Tag Archive for 'Mahmoud Ahmadinejad'

Some question and answers about responsibility of writers

Published on 16 June 2011 in General and Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Following my essay in the latest edition of literary journal Overland on cultural boycotts, politics, Palestine and Sri Lanka, the magazine interviewed me on various matters:

Passionate and outspoken about Israel/Palestine, among other things, Antony Loewenstein is a freelance independent journalist based in Sydney. Author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution, he is a denizen of the Twittersphere. Antony speaks regularly at literary festivals around the world and his essay ‘Boycotts and Literary Festivals’ is published in the 203 edition of Overland.

What was your pathway to becoming a speaker at literary festivals?

I wrote a book and many festivals in Australia invited me. It was My Israel Question, first published in 2006, and told the story of a dissident Jew challenging Zionist power in the West and the realities of occupation for Palestinians. Many Jews hated it, smeared me and tried to shut down the debate. It was typical Zionist behaviour. Thankfully, they failed miserably, despite continuing to try, and even today literary festival directors tell me that the Zionist lobby still tries to pressure them to not invite me to speak on the Middle East, or anything really. This is what Zionism has done to my people, convince them that victimhood is a natural state of affairs and that honest discussion about Israel/Palestine is too threatening to be heard by non-Jews.

The audiences at my literary festival events, since the beginning, have been largely supportive of my stance – though I don’t just speak about Israel/Palestine, also Wikileaks, freedom of speech, web censorship and disaster capitalism – and curiously the strongest Zionist supporters of Israel rarely raise their voices at literary festivals. Instead, they’ll later go into print arguing that festivals were biased against Israel (as happened recently by the Zionist lobby in Australia, condemning my supposedly extremist views on Israel during the Sydney Writer’s Festival). As I say, victimhood comes so naturally to some Jews.

I often have mixed feelings about attending writers’ festivals. I rarely reject an invitation – and have been lucky to speak at events in Australia, India and Indonesia – but it’s often a cozy club that shuns controversy. I like to provoke, not merely for the sake of it, but I know the middle-class audience will not generally hear such thoughts in events about ‘the art of the novel’ or ‘where is the US in 2011?’ I guess if I wrote about knitting or frogs, it may be harder to stir debates.

What is the purpose of a literary festival?

It should be to entertain, challenge and dissect contemporary life. As books sell less in our societies, attendance at literary festivals has increased. People crave intelligent discussion. They generally aren’t receiving that in the corporate media. To see massive audiences in Sydney, Ubud or Jaipur sitting or standing to hear robust debates on the ways of the world can only be a good thing. But there is an important caveat. Do these events too often provide comfort for the listener, a warm glow about themselves and their existence and all-too-rarely tackle the real effects of, say, government policies or the civilian murders in our various wars in the Muslim world?

I argue for a far more politicised literary scene, where intellectuals aren’t so keen to be loved and embraced by an audience but the art of discomfort is raised as an art form. This is why I argue for boycotts in my Overland piece, relating to Palestine and Sri Lanka. Surely our responsibility as artists is not to kow-tow to the powerful but challenge them? And surely our duty is to make people think about the role of non-violent resistance to situations in which we in the West have a role? Literary festivals are a unique opportunity to capture a large audience and throw around some ideas, thoughts which may percolate. If a reader can digest this, still buy a book and ponder something they hadn’t pondered before, my job here is done.

Writer discomfort, to being feted at literary festivals, is my natural state of being. I welcome it.

As a writer, what inspires you?

Passion, direct action, living life in a way that doesn’t ignore the hypocrisy of our realities, lived experiences, detailed journalism, inspiring tales of heroism (that don’t involve women giving up everything and living in Italy for a few months) and voices that struggle to be heard. I’ve always seen my job as a writer as to highlight and brighten the silenced voices in our society. It may be a Tamil or Palestinian, somebody living under occupation or the worker of a multinational who gets shafted for simply doing her job. This may sound pompous or self-important but frankly most journalists say they believe these things but then spend most of their lives dying to be insulated within the power structures of society.

The recent debate in Sydney over Marrickville council embracing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) over Israel was a rare example of government seeing injustice and trying to do something about it. The faux controversy concocted by the Murdoch press, Zionist lobby and Jewish establishment proved just how toxic the occupation of Palestinian lands has become. As a writer, I savoured the few brave individuals who stood up in the face of overwhelming bullying and spoke eloquently for Palestinian rights and real peace with justice in the Middle East. This position is not something that will be taught on a Zionist lobby trip to Israel (something undertaken by most politicians in Australia and many journalists) but real investigation. There are times, though, when I nearly despair, such as my recent visit to New York and attendance at the Celebrate Israel parade.

I think anger is an under-valued attribute in a good writer.

Where are you now, with your writing practice?

I know far more today than when I started my professional career in 2003. In some ways my anger is far more targeted and my writing has improved because of it. I’m pleased that both my current books, My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution, are currently being updated and translated in various countries around the world. I’m working on a book about the modern Left and another about disaster capitalism in Australia and the world. And that’s just for starters. I’m rather busy. I constantly struggle with the sheer volume of information that exists out there. The internet is a blessing and a curse. Taking time away from this device would be just lovely but I’m not too sure how to do it. Feeling connected as a writer is one of the most pleasing aspects of my job. From a schoolgirl who uses my work in her classes to an Iranian dissident who reaches out to raise the brutal nature of the Ahmadinejad regime.

Our society is infected with writers who seem to see their role as robots, spokespeople for a predictable cause, afraid to offend or provoke. Being on the road as a writer is a humbling experience, hearing people’s stories, but it can also be lonely. Being challenged on my positions, as I often am over an issue like Palestine, can (usually) only make my work better. The ignorance and cowardly behaviour of our media and political elites over such questions – Wikileaks, Palestine or refugee policies – is indicative of a wider societal malaise and sometimes I’m not surprised that I have so few friends in the media. It’s not a loss. Who wouldn’t want to breathlessly report on the latest press release by the Gillard government? Sigh.

If anything, I hope my Overland piece stimulates thought over the far-too-comfortable and insulated work of the literary and arts scenes in the West. Self-congratulatory back-slaps may feel good at the time but history ain’t being written by time-keepers.

The Net Delusion is alive and well

Published on 6 June 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

My following book review appeared in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald:

THE NET DELUSION
Evgeny Morozov
Allen Lane,
408pp, $29.95

As people in the Middle East have been protesting in the streets against Western-backed dictators and using social media to connect and circumvent state repression, it would be easy to dismiss The Net Delusion as almost irrelevant.

Born in Belarus, Evgeny Morozov collects mountains of evidence to claim the internet isn’t able to bring freedom, democracy and liberalism.

Sceptics would tell him to watch Al-Jazeera and see the power of the Facebook generation in action.

In fact, it is a dangerous fantasy to believe, he argues, because countless regimes are using the same tools as activists – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and email – to monitor and catch dissidents.

He writes that “the only space where the West (especially the United States) is still unabashedly eager to promote democracy is in cyberspace. The Freedom Agenda is out; the Twitter Agenda is in.”

Morozov condemns “cyber-utopians” for wanting to build a world where borders are no more. Instead, he says these well-meaning people “did not predict how useful it would prove for propaganda purposes, how masterfully dictators would learn to use it for surveillance” and the increasingly sophisticated methods of web censorship.

Furthermore, Google, Yahoo, Cisco, Nokia and web security firms have all willingly colluded with a range of brutal states to turn a profit.

The Western media are largely to blame for creating the illusion of web-inspired democracy. During the Iranian uprisings in June 2009, many journalists dubbed it the Twitter Revolution, closely following countless tweets from the streets of Tehran. However, it was soon discovered that many of the tweets originated in California and not the Islamic republic. The myth had already been born.

None of these facts is designed to lessen the bravery of demonstrators against autocracies – and Morozov praises countless dissidents in China, the Arab world and beyond – but lazy journalists seemingly crave easy and often inaccurate narratives of nimble young keyboard warriors against sluggish old men in golden palaces.

The New York Times’s Roger Cohen was right when he wrote in January that “the internet’s impact has been to expose the great delusion that has led Western governments to buttress Arab autocrats; that the only alternative to them was Islamic jihadists”.

But most protesters in the streets of Egypt had no access to the internet or any use for it and the main gripes were economic rather than ideological. However, it is undeniable that many of the young organised through online networks and clearly surprised the former Mubarak regime with their ability to harness a mainstream call for change.

Morozov, hailing from a country that knows about disappearances and suppression, urges the West to “stop glorifying those living in authoritarian governments”.

One of the Western fallacies of web usage in non-democratic nations is the belief that people are all looking for political content as a way to cope with repression. In fact, as Morozov proves with research, an experiment in 2007 with strangers in autocratic regimes found that instead of looking for dissenting material they “searched for nude pictures of Gwen Stefani and photos of a panty-less Britney Spears”.

I noted similar trends in China when researching my book The Blogging Revolution and found most Chinese youth were interested in downloading movies and music and meeting boys and girls. Politics was the furthest thing from their minds.

This would change only if economic conditions worsened. A wise government would pre-empt these problems by allowing citizens to let off steam; Beijing has undoubtedly opened up online debate in the past decade, though there are certainly set boundaries and red lines not to cross.

Morozov sometimes underestimates the importance of people in repressive states feeling less alone and mixing with like-minded individuals. Witness the persecuted gay community in Iran, the websites connecting this beleaguered population and the space to discuss an identity denied by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ultimately, The Net Delusion is necessary because it challenges comfortable Western thinking about the modern nature of authoritarianism.

This year we have already been left to ponder the irony of the US State Department deploying its resources to pressure Arab regimes not to block communications and social media while the stated agenda of Washington is a matrix of control across the region.

These policies are clearly contradictory and a person in US-backed Saudi Arabia and Bahrain won’t be fooled into believing Western benevolence if they can merely use Twitter every day.

The West has much to learn post Bin Laden death

Published on 5 May 2011 in General and Israel. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

My following article appears in today’s ABC’s The Drum:

The triumphalism after the American targeted assassination of Osama bin Laden is a sure sign that the US is incapable of understanding the significance of the painful years since September 11. We suffered and now you must, too.

“I’ve never been so excited to see the photo of a corpse with a gunshot wound through the head”, tweeted Emily Miller of The Washington Times.

Most in the mainstream press have simply regurgitated White House propaganda without question, including key details of bin Laden’s death and lifestyle.

The glee with which many in the American public, political and media elites have celebrated the murder of bin Laden may be unsurprising but it provides a welcome insight into an infantile and violence-obsessed culture. He used mayhem against Us and We must unleash overwhelming firepower against Him and His followers.

9/11 was slaughter on a huge scale and American hurt, confusion and anger was understandable. Finding the perpetrators of the crime was essential but it is difficult to cheer when a man receives bullets to the head unless, of course, we want to marinate in the juices of a John Wayne fantasy.

“We responded [to 9/11] exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond”, says former New York Times Middle East correspondent Chris Hedges. “They wanted us to speak the language of violence”.

The corporate media is filled with undeniably fascinating stories of how the US tracked bin Laden to his Pakistani hideout. The potential complicity of forces within the Pakistani intelligence services will be investigated but is unlikely to lead to a serious reduction in US funding for the corrupt elites there. The ongoing US-led war in Afghanistan guarantees Washington is joined at the hip to the Pakistani military. And once again, the Pakistani people will be killed without mercy.

But largely missing from the mountains of coverage in the last days are the profound changes 9/11 brought to the world, and the pyrrhic victories scored by bin Laden and his group of murderous thugs.

The militarisation of America and the engagements in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia and elsewhere has not made the US homeland any safer. In fact, the opposite is true. The thought that an old man sitting in an expensive compound in Pakistan with no internet or phone access is truly the most dangerous and wanted man in the world shows the skewed priorities of a brutal super-power hell-bent on revenge.

The murder of bin Laden wasn’t justice, as claimed by Obama and a range of commentators. It was a targeted assassination, an art perfected by Israel, and an illegal tool that has not made the Zionist nation any less likely to face attack from designated enemies. America will be no different.

The post 9/11 security state is now well and truly entrenched in our lives. The arrival of President Barack Obama did nothing to change that; it was merely accelerated with a nicer, kinder face. Privatised killing is now ubiquitous in Iraq and Afghanistan as an out-of-control and multi-trillion dollar industry finds ways to kill and make new foes in the process.

The US and its allies have provided over the last years an overwhelming range of weapons to murderers (former opponents now known as “allies”) in nations where conventional US forces have been unable to subdue a legitimate insurgency.

It’s grimly ironic that the Australian media obsesses over every word of supposed terrorism expert Australian David Kilcullen – described on Monday night’s ABC TV Lateline as “one of the world’s top counter-insurgency specialists” – without asking whether his skills have actually succeeded and at what cost.

An insurgency still rages in Iraq and has never been stronger in Afghanistan, and the methods by which US forces tried to destroy resistance movements involved arming former enemies and unleashing horrific violence against those who wouldn’t accept US rule. That’s some victory that plays directly into the narrative articulated by bin Laden from the 1990s: Western forces only want to occupy and subjugate Muslims.

Besides, Kilcullen is closely associated with the likely next CIA director David Petraeus, whose military tactics against insurgents have been vicious and counter-productive. He will certainly bring a far more militarised mindset to America’s intelligence community.

But resistance to Western domination of the Arab world wasn’t achieved by Al-Qaeda. Their murder of countless Muslims and quasi-death cult ideology failed to connect with enough people looking for something more than just opposition to sclerotic Western-backed dictatorships across the region.

Hamas, Hizbollah head Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have succeeded where Al-Qaeda failed; they spent years cementing themselves in the fabric of societies that were being ignored by the state. These nationalist movements, with various degrees of aggression and repression, have far more successfully captured the spirit of the post 9/11 times than bin Laden’s superficially appealing dogma. And most Muslims worldwide haven’t bought the hardline Islamist line for years.

This year’s Arab revolutions have shown the almost irrelevance of Al-Qaeda. Millions of Arabs in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, Libya, Saudi Arabia and beyond have found ways to challenge despots and US-backed autocrats in ways unimagined and impossible for bin Laden. Freedom movements, partly religious and partly secular, have fundamentally transformed a region that most of its largely young population only associated with social and political stagnation. Al-Qaeda has been almost silent in the last while, a force that had no way to harness, let alone lead, grievances of the oppressed masses.

None of us will feel safer with the death of bin Laden and why should we? The arguments for his organisation’s force have only strengthened since 9/11, even if his tactics were abhorrent and failed to attract huge numbers of followers. America and its allies are now far widely engaged across the Muslim world, militarising lands in the name of “fighting terrorism”. Wikileaks has shown the futility of such actions, detailing US officials attempts to pressure autocratic nations to crack down on unwanted elements while stirring up hatred of citizens under the path of ever-increasing drone attacks (in Yemen, Pakistan and now Libya).

The West will never feel more secure with the murder of a terrorist leader. Almost nowhere in the media orgy of celebration (including, disappointingly, Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show) was anything discussed about occupation. It didn’t exist, seemingly completely separate to the rise and once high popularity of bin Laden. Pakistan’s apparent protection of the Al-Qaeda leader will only deepen America’s desire to further occupy that nation’s mind. Obama is a war President, a badge he wears with pride, such is his escalation of covert missions in numerous nations in the last years.

There has been a deliberate conflation by a litany of politicians, corporate journalists and think-tankers in the last decade to frame every resistance to Western policy as terrorism. It is not. Take Afghanistan, where the Taliban has virtually no relationship with Al-Qaeda anymore and will continue to fight for the liquidation of foreign forces, whether we like or not. They’ll have no concern with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd mouthing platitudes about staying the course in Afghanistan with a warlord infested, Kabul government.

bin Laden died a man who had profoundly changed the landscape of the world. He failed to rally Muslims to his brutal cause but his shadow will continue to hover over Western policy towards the Islamic world. We have been sold a lie, one pushed by the Israelis for decades, that the killing of countless terrorists will bring peace. Colonising Muslim lands is seemingly irrelevant, or locking up innocent men in Guantanamo Bay or escalating a drone war in Pakistan.

The West has much to learn.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.

Hypocrisy trumps policy in Western alliance with Libya

Published on 3 March 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

My following article appears today on ABC’s The Drum:

The latest BBC interview with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, situated in a fancy restaurant on the Mediterranean, was painful to watch. Clearly delusional and blaming drug-addled youth and al-Qaeda for the ongoing revolution in his country (which he claimed he didn’t lead, the “masses” were in charge), the Western media have labelled him “mad” and “dangerous to know”.

This is not a defence of Gaddafi or the countless crimes against his own people or outsiders. He should be held to account for all violations of international law. The crimes are multiple and must be punished.

Events in Libya are moving fast and I won’t try to cover all the latest developments here. Al-Jazeera English’s daily Libya blog is one of the best places to read all the news.

But it’s remarkable to watch how quickly Western leaders and commentators, many of whom have celebrated the increasing ties between them and Gaddafi, are suddenly calling for his departure.

It was seemingly only yesterday that a newfound, supposedly reliable ally in the “war on terror” had come in from the cold, rejected terrorism, ditched a nuclear program, given information about Pakistan’s covert nuclear program under AQ Khan and perhaps most importantly opened up Libya for Western businesses. The EU was only recently so keen to sell arms to Tripoli.

In the last years the West embraced Gaddafi and his children because he was the kind of dictator we could deal with. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has visited Libya a number of times as an employee of J.P. Morgan, who pays him millions of pounds annually, to push for banking opportunities.

Newly released documents indicate the Blair government wanted to provide weapons to Tripoli and train some of its military.

The current British government of David Cameron has at least acknowledged the moral bankruptcy of backing autocrats in the Middle East and not believing Arabs can rule themselves freely but his message was contradicted by travelling across the Middle East with arms dealers in tow to sell weapons to “democratic” Kuwait.

Why am I bringing all this sordid history up now? Because it shows the hypocrisy at the heart of Western political and media elites and how language is abused and selectively applied to the “good” and “evil”.

Gaddafi is clearly “mad” while western presidents or prime ministers, who have caused far worse carnage in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Palestine, are still given respectful interviews in our media. It is inconceivable that an ABC or Murdoch journalist would openly call Tony Blair, Barack Obama, David Cameron or Nicholas Sarkozy a “war criminal”, even after they leave office. “We” are always better than “them”, a spurious democratic imprimatur that protects officialdom in our system. Killing literally hundreds of thousands of civilians – far in excess of anything Gaddafi could imagine – is ignored to maintain access to the powerful.

I’m reminded of the former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan in January. Aside from a few questions about the Iraq war, the two laughed about Condi’s piano playing. There was nothing about her authorising torture against terror suspects after 9/11 or the huge civilian death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Western commentators will show respect to a person such as Rice because she seems reasonable, calm and doesn’t dress in overly colourful garb like Gaddafi. This elaborate dance, an old tradition to protect a fellow powerful figure you’re likely to see at a cocktail party or media event in the weeks or month ahead, is what allows Rice to escape scrutiny, mockery or justice while somebody like Gaddafi is thrown to the wolves when he’s no longer useful. Piers Morgan is unlikely to catch him in Hollywood anytime soon.

This is despite the fact that she has unarguably caused far greater trauma to far more people than Gaddafi or Mubarak. Journalism all too often reflects and defends the government line because reporters inhabit a world where that is their only logical perspective.

As Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently wrote:

“…’The American press’ generally and ‘senior American national security journalists’ in particular operate with a glaring, overwhelming bias that determines what they do and do not report:  namely, the desire to advance U.S. interests… America’s “establishment media” is properly described as such precisely because their overarching objective is to promote and defend establishment interests in what they report to – and conceal from – their readers.”

When it comes to Libya, how many Western media services even irregularly published voices from inside the country – bloggers, dissidents etc – that questioned how ordinary Libyans felt about the ever-increasing Western largesse being showered on Tripoli? US foreign policy, post the 2003 Iraq war, dictated a friendlier face towards “mad dog” Gaddafi and many Western writers bought this spin and transmitted it to their readers and viewers (“Gaddafi has a terrible record but in a remarkable transformation has ditched his nuclear program and embraced Tony Blair…”).

While the situation on the ground in Libya is dire and the border with Tunisia, reports Robert Fisk from the scene, is a seething mass of bodies, it seems everybody is now an expert on Libya. Foreign military intervention is being openly discussed, despite many Libyans being openly opposed to it and The Los Angeles Times editorialising against imposing a no-fly zone.

It’s time to put Libya into some perspective. Gaddafi may be a brute and autocrat but this didn’t suddenly occur in the last weeks. Good journalism has a responsibility to treat its subjects equally, not to the whims of US foreign policy (and therefore Australian foreign policy). Unfortunately, too many in the West view our behaviour as central to any radical change in the world; independence is unimagined.

The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman wrote this week that the Arab revolutionaries were inspired by Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009. The “Arab” youth in his head said:

“Hmmm, let’s see. He’s young. I’m young. He’s dark-skinned. I’m dark-skinned. His middle name is Hussein. My name is Hussein. His grandfather is a Muslim. My grandfather is a Muslim. He is president of the United States. And I’m an unemployed young Arab with no vote and no voice in my future.”

Even though he was in Cairo during the uprising against Mubarak, Friedman clearly missed the deep anger at Washington’s funding and backing of the Egyptian dictator. Friedman is a “serious” writer, regularly re-published in the Fairfax press here, who argued Israel, the Beijing Olympics, Google Earth and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were the main causes of the Arab protests. Seriously.

Finally, some ground rules for decent journalism in the Middle East in the midst of the new Arab world:

1)     Not every story is about Israel and its “security” (do Palestinians not have security concerns, too?). Base yourself somewhere other than Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Try the West Bank, Beirut, Cairo or Tunis.

2)     “Moderate” Arab regimes are anything but so don’t simply repeat State Department lines about “stability” in the region.

3)     Libya’s Gaddafi is a delusional thug but he’s an easy target. So is Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Don’t ignore such regimes but remember our own responsibility for backing Arab autocrats in the name of “stability”.

4)     Locate and cultivate local sources in multiple countries that send reliable information, therefore reducing the need to send in white correspondents for a few days, with no real knowledge of a nation, on the frontline of a battle they don’t really understand.

5)     Don’t fear everybody who talks about Islamic democracy or democracy with an Islamic hue.

6)     Don’t continually quote or interview Western officials who have spent a lifetime implementing failed and Israel-centric policies in the Middle East and frame them as “experts”. I’m talking about people such as neo-conservative, former George W Bush official and Barack Obama adviser Elliot Abrams and former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk. Their time has past. Move on.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution

Israeli military; all critical voices stooges of Iran

Published on 26 February 2011 in Israel. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Who knew that millions of global citizens, who campaign against Israeli occupation and apartheid, are in the pocket of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Smell the Zionist desperation. The Electronic Intifada reports:

The Israeli military establishment is once again on the offensive, but instead of high-tech weaponry and missiles, it is using computer screens, keyboards and rapid wireless connections to fight what Israeli military representatives are dubbing a “new media war.”

In early February, military spokesperson Avi Benayahu announced that approximately $1.6 million would be invested to train more than a hundred Israeli “media warriors,” who would use social media tools to disseminate Israeli propaganda to audiences around the world.

“We need to ensure the confidence of the public, and assist the minister of foreign affairs to obtain that legitimization which is required for an army like ours to effect a military operation, whether it’s in the north or the south,” said Benayahu of this new media campaign during the 11th annual Herzliya security conference in early February.

Held at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya near Tel Aviv, the Herzliya Conference is a largely right-wing, neo-conservative gathering that brings together mainly Israeli and American government, business and academic figures to discuss Israeli policy and regional and global issues. This year’s conference, which was covered by this reporter, was held under the theme “The Balance of Israel’s National Strength and Security.”

Speaking on a panel called “New Media as a Strategic Weapon,” Benayahu told the audience in Herzliya that Israeli soldiers are now forced to be more aware of the fact that new media users can be documenting their actions at all times.

“[There is] an unprecedented responsibility to the commanders,” he said. “They have to think if the civilian across from them or the child on the second floor above them is a combatant or a new generation media person.”

According to Benayahu, the Israeli military has prioritized the field of new media in order to combat “pro-Iranian factors” which use the Internet to “delegitimize Israel.”

“It is orchestrated and timed and financed by all the pro-Iranian factors,” he stated. “They know how to flood us with media and information. They are also nurturing all these pro-radical organizations. The Palestinian Diaspora [is] conducting this [work] in universities, in the [United Nations] institutions, in the human rights institutions, and in the new media,” he added.

Wikileaks shows inept US trying to change Iran

Published on 11 February 2011 in General. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Memo to Washington: your credibility over Iran would be massively higher if you told client state Israel to stop claiming Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the second coming of Hitler:

WikiLeaks has worked its magic again, illuminating US efforts to promote change in Iran – and explaining recent goings-on at Durham University. Its proposals for exchanges with Iranian media, academic, civil society and clerical sectors are set out in a “confidential” cable from the US embassy in London in April 2008. Ideas include conferences on NGOs and women, with Persian transcripts to be disseminated via podcasts or videoclips posted on YouTube or in VOA Persian TV broadcasts. It would offer “US and USG [US government] observers a useful look inside Iranian politics at a grassroots level”.

The embassy was impressed by the “political cover” among contacts within Iran that Durham was apparently able to generate, even allowing it to invite an academic and cleric associated with the Revolutionary Guard. And there was praise for an “innovative and arguably groundbreaking proposal” (needing £57,000 in funding) for workshops for students from seminaries in Qom and Mashhad with US and UK academics, to emphasise themes of human rights, democracy, accountability and rule of law.

New Zealand PM says foreign policy dictated by keeping Israel happy

Published on 3 February 2011 in General and Israel. 10 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

The country’s Jewish Prime Minister, John Key, was on a TV breakfast program earlier in the week and made it very clear that democracy in the Arab world was a threat to Israeli apartheid. “Stability” and “moderation” are two vastly over-used words; they simply mean keeping Arabs oppressed to please Israel. No more:

Key: It’s a serious situation in Egypt. As we’ve seen, a number of people have lost their lives already. And, worryingly actually, is that Egypt has been one of the few Arab nations that has recognised Israel, in fact the only one. And has been very peaceful with Israel. So, the concern is what that might mean for the wider position in the Middle East. So, a real worry….Breakfast presenter Corin Dann: I’ll just take you back to that issue of the support for Israel. Egypt has been a very strong ally for the West, which makes this a very difficult situation for the likes of the US, which, I know, has not called for Mubarak to go yet. Where does New Zealand sit on that?

Key: The New Zealand Government wants a peaceful outcome to this. In the end, whoever governs your country is a matter for the citizens. And in the case of Mubarak he’s been there for a long time, 30-odd years. We respect the fact that he has done his very best to lead a country which has recognised Israel and, therefore, has wanted to make sure the position in Middle East has been a peaceful one. It’s not easy, it’s very complex, and there’s a lot of emotion.

Dann: Are you calling for him to go?

Key: No.

Dann: I guess the concern is the Muslim Brotherhood. The potential for an Islamist movement to come in and fill that vacuum. Is that the concern?

Key: Well, the concern is that there are some nations that simply do not recognise Israel. And, taken to the extreme, in Iran, Ahmadinejad has said he basically wants to see Israel wiped off the face of the Earth. So, it’s a very serious situation. Egypt’s provided stability and leadership and calmness. Obviously, the hope always being that that position would spread across the Middle East, that it would be possible to broker a two-state solution, with recognition of Palestine as well but this certainly looks like it’s taking things, potentially, in the wrong direction.’

Poking the eye of Ahmadinejad

Published on 22 January 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .
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Ahmadinejad as the moderate

Published on 5 January 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Really:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought some kind of nuclear fuel swap deal more than a year ago, but faced internal pressures from hard-liners who viewed it as a “virtual defeat,” according to US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

The report, available on the WikiLeaks website Tuesday, also suggested Iran trusted the United States more than ally Russia to follow through with the UN-backed proposal: providing reactor-ready fuel in exchange for Iran giving up control of its low-enriched uranium stockpile.

Ahmadinejad bitch slapped by even harder hard-liner

Published on 31 December 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Oh my:

The chief of the Revolutionary Guard angrily slapped Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in early 2010, as Tehran was still dealing with the fallout from last year’s election, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable.

The cable, written in February, said Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari blamed Ahmadinejad for the post-election “mess” in 2009, which saw the country roundly criticized by the West amid allegations of fraud and tough crackdowns on large-scale protests in Tehran.

The guard was founded after the Islamic revolution in 1979 to prevent dissident activity and is a strong internal force within the country, with economic and military wings.

Jafari is seen as close to the most conservative Iranian elements, but Ahmedinejad himself is also deemed a stalwart hawk.

The cable, titled “He who got slapped,” quotes an Iran watcher in Baku, Azerbaijan, who related that Ahmedinejad felt that in the aftermath of the post-election street protests, which turned violent, “people feel suffocated.”

In a meeting with his national security council, the president “mused that to defuse the situation it may be necessary to allow more personal and social freedoms, including more freedom of the press,” according to the source.

This provoked an angry retort from Jafari, according to the cable:

“You are wrong! (In fact) it is YOU who created this mess! And now you say give more freedom to the press?!”

The top guard then slapped the president in the face “causing an uproar and an immediate call for a break in the meeting” which did not resume for another two weeks, the cable said.

It took the intervention of Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, a senior member of the top oversight body, the Guardian Council, to get Jafari and Ahmedinejad back to the table, according to the cable.

For that honesty, Iran has allegedly now blocked sites discussing the cable.

Israel may have to attack Iran, Zionist leader tells obedient Murdoch typist

Published on 24 December 2010 in General and Israel. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Hands up all those who like taking free trips to Israel organised by the Zionist lobby?

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Lenore Taylor does and her recent column simply “reported” alarmist Israeli comments over the supposed threat of Iran. It wasn’t journalism; it was very effective stenography. No alternative voices were offered.

Today, in Murdoch’s Australian, there’s Greg Sheridan (who doesn’t acknowledge who held his hand throughout the trip ie. the Zionist lobby) and he simply republishes large swathes of predictable ramblings by Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington.

Quick summary: Iran is a massive threat. The occupation of Palestine doesn’t exist. The Palestinians have themselves to blame for not being independent. Australia is a wonderful ally that backs everything Israel does.

One day, and this day isn’t that far away, Israel and its sycophantic Western backers will have much explaining to do. How the hell has the Zionist state become so loathed because it continues to brutalise Palestinians?

The world is moving towards a decision point on Iran and a key player in any decision will be the government of Israel. I have just spent 10 days in Israel and every discussion there – almost every thought – is infused with Iran.

Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington, thinks some decisions will be made in a matter of weeks. Everything is in the balance. The possible consequences are stark and enormously disquieting.

They include: a nuclear-armed Iran, an explosion of global terrorism and a new war in the Middle East. All are possible.

I met Ayalon for a long discussion in a small ante-room in Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University, oddly enough over haddock and mayonnaise.

The central question asks itself: will the world succeed in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? “I would say it’s touch and go,” Ayalon says. “Iran is a threat not just to Israel, but to Sunni regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the (Persian) Gulf countries, countries in North Africa.

“A nuclear Iran would have a disastrous effect on the entire world order.”

Ayalon, steel-grey-haired, sober, judicious and diplomatic of demeanour, then lists some of the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran: “Iran could control the oil supply and dictate oil prices.

“Anyone who says don’t rock the boat because it will jack up oil prices should try and imagine what will happen under a nuclear Iran.

The Iranians “will also have complete protection in their aggressive actions in terrorism around the world”.

“They are increasingly penetrating into Latin America through Venezuela. They are influential in Lebanon through Hezbollah, in Syria, among the Palestinians through Hamas, in Africa, where they are looking for uranium.”

It is impossible to get Israeli government figures to say what the red line is for Israel with Iran, whether Jerusalem would take pre-emptive military action to destroy or at least retard Iran’s nuclear program.

Both Jerusalem and Washington have studied intensely both the risks and the opportunities of striking Iran’s nuclear program.

And there are endless reports, which Israelis will never comment on, of Israeli and US efforts to sabotage and disrupt Iran’s nuclear program by non-military means.

In Israel these are life and death matters. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has famously called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Ayalon offers a measured and mixed assessment of the effectiveness of efforts, especially sanctions, to constrain Iran.

“Probably in a matter of weeks we will have to sit down and reflect on how effective the sanctions have been,” he says. “Notwithstanding the technical problems Iran has, it’s touch and go. The sanctions were effective on the Iranian economy, and in undermining the self-confidence of the Iranian leadership. But these efforts have not yet changed the Iranians’ behaviour. The Iranians were surprised by the UN resolution (on sanctions) and by the extra measures a number of nations, such as Australia, took. This is the first time the Iranians are paying a price for their international defiance.

Don’t tell us that Australia is an honest broker in the Middle East

Published on 13 December 2010 in General and Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

This is the not the behaviour of an ally; it’s the actions of a country utterly incapable of viewing the human rights of Arabs as equal to Israelis:

The Israeli ambassador to Australia found Kevin Rudd to be “very pro-Israel” and senior Australian diplomats warned the former prime minister that his condemnation of Iran risked retaliation against Australia’s embassy in Tehran, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

The secret cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald, reveal the Israeli ambassador, Yuval Rotem, was pleased with Mr Rudd’s “very supportive” attitude towards Israel’s position in the Middle East peace process and his strong attacks on the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The revelation of Mr Rotem’s description of Mr Rudd last year comes as the Foreign Minister wraps up a visit to Cairo where he expressed concern that ”no real progress” has been made in the US-brokered Middle East peace process.

Following a weekend meeting with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, Mr Rudd said Israeli settlements on Palestinian land were ”destroying” the chances of peace. He said he would visit Israel this week and reiterate his position, but added Israel had security fears that needed to be taken into account.

The leaked cables reveal that Israeli diplomats saw Mr Rudd as an important ally.

Mr Rotem told US officials in July 2008 that during his first meeting with Mr Rudd after the 2007 federal election, the newly elected prime minister had described Mr Ahmedinejad as a ”loathsome individual on every level” and that his anti-Semitism ”turns my stomach”.

The US embassy noted that while opposition leader, Mr Rudd had taken a “very strong stance” on Iran, including calling for Mr Ahmadinejad to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court for his calls for the destruction of Israel.

The Israeli ambassador said that the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Michael l’Estrange, and the director-general of the Office of National Assessments, Peter Varghese, had “met several times to convince the PM to think through the consequences of his rhetoric on Iran”.

“The Israeli ambassador believes PM Rudd is very concerned about the Iranian nuclear program and firm in his desire to do whatever possible to signal Australia’s opposition to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions,” the embassy reported. “The Israelis believe Rudd is very firm in his overall support for Israel.”

Asked by the US embassy about whether Mr Rudd’s views on Iran had elicited any response, Mr Rotem said the Iranian government had reacted to the prime minister’s statements by taking ”retaliatory measures” against the Australian embassy in Tehran.

“These measures make it harder for the embassy to conduct its day-to-day business,” Mr Rotem observed.

The Australian government has never publicly acknowledged any Iranian response to Mr Rudd’s public criticism of Iran and its President.

Mr Rotem went on to tell the US embassy that Israel saw Australia “as playing an important role in the ‘global PR battle’ on Iran because PM Rudd is viewed favourably by the ‘European Left’, many of whom are sceptical about taking a tough line towards Tehran”.

The ambassador said Israeli officials would normally have been concerned at the prospect of a Labor government: “However, this was not the case because Rudd had long gone out of his way to stress his strong commitment to Israel and appreciation for its security concerns.”

”Commenting that DFAT officials are very frank in expressing their annoyance with the PM’s micromanaging of foreign policy issues, Rotem laughingly said that ‘while I understand their point of view, how can I complain about having that kind of attention from the PM’.”

The Israeli ambassador’s enthusiasm for the Labor government extended to the deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, with the US embassy reporting in January last year that Mr Rotem was “very satisfied” with the Australian response to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

“Rotem said he had been impressed with acting PM Julia Gillard, who has taken the lead in co-ordinating the [Australian government] public and private response to the Gaza fighting … Rotem said that Gillard and [national security adviser Duncan] Lewis have been very understanding of Israel’s military action, while stressing the need to minimise civilian casualties and address humanitarian concerns.”

Mr Rotem said Ms Gillard’s public statements surprised many Israeli embassy contacts as being “far more supportive than they had expected”.

Mr Rotem told his US counterparts that several senior Labor Party contacts had told him privately that Mr Rudd had been “a bit jealous of the attention garnered by Gillard” and that this led him to speak to the Gaza issue later in January 2009.

The ambassador added that he would be “playing to Rudd’s vanity” to encourage him to pay an early visit to Israel and continue to speak out in support of a hard line against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

And fears that the Zionist state isn’t a rational player:

Australian intelligence agencies fear that Israel might launch military strikes against Iran and that Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities could draw the US and Australia into a potential nuclear war in the Middle East.

Australia’s top intelligence agency has also privately undercut the hardline stance towards Tehran of the United States, Israeli and Australian governments, saying that Iran’s nuclear program is intended to deter attack and that it is a mistake to regard Iran as a ”rogue state”.

The warnings about the dangers of nuclear conflict in the Middle East are given in a secret US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald. They reflect views obtained by US intelligence liaison officers in Canberra from across the range of Australian intelligence agencies.

“The AIC’s [Australian intelligence community's] leading concerns with respect to Iran’s nuclear ambitions centre on understanding the time frame of a possible weapons capability, and working with the United States to prevent Israel from independently launching unco-ordinated military strikes against Iran,” the US embassy in Canberra reported to Washington in March last year.

“They are immediately concerned that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities would lead to a conventional war – or even nuclear exchange – in the Middle East involving the United States that would draw Australia into a conflict.”

The false choice offered by US autocrats in the Middle East

Published on 1 December 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

A handy reminder by Nasrin Alavi in the Wikileaks dump that has been largely ignored by the corporate press (too busy covering the “embarrassment” of the US and allies):

Interestingly, though, in the very same cable in which Abu Dhabi’s crown prince declared it is merely “a matter of time” before President Ahmadinejad “takes us to war,” he also describes Mir-Hossein Mousavi—the man millions of Iranians believe was the true winner of June’s elections—as “more dangerous than his competitor.” At least, according to the Sheikh, Ahmadinejad is “an open book.” This attitude perhaps shows that what the Arab Sheikhdoms fear more than a nuclear Israel or Iran are calls for accountability and signs of democracy in the region. To shore up their power they claim to offer western allies a strict choice between “loyal Arab monarchies” in the region—or the mayhem of Islamic terrorism.

Rupert is sending “Satan worship” into Iran

Published on 20 November 2010 in General. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Tehran fears cultural imperialism but they just end up looking like paranoid and bigoted fools:

In little more than a year, the Persian-language satellite television channel beamed into Iran by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and a prominent Afghan family has rapidly become one of the most popular stations in the country.

A little too popular, it appears.

This week, a long-running campaign led by the Iranian government to undermine the channel, Farsi1, took a menacing turn: A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army hacked into Farsi1’s Web site, as well as several sites owned by the Mohseni family, and posted a cryptic but sinister warning.

“The allies of Zionism should know this,” said the message, which stayed on the Web sites for about six hours on Thursday. “Dreams of destroying the foundation of the family will lead straight to the graveyard.”

The exact meaning of the message was unclear, but conservative Iranian leaders complain that the programming — a heavily censored variety of comedies, soap operas and dramas — is eroding traditional Iranian values.

The campaign against Farsi1 illustrates the growing fear among Iranian leaders over the intrusion of private broadcasters onto the country’s airwaves, which is challenging the state’s monopoly over the flow of information.

The cyberattack is the latest effort in a campaign to discredit the television station, which went on the air in August 2009. This year, Iranian authorities tried to jam a satellite used by the channel. Personal attacks on Mr. Murdoch, as well as on Saad Mohseni, the chairman of the Moby Group, have appeared on Iranian television and newspapers. News Corporation and the Moby Group each own half of the channel.

The Iranian authorities appear to be particularly unnerved by the entrance of Mr. Murdoch, who is not just an aggressive businessman but also a politically active one. In neighboring Afghanistan, the Mohseni family has built a successful string of television and radio stations and Web sites since the American-led invasion in 2001.

Both Mr. Murdoch and the Mohseni family were named in the renegade Web site posting that appeared Thursday.

According to American officials, as well as spokesmen for both the Moby Group and the News Corporation, Farsi1 receives no funds from any government.

Indeed, Farsi1 offers no political fare, neither news nor editorial commentary. Instead, it provides viewers with comedies and dramas, most of them from Latin America and Korea, and toned down for a more conservative Iranian audience.

Though the plots often involve romance and infidelity, anything resembling male-female contact is excised — even kissing. The menu even includes a few American standbys like “24,” which features an American federal agent who often battles terrorists from the Muslim world.

“If the script says anything that is not right or appropriate, we edit it,” said Zaid Mohseni, the chief executive officer of Farsi1 and Saad Mohseni’s brother. “Visually, if there is something not appropriate, we edit it out. We know that the majority of viewers are watching with their families. We are very sensitive to this.”

Still, Farsi1 has drawn the ire of Iranian leaders, who say that the Western-oriented programming represents an assault on traditional Iranian values and is even corrupting the Iranian people.

“Satellite TV programs such as those broadcast on Farsi1 destroy the chastity and honor of our families and encourage the young to take up lovemaking, wine drinking and Satan worship,” Mohammad-Taghi Rahbar, a member of Parliament, told the Iranian news agency IWNA this year.

“The channel is funded by ‘Zionist money’ and planned and managed by Iran’s enemies,” he said, without providing details. “What family that has any dignity would let is members watch Farsi1?”

Hope, Votes and Bullets; documenting Iranian resistance

Published on 10 November 2010 in General. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

A wonderful new book has recently been released, Hope, Votes and Bullets (here’s an internet preview of the striking pages). It documents, through wonderful imagery, graphics and text, the millions of Iranians who took to the streets in 2009 during a period of intense political upheaval. The internet was integral to spreading the word.

There was hope, fear and optimism in the air. More than one year later, the situation in the Islamic Republic is grim and human rights are routinely abused.

We haven’t forgotten.

MSM commentator prays for Iran attack

Published on 1 November 2010 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

This is what a Serious columnist for the Washington Post, David Broder, wrote yesterday:

Here is where Obama is likely to prevail. With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve.

I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.

What other response than ridicule to such ignorant bollocks? Perhaps Broder would like to kill Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself.

Don’t see Iran as freedom fighters

Published on 23 October 2010 in General. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .

While Hugo Chavez shamefully embraces Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and utterly ignores Tehran’s horrific human rights record, Nasrin Alavi highlights the struggles inside Iran that deserve global support:

The Iranian state has to come to terms with the reality that, a generation after the revolution, no hardline Islamic student group is (or has been) able to gain control of any Iranian campus through free elections.

In the same week that Ahmadinejad was hailed as a hero of resistance in Lebanon, fellow inmates of the imprisoned human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, told of her nightly interrogation sessions and the screams that could be heard from her cell. We have also heard from the father of student Hamed Rouhinejad, who has related his desperate efforts to get guards at the same prison to take delivery of his son’s medication for multiple sclerosis, “begging them to keep it refrigerated so it doesn’t go off.”

When a loopy preacher in Florida threatened to burn the Koran, there were violent protests across the Arab world, but when pro-Ahmadinejad militia attacked the offices of Grand Ayatollah Saanei last June, leaving his books and tattered copies of the Koran in their wake, a deafening silence was heard from Iran’s neighbours. Had these events taken place in the occupied territories, I suspect the response would not have been so mute. Is this not the same gross hypocrisy and double standard that we in the region often accuse the west of?

Today Iranians who are standing up for their rights deserve to be acknowledged by their Arab neighbours. Their struggle is part of a long walk to freedom that began with the creation of the first elected parliament in the region in 1906. By 1911 authoritarian rule was implemented as Britain and imperial Russia strangled the early aspirations of Iranians for democratic change. A generation later, the democratically elected government of Mossadegh was finished off in a coup backed by Britain and the US.

Whether in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia or Iran, we are all familiar with pitiful old men who sit blaming and cursing the ghosts of a colonial past. These men are forever warning us of the enemies in the shadows who will conspire and thwart our every move.

But Iran is a country of the young, where two out of every three people you see on the streets are likely to be under 30. It is also the only country in the middle east where people can’t blame corruption, tyranny or even their daily hardship on their American-backed leaders.

We buried our colonial parents during the 1979 revolution. Today, the children of that revolution are banishing the ghosts that debilitated their forefathers by demanding that we hold ourselves accountable—both for our failures and for our successes.

Australian unions recognise the power and necessity of BDS

Published on 15 October 2010 in Israel. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Now this is news, a growing realisation that the status-quo in Palestine is simply oppressing Palestinians. Civil society is rising:

Australian unions are signing up to an international campaign to boycott Israeli goods.

But a fight is brewing over a proposal for the Australian Council of Trade Unions to endorse the movement.

The broad-based divestment and boycott campaign is targeting companies that profit from the Israeli settlements.

The Electrical Trades Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, the Queensland branch of the Rail Tram and Bus Union and the Finance Sector Union have all passed a resolution supporting the international campaign of “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) against Israel.

Communications Electrical Plumbing Union national secretary Peter Tighe told The Australian the electrical branch of his union had adopted the resolution and he would now take it to the broader CEPU, then the ACTU.

“We had a 30 or 40 minute presentation from a delegate who had visited Palestine,” Mr Tighe said.

“The council decided we would support the BDS. We are not anti-Jewish; we just think the human misery over there is outrageous. We think the Israeli government is captive to some extreme views on the Right.

“We think it’s got to a stage where we are going to have to have bans across the board.

“Working people can’t sit on their hands forever.”

Mr Tighe, who sits on the ACTU executive, will take a resolution to the peak union body.

“We will use our influence within the ALP to push this position,” he said.

“Now you have a few unions with the same view and we can influence the political process more, we are not just one voice.”

Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes said he would fight any plan to see the ACTU endorse the sanctions.

“We don’t believe that it’s in the interests of Palestinian or Israeli workers to seek to divide them in the peace process,” Mr Howes said.

“Unions are free to do what they wish but certainly I think it’s a bit naive. Some unions are not fully aware of what they are signing on to.”

Of course, the Australian editorial opposes any kind of BDS, simply hoping and praying that someone, somewhere, will convince Israel to give up its occupation. Without pressure and pain, this will never happen:

If there is logic behind the international campaign to boycott Israel and the decision of some Australian trade unions to back it, we are struggling to see it.

Assuming sanctions work (and that is a big assumption), there are many regimes with a far greater claim to global opprobrium than that of Israel, a nation the Left once supported. The frustrating truth is that nothing has changed on the ground to justify the international Left’s perfidy. Everyone of goodwill agrees where this conflict will end, with two states separated by borders that approximate the 1967 boundaries and Jerusalem as a shared capital. So let’s make it happen.

The starting point must be talks without precondition. The Palestinians must dump their disingenuous tactic of linking construction of West Bank settlements with a return to the negotiating table. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, must use the advantages of incumbency to resist pressure from the Right and orthodox religious parties and pursue a path to peace that allows room for compromise. While political chaos would be in nobody’s interests — not that of the Israelis nor the Palestinians — Mr Netanyahu should not hoard a cent of his political capital in the pursuit of peace.

Settlements, however, are not the main issue. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority leader, has negotiated with the Israelis in the past without demanding the sort of freeze on construction he now insists is a precondition to resuming talks. Any further delays would betray a basic lack of enthusiasm among Mr Abbas and his colleagues for negotiations and an attempt by them to drive a wedge between Israel and the Obama administration, which erred by allowing the settlements issue to assume the centrality that it has.

Mr Netanyahu, of course, has not helped by backing legislation in the Knesset that requires new non-Jewish citizens to take a loyalty oath to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The best hope is that this is part of a broader strategy aimed at shoring up essential political support that will assist him in eventually striking a peace deal. The presence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a state visit to south Beirut is a salutary reminder of just how urgent it is for both men to get to grips with reality.

Because Ahmadinejad fits a necessary hole in the enemy gallery

Published on 13 October 2010 in General and Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , .

Roger Cohen writes in the New York Times that the world (and Israel especially) needs to not frame Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the devil incarnate but that’s exactly what the Zionists must do; the new “Hitler” has arrived:

Ahmadinejad is a one-trick pony. His thing is double standards. Ask about the Iranian nuclear program, he’ll retort with Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal. Ask about Iran’s economic difficulties, he’ll see you with September 2008. Ask about rampant capital punishment, he’ll raise you a Texas. Ask about Iranian lying, he’ll counter with human rights and Abu Ghraib.

…

Ahmadinejad is odious but I don’t think he’s dangerous. Some people do of course find him dangerous, especially in the Israel he gratuitously insults and threatens, and yet others — many more I’d say — find it convenient to find him dangerous.

…

Yes, Ahmadinejad is the bogeyman from Central Casting. One of the things there’s time for, if you’re not playing games with the Iran specter, is a serious push for an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough that would further undermine the Iranian president.

I don’t expect that, however. And here are two more predictions: Obama won’t attack Iran and nor will Israel, not by next July or ever. Iran is a paper tiger, a postmodern threat: It has many uses but a third Western war against a Muslim country is a bridge too far.

News Corp embraces its inner Iran

Published on 11 October 2010 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Who says Rupert Murdoch doesn’t love the Islamic Republic?

The News Corp-backed network Farsi1 offers Fox favorites and Telenovelas, and has quickly become the most watched in Iran. Reza Aslan on why Ahmadinejad’s government is worried.

Farsi1, a Persian language satellite station partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, has become the most popular entertainment network in Iran, with nearly half of the country’s population (some 35 million people) tuning in daily to keep up with dubbed episodes of Fox favorites like 24 and How I Met Your Mother.

However, the real draw of the network is its dubbed versions of Latin American Telenovelas, which have most of the country in their melodramatic grip. One Telenovela in particular, Second Chance, has become such a national obsession in Iran that it has inspired a hairstyle for women called “the Isabel,” named after the show’s heroine.

…

he truth is that the Iranian government is fairly blasé about the satellite dishes, perhaps recognizing that it may be able to get away with denying basic rights and freedoms to its citizens, but if it tried to take away their right to find out what happened to Victoria (the title character of one of Iran’s most popular Telenovelas) after her husband left her for a younger woman… well, that’s enough to stir up a revolution.