Antony Loewenstein

Last week I spoke at Sydney’s Politics in the Pub about the recent Gaza conflict and implications for global attitudes towards Israel. Thanks to Cathy Vogan for filming the event:

In August I was involved in an IQ2 Squared debate in Sydney (and my side won, for the record, despite the audience starting off backing the other team.) This was broadcast by ABCTV1’s Big Ideas:

Are we becoming enslaved to our technology?

This was a decent Intelligence Squared debate with the audience split between the oldies, some middle aged hipsters and a bunch of law students.

The biggest drawcard was Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, who turned in a good performance for the negative. That is, we are not enslaved by technology. He was backed by journalist, filmmaker and blogger, Antony Loewenstein, and Asher Wolf, a self-described ‘information activist’.

On the affirmative was Crikey’s Bernard Keane, Alastair McGibbon, an Associate Professor at the University of Canberra and Katina Michael. Michael is an Associate Professor in the School of Information Systems and Technology at the University of Wollongong. Consequently hers is a surprising stand and she does a decent imitation of a rapper in a great big spray on the ‘evils of technology’.

This debate was moderated by Simon Longstaff and recorded at the City Recital Hall in Sydney.

During the recent Byron Bay Writer’s Festival this event, broadcast by ABCTV1’s Big Ideas, was a robust discussion on the rights, responsibilities and pressures of conflict reporting in a post 9/11 world:

In this session writers Abbas El-Zein, Antony Loewenstein and Washington Post journalist David Finkel deliver strikingly different perspectives on the Iraqi and Afghan wars. An intense discussion develops about the nature of reporting and advocacy, with Finkel and Loewenstein very much opposed.

Finkel has covered wars in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, documenting the impact of war on the psyche of the soldiers at the front. Loewenstein explains that whilst he is not without empathy for the plight of the individual soldier, his sympathies lie with the Iraqis and the Afghans.

Finkel drives home the need to tell a story without an agenda “so that readers can feel what war can be.” El-Zein is in agreement and observes “the job of a journalist isn’t to judge” but to deliver to the public the most comprehensive information available.

This session was filmed at the Byron Bay Writers Festival and moderated by Jacqui Park.

I recently attended the Wordstorm literary festival in Darwin and participated in the following event that was recorded and broadcast by ABCTV1’s Big Ideas:

This panel brings together a group of Australians of Italian, Chinese, Indigenous, Jewish, and Vietnamese descent to talk over the notion of home.

What is it? Where is it? What is belonging?

They discuss the importance of land, acknowledging their different approaches towards ownership and property, and the experience of living in a country that has been inundated and crisscrossed by many migratory patterns.

This conservation features Teresa Crea, Annette Shun Wah, Alexis Wright, Philip McLaren, Lionel Fogarty, Antony Loewenstein and Chi Vu. Staged in Darwin at the Wordstorm writers festival this seems a particularly apt forum for such a dialogue.

Every day we’re reading new stories about the ferocity and barbarism of ISIS in Iraq and Syria (see here, here and here).

This powerful New York Times short film tells the story of an Iraqi man who barely escaped ISIS:

For the last years I’ve been working with New York based film-maker Thor Neureiter on a documentary about Disaster Capitalism. We successfully raised money on Kickstarter last year and we’re currently pursuing funding from a range of global sources. Film-making is a long, painful and challenging process.

I’m happy to release the new teaser that shows the progression of the work. Hopefully this whets your appetite:

“Disaster Capitalism” Teaser from Thor Neureiter on Vimeo.

My weekly Guardian column:

It’s extremely rare to have the genesis of a political smear campaign uncovered for all to see, just like it is uncommon to read the correspondence between senior government officials and media backers to attack opponents and critics. And yet, that’s exactly what is unfolding in New Zealand.

New Zealanders are currently witnesses to an expose of unprecedented proportions. These details are contained in investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s new book, Dirty Politics: How Attack Politics is Poisoning New Zealand’s Political Environment. The work has caused an earthquake, entrapping more players every day. New actors like Kim Dotcom are revelling in the outrage, and US journalist Glenn Greenwald has beeninvited to speak in Auckland a few days before the September poll.

The story revolves around prime minister John Key, the conservative leader facing re-election. Hager has obtained information, emails and Facebook messages from the files of right-wing blogger Cameron Slater, founder of the Whale Oil website. The documents show a deep and intimate connection between Slater and Jason Ede, former senior advisor to Key.

The situation is made worse by the allegation that a senior cabinet minister, Judith Collins, established close ties to Slater to bash enemies. Hager claims that the blogger, with the assistance of Ede, breached an unsecured opposition party Labor computer to obtain private information. Labor party head David Cunliffe says the allegations are “the closest New Zealand’s got to its own kind of Watergate”.

Hager is an experienced journalist with a history of receiving leaks from deep inside the establishment. His 2011 book, Other People’s Wars, was an explosive examination of New Zealand’s extensive involvement in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the “war on terror”. A close associationwith Wikileaks, along with constant attempts to challenge the country’s outward perception of being a quiet nation with few geo-political ambitions, places Hager as a leading, independently minded reporter getting past the spin so dominant in modern politics. He shows how smear, fear and arrogance have become key ingredients of Key’s administration.

Wellington-based blogger Danyl Mclauchlan wrote in mid-August on the significance of Hager’s latest scoop:

“Whatever the wider implications, the book has had a profound effect on me, personally. Something that doesn’t come across in the news coverage about Dirty Politics, and Cameron Slater, Jason Ede, Jordan Williams, Simon Lusk et al is just how fucking awful these people are. They spend their lives trying to poison and contaminate our politics. They enjoy seeing people suffer. They get excited by the idea of breaking up the marriages of their political enemies and ruining their lives.”

These sentiments explain why Dirty Politics and its warning extend well beyond New Zealand’s borders. The revelations detail a form of attack-dog politics that’s now common-place in global affairs.

In the book’s preface, Hager explains how Key was desperate to continue his success by constructing a charming public persona while pursuing “ more personal attacks and negative politics than any in living memory.” I asked Hager to tell me more:

“It is about political PR and particularly what the US Republican party strategists have called a two-track approach. This is where the leaders are presented as positive while other people, the second track, conduct personal attacks and dirty tricks against their opponents. There were particularly nasty people doing the government’s dirty work and it didn’t look good for the government when they were exposed.”

This style of politics will be familiar to even a casual observer of insider journalism. It’s a worldwide trend. Journalists routinely receive “exclusive” leaks from government insiders that provide perfect ammunition to attack the other side. Hager shows how in New Zealand, the relationship between government and its media allies suits both their agendas – it simply is the method of today’s corporate politics.

I’m currently in America, where things are eerily similar. Watching Fox News is like a rehearsed ballet: every show over the last week has claimed that president Obama’s response to the murder of journalist James Foley has been so weak because he issued a statement before going back to his golf game while on vacation – host Judge Jeanine’s monologue epitomised the channel’s sentiment.

Arguing over Washington’s response to the ISIS threat is legitimate, but it’s hardly accidental that Obama is being damned for not bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria before dinner-time. Fox News has a history of telling its hosts (and even guests) what to say and think – it’s Republican party PR as journalism.

This brings us back to New Zealand. Hager has been pleasantly surprised by the best-selling success of his book – his biggest yet. He says that the small, local media market risks being abused by powers with ulterior motives. “Our small, mostly foreign-owned media risks being a push over for well organised PR campaigns”, Hager argues. “Political manipulation is helped by poor media. But this isn’t a criticism of the journalists themselves, who of course want to do good work.”

Without a central leaker, Hager would have no book. He salutes their bravery. “We mustn’t fall for the idea that whistleblowers are doing something wrong. They are the natural reaction to undemocratic government.”

The same applies to Australia. We desperately need a healthier leaking culture to uncover the murky dynamics between corporate, media and government interests. It’s a shame so few journalists are willing to foster this environment and protect sources beyond the reach of intelligence agencies so keen to monitor dissent.

I’m currently in America, investigating disaster capitalism in privatised immigration detention for my 2015 Verso book.

I’ve been watching a lot of cable TV (lord knows why but I’m a masochist) and it’s been ISIS day and night (apart from mostly awful coverage of the killing of Michael Brown and white blindness on racism). Fox News is desperate for President Obama to bomb Muslims and ISIS is the current target in Syria and Iraq (host Justice Jeanine’s monologue reflects the bloodlust inside Murdoch’s station). The former head of Britain’s MI5 stated that the Iraq war massively increased the terror threat. What do you think attacking Iraq (again) and Syria (presumably with the assistance of the once-reviled and now loved Assad regime) will do? ISIS has grown because the Assad regime allowed it to surge, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Understanding the reality and rise of ISIS is clearly too difficult for many in the mainstream media though journalist Patrick Cockburn’s new book is one of the best primers. How to tackle ISIS extremism, especially in the wake of the shocking beheading of US reporter James Foley, brings clear challenges to the press. What to show, how to show it, what is propaganda?

This VICE News film on ISIS is remarkable, scary, intense and vital. Incredible access:

My weekly Guardian column:

The South African national high school debating team was recently in Bangkok for the world debating championships. During the competition, the team uploaded a picture of themselves at the tournament’s opening ceremony to Facebook, and controversy ensued.

“Team South Africa wearing Palestinian badges and Keffiyehs to show our opposition to the human rights violations carried out against the people of Palestine,” they posted.

The debating team’s captain, Joshua Broomberg, is the deputy head boy of a prestigious Jewish school in Johannesburg. That sent the online commenters into apoplexy. Threats of violence were made against the students.

Although South Africa has long had a strongly pro-Israel Jewish community, despite the African National Congress government increasingly opposing Israeli militarism and occupation, there are growing splits within the tight, Zionist enclave. Over 500 prominent Jews signed a statement a few weeks ago that read:

“Just as we resist antisemitism, we refuse to dehumanise Palestinians in order to make their deaths lighter on our collective conscience. We sign this statement in order to affirm their humanity and our own. We distance ourselves from South African Jewish organizations whose blind support for Israel’s disproportionate actions moves us further from a just resolution to the conflict.”

In the global Jewish diaspora, dissent against Israel of this magnitude is a relatively new phenomenon. Although support for the Jewish state has been an unofficial second religion for Jews for decades – in my own family it was simply expected that Israel would be uncritically backed in times of war and peace, with Palestinians demonised as unreasonable and violent – times are changing.

This doesn’t please some of the loudest Jewish voices. Conservative writer Shmuel Rosner argued in the New York Times in early August that liberal critics of Israel were severing familial ties. “If all Jews are a family”, he wrote, “it would be natural for Israelis to expect the unconditional love of their non-Israeli Jewish kin.”

“If Jews aren’t a family,” he continued, “and their support can be withdrawn, then Israelis have no reason to pay special attention to the complaints of non-Israeli Jews.”

Rosner believes that Israel will survive without liberal Jewish backing but surely even he recognises that Israel isn’t an island, and without strong support from America – diplomatically, financially and militarily – the Jewish state is isolated and increasingly alone. Rosner knows that Jewish diaspora support for Israel is vital if the Jewish state is to perpetuate its nearly 50-year occupation of Palestinian lands.

The standard tools used to silence skeptical Jews, including those in the diaspora – false allegations of self-hatred and antisemitism, accusations of backing Hamas – are less effective today. Israel can’t rely on diaspora support while hardline Zionists criticise diaspora Jewish voices for an apparently insufficient knowledge of Israeli politics or Hebrew, either.

In reality, despite what Israel supporters claim, the conflict isn’t complicated; occupation never is. Critics have been stripped of their power by the sheer scale of the Israeli invasion in Gaza, and the searing images of death and destruction, which are forcing even the most dedicated Israel backers to question the tactic of collective punishment.

In the US, Israel’s chief backer, support for Israel is flagging. The numbers don’t lie; a recent Gallup poll in the US found that Democrat voters and youth were much less likely to endorse Israel’s actions than the general US population, and a key sample of congressional staffers agreed that “Israel attacked Gaza in a wild overreaction”.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee understands the “vulnerability” of progressive support for Israel in the diaspora. Funding for young Jews to embraceIsrael has been ramped up and “birthright” trips are still ongoing, despite the conflict. But as one Rabbi noted, “This is a hard time to go and make that deep connection that we seek to make [on trips to Israel] … you are not going to see the Israel I saw when I was there in June. It really is different. It changed overnight”. Even the free trips are losing their effectiveness, and little wonder: a recent video, filmed at the Western Wall, shows how some young Israelis consider “another war, and another war, and another war” in Gaza to be normal.

The Jewish diaspora has long been relied upon to endorse and fund Israeli actions. Zionist leaders from my home country, Australia, are this month welcoming one of the most senior members of the Israeli government: Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, who advocates the total separation of Palestinians and Jews inside Israel, and wants “loyalty oaths” for Arab-Israeli citizens. The visit is already being hailed as “a wonderful reflection of the standing of the Australian Jewish community within the leadership of the Israeli government.”

The feeling is mutual. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, wrote a letter to diaspora Jews this month thanking them for “standing by Israel”:

“The support of Jewish communities around the world has been a source of great strength for the people of Israel … Many of you have had to face aggressive protesters, and even violent antisemitism … Israel will, for its part, continue standing at your side, as you deal with hatred and intolerance. Jews everywhere should be able to live with pride, not fear. I have great faith in the Jewish people and in the justice of our cause.”

While Israel doesn’t attract the same degree of support, some blind, it once enjoyed, the extent of dissent shouldn’t be exaggerated. Netanyahu’s message is still overwhelmingly appreciated by the majority of active Jews worldwide. Orthodox and Liberal around the world embrace Israel in their own, often deeply reactionary way – as do plenty of evangelical Christians.

Even some self-described progressive Jews, like the US writer Peter Beinart, still identify as Zionist. They do so to stay connected to family, friends and community. Were they to oppose Israel they would become outsiders. After all, since Israel’s establishment in 1948, and more so since the 1967 Six Day War, communal organisations have been deeply involved in providing the intellectual, emotional and financial backing for the Jewish state.

Who knows how many more Israeli massacres it will take to wean Jews in the diaspora off the Zionist cultural drip-feed? There’s a feeling of belonging, a prestige associated with the Zionist world that makes many Jews feel complete. Losing that means cutting ties with the modern, Jewish ritual of devotion to a foreign country. It’s perhaps hard for an outsider to understand this.

Nevertheless, groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace in America are giving strength to an independent view. While acknowledging the worrying signs of real antisemitism emerging around the world, they argue, as Israeli journalist Amira Hass does, that “If the security of Jews in the Middle East were of real interest … [the west] would not continue subsidising the Israeli occupation”.

Even the prominent Zionist Leon Wieseltier, writing in New Republic, is signalling the surging disquiet. “I have been surprised by the magnitude of the indifference in the Jewish world to the human costs of Israel’s defense against the missiles and the tunnels,” he argued recently.

A “Jewish Bloc against Zionism” marched in the massive protests in London against the Gaza massacre, joining unprecedented outrage from Britain’s political leadership over Israeli behaviour. Jews protested in New York and across America against Israeli actions.

Diaspora Jews should acknowledge the risks that arise from conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, a legitimate difference with historical roots. They are increasingly feeling targeted for uncritically backing Israel, and perhaps have the most to lose if this distinction is not made. The alternatives are bleak: a split among Jewish communities along generational lines, or growing disillusionment of the Jewish population.

French Jews are moving to Israel in ever-growing numbers, but few Jews feel safer in Israel than in their own nations. What threatens the Zionist establishment is not antisemitism or migration, but boycotts. A spokesperson for Britain’s Community Security Trust, a group that monitors antisemitism, recently said that the community would “get through” a spike in Jew hatred – “but the boycott stuff is really, really serious”.

Last Friday I gave the following speech at Sydney’s Lebanese Muslim Association forum on terrorism, Gaza, ISIS and Western governments spreading fear and anger towards the Islamic faith. Labor MP Tony Burke and Liberal MP Craig Laundy both pledged to bring harmony to the community and yet both their parties have flamed bigotry. Government surveillance is clearly mostly targeted towards Muslims and honest politicians would acknowledge it.

Here’s my speech:

-       Thanks to Andrew Bolt and the Murdoch press for mentioning tonight’s event this week; it’s clearly a threat to public order to be critical of Israel and the “war on terror”.

-       It’s a shame there are no women on this panel discussing the effects of war, terrorism and the Middle East from the group that often suffers the most from counter-terrorism policies as well as Zionist and Muslim extremism.

-       We must resist fear without question.

-       We must resist the narrative being sold to us about Palestine and Israel, so-called Western “humanitarian intervention” and government spin over the supposed terrorist threat.

-       We must resist the pressure placed on vulnerable communities to accept collective guilt for the actions of a few. I believe the Muslim leadership needs to more vigorously refuse to co-operate so closely with governments and intelligence bodies that aim to bring mass surveillance on the Muslim and wider communities.

-       A recent report in the US, through documents leaked by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, found that the NSA and FBI have been secretly monitoring for years thousands of Muslims with no connection to terrorism at all, along with a handful of potential extremists. Some of the most prominent Muslim spokespeople in the US are now suing the US government for being caught in an unaccountable system with no chance to defend themselves.

-       Another recent report, from another NSA whistle-blower, revealed that the Obama administration has placed over 680,000 people on its secretive Terrorist Screening Database with more than 40% of these individuals having no connection to terrorism.

-       With our closeness to the US, there’s every reason to believe the Muslim community in Australia is equally under suspicion. The Muslim response should not be acquiescence with the state, the AFP or ASIO but demands to know the evidence explaining why collective guilt has become the defacto policy from Canberra. It is unacceptable and does not make us safer.

-       Let’s speak out against the barbarity of ISIS and Al-Qaeda and understand why this hatred is brewing in our midst. It’s because of failings in education, language, parenthood, attention, imams, government actions, Western foreign policy hypocrisy and atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Libya and beyond. We have a responsibility to challenge fundamentalism and understand its roots to reduce it.

-       I speak to you as an atheist, Jewish, Australian, proud of my heritage but ashamed of Israeli actions. A few years ago my friend Peter Slezak and I founded Independent Australian Jewish Voices to highlight the growth in Jewish dissent over the Middle East. Not all Jews are Zionists and increasingly across the world young Jews are speaking out against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and wars in Gaza. Not in our name.

-       Jews who speak out against Israel are often demonised, harassed and threatened. But recent actions in Gaza, the brutality, death and destruction, have unleashed a growth in Jewish dissent around the world.

-       Anti-Semitism must never be tolerated. It must be challenged and crushed. This conflict isn’t about Jews versus Arabs. It’s about Zionism colonising Arab lands. Remember that many Jews are proudly Jewish and proudly anti-Zionist.

-      500 South African Jews, from a traditionally strongly Zionist community, recently signed a public letter that read in part: “Just as we resist anti-Semitism, we refuse to dehumanise Palestinians in order to make their deaths lighter on our collective conscience. We sign this statement in order to affirm their humanity and our own. We distance ourselves from South African Jewish organizations whose blind support for Israel’s disproportionate actions moves us further from a just resolution to the conflict.”

-       This is the kind of humane Judaism of which I can be proud.

-       One of the finest Israeli, Jewish journalists, Gideon Levy, explained this week what is at stake and why we must stay vigilant and outspoken: “A wave of animosity is washing over world public opinion. In contrast to the complacent, blind, smug Israeli public opinion, people abroad saw the pictures in Gaza and were aghast. No conscientious person could have remained unaffected. The shock was translated into hatred toward the state that did all that, and in extreme cases the hatred also awakened anti-Semitism from its lair. Yes, there is anti-Semitism in the world, even in the 21st century, and Israel has fuelled it. Israel provided it with abundant excuses for hatred. But not every anti-Israeli sentiment is anti-Semitism. The opposite is true – most of the criticism of Israel is still substantive and moral. Anti-Semitism, racist as any national hatred, popped up on the sidelines of this criticism – and Israel is indirectly responsible for its appearance.”

-       The media frames this issue as between two equal sides fighting over land and autonomy. The press says it’s “complicated”, that only certain perspectives should be heard, namely Zionist lobbyists and the occasional Palestinian or Arab. This is a lie. For too long, spokespeople from the Jewish establishment claim that their community speaks in one voice over Israel. They say they’re against terrorism and want peace. But what about state terrorism, unleashed by Israel and Australia and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan? Their dangerous tendency to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism leads to public skepticism over their cause.

-       In reality, this conflict is about occupation of Palestinian land, since 1948, and the legitimate rights of both Jews and Arabs to live in peace in Palestine. I have seen the reality of this situation with my own eyes in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza and found warmth, resistance, hardship, destruction of neighbourhoods and a desire for peace. But there cannot be a true and sustainable peace without justice, the Palestinian Right of Return and an end to the decades-long occupation.

-       Shamefully, successive Australian governments have indulged Israeli actions for too long. As a result, Canberra is now a fringe player on the world stage, unable to even acknowledge that East Jerusalem is “occupied”. The rise of Israeli fascism, endorsed by the Israeli government, is largely ignored in the West.

-       But there is hope. The last ten years have seen an explosion of new media that allows a stunning diversity of views. During the recent Gaza conflict, we all consumed tweets, Facebook posts, blogs and mainstream news from countless sources inside Gaza. Some were Gazans, able to communicate their plight online to the world, and others were brave professional reporters, such as Jon Snow from Britain’s Channel 4, who were unafraid to document the horrors unleashed by Israel on the people of Gaza.

-       In Australia Palestinian writers and commentators are occasionally heard though far too rarely. There is still timidity. Here’s an example. I was recently asked to appear on a popular current affairs TV show to debate a Zionist lobbyist. The lobbyist refused to show up alongside me so the TV producer cut the segment. Without a strong pro-Israel voice it was deemed impossible to have the story. How many times is a pro-Israel voice appearing alone on our TV screens? Regularly. A robust discussion over Israel and Palestine is healthy and necessary within the Jewish community but just featuring a Jewish dissident, on my own, was clearly a bridge too far. Why not have a Jew and Palestinian discuss the issues calmly and passionately?

-       The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is surging in popularity. From public moves against Sodastream for operating a factory in the occupied territories to European countries selling stakes in Israeli banks that bankroll the occupation. I strongly support BDS and encourage its growth in Australia. I hope the Muslim community more fully embraces this non-violent tactic, by lobbying politicians, businesses and the media to force Israel and its financial and intellectual backers to pay a price for flouting international law.

-       Of course Israel isn’t the only guilty party in the Middle East. One of the most pernicious actors is the US-backed Saudi Arabia, spreading poisonous Wahabism across the world. Extremism lives in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Egypt, Yemen and Iran. Do not be afraid to confront the radicals in our own communities, those who preach death, beheadings and violent jihad.

-       We must resist with purpose. 

Stinging Gideon Levy in Haaretz:

Israel is today the most dangerous place in the world for Jews. Since its establishment, more Jews were hurt in wars and terror attacks that took place in Israel than anywhere else. The war in Gaza took this one step backward – it endangered world Jews as well, as no other war has before it. The Jewish home, the national refuge, not only doesn’t provide refuge, but even threatens Jews everywhere else. When you tote up the results of the war, include that too in the loss column.

A wave of animosity is washing over world public opinion. In contrast to the complacent, blind, smug Israeli public opinion, people abroad saw the pictures in Gaza and were aghast. No conscientious person could have remained unaffected. The shock was translated into hatred toward the state that did all that, and in extreme cases the hatred also awakened anti-Semitism from its lair. Yes, there is anti-Semitism in the world, even in the 21st century, and Israel has fueled it. Israel provided it with abundant excuses for hatred.

But not every anti-Israeli sentiment is anti-Semitism. The opposite is true – most of the criticism of Israel is still substantive and moral. Anti-Semitism, racist as any national hatred, popped up on the sidelines of this criticism – and Israel is indirectly responsible for its appearance.

But Israel and the Diaspora Jewish establishment automatically tag any criticism as anti-Semitic. It’s an old trick – the burden of guilt is shifted from those who perpetrated the Gaza horrors to those who are tainted with so-called anti-Semitism. It’s not us, it’s you, anti-Semitic world. No matter what Israel does, the whole world is against it.

This is nonsense, of course. Just as not every policeman who gives a Jewish driver a traffic ticket is an anti-Semite, as the Jewish organizations try to put it, and not every robbery of a rabbi is a hate crime, so not every criticism of Israel is motivated by hatred of Jews.

These organizations have become the lightning rods of the criticism of Israel and they have brought it on themselves. This is the price of their blind support of Israel, their noisy propaganda campaigns in Israel’s name, their turning of every Jewish community center into a PR agency for Israel, and their unanimous support for everything Israel does. We’re all one people, they say. In that case, if every Jew who dares to censure Israel, even when it’s involved in brutal conduct, is a self-hating Jew – then everyone bears responsibility.

Quite a few Jews abroad sent me frightened messages during the war, pleading me to stop writing my articles, cease my criticism, because the anti-Semites use them. I replied to all of them that all my articles together haven’t affected Israel’s status as much as one news report from Gaza. I also know many who still harbor sympathy for Israel precisely because of the remnants here of a free society, one that allows criticism.

In any case, the address for the Jews’ fear should be the State of Israel. Many Jews now feel afraid. Part of the fear may be exaggerated, part of it is justified. It seems to me that being a Muslim in Europe is still harder than being a Jew. But in Paris, Jews don’t dare wear a kippa, in Belgium a woman wasn’t allowed into a store because she was Jewish and a French journalist who visited Algiers last week told me that the hatred for Israel and the Jews in France has reached an all-time high.

The address for all the complaints is Israel, because Israel is the one to blame for Gaza.

Whoever is afraid for the Jews’ fate, whoever is shocked by the anti-Semitic incidents, should have thought about it before taking Israel to another runaway war. The world isn’t always against Israel. Suffice it to remember Israel’s status during the Oslo period, when the entire world cheered it, including parts of the Arab world. This world will be happy to embrace Israel again, if this country only changes its bullying, domineering behavior.

Gevalt, anti-Semitism? Maybe. But Israel is supplying the fuse.

This week I was invited onto 2SER’s Fourth Estate media program:

In the wake of Mike Carlton’s resignation from the SMH over Israel/Palestine, the panel discuss the pitfalls of interacting with readers and dealing with vicious feedback. Plus, compassion fatigue and the media and typos, when are they newsworthy?