A.LOEWENSTEIN

NOVANEW

To the panic stations! 
Posted: 10 May 2010 05:26 PM PDT

Akiva Eldar in Haaretz:

The entire world, with our American friends at the forefront, insists that the beefing up of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem cannot be reconciled with the “two states for two peoples” solution. How can the Palestinian leadership be expected to stand by idly while 25,000 Palestinian workers put a stamp of approval on the occupation through their own labor and the sweat of their own brows?
The commotion over the PA’s economic campaign against the settlements indicates, more than anything else, how the colonialist mindset has been branded into Israeli consciousness. The protests over the threatened loss of the hewers of wood and drawers of water shows how hard it is to shake off the master-servant attitudes that have taken root over the last 43 years.
The gap between the economies of Israel and the occupied territories, the security restrictions on entering Israel and movement within the territories, and the discrimination in favor of Israeli goods, have all forced the West Bank’s labor force into the settlements. The settlers have also become dependent upon this asymmetrical relationship between themselves and the natives:
Why should they accommodate Chinese workers on their holy land if they can get cheap Palestinian laborers who go home at the end of the day.

Bradley Burston in Haaretz:

If a Jewish state were run by the secret police, Israelis could disappear without a trace. No contact with lawyers. Court-ordered muzzles on broadcast and print news media.
If a Jewish state were run by the secret police, there were be gag orders forbidding journalists to write even of the existence of the gag orders.
Thank God such a thing couldn’t happen here.
If a Jewish state were run by the secret police, its agents would meet Spain’s most prominent clown on his arrival at the airport. They would confiscate his passport, interrogate him on and off for six hours, and tell the Interior Ministry to order him expelled without entry.
Thank God such a thing wouldn’t happen anywhere.
Because if the secret police ran the Jewish state, it would also run – and run with – the Interior Ministry. Which, in turn, would undermine and overrule the Foreign Ministry and even the Prime Minister’s Office, changing the course of Israel’s international diplomacy, its global public relations, and its relationship with Washington.
And because if the secret police ran the Jewish state, any and every move could be explained in two words and never more than two. Security reasons.

Moreover, if a Jewish state were run by the secret police, the chief of the secret police would hold an effective veto over the resumption and the substance of peace talks with the Palestinians, or over such issues as easing a crippling embargo on every one of Gaza’s million and a half people.

No way we would let that happen here.
Or, if the defense ministry of the Jewish state were run by a furtive autocrat, in close cooperation with the secret police, the army might decide to bypass decisions of the High Court of Justice on such issues as the West Bank barrier or highway use by Palestinian motorists – thus gutting the court, and the separation of powers, of meaning.
And if, by some twist of fate, the Jewish state were run by the secret police, we would, all of us, be in danger of becoming Prisoners of Zion, our movements monitored and curtailed, our freedoms of the press, of free assembly, of due process, of religious expression, all placed in doubt.
We can only thank our lucky stars that none of this can ever befall us.
Enough of this fantasizing for one morning. Time to get back to work.
Time to grab a cup of coffee and leaf through the gag orders.

Chipping away at the “Middle East’s only democracy” myth 
Posted: 10 May 2010 05:19 PM PDT

Visiting American law professor George Bisharat – a vocal opponent of Israel’s occupation – writes in the Fairfax National Times about the daily discrimination suffered by Palestinians across the occupied territories.
Oddly and rather comically, an editor has placed the following caption below the accompanying photo, an image that has no connection whatsoever to the piece itself:

Independent Australian Jewish Voices has unleashed a torrent of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist feeling despite its protestations of balance.

Good to see that IAJV continues to get noticed.

The Zionist who speaks Arabic to the Muslim world 
Posted: 10 May 2010 05:12 PM PDT

Israel’s appointment of an Arabic-speaking spokesman is almost comical.
Good luck explaining the ever-growing occupation in the West Bank on Al-Jazeera.

Israel should not be allowed in the OECD 
Posted: 10 May 2010 04:32 PM PDT

The struggle will go on:

Palestinian civil society represented by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), a wide coalition of the largest Palestinian mass organizations and trade unions, issued a strong condemnation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) decision today to welcome Israel as a member of the organization at its ministerial meeting to take place on 27-78 May.
A BNC spokesperson commented: “By accepting Israel, OECD member countries show a blatant complicity with Israeli war crimes, destroying the very foundations of international law. Rewarding Israel entrenches its impunity and dashes any realistic hope for achieving a just peace in the region.”
The OECD’s decision is the culmination of a process that began in 2007 whereby Israel had to pass a number of technical tests and implement reforms to be eligible for accession. According to the “Road Map for the accession of Israel to the OECD Convention,” it was required to demonstrate commitment to the “fundamental values” of the OECD.
The BNC had released a paper showing how Israel has consistently breached these requirements, making it ineligible for accession (see holdisraelaccountable.net/2010/05/05/memo/). A BNC spokesperson commented: “Officials of OECD member states are perfectly aware that Israel does not comply with any of the objective criteria put forth.
Yet, they have decided to single out Israel, elevate it above all these objective criteria, reward it for its defiance of the OECD, not to mention of international law, and make the entire accession process a farce.”
In the run-up to the OECD decision, the BNC coordinated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), unions and other civil society actors in all 30 OECD member states as part of an intensive campaign to oppose Israel’s membership for its persistent and systematic violations of the rights of the Palestinians, especially after its atrocities in Gaza in 2008-09, described as “war crimes” in the UN report authored by Justice Richard Goldstone and his colleagues.
Most important for OECD member states should be the fact that they themselves are violating their own legal obligations, in the moment they accept Israel into the OECD as currently agreed upon. The PLO, supported by renowned international law experts, presented to the OECD and its member states a legal opinion that highlights this serious legal matter and requested that it be clarified prior to Israel’s accession. Governments are yet to respond.
Having accepted economic data from Israel that include its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, the OECD is, in legal terms, considering Israel’s accession into the OECD as a state and an Occupying Power.
The Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV) requires that Israel as an Occupying Power ensures the economic well-being of the occupied Palestinian population. Under the Convention, Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank constitute population transfer, which is defined as a war crime. OECD member states are under legal obligation to ensure compliance with the Fourth Geneva Convention under international humanitarian law and the law on state responsibility.
Accepting economic data of the illegal settlements makes it absolutely required to ensure that the protected Palestinian population is also included in this data. Under the convention, Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank constitute population transfer which is defined as a war crime.
Moreover, accepting Israel into the OECD based on economic data which include the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank but arbitrarily exclude the four million Palestinians living there constitutes a direct and blatant breach by the OECD and member states of their legal obligations under both bodies Fourth Geneva Convention international law. OECD member states as High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention would thereby endorse and become complicit in Israel’s war crime of population transfer.
“The only legally sound course of action for OECD governments would have been to put Israel’s accession process on hold and give due consideration to the serious legal ramifications put forth by prominent legal experts,” said a BNC spokesperson. “Not doing so means that these states are actively abetting Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people and cementing Israeli impunity in maintaining its occupation and apartheid system.”

Debating why the internet should not be censored 
Posted: 10 May 2010 07:08 AM PDT

The following article by Erik Jensen appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Governments should not censor the internet. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, disagrees and the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, broadly supports his position.
But two journalists and the head of government affairs for Google in Asia strongly agree with the proposition.
“We have to ask what the Rudd government’s agenda is,” said Antony Loewenstein, a freelance journalist and blogger who is speaking for the motion at the Herald’s IQ2 debate tonight. “And we have to assume it is to appease certain lobby groups – particularly the Christian lobby.”
Mr Loewenstein is joined in condemning clean-feed internet by the head of government affairs for Google in Asia, Ross LaJeunesse, and the Herald’s David Marr.
Broadly, the trio argue that censoring the internet will not work, is not the most effective way to deal with the crimes cited as reasons for censorship, and can be a front for government control of ideas.
“The argument government goes for is they’re protecting citizens from harmful content, they’re protecting children from paedophilia,” Loewenstein said. “The truth is in all these countries [China and Iran] there is zero evidence that blocking content is doing anything to these crimes.”
But Elizabeth Handsley, a professor of law at Flinders University and third speaker for the negative, said the argument was not about implementation – it was about government responsibility and developing a mechanism to control content that was already illegal. “The government regulates every other medium of communication,” she said.
In arguing against the motion, she is joined by the Beijing-based commentator Kaiser Kuo and the founding director of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre, Alastair MacGibbon.
The Herald’s IQ2 debate is held at the City Recital Hall tonight from 6.30.

How the Pakistani client state will be forced to please its American master 
Posted: 10 May 2010 01:24 AM PDT

Patrick Cockburn on the war inside Pakistan that will only worsen as Western pressures increase (without understanding where the anger is coming from):

The Pakistani Foreign Minister, Makhdoom Qureshi, believes that what happened in New York was “blowback” for the US drone strikes in Pakistan, which he says killed 700 Pakistani civilians last year.
This may be true, but it is also hypocritical since the drones are launched from inside Pakistan and senior Pakistani security officials confirm that the information on the whereabouts of Taliban leaders, enabling the drones to target them, comes from Pakistani military intelligence (ISI) agents on the ground. Without the ISI involvement the drones would be ineffective.

The Israeli elite knows apartheid is biting 
Posted: 10 May 2010 12:34 AM PDT

Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday:

Without an agreement we will be subject to international isolation and we will suffer a fate similar to that of Belfast or Bosnia, or a gradual transition from a paradigm of two states for two peoples to one of one state for two peoples. Some people will try to label us as being similar to South Africa. That’s why we must act.

And Avishai Braverman, Labour’s minister for minority affairs:

It’s time to address the core issues, courageously. The talks must stop focusing on one or another [West Bank] outpost or one or another building, and we must go straight to the main big problems. We are in such a state of international isolation that if we fail to move forward to a solution of two states for two people, that isolation will weaken us significantly.

Why can’t Israel just talk about its wonderful environmental developments? 
Posted: 09 May 2010 09:24 PM PDT

These days, any attempt by the Zionist community to present “vibrant, democratic Israel” should be met like this:

Local activists protested the so-called “Israeli Innovation Weekend” (IIW) at the Museum of Science in Boston through multiple, disparate actions on Sunday. IIW’s sponsors, including the Consulate General of Israel to New England, were left flummoxed by the activists’ efforts and largely unable to prevent their successful, multi-pronged disruption of the event.
Protesters targeted IIW because it was part of a state-sponsored campaign to “greenwash” Israel’s discriminatory, apartheid regime and atrocious human rights record. IIW was officially sponsored by the Israeli Consulate, which also played a major role in funding and planning the event; nearly half of IIW’s steering committee was composed of Consulate staff and the Consulate was one of the top donors.
Throughout the day, protesters maintained a visible public presence outside the Museum. Protesters held signs drawing attention to Israeli “innovation” in technologies of death such as white phosphorus and cluster bombs, parodying the exhibit’s slogan, “Healing the World Through Technology.”
Across the street from the Museum, demonstrators also prominently displayed a large Palestinian flag from the adjacent East Cambridge Lechmere Viaduct Bridge. The protesters’ message was seen by hundreds of Museum visitors and passing tour groups, many of whom called out or honked horns in expressions of solidarity.
Meanwhile, inside the Museum, lone activists stealthily replaced the IIW program with a duplicate program, virtually identical in appearance but which highlighted themes of the Israeli science and technology sectors’ complicity in water theft and other abuses [program attached].
The front of the program named Israel “The World’s Leader in Cutting-Edge Apartheid Technologies,” while inside the program, titles of IWW lectures were re-printed with altered titles. For example, “Sunshine and Sustainability: Israeli Leadership in Solar Technology” was renamed “Sustainable Darkness:
Israeli Innovations in Torture Technology and Extra-Legal Maneuvering,” while “Sharing Water in the Middle East—Israel’s Cross-Border Water Resource Strategy” became “Strategic Water Appropriation in the Middle East: Might Makes Right.” IIW organizers were overheard multiple times expressing anger and frustration at their inability to determine who was “plastering” the exhibit with this literature.
Activists surreptitiously distributed this material for more than two hours before finally being discovered and asked to leave the Museum. Yet Museum staff were observed reading the alternative program and several expressed sympathy with the activists’ cause as they were escorted out of the Museum.
Finally, yet another group of activists infiltrated the last panel lecture of the day, entitled “Israeli Technology: An Investor’s Perspective.” As the panel began, two participants unfurled a giant banner reading “Don’t Invest in Israeli Apartheid.” After the activists were shouted down by the audience and removed by Museum security, others continued to disrupt the session every five to ten minutes, individually standing up and interrupting the lecture by condemning investment in Israeli technology, calling for justice for Palestinians, or singing liberation songs.
One disrupter referred the audience to the report about war crimes in Gaza by the UN inquiry commission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone if they truly wanted to know more about Israeli technological innovation. Another declared that investing in Israel was investing in the dispossession and genocide of indigenous people.
Yet another sang a re-written, Palestine-specific version of Sweet Honey in the Rock’s Chile Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto. In sum, the activists made it impossible for the event to proceed and visibly agitated the audience. Video of the disruption will be made available online this week.
In another positive sign of Israel’s increasing marginalization, there were so few people in actual attendance of the lecture that after all the activists had been removed, there was more security present in the auditorium than attendees.
The Boston-area activists were pleased to be part of a larger, international campaign that refuses to let the Israeli government “greenwash” its occupation and devastation of Palestinian life by presenting itself as a leader in scientific innovation and green technology, a campaign that is part of the larger movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
Just days earlier, activists in Scotland held a three-day protest of a similar such exhibition of Israeli science and technological innovation at their national Parliament building, a demonstration that included 400 tiny coffins to represent the children massacred in the 2009-2010 war on Gaza.
The BDS movement is an international response to the call from Palestinian society to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Israeli government until it ends its occupation and dismantles the Wall inside the West Bank, recognizes the equal rights of Palestinian citizens, and respects the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Havana’s revolution is dying a very painful death 
Posted: 09 May 2010 07:34 PM PDT

The US embargo remains insane and counter-productive but aging dictators are equally killing their country:

Parque Trillo used to be a lively pocket of Havana. A small open space bounded by four streets, it was where Cubans came to gossip, shop, play baseball and dance.
On the surface little has changed. Pensioners chat on benches, housewives trawl the food market, teenage boys take turns swinging a bat, and the Palacio de la Rumba nightclub throbs after dusk.
Things are gritty – buildings are dilapidated, grass is strewn with rubbish and the park’s blue pillars are discoloured and peeling – but that is hardly new. Jaime Valdés, however, has noticed one big change. “It’s a lot quieter these days. Young people are disappearing. The ones in their 20s and 30s, they’ve left.”
From his bench the retired chemist pointed to San Rafael street. “Fifteen from there, gone.” He pointed to San Miguel street. “There, another nine or 10, gone.” From Aramburu street, another eight, and from Hospital street, about a dozen, said Valdés. “It’s an exodus.”
Neighbourhoods across Havana report the same phenomenon. Young people, especially well-educated professionals, are fleeing the island. Tens of thousands have emigrated in the past two years. The exodus has alarmed the communist government but remains largely unreported, a taboo topic for state media.
“It’s a sign that the revolution has failed, so they don’t want to talk about it. We are losing our future,” said Ricardo Martinelli, a university professor who has seen many of his students and his only child, a 23-year-old technician, emigrate in recent months.

A government that shuns asylum seekers deserves sanction 
Posted: 09 May 2010 07:16 PM PDT

Last weekend Australia’s leading unions sent a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd demanding a more humane response to refugees (the story is covered in today’s Sydney Morning Herald):

Dear Prime Minister,
We are writing to express our concern at the growing stance of indifference towards and demonisation of asylum seekers from both sides of Australian politics. Instead, Australian unions restate the need for strong political leadership from all sides of politics that recognises and deals with the push factors that cause people to seek asylum, and Australia’s international obligations to protect the rights of those most vulnerable in our global community.
Political parties should not exploit fear and xenophobia through the dehumanisation of refugees. These attitudes have been building for more than six months, culminating in the recent policy change by the Australian Government to suspend the processing of all new asylum claims by Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals. In devising this approach to deter “boat people”, the Government has successfully alienated thousands of people seeking refuge from persecution, and forsaken Australia’s “fair-go” spirit.
The decision to reopen the isolated Curtin detention facility in Western Australia is also veryconcerning. We want to avoid a repeat of the politics of fear that overcame Australia in the period of 2001 to 2004 – a period that brought shame upon Australia internationally, and divided the nation.
It also created a situation of intolerable misery and anguish for asylum seekers, including children who arrived in Australia only to be shipped off to the Pacific Solution, locked into desert-bound detention centres, or placed in limbo through Temporary Protection Visas.
In using refugees as pawns in an election game, Australia is failing in its obligations as a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and its 1976 Protocol to not discriminate in the treatment of refugees on the basis of race, religion or country of origin (Article 3). Sri Lankans and Afghans are being singled out purely based on race. Asylum seekers should be assessed case by case and this blanket decision to suspend asylum claims ignores real security threats existing in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
The Sri Lankan Government’s persistent harassment and intimidation of journalists and human rights activists, arrests of opposition party members and continued incarceration of tens of thousands of Tamil refugees highlights the continuing political and social instability in Sri Lanka. A recent US Department of Statei report notes Tamils in Sri Lanka are also victims to extrajudicial killings and disappearances.
In Afghanistan, civilian casualties remain high, with 2009 representing the highest number of civilians killed in the armed conflict, according to Human Rights Watchii. Ethnic and religious minorities, including the Hazara population – the largest percentage fleeing the country, remain at risk of persecution while journalists continue to face threats in the pursuit of truth.
Permanent migration – including the humanitarian and refugee program – has and will continue to play an enormous role in Australia’s growth and prosperity. It is time to back the words of our national anthem about the boundless plains to share for anybody who has travelled across the high seas.
We call on all sides of politics to show some compassion and humanity in a bipartisan way, and we urge the Australian Government to act now to uphold its international obligations and live up to its election promise of a humane immigration and refugee policy.
Australian Council of Trade Unions, President Sharan Burrow
Australian Education Union, Federal Secretary Susan Hopgood
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, National Secretary Dave Oliver
Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union, Federal Secretary Brian Crawford
Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Secretary Ged Kearney
Australian Rail, Tram and Bus Industry Union, National Secretary Allan Barden
Australian Services Union, NSW & ACT (Services) Branch, Branch Secretary Sally McManus
Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union of Australia, National Secretary Peter Tighe
CPSU – SPSF Group, Federal Secretary David Carey
Evatt Foundation, Secretary Chris Gambian
Finance Sector Union, National Secretary Leon Carter
Independent Education Union of Australia, Federal Secretary Chris Watt
Labor for Refugees (NSW & VIC), Convenor Linda Scott (NSW) and Secretary Robin Rothfield (VIC)
Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, National Secretary Louise Tarrant
Maritime Union of Australia, National Secretary Paddy Crumlin
Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, Federal Secretary Christopher Warren
National Tertiary Education Union, General Secretary Grahame McCulloch
The Textile Clothing & Footwear Union of Australia, National Secretary Michele O’Neil
Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA, Executive Officer Peter Jennings
Unions NSW, Secretary Mark Lennon
See: www.antonyloewenstein.com

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