Business as usual with an occupier isn’t feasible

Published on 20 July 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah tells Haaretz why Israel must pay a price for colonising Palestinian land:

As long as there is no pressure on Israel, Israel will not change. Following the Oslo Accords, there were a lot of ‘joint projects’ – in health, environment, training, and many of these were funded by the European Union and others,” he answers. “These were generally popular with Israeli participants because they allowed the Israelis to feel good and to present themselves as peacemakers and to normalize Israel’s image in the world. However, the Palestinian experience, in general, was that such joint projects, while offering clear propaganda benefits to Israel, were not helpful, or were even harmful to Palestinians because they presented a false image of harmony while, in fact, the occupation and settlements were advancing.

So across Palestinian civil society there is now a strong antipathy toward such organized joint projects. They are largely seen as patronizing and offering nothing that changes the power dynamic or advances the struggle to end Israeli occupation and oppression. By way of contrast, pressure and isolation is having a quite dramatic effect on Israel. First, there was an effort to ignore it, but now there is panic. Israel has launched a global campaign against what it calls ‘delegitimization’ and recently we saw the Boycott Law passed. This reminds me of the final years of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Questions about Australian union support for Palestine a smokescreen

Published on 20 July 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

My following investigation appears in Online Opinion:

Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA does essential work in many corners of the globe. But its focus in Palestine has caused the local Israel lobby to pressure the Australian government to sever ties to the group. This isn’t likely but once again highlights the aim of the Zionist mainstream against any assistance to the occupied Palestinians.

During a recent parliamentary committee in Canberra, Liberal Senator Eric Abetz asked AusAID what exactly it was backing in the Middle East.

There’s no problem with such questions in theory but the aim was twofold: do the Zionist lobby’s bidding and attempt to demonise any kind of support for Palestinians; and frame Israel as a benevolent power in Palestine.

A recent report from the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), stated:

“At the October 2010 Estimates hearings, Senator Eric Abetz questioned AusAID on elements of its funding dispensed to APHEDA. Senator Abetz asked AusAID whether it funded organisations associated with BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] or the APHEDA ‘study tours’ to the Middle East. AusAID responded that “no AusAID or other Australian Development Assistance funds are provided to any groups for the BDS campaign” and that “AusAID does not provide any funding for the [APHEDA] study trips.” However, regarding Ma’an Development Centre AusAID conceded that while “AusAID does not directly fund Ma’an Development Centre… under the Australian Middle East NGO Cooperation Agreement (AMENCA) AusAID provides funding to Union Aid Abroad APHEDA.””

APHEDA released a statement clearly explaining that, “no AusAID funds or resources are used to support campaigning by MA’AN or APHEDA.” AIJAC apparently doesn’t understand the concept of independent Palestinian organisers making independent decisions about policies without Australian NGO or government direction.

AIJAC continued:

“Senator Abetz returned to these issues at the 2 June 2011 Estimates hearings, eliciting yet more revelations. Abetz asked AusAID: “What are the safeguards in place that prevent AusAID funding being used by APHEDA or any of the other in a manner that contravenes Australian government policy on Israel? Let us just pluck an example out of the air like BDS?” AusAID replied simply: “We have no information that any of the NGOs we are supporting…are involved with that program.”

“But Senator Abetz then pointed out to AusAID that: “According to APHEDA’s annual reports all of APHEDA’s funds for Middle East projects originate from AusAID,” which would seem to imply that it must be AusAID’s tax dollars being given to the Ma’an Development Centre by APHEDA. In response, AusAID did not contest this claim, merely re-stating its position that no AusAID funds are contributed towards organisations that support BDS. The AusAID representative offered no concrete assurances that the Australian taxpayer money apparently being given to the Ma’an Development Centre via APHEDA is not being used for BDS activities.”

Again, AIJAC fails to understand the realities in Palestine itself. Officially Australia claims to be opposed to the illegal colonies in the West Bank but also states its opposition to the BDS movement. These are inherently contradictory positions on the ground because there are no Palestinian groups of importance that aren’t engaged in some kind of political or economic opposition to creeping settlement expansion. In other words, AIJAC is calling for the severing of assistance to all Palestinian groups because they dare to protest against the illegal colonies.

The Gillard government has thus far avoided tackling this question, simply calling BDS “nuts” but offering no alternative to a non-existent peace process in the region.

AIJAC concludes:

“Given the information revealed in these hearings, there now seems ample reason to raise such questions about the AusAID funding to APHEDA. Given AusAID’s inability to provide adequate answers to Senator Abetz’s questions, the ball must now move to the court of Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, as AusAID implied. There is now a good basis for expecting a review of his department’s funding of APHEDA in light of these revelations and the fact that on 1 April 2011, Mr. Rudd assured Australians that his government “did not condone nor support any boycotts or sanctions against the Jewish state.””

It is interesting how the other three relevant Australian NGOs (CARE, World Vision and Actionaid) did not get questioned and odd also how their Palestinian partner NGOs (like just about every Palestinian NGO, according to an aid insider who spoke to me) have equally signed up to the 2005 BDS call, yet it is the APHEDA partner that gets singled out.

The Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO Network) is signed up to the BDS and all the Australian NGOs have at least one Palestinian NGO partner who is a member of the PNGO Network. If the Australian government (or AIJAC) were really serious about severing connection with any Palestinian group that backs BDS, then the Palestinian Authority would also have to be shunned because it has implemented partial BDS against settlement goods.

The Australian union movement is increasingly backing BDS against a recalcitrant Zionist state. There are a handful of prominent unionists, such as ACTU Assistant Secretary, Michael Borowick, an Orthodox Jew, who opposes BDS and organises Zionist lobby trips to Israel and Palestine but they are a dwindling minority.

An aid insider tells me that a number of key unionists continue to bully APHEDA behind the scenes in an attempt to stop its work in Palestine, including the successful study tours led by APHEDA. The pressure has singularly failed.

These trips are seen as a threat because they refuse to follow the path set by AIJAC, Albert Dadon and other Zionist lobbyists who take politicians and journalists on propaganda tours around Israel (with five minutes in Ramallah). The Greens recently obtained a long list of media and political elite figures that took the Dadon trip last year and this proved that both major political parties and corporate press are ideologically compromised by such visits.

For those who know the reality in the region, advocating for Palestinian rights under occupation has become unavoidably and necessarily linked to some form of BDS endorsement.

It is ironic that the right-wing Israeli Knesset is making it illegal for Israeli’s to support BDS and yet this is the “democratic” state that Zionists argue we must uncritically support.

Even in Australia, it’s apparently illegal to simply protest outside a shop, Max Brenner, which supports the Israeli army. It is not, as claimed by blind defenders of Zionism, an attack on Jewish businesses but rather a non-violent and legitimate form of protest, like what occurred against companies and individuals who supported apartheid in South Africa.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd is always quoting the fact that Australia has “greatly” increased aid to the Palestinians to $56m in 2011-12 and the important activities the aid is doing. However, he uses this “fact” to erroneously answer questions about Australia’s support of Palestinian aspirations (statehood, refugee right of return, end the occupation, human rights etc) for peace. In a political conflict such as this, providing aid is only half the answer: it must also be coupled with the insistence that Israel comply with relevant international, humanitarian law. The Australian government is silent on law enforcement against its great friend and ally.

Following the ripple effect of the Marrickville BDS campaign and rising public support for the Palestinians, there is growing scrutiny in Parliament on AusAID’s Palestine program. It’s tragic that Palestine, with the least resources available to it and under siege, has to answer for the world’s ills and people’s petty prejudices.

APHEDA’s Middle East project officer Lisa Arnold tells me: “Gaza is a man-made disaster of more than five times the scale of the Indian Ocean tsunami; it’s just that the deaths and destruction occur over the course of decades, not minutes.”

The reality remains that APHEDA operates vitally important programs across Palestine – a few years ago I visited one of its programs at Gaza’s only rehabilitation hospital – and the Zionist lobby with its corporate and media mates should not be allowed to threaten this life-line to a people under occupation.

It is not the right of the Australian Senate to pry into what APHEDA or their Palestinian partners do with their own monies or other donor funds. What AIJAC and its lobby friends desperately want to avoid is any examination of what Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza and why hysteria against any critics of Zionist policies is now par for the course by its Israeli government masters.

Murdoch empire ruled by arrogance and denial (and respected by few)

Published on 20 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Jay Rosen on a bloated corporate culture that indulges and fellates power. Oh, and loves wars against Muslims:

When the news broke that the Murdochs had hired the Edelman firm to handle public relations in the UK, I thought to myself, “Edelman has a crisis response practice, but do they have a denial division?”

Because to me that is the most striking thing about the way News Corp has reacted to these events from the beginning. Denial! Not only in the sense of deflecting questions with “move along, nothing to see here…” (when, in fact, there is something) but that deeper sense of denial we invoke when we say that a woman is in denial about her unfaithful husband or a man about his coming mortality.

Denial is somehow built into the culture of News Corp, more so than any normal company. It isn’t normal for the CEO to say, as Murdoch said on July 15, that his company had handled the crisis “extremely well in every way possible,” making just “minor mistakes,” when the next day the executive in charge (Rebekah Brooks) resigns, then a day later gets arrested, followed by Murdoch’s closest aide, Les Hinton, who also resigned in hopes of reversing the tide of defeats.

Your top people don’t quit for minor mistakes, but no one in News Corp seemed troubled by that July 15 statement. The Wall Street Journal reported it without raising an eyebrow. Murdoch was confronted with his “minor mistakes” quote in Tuesday’s parliamentary hearing but he turned down the chance to take it back. Where does denial so massive come from?

Here’s my little theory: News Corp is not a news company at all, but a global media empire that employs its newspapers – and in the US, Fox News – as a lobbying arm. The logic of holding these “press” properties is to wield influence on behalf of the rest of the (much bigger and more profitable) media business and also to satisfy Murdoch’s own power urges.

However, this fact, fairly obvious to outside observers, is actually concealed from the company by its own culture. So here we find the source for the river of denial that runs through News Corp.

Fox News and the newspapers Murdoch owns are described by News Corp, and understood by most who work there as “normal” news organisations. But they aren’t, really. What makes them different is not that they have a more conservative take on the world – that’s the fiction in which opponents and supporters join – but rather: news is not their first business. Wielding influence is.

Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs says West Bank isn’t occupied

Published on 19 July 2011 in Israel. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

This is Zionist propaganda that would like the world to ignore this or this:

Remembering what Chomsky does to help people in countless places

Published on 19 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

As Noam Chomsky prepares to arrive in Australia later in the year to receive the Sydney Peace Prize, haters routinely forget the tireless work by the American intellectual behind the scenes on behalf of those persecuted by governments. This campaigning is rarely acknowledged and it often comes at some personal cost. Below is one case in literally thousands. It was published in the Sunday Age in 1997. I’m told the man mentioned was eventually brought to safety:

An Indonesian embassy official has sought political asylum in South Africa, claiming to have classified documents detailing official corruption in his country and evidence of human rights violations in Indonesian-ruled East Timor.

The official, Stany Aji, said he had been assisting the pro-democracy movement in Indonesia and had been in contact with Guruh Sukarnoputra, former opposition parliamentarian and brother of pro-democracy leader Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Marco Boni, a spokesman for South Africa’s Foreign Ministry, confirmed yesterday that an application for asylum had been received from Aji, who had been working in the trade section of the Indonesian embassy. “Our Home Affairs Department is considering the case at the moment,” he told ‘The Sunday Age’.

Aji, who has been in hiding since his activities were discovered, appealed last week for urgent help via the Internet, sending a message to US academic Professor Noam Chomsky of Boston. Chomsky is known as a strong critic of the Indonesian regime and has intervened in previous bids for political asylum by East European and Latin American dissidents.

“(South Africa) has so far not given me any guarantee of granting asylum due to the fact that South Africa wants to hold on to good relations with Indonesia,” Aji said in his plea to Chomsky. “The information that I hold would most definitely break this illusory and temporary state of good relations with the Indonesian Government.”

Chomsky later sought help from a number of colleagues around the world, including Deakin University academic Scott Burchill. “He said the fellow seemed to be in a bit of trouble,” said Burchill, a lecturer in international relations. “The official also wanted to contact Jose Ramos Horta, who Chomsky thought was still in Australia.”

Ramos Horta, who lives in Sydney but spends much of the year travelling, is an exiled East Timorese resistance leader who shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with the territory’s Catholic bishop, Carlos Belo. He was in Australia until last week.

What Murdoch thugs fear most; sunlight

Published on 19 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Wendy Bacon, a journalist for the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology, writes in New Matilda that now is the time to seriously investigate the power of the Murdoch empire in Australia. It’s called democracy, hacks:

There are two main ways of thinking about freedom of expression in the context of a democracy.

One way concentrates on freedom of the press. This tends to emphasise the importance of an unrestrained press to hold others accountable. From that point of view, the more power the press has the better.

The other way puts the emphasis on communication — access to information and a voice for all groups. This second way assumes that the media marketplace is not an even playing field and that some steps may be taken by governments to protect the rights of less powerful groups and individuals.

Not surprisingly, press owners and journalists often react negatively to any suggestion that could impinge on their freedom. Take the Weekend Australian’s vehement defence of its editorial performance and its attack on Greens leader Bob Brown’s call for a media inquiry into media ownership. The Saturday editorial accuses News Limited’s critics of wanting to swap a robust media for “a monocultural media” which is ironic as that is exactly what critics of Australia’s ownership laws say they want investigated. While failing to come to grips with critics’ key concern, which is the potential abuse of media power gained through concentrated ownership, the paper says it will debate media regulation on its merits — provided, it seems, that the underlying preference for the profit motive is accepted by us all.

Meanwhile, across in the tabloids, the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt announced to the readers of Australia’s biggest newspaper that Greens Leader Bob Brown’s “jihad” on freedom of speech was ”totalitarian”.

In fact, in a long press conference on Friday, Brown said he was in favour of free speech and had no predetermined ideas about the answer to what he sees as threats to diversity. He supports a legal right to sue for breach of privacy. (In fact this would only benefit those few with resources to take action and should have a public interest defence.)

It’s understandable that Australian News Corp journalists have mostly concentrated on explaining that they do not systematically break the law like their peers at News of the World. But doesn’t this sidestep the key point in this saga for Australia — that there is no competition here? Tabloid journalism in Australia is controlled by News Ltd, each paper having its own city market to itself.

After the phone hacking scandal broke, few commentators thought about how much of the results of News of the World unethical practices ended up being served up to Australian audiences. There are lots of advantages of being part of a global “integrated media company” as News Corporation describes itself.

10 questions the British MPs will not ask Murdoch

Published on 19 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

And it’s all about Iraq and Tony Blair’s desperate need to receive the backing of the media mogul.

Omar Barghouti talks on BDS and Palestinian resistance

Published on 19 July 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

How corporate media aims to protect Murdoch empire

Published on 19 July 2011 in General. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

A serious media and political culture would always oppose concentration of corporate interests. Alas, that does not happen and hence the Murdoch empire has accumulated ridiculous amounts of power over the last decades. It should be challenged, including here in Australia.

So it’s unsurprising that the corporate press, which lives and thrives by maintaining a monopoly, would often defend the Murdoch rules.

Here’s the Washington Post editorial from Sunday:

It goes without saying that law enforcement on both sides of the Atlantic should aggressively pursue any evidence of criminal conduct — and investigators must determine why British police failed to pursue evidence of phone hacking after an initial case four years ago. Though News Corp. will suffer, Britain may benefit from its failure to take control of BSkyB and an overall diminution of its influence. More so than in the United States, concentration of media ownership in Britain — where News Corp. controlled some 40 percent of newspaper circulation — is a concern.

It would be easy, however, for the reaction to the scandal to go too far, driven by the long-standing antipathy among the media and political left for Mr. Murdoch and his rightward-leaning organs. Calls by some Democrats in Congress for the Justice Department to investigate News Corp. for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, for example, are premature at best; Britain has good bribery laws and is perfectly capable of following up allegations of payoffs to its police or others.

Similarly, suggestions that Britain should replace the newspaper industry’s self-regulatory body with official regulation are misguided and dangerous. Britain’s biggest media problem is not too much freedom but too little: Onerous libel laws deter critical reporting about public figures and arguably drive journalists to measures such as phone hacking to obtain lawsuit-proof stories. That’s obviously no excuse for the inexcusable. But once they are done flaying Mr. Murdoch, the country’s political leaders would do well to address that larger issue too.

And then there’s the sorry sight of the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal editorial defending the company and explaining how essential is the empire for democracy, freedom, human rights, food production et al:

At least three British investigations into phone-hacking and payments to police and others by the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid are underway, with 10 arrests so far. News Corp. and its executives have apologized profusely and are cooperating with authorities. Phone-hacking is illegal, and it is up to British authorities to enforce their laws. If Scotland Yard failed to do so adequately when the hacking was first uncovered several years ago, then that is more troubling than the hacking itself.

It is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous. Fleet Street in general has long had a well-earned global reputation for the blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true. The understandable outrage in this case stems from the hacking of a noncelebrity, the murder victim Milly Dowler.

The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support. The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren’t attempting to influence public affairs, and don’t skew their coverage to do so, can’t stand a day’s scrutiny. The overnight turn toward righteous independence recalls an eternal truth: Never trust a politician.

…

We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp. journalists across the world.

Israel treats Palestinian children like criminals

Published on 19 July 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

More here.

Finally, after decades, some honesty from the Murdoch king

Published on 18 July 2011 in General. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

Talking Murdoch hacking on Portland indy radio

Published on 18 July 2011 in Audio, General and Interviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I was interviewed last week by a progressive Portland radio station, 620KPOJ, on the Murdoch phone hacking scandal and the empire’s pernicious effect on democracy (interview begins around 21 minutes):

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Murdoch criminals already getting the cinema treatment

Published on 18 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Revolution Truth speaks out on Wikileaks

Published on 17 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Jeremy Scahill on US media ignoring US-led war on terror black sites

Published on 17 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .



Here’s Schaill’s stunning Nation story on CIA-led black sites in Somalia.

One Murdoch realises Palestinian reality

Published on 17 July 2011 in General and Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Fascinating historical recollection:

In 2002, [former Labour spin doctor Alastair] Campbell records in his diaries, Rupert Murdoch, James and Lachlan came to dinner at Downing Street. The conversation turned to the Middle East: “[Rupert] Murdoch said he didn’t see what the Palestinians’ problem was and James said it was that they were kicked out of their fucking homes and had nowhere to fucking live. Murdoch . . . finally said to James that he didn’t think he should talk like that in the prime minister’s house . . . TB said afterwards he was quite impressed with the way Murdoch let his sons do so much of the talking.”

Fox News does oh so serious examination into Murdoch scandal

Published on 16 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Bleating of the oppressed Murdoch multinational

Published on 16 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Life is tough for an organisation that constantly speaks about high morals and noble wars and yet finds itself under the spotlight as a corporation that bullies opponents and conducts illegal acts in the name of “journalism”. Hilariously, Murdoch’s Australian today says the glorious empire remains glorious and dedicated to holding politicians to account. Apart from the ones who give them better business opportunities, of course.

Overland editor Jeff Sparrow writes in Counterpunch on the ways in which a billionaire frames his company as a voice of the people (and yet is believed by increasingly few):

It’s been fascinating to watch from Australia as the News of the World scandal engulfs Britain.

Rupert Murdoch himself was, of course, originally one of ours, and those antipodean origins are often cited to explain his self-perception as an outsider in international media, a crass colonial pitting himself against the stuffy clubmen who once controlled London’s newspapers.

The flagship titles of the Murdoch Empire have traditionally expressed this brash populism, boldly declaring Jack just as good as his PC masters, if not a damn sight better. The late Paul Foot described how Murdoch’s Sun built its remarkable circulation around the image of a ‘cheeky chappy’, a fellow who liked a pint and a punt and a well-endowed woman, and wouldn’t be told there was anything wrong with any of them.

That last point was crucial. The Sun didn’t simply know what its readers wanted but also upheld their values (even, or perhaps especially, their prejudices) against censorious feminists and snooty academics and stuffy bureaucrats and out-of-touch judges and other condescending know-it-alls, displacing class resentment into a cultural antagonism directed against the Left.

Now, there’s a long history of conservative idealisation of the Tory workman, a fellow hailed as patriotic, royalist to the bone and genetically immune to political radicalism (unless, of course, he goes on strike, whereupon he’s knocked to the curb as lazy and pampered).

Murdoch’s populism distinguished itself not so much by the way it encouraged its readers to kick down (against immigrants, homosexuals, black people and so on) but by how it encouraged them to kick up. It drew upon the New Class concept developed by conservative intellectuals (Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Christopher Lasch, etc) in response to the sixties: a theory that posited the emergence of a white collar elite, identifiable by cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, liberalism and all the other notions that patriotic sons of the soil were said to despise. This New Class was supposed to have ensconced itself throughout society’s top echelons, particularly within the media and universities, a position from which it thereafter busied itself belittling and mocking the traditional pursuits of ordinary folk.

By expressing his outrage against, say, housing specially allocated to immigrants or the light sentences received by muggers, the cheeky chappy of a Murdoch tabloid cocked a snoot against the smug moralisers on his TV or in the upmarket papers, even as he aligned himself with the traditional priorities of the Conservatives.

You can see an updated and Americanised version playing out every night on Fox News, where the Aryan anchors perennially incite Joe Sixpack against the forces who would patronise him, from Hollywood liberals flapping their gums about gay marriage to pusillanimous Frenchmen who treacherously refuse to go to war.

By uncoupling the tropes of class from economics (indeed, from reaility), the schema facilitates a populist demagoguery sufficiently elastic so as to embrace almost anything. John Kerry might have actually been wounded in a conflict that George Bush assiduously dodged but Fox could still paint him as a pacifist elitist who sneered at patriots like W, largely on the basis that, though Bush didn’t fight, he looked like someone who would have.

The ‘Dirty Digger’ himself might have lacked the right accent, but even when he was first challenging the newspaper establishment, he was scarcely proletarian. Murdoch inherited his first paper, the Adelaide News, from his father, Sir Keith; he did his schooling at Geelong Grammar, a quintessential finishing college for the rich and entitled that also educated a young Prince Charles.

The journalist David Marr tells of attending a lecture in which Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s son, denounced the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for drawing attention to his shenanigans in the mobile phone business: the particular program in question was, he said, a ‘disgracful and biased attack’ by ‘our media elite’. So powerful has the peculiar vocabulary of New Class anti-elitism become that a man born into the most powerful media dynasty the world has ever seen can still present himself, without any trace of irony whatsoever, as an outsider being done down by society’s rulers.

Liberal Zionists struggle with brutal Israeli realities

Published on 16 July 2011 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Some, like editors of the Australian Jewish News, simply don’t see themselves as liberal at all and prefer to blindly back Israeli policies because they perceive their role as Diaspora Jews to be robots without thought. That’s what Zionism has done to my people. Witness a recent editorial on BDS:

The hostile mob arrayed outside a Max Brenner shop in downtown Melbourne last Friday carried ominous historical echoes. Some 100 demonstrators shouting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” reportedly frightened shoppers and their children, and charges have been laid after police officers were injured in scuffles.

Make no mistake, this was not just a right of assembly, or even a pernicious boycott of a shop whose alleged crime, according to Australia’s encroaching Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, is that its parent company stocks Israeli soldiers’ backpacks with its chocolate products.

Last week’s boycott and a similar one against a Max Brenner shop in Sydney last month were, as anyone who appreciates the significance of the chant and the underlying ethos of the global BDS movement, attacks on the very existence of the State of Israel.

As for the impact on Australian Jewry, the BDS troublemakers must surely  understand the resonance of their boycotts, so painfully similar to the Nazi boycotts of Jewish shops in Germany and Austria at the onset of the Holocaust.

Further, one must wonder whether the decision to stage both the Sydney and Melbourne protests on Shabbat was a strategic one to ensure a minimal Jewish presence on the ground.

Which brings us to the vexed question of a Jewish response. There is considerable debate within the community as to what kind of reaction is appropriate. Nobody but our foes wants to see the spectacle of two groups of warring protesters involved in heated clashes in a retail precinct. But if there is no response on-site, there surely needs to be one in another place at another time – perhaps a positive rally, explaining Israel’s case, coupled with an education campaign through the media.

While our community’s state and national roof bodies are to be applauded for their strenuous efforts behind the scenes to protect Israel’s interests, the increasing frequency of the BDS protests and the publicity they are receiving means their significance  can no longer be downplayed as far as ordinary members of the community are concerned.

There is a grassroots appetite for a grassroots response and we should seek a way to harness that in a positive and constructive manner, so all members of the community feel satisfied they are doing their bit, rather than simply watching the anti-Israel drama unfold passively and powerlessly from the sidelines.

Others, like the Jewish Forward in the US, actually use their brains and feel distinctly uncomfortable with the current direction of Israel and its anti-democratic ways. Its latest editorial:

We could get in trouble for this. Not in New York City, where this editorial is being written, because legitimate comment is protected under the First Amendment. But our editorials, along with many other stories and columns in the Forward, also appear every Sunday in the English edition of the Haaretz newspaper in Israel. And now, with a new anti-boycott law approved by the Knesset and due to take effect in less than 90 days, the boundaries of free speech and legitimate expression have grown unpredictably and suffocatingly tight.

So, for example, if we say something like: We can understand why reasonable people could advocate a boycott of products made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank because those settlements are deemed illegal under international law and because a boycott is a peaceful way of expressing a moral concern — well, if we say something like that, we could be sued and held liable in civil court. And that court could award financial recompense to the plaintiff not according to actual damage done to his income if, for instance, we suggested that people refrain from buying his oranges or his facial cream, but according to what he thinks he might lose in the future.

Unpack this for a moment. We didn’t boycott, we just expressed sympathy in a way that could be seen as advocacy without taking the leap from speech to action. We didn’t target a product manufactured in Tel Aviv or Hadera or within the undisputed borders of Israel, or in any way seek to delegitimize the state. We surely didn’t advocate violence or express a destructive opinion about Israel or its government and leaders.

We simply said that promoting a boycott of goods from the occupied West Bank could be a legitimate form of political protest by those who love Israel and therefore wish to see her survive as a democratic Jewish state with borders that allow for a viable Palestinian state next door.

But it could get us in trouble.

Which is why we have stricken the potentially offending words. Just in case.

It may be that when the Israeli Supreme Court hears the inevitable legal challenge to the anti-boycott law, it will rule it unconstitutional and prove, again, that a democratic system of checks and balances exists in the Israeli polity. It may be that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who stayed away from the impassioned Knesset debate on the bill, even though it was sponsored by a member of his own party — will signal his displeasure and work to get it repealed.

This, however, may all be wishful thinking. The Israeli government has to answer to its own people before it answers to Diaspora Jews, and the inability of a weak political opposition and a tepid public response to stop this disturbing new law could mean that it is actually what Israel wants. It may think putting limits on free speech and outlawing calls for boycott are the best way to counter its growing diplomatic isolation. After all, Israel is not the only country in its neighborhood to use drastic measures to curtail political protest, and the prospect of a civil case for damages contained in this new law is far more palatable than the punishments meted out by ruthless leaders elsewhere in the region.

Yet, comparing Israel to its struggling neighbors sets such a low standard of democratic performance that it hardly seems worth the trouble. The threat of “delegitimization” — real in some instances, overblown in many others — should be countered with forceful, positive action to solve real problems, not silence them. No attempt to threaten or censor can hide the fact that, for 44 years, Israel has ruled another people with its own legitimate, national aspirations, and it is in everyone’s interests, including those of the United States, to negotiate an end to this impasse.

The fear and frustration that prompted this new law are to be acknowledged, but they cannot justify such a dangerous move. Some boycotts are ruthless and discriminatory, true, but in other circumstances, a boycott can be a legitimate use of non-violent protest to achieve a worthy goal. A boycott of West Bank products could fall into the first category. It could also be seen as a noble attempt to effect change.

But we can’t say that.

BDS call turns six and Palestine will be free one day

Published on 16 July 2011 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .