned at a demo in Konduz City. The next day in Kabul, 2000 people demonstrate. A day later, another 400 people demonstrate against air strikes. More on January 8. Another on January 15. On January 25, a “peaceful and organized demonstration” near Kabul. No target mentioned for this demo; but you’d guess from the date that it involved Gaza. (Oh, and here 350 university students conduct a protest in support of Palestinians, in 2007.) A few days back I showed that James V. Forrestal, the first Sec’y of Defense, was opposed to the establishment of Israel because it would create turmoil in the Muslim world all the way out to Afghanistan. And he died way before Wikileaks.