Disaster has become big business. Talking to immigrants stuck in limbo in Britain or visiting immigration centers in America, Loewenstein maps the secret networks formed to help corporations bleed what profits they can from economic crisis. He debates with Western contractors in Afghanistan, meets the locals in post-earthquake Haiti, and in Greece finds a country at the mercy of vulture profiteers. In Papua New Guinea, he sees a local community forced to rebel against predatory resource companies and NGOs.
What emerges through Loewenstein’s reporting is a dark history of multinational corporations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world’s most valuable commodity. Disaster Capitalism is published by Verso in 2015 and in paperback in January 2017.
Vulture capitalism has seen the corporation become more powerful than the state, and yet its work is often done by stealth, supported by political and media elites. The result is privatised wars and outsourced detention centres, mining companies pillaging precious land in developing countries and struggling nations invaded by NGOs and the corporate dollar.
Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and across Australia to witness the reality of this largely hidden world of privatised detention centres, outsourced aid, destructive resource wars and militarized private security. Who is involved and why? Can it be stopped? What are the alternatives in a globalised world? Profits of Doom, published in 2013 and released in an updated edition in 2014, challenges the fundamentals of our unsustainable way of life and the money-making imperatives driving it. It is released in an updated edition in 2014. 
Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? And Where do we find hope?
We are introduced to different belief systems – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position.
Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Bronte sisters. Antony Loewenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam.
Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake, published in 2013, encourages us to accept religious differences, but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.
After Zionism, published in 2012 and 2013 with co-editor Ahmed Moor, brings together some of the world s leading thinkers on the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a one-state solution.
Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land. Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different, unified future. Progressive and realist ideas are at last gaining a foothold in the discourse, while those influenced by the colonial era have been discredited or abandoned. Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably.
This daring and timely collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Jonathan Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Antony Loewenstein, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ahmed Moor, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss. 
The 2008 financial crisis opened the door for a bold, progressive social movement. But despite widespread revulsion at economic inequity and political opportunism, after the crash very little has changed.
Has the Left failed? What agenda should progressives pursue? And what alternatives do they dare to imagine?
Left Turn, published by Melbourne University Press in 2012 and co-edited with Jeff Sparrow, is aimed at the many Australians disillusioned with the political process. It includes passionate and challenging contributions by a diverse range of writers, thinkers and politicians, from Larissa Berendht and Christos Tsiolkas to Guy Rundle and Lee Rhiannon. These essays offer perspectives largely excluded from the mainstream. They offer possibilities for resistance and for a renewed struggle for change. 
The Blogging Revolution, released by Melbourne University Press in 2008, is a colourful and revelatory account of bloggers around the globe why live and write under repressive regimes - many of them risking their lives in doing so.
Antony Loewenstein's travels take him to private parties in Iran and Egypt, internet cafes in Saudi Arabia and Damascus, to the homes of Cuban dissidents and into newspaper offices in Beijing, where he discovers the ways in which the internet is threatening the ruld of governments.
Through first-hand investigations, he reveals the complicity of Western multinationals in assisting the restriction of information in these countries and how bloggers are leading the charge for change.
The blogging revolution is a superb examination about the nature of repression in the twenty-first century and the power of brave individuals to overcome it.
It was released in an updated edition in 2011, post the Arab revolutions, and an updated Indian print version in 2011. 
The best-selling book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question - on Jewish identity, the Zionist lobby, reporting from Palestine and future Middle East directions - was released by Melbourne University Press in 2006. A new, updated edition was released in 2007 (and reprinted again in 2008). The book was short-listed for the 2007 NSW Premier's Literary Award.
Another fully updated, third edition was published in 2009. It was released in all e-book formats in 2011. An updated and translated edition was published in Arabic in 2012.
In September, I spoke at Sydney University alongside US academic Mark LeVine and Palestinian academic Lana Tatour on the realities in today’s Palestine/Israel. Many interesting comments and my thoughts (after living in East Jerusalem for the last 1.5 years) start at 1:00:26:
Israeli-Canadian journalist David Sheen is facing a major legal battle in Israel.
I’ve investigated the story in British outlet The New Arab:
Israel promotes itself as the only democracy in the Middle East.
Former prime minister Ehud Barak once described his nation as a “villa in the jungle“. But recent years have seen a major erosion of press freedoms in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and an Israeli Jewish public that wholeheartedly supports the suppression of independent media.
Palestinian journalists are routinely harassed and arrested. Palestinians are increasingly targeted on social media after Israel accuses them of incitement. Al Jazeera is now being threatened with closure. Israel’s communication minister Ayoub Kara claimed that Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain were his inspiration for trying to shut the Qatari news channel.
Israeli journalists aren’t immune. Being opposed to the decades-long occupation automatically makes you a target. Israel cannot maintain its control over millions of Palestinians without instituting a regime of control, intimidation, imprisonment and death. Occupation is brutal, unforgiving and now permanent.
Israeli-Canadian journalist David Sheen is the latest reporter to fall foul of Israel’s draconian political environment – and his case should be a wake-up call to a global community that still clings to the belief that Israel is a thriving democracy.
Sheen has contributed to The New Arab, Haaretz, Al Jazeera and others, and is one of Israel’s finest chroniclers of the state’s mistreatment of its Africans, and a consistent advocate of humanitarian principles.
He is being sued by an Israeli general, Israel Ziv, for writing about Ziv’s connections to the South Sudanese government led by President Salva Kiir.
Late last year, Israel’s Channel 2 discovered that Ziv’s company, Global CST, in addition to assisting and training security forces in South America, Eurasia and Africa, was advising Kiir to defend his beleaguered South Sudanese regime.
Kiir’s military stands accused of encouraging its soldiers to rape women during the ongoing civil war. Ziv and his colleagues allegedly suggested bringing a rape victim to the UN in New York, and giving Kiir the chance to blame these war crimes on traditional African culture. Ziv claims he was only working on agricultural projects in South Sudan.
The South Sudanese regime is guilty of rampant human rights abuses – including murder, rape and ethnic cleansing. Israeli companies have a dark and largely hidden relationship with the African state, selling weapons and surveillance equipment since the country’s independence in 2011.
I was based in South Sudan in 2015 and routinely heard about Israelis visiting to assist the state’s repression.
This fits into Israel’s aggressive policy to befriend African states, selling them arms and defence equipment, in the hope of better diplomatic support at the UN. Israel has also been sending African refugees to Rwanda and Uganda in an opaque process that’s causing immense trauma for the people being sent back.
I interviewed Eritrean refugees in South Sudan in 2015 who had been kicked out of Israel and left to fend for themselves in one of Africa’s poorest nations.
Tellingly, Ziv is pursuing Sheen – but not Israel’s Channel 2 (its report on Ziv is damning). It’s the very definition of a SLAPP suit which is “intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defence until they abandon their criticism or opposition”.
After the Channel 2 investigation aired last December, Ziv appeared on Israel’s Army Radio. One of the hosts, Amit Segal, asked Ziv: “So how did you get into a situation where you are sitting in a café… and in something like a parody of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you suggest how he [the president of South Sudan] can whitewash his crimes?”
Ziv chuckled. He was accused by a mainstream journalist of secretly plotting to manipulate world opinion, cover up crimes and was compared to the most anti-Semitic work in history, and yet Ziv did not sue Segal. Instead, he’s harassing Sheen.
Ziv has a history of disturbing behaviour and comments in both Palestine and the world’s trouble spots. As a former commander of Israeli forces in Gaza, he has smeared Palestinians as having a “society for whom lies are its truth”. He has blamed murdered peace activist Rachel Corrie for her own death at the hands of the Israeli army in 2003.
In 2002, Israeli media outlet Kol Ha’ir Weekly Magazine reported that Ziv pushed to close an inquiry into the killing of five Palestinian children in 2001, “an investigation that may question, among other things, Ziv’s own responsibility for the killing”.
Ziv is deeply connected with the Israeli political establishment – many former Israeli politicians have worked for his company, Global CST, and assisted in the repression of innocent civilians across Latin America.
According to Amnesty International, Ziv’s firm was witnessed training Guinean military forces in 2009. That same year, Guinean forces committed horrible human rights abuses. Israel has recently upgraded its relations with the African state.
Wikileaks’ State Department cables released in 2011 revealed that the US had major concerns with Global CST, claiming it “created problems” in Colombia and Peru. US ambassador to Bogota, William Brownfield, wrote that the company “had no Latin American experience and that its proposals seem designed more to support Israeli equipment and services sales than to meet in-country needs”.
Sheen, a friend and colleague, has spent his professional life highlighting the descent of Israeli society into state-sanctioned racism. His astute observations are increasingly rare in a country that celebrates the use of unaccountable violence against perceived enemies.
Most importantly, he has examined the growing tendency of Israeli military figures to profit from its brutal occupation of Palestinians. The Israeli state is now a global leader in providing military, strategic and political advice to nations determined to deter, stop, kill or imprison unwanted minorities.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has worked for years with his media allies trying to silence anti-occupation voices. Critical perspectives on the occupation, Palestinian self-determination, Zionism or Israel’s future are increasingly infused with indignant nationalism and rampant anti-Arab racism.
Sheen is a rare voice who should be celebrated, not silenced. The court case against him, beginning in September, should be carefully watched by global media watchdogs, fellow journalists and foreign governments as a test of the Israeli judicial system to fairly arbitrate between a powerful, former military man and an independent journalist.
It’s clear where justice lies.
Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist who has written for The New York Times, the Guardian and many others. He is the author of My Israel Question and Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe and has been reporting on Israel/Palestine for fifteen years.
During my recent 1.5 years living in Jerusalem, I became friends with the great Israeli-Canadian journalist David Sheen. He’s one of the sharpest reporters on Israel’s far-right turn including the Jewish state’s war on African refugees.
He’s currently embroiled in a legal case in Israel that goes to the heart of that country’s increasing opposition to free speech.
I’ve signed the following statement in support alongside journalists such as Ali Abunimah, Max Blumenthal, Dan Cohen, Ben Ehrenreich, Jonathan Cook, Jillian York and many others:
We are journalists who wish to express our concern at the defamation suit against our colleague David Sheen. He is being sued by a leading Israeli general, Israel Ziv.
Sheen is a respected reporter and analyst, one with a deep knowledge of Israeli society, who regularly investigates issues related to racism and human rights abuses.
Over the years, a number of investigations by the Israeli media have tied Ziv to some of the world’s ugliest regimes.
Sheen’s comments about Ziv were provoked by the latest such investigation, carried out late last year by Israel’s Channel 2 TV. It published transcripts of conversations between Ziv and his business associates in which they discussed rehabilitating the reputation of Salva Kiir Mayardit, the president of South Sudan.
This was after the United Nations revealed that Salva Kiir had permitted soldiers under his command to rape women and children on a mass scale. Ziv and his team proposed exploiting a rape victim by bringing her to the UN General Assembly so that Salva Kiir could blame such war crimes on indigenous African tribal culture.
Despite being offered the chance on both Ch2 and Army Radio to deny the accuracy of the transcripts, Ziv declined to do so.
In a subsequent article Sheen wrote about the treatment of Africans by Israelis, he commented critically on Ziv’s behaviour. This is what he is being sued for, despite such criticism clearly being protected under the important right of journalists to comment fairly on matters of public interest.
This is not the first time Ziv has sought to silence journalists.
The Hebrew website Local Call received threats of litigation from Ziv over its reporting of his activities.
And in an extremely rare move, the Haaretz newspaper has removed from its websitefive investigative articles it published between 2009 and 2011 on Ziv’s business activities in Guinea and Abkhazia. Haaretz also parted ways with the reporter who wrote the articles after complaints from Ziv, and in circumstances none of those involved are prepared to talk about.
It is noteworthy that Ch2’s investigation revealed discussions between Ziv and his associates on ways that his company, Global CST, could manipulate and deceive the media about Salva Kiir’s brutal policies in South Sudan. Ziv appears to believe that journalists are there to serve his interests and not to act as independent watchdogs on power and its misuse.
Also noticeable is that Ziv is not suing a large organisation like Ch2 that published the original allegations and is equipped to defend itself in court. He is targeting an independent journalist as a way to intimidate other reporters. This is the very definition of a SLAPP suit, which is “intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition”.
It is important that the principle of journalistic freedom is upheld and that Ziv is not able to use the courts as way to exempt himself and his business activities from scrutiny, or from criticism. For that reason, we stand in solidarity with David Sheen and call on the court to dismiss the suit against him.
This week I appeared on ABC TV’s The Drum talking about Australia’s awful refugee policies, Israel/Palestine and the Israel lobby’s pernicious attacks on anybody who dares challenge the Jewish state:
The show has gone viral. One clip, of fellow journalist John Lyons and I talking about the Zionist lobby’s pressuring of critical voices, has been watched nearly 100,000 times (and growing fast). It’s received international attention.
Back in 2014, I argued in The Guardian that Australia should suffer a sports boycott due to its illegal asylum seeker policies. I made the same point on this TV show and many people, with a few notable exceptions, welcomed the idea. Australian legal academic Dr Amy McGuire wrote a story in The Conversation around the issue.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been caught speaking privately against the European Union and its often critical stance towards Israel. In reality, the EU occasionally condemns the Israeli occupation of Palestine but continues to maintain very close ties with the Jewish state.
Today I was interviewed by Australian current affairs show, The Wire, about the issue.
My article in Australian magazine Crikey:
Less than one and a half hours from Jerusalem, Gaza is like a different planet, literally cut off from the outside world. Its 2 million residents, suffering huge electricity cuts, polluted water (a recent Oxfam report details Israel’s refusal to allow vital equipment into Gaza to fix infrastructure destroyed by the Israelis) and high unemployment (affecting both Gaza and the occupied West Bank) are often forgotten, seemingly doomed to be permanently separatedfrom the West Bank and Israel.
The 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem will be celebrated in Israel this week as liberation — biblically inspired. Palestinians remain under an Israeli regime of house demolitions, ever-expanding illegal settlements (there are now an estimated 700,000 settlers living in occupied territory) and strict controls over daily life. The Palestinian, political leadership is old, corrupt, complicit with Israel and out of touch.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is currently in his 12th year of a four-year term. During his recent visit to the White House, both he and President Donald Trump spoke in motherhood statements about peace but offered no concrete path to create it. A just, two-state solution is dead on arrival; decades of Israeli settlement building killed it. The status-quo is one state, with one rule and law for Jews and another, less equal reality for Palestinians. Trump’s recent Middle East tour offered little more than weapons for Arab dictatorships.
Australia’s role in the conflict is small but significant. Successive governments in Canberra, both Labor and Liberal, though the latter has been more proudly belligerent in Israel’s corner, have offered carte blanche to Israeli actions.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop wrongly questions whether Israeli settlements are illegal under international law (they are, and a UN resolution in December proved that the entire world, except Australia and Israel, knew it). During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to Australia, talk of “shared values” was in the air. This was fitting for two nations that ethnically cleansed their indigenous populations and have yet to fully acknowledge, let alone compensate, the victims.
Israel’s “separation barrier” divides Palestinian communities in Bethlehem. Photo by Antony Loewenstein
The effect of Australia’s obsequiousness towards Israel, yet another example of Canberra blindly following Washington’s lead around the world, is the danger of being both on the wrong side of history and out of step with public opinion. Israeli settlement expansion has pushed Palestinians in the West Bank to the brink. Australia and many Western nations have spent decades enabling this policy. Australia’s Ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, spends his days channelling Israeli propaganda on social media and palling around with extremist, Israeli politicians. The result is a Jewish state that currently feels no pressure to change.
There are, however, signs of change. The latest poll in the US finds that two-in-five Americans now back sanctions against Israel, and Australian citizens, according to a recent Roy Morgan poll, are both opposed to Israeli settlements and supportive of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
During a recent visit to Gaza, my third since 2009, I witnessed a populationmore frustrated than ever before. With the threat of another war with Israel always on the horizon, many in the Israeli military and government are itching to bomb the Gaza Strip again. “Mowing the grass” is the euphemism used in Israel to describe this perennial obsession with attacking the area. The people in Gaza are unable to plan their lives because of it.
I met many locals who didn’t know if they’d be allowed out of Gaza. Israel routinely blocks departures for spurious reasons and the Egyptian border is mostly closed (reflective of leaders in the Arab world, who for decades have paid lip service to the Palestinian cause but done little to practically support it). It’s now not uncommon for couples to marry with one partner in Gaza and the other somewhere else, Skyping into proceedings. They hope to be reunited soon after the event.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of Gaza today is the desire of so many people there to leave. After years of isolation, it’s an understandable feeling. Not convinced by the rhetoric or actions of the Hamas government, the party operates a police state in the territory, and distrusting Israeli intentions, finding a better home elsewhere is necessary, especially for young people. But the opportunity to depart is mostly blocked by forces beyond their control. Time passes, frustrations grow and lives are stunted. It’s a recipe for future conflict and radicalisation.
Family in Gaza displaced during the 2014 war with Israel. Photo by Antony Loewenstein
***
Sitting at her desk in Beit Lahia, Gaza, Aesha Abu Shaqfa battles to be heard above the sound of Israeli fighter jets roaring overhead. She worked as the executive director of the Future Development Commission, a local NGO committed to empowering women. It’s a lonely path in a territory devastated by war, Israeli and Hamas intransigence, misogyny and deprivation.
Wearing a red hijab, Shaqfa recently told me that one of her main goals was to reduce the prevalence of childhood marriage. “In our culture, girls having sex at 14 is not rape so we try and educate the girls about the challenges they will face [when married]”, she said. “Girls at 14 do not know about sex and they think marriage is sweet words, a pretty dress and make-up. The divorce rates of 14-18 year olds, for boys and girls, are rising.”
Domestic violence and sexual abuse against minors and adults are worsening because of regular Israeli attacks, social instability, conservative Islam and high unemployment.
Shaqfa, who is divorced from her second husband, acknowledged the huge challenges in Gaza for achieving gender equality. “I have three brothers and a father and only one of them can make sandwiches and tea,” she explained. “Here, women serve men.”
But she told me that big changes had occurred in the last years, a sentiment I heard echoed across Gaza, despite three wars with Israel since 2007, a repressive Hamas government and suffocating, 10-year siege imposed by Israel and Egypt. “More women are now finishing education, getting work and we’re trying to educate young girls at secondary schools about women’s rights,” she said.
***
I’ve been living in Jerusalem since early 2016 and returning regularly to Israel and Palestine since 2005. My first book, My Israel Question in 2006, challenged the myopic racism of the establishment, Jewish community and in 2013 I co-edited a collection, After Zionism, that outlined alternatives to discriminatory Israel.
Palestinians are rarely heard in the Israeli media as anything other than a security threat. Arab voices are almost invisible and most Israelis never meet a Palestinian except when they’re serving in the army.
Jerusalem is a divided city, with Palestinians in East Jerusalem subject to discrimination and constant house demolitions. Tel Aviv is a beachside city that’s known as a bubble away from the conflict. Decades of conflict, privatisation and disaster capitalist policies have resulted in poverty being one of the highest in the developed world.
Racism is state-backed and encouraged by the highest levels of the Israeli government, knowing it’ll receive domestic support. Bigotry and incitement against African refugees, Palestinians and minorities is common, reflective of a country that was light years ahead of Trump’s war on Muslims. Trying to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel, or Christian rule in the US, requires discrimination and exclusion. Such policies are the antithesis of liberal democracy. Far-right groups in the US and Europe, traditional enemies of Jews, are increasingly enamoured with Israel due to its hardline against Muslims. Israel often welcomes these new friends.
The Oslo peace accords, signed more than 20 years ago by then-US president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian head Yasser Arafat, sealed Palestine’s fate, entrenching Israeli occupation as state policy. Today, Israel works hand in hand with the private military industry to sell and promote “battle-tested” weaponry for the global market. Privatising the occupation of Palestine has allowed the Jewish state to perfect the art of military control, assets for nations fighting refugees or insurgents.
This is not without controversy, with Israeli human rights lawyers pushing for transparency over arms sales to repressive states such as South Sudan. When I lived there in 2015, in the capital Juba, I regularly heard about Israelis visiting the country to liaise with South Sudanese officials. Its government stands accused of genocide.
The 50th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War will be marked in illegal, Israeli settlements, a perfect place to commemorate colonial acquisition. A recent poll found that Israeli settlers are the most satisfied of all Israelis with their lives. Many liberal Israeli Jews I know are disillusioned with the situation and looking to leave; they have no hope that Israel’s future will be anything other than a far-right theocracy.
From the beginning of the 1967 occupation, voices of dissent were rare. Euphoria was in the air and dominating the Palestinians without full civil rights was defended as necessary. Little has changed since.
During extensive time with Jewish colonists in the West Bank last year, I found arrogance but surprising insecurity about their long-term situation. Yair Ben-David, living at Kashuela Farms near the Gush Etzion settlements, told me that, “the Western world is at war with radical Islam”. He said Palestinians under occupation “know that Israel is the best place to live,” compared to the rest of the Arab world, and they should be grateful for their situation. “Only Israel is helping the Palestinians,” he claimed. We spoke on a hot day while sheep, goats and rabbits roamed around the settlement. Ben-David always carried a loaded gun.
Despite his knowledge that the Israeli army protected his settlement, and without them he would be unable to survive, he said that he was “greening” the environment for the sake of the Israeli state. If he were forced to leave, because of a peace deal with the Palestinians, he would “resist, though not with a weapon. I would eventually go.”
The situation feels hopeless on the ground but there are rays of hope. Israeli attempts to destroy the global Palestinian solidarity movement has failed. Jewish dissent in the US and beyond is surging, no longer content being associated with a Jewish establishment that offers uncritical backing of the Israeli state. A major step towards change will involve educating Jews and others that occupying the Palestinian people for 50 years isn’t the actions of a normal, healthy state. Without outside pressure, as many Israelis and Palestinians tell me, the situation will never change. Israel’s biggest supporters are increasingly the Christian far-right and far-right fanatics.
Occupying nations never give up power voluntarily. Remember, South Africa was economically squeezed for years before it capitulated and ended political apartheid. Israel is facing a growing global movement aiming for a similar transformation.
*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe
My investigation and analysis in The National newspaper on the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of Palestine:
For the two million Palestinians living under siege in Gaza, every week presents new challenges. Electricity is now reduced to about four hours a day due to political infighting between Palestinian parties Fatah and Hamas. Israel refuses to allow imports of the spare parts needed to fix the power plant that it bombed in 2012 and 2014, so the population suffers during the freezing winter and sweltering summer. Safe drinking water is often out of reach.
Unemployment is soaring, domestic violence against women is rising and freedom of movement, through Egypt or Israel, is restricted. During a recent visit, Gazans told me that they had never been more isolated from neighbouring states and the world.
The 50th anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War will be celebrated in Israel and is another signal that the occupation that began soon after this military victory is a permanent one. Nearly US$3 million (Dh11 million) has been allocated by Israel to celebrate this year’s anniversary and events will take place in illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The 1967 war was the third between the Arab states and Israel. Tensions built throughout the 1960s, and after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered United Nations forces out of the Sinai and reoccupied it, and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, the path to war was set. On June 5, 1967, Israel launched surprise attacks and within six days seized the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Today, the most visible and painful legacy of the war has been the fate of the Palestinians. Newly released documents show that Israel knew the international community would not formally approve, and instructed diplomats not to talk of annexation in East Jerusalem but of “municipal fusion”. Other previously-secret files reveal the arrogance and euphoria after the 1967 war. Prime minister Levi Eshkol advocated forcible transfer of Arabs under occupation and only a few voices worried about ruling over a population with few civil rights.
With the backing of the Israeli government and full support of Zionist politicians such as Shimon Peres – years later he framed himself as a peacemaker though he remained a western-friendly face of colonisation – Jewish, religious nationalists quickly established colonies, all illegal under international law. They justified them for Biblical and ideological reasons (claiming God gave Jews all the land of “Judea and Samaria”) and strategic considerations (the need to protect the Jewish state). Between 1967 and 1977, about 5,000 settlers moved principally into the Jordan Valley.
The United Nations estimates that Gaza could be unliveable by 2020 due to a decade of war and Israeli deprivation. Robert Piper, UN coordinator for humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, told the Jerusalem Post in April that the situation was so dire, half the population in Gaza was “food insecure”.
Unemployment is one of the highest rates in the world. Israel has controlled the lives of Palestinians for 50 years now, with no end in sight.
From 1977 until today, regardless of who ruled Israel, settlements became state religion. There are now about 700,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel withdrew 8,000 settlers from Gaza in 2005 but maintains control of its land, sea and air borders.
Israel has instituted a discriminatory regime for Palestinians under occupation – hundreds of thousands have been imprisoned over the decades, with many killed (families are rarely given compensation when innocents are murdered), and settler violence against Arabs is both tolerated and encouraged by the Israeli army in the West Bank. Settlers live as if they are in the Wild West, stealing water and the best natural resources from the native population and often destroying their main source of income, olive groves.
In the city of Hebron, with 500 radical Jews and 200,000 Palestinians, Israel has segregated the communities, reminiscent of apartheid South Africa. American actor Richard Gere, who recently visited the town, remarked that, “it’s exactly what the Old South was in America. Blacks knew where they could go … You didn’t cross over if you didn’t want to get your head beat in, or you get lynched”.
The religious, nationalist movement has forced itself into all levels of the state and liberal Israelis have accepted this shift, migrated or become a tiny and ineffective opposition. It’s why the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, a Palestinian-led initiative that aims to economically isolate the Jewish state, has become so effective in the past decade in highlighting the undemocratic nature of Israel. BDS argues that change will only come from strong and consistent outside pressure.
Since the Oslo peace accords in the 1990s, an arrangement that established a complicit Palestinian Authority deputised to police the West Bank for the Israelis while colonies grew exponentially, the world has seen peace conferences and endless negotiations. Washington’s role has been akin to “Israel’s lawyer”. The European Union and Arab League have not been able to change anything. The Jewish, Israeli public have shifted far to the right, and racism against black Africans, Palestinians and minorities is surging.
Israel is only democratic if you’re Jewish. A just, two-state solution was dead on arrival because Israel had no intention of ending its addiction to settlements. A recent poll of Israeli Jews conducted by Fathom, a British journal on Israel, found that many thought the settlements were part of sovereign Israel (they’re not).
This year, after 50 years of occupation, Israel faces little, real opposition to its policies but the moral and economic cost has been massive. On the 40th anniversary of the occupation, in 2007, Israeli estimated the cost of the enterprise since 1967 at more than US$50 billion (Dh184 billion), including security and civilian expenses.
The effect has been dramatic. The rate of poverty in Israel is the highest in the developed world; a quarter of the population and nearly one-in-three children are poor. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy recently wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that, “a state that celebrates 50 years of occupation is a state whose sense of direction has been lost, its ability to distinguish good from evil impaired”.
A massive hunger strike by thousands of Palestinian prisoners, held illegally in Israeli prisons, began in April led by imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti. It aimed to highlight their poor treatment by Israel and remind the world that 800,000 Palestinians – 40 per cent of males – have experienced Israeli prisons since 1967.
Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians live under constant risk of house demolitions, Israeli army invasions, road closures and lack of adequate services. Israeli society is constricting. Prominent left-wing, human rights organisations, such as Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem, are accused of treason by senior members of the Israeli government.
The situation on the ground feels hopeless. With the region in disarray, wars in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, terrorism by extremists and United States president Donald Trump’s unpredictability, justly resolving the Palestinian issue is not a likely priority. During Trump’s recent Middle East trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel, he mentioned nothing tangible about Palestinian rights.
If the two-state solution is impossible, what are the alternatives? The status quo is assured with occasional and inevitable Palestinian resistance.
A fair one-state solution would give all citizens of Israel and Palestine equal rights and a vote in parliament. This option is refused by the vast majority of Israeli Jews and the Jewish diaspora because they want to maintain Jewish privilege.
Rawabi in the West Bank, the first planned, modern Palestinian city at a cost of $1.4 billion, with financial help from the Gulf, is mooted as a ray of light. However, during a recent visit, I saw a ghost town of modern apartment buildings with few residents or services. Palestinian businessman Bashar Masri envisages a population of 40,000, and when I visited, I saw families receiving tours of the area. It is close to Jerusalem and Ramallah and about 3,000 Palestinians currently live there.
A shopping centre, amphitheatre, equestrian area, winery, church, mosque and bungee jumping are all part of the vision. However, Rawabi has been entangled for years with Israel over issues of access roads, the electricity grid and a reliable water supply.
The lasting legacy of the 1967 war and Israel’s colonisation project is a dark reminder of the international community’s acceptance of the Jewish state because of Holocaust guilt, racism against Arabs and a fear of upsetting a key US ally. The result is one of the longest occupations in modern times, with no serious internal or external pressure to change the status quo.
The 1967 war was the third between the Arab states and Israel. The first took place in 1948. This war left the West Bank and East Jerusalem under Jordanian control, with the Egyptians in control of the Gaza Strip. The second, in 1956, resulted in Israel capturing the Gaza Strip and Sinai. But Israel was forced to give up the Sinai in 1957, when a UN force was deployed. Tensions remained high.
Israel in the 1960s was experiencing a recession while Arab nationalism surged across the region. The Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser generated huge support by talking about the “liberation” of Palestinian territory. Palestinian insurgent groups found support in Syria and Jordan, leading to Israeli military leaders urging a preemptive, Israeli strike.
Washington was consumed with the Vietnam War and refused to guarantee assistance, while Moscow was deeply concerned with Israel’s nuclear capabilities and urged an Arab attack.
In May 1967, Nasser ordered the UN force out of Sinai, signed a defence pact with Jordan and closed certain waters to Israeli shipping.
After much deliberation within the Israeli establishment, the Jewish state bombed the Egyptian Air Force on June 5, 1967, quickly destroying it. Egypt’s ground forces were neutralised days later. Victory was remarkably swift following considerable Arab military failures. In a mere 132 hours, Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and Gaza, along with the Sinai, from Egypt.
Israeli euphoria filled the country and voices against the occupation of Palestinian territory were minimal. Many Israeli leaders claimed the Arabs under their control would soon regard them as benign rulers. The decision to capture East Jerusalem was taken purely for emotional reasons, not strategic considerations, because of the strong Zionist desire to unify the city under Jewish dictate.
Antony Loewenstein is a Jerusalem- based journalist and author of Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe.
My essay in The National newspaper about the city of Jerusalem:
House demolitions occur regularly in East Jerusalem, well away from the tourist path. According to the United Nations, Israel destroyed 190 Palestinian homes in 2016 and displaced thousands of people. It was the highest figure since 2000.
I’ve witnessed Palestinian families thrown out of their own houses, sometimes immediately replaced by radical, Jewish settlers, or standing in front of crushed, concrete structures with nowhere to go. Last year, a few hours after a Palestinian home was demolished in the neighbourhood of Wadi Joz, I arrived to find a solitary man sitting under a large, green plastic sheet. He had 12 children and a wife and all his possessions, including couches, fridge, table, crockery and cutlery, were exposed to the elements. “The Palestinian people don’t help me”, he said. Despite his situation, he gave me a cup of hot coffee and then began calling friends to see where he could sleep with his family.
The official policy of Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat is to make Jerusalem the “united capital”. In practice, this means the approval of thousands of Jewish homes in West Jerusalem, but nothing in the East where Palestinians live. Up to 20,000 Palestinian homes have been built without approval, giving Israel the justification to destroy them, but obtaining permits is almost impossible. It’s a daily reality faced by a Palestinian community that foreigners and Israeli Jews almost never witness nor want to.
To a Jew growing up in Australia, this Jerusalem is vastly different to the fantasy Jewish city described in my youth, although it remains a sparkling and beautiful place. I’m preparing to leave after living here with my partner for more than a year. During this time and in the course of many visits over the past decade, I constantly marvel at the shimmering Al Aqsa Mosque, cobbled streets in the Old City and the green and brown hills of the Mount of Olives. With few tall buildings and its famed cream-coloured stone, the city has a spiritual feeling that is perhaps unrivalled in the world.
However, the brutal politics of division sucks away any inkling of nostalgia. The ubiquitous presence of armed and aggressive Israeli soldiers and police harassing Palestinians increasingly defines it. Many secular, Jewish Israelis hate Jerusalem and try to avoid coming. For them, the comfortable bubble of Tel Aviv is preferable, where the occupation of Palestine is almost completely invisible. They like it that way, away from Palestinians and the ultra-Orthodox, Haredi Jews who ghettoise themselves in isolated neighbourhoods.
As Israel prepares to celebrate 50 years of conquest and occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, this holy city has rarely been so angry and volatile.
Recently released documents revealed that Israel knew from the beginning of its occupation that it was illegal and worried about international reaction. Israel annexed East Jerusalem three weeks after the 1967 war and sent a telegram to its ambassadors around the world explaining that this wasn’t “annexation” but “municipal fusion” to guarantee running services. Israel needn’t have been too concerned, though, because facts on the ground after 50 years have become permanent.
As a journalist in Jerusalem, it’s a strange experience and almost guaranteed to bring cognitive dissonance. It’s possible to spend time in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the day, witnessing suffering and occupation and be safely back at home in the evening. Considering what surrounds us, Jerusalem is perhaps too comfortable for foreign media.
For Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, the city can be a dark experience. I live in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem that’s slowly being taken over by extremist, Jewish settlers. There are plans to build a religious school, a 10,000-square-metre complex in the heart of an Arab area, and accelerated moves, backed by the Israeli Supreme Court, to evict even more Palestinians from their homes. The clear Israeli aim, used over decades, is to make Palestinian lives so miserable that they simply pick up and leave. Some agree, most resist.
There may be no checkpoints separating East and West Jerusalem, unlike throughout the West Bank, but the divides are clear. The vast majority of Jews here have no interest or knowledge of Palestinian history before the 1948 Nakba.
Israel is pushing for millions more tourists in Jerusalem in the coming decades, but this can only be achieved by isolating and silencing Palestinian residents, many of whom lost residency unless they regularly proved that this city was their “centre of life”.
Jerusalem will seduce even the most jaded traveller, but only the blind can ignore the racial and political discrimination undertaken in the name of Zionism.
Antony Loewenstein is a Jerusalem-based journalist and author, most recently, of Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out of Catastrophe.
I recently reported from Gaza for the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age. The piece was spread widely online around the world.
Unsurprisingly, it upset the Israel lobby because I hadn’t simply republished Israeli government talking points. Furthermore, humanising Palestinians is always a problem for people and groups that loathe empathetic Arabs.
A major, Zionist lobby in Australia, AIJAC, condemned the piece:
Then on April 9, the Age ran a full-page feature from extreme anti-Israel writer Antony Loewenstein on Gaza that was all about the Palestinians as victims and their utter lack of culpability.
Falsely calling the blockade a “siege”, the piece quoted IDF Chief of Staff Gen. Gadi Eisenkot out of context making him sound like he admitted Israel uses disproportionate force when responding to Hamas terror. It also gave the benefit of the doubt to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ new leader in Gaza who “reportedly opposes reconciliation with Israel” before quoting another expert who said Hamas doesn’t hate Jews, only Israel.
The nadir was reached when Loewenstein quoted a Gaza expert blaming a string of social problems, including domestic violence in Gaza, on Israeli occupation. The occupation ended in 2005!
And then in another, massive attempt at criticism (as usual with AIJAC, the Israeli government could have written all of its articles), the organisation spends a huge amount of time trying to challenge my reporting by comically quoting any number of Israeli-aligned journalists, commentators and think-tanks. By the way, thank you, AIJAC, for picking a photo of me taken in Afghanistan, another country that induces fear and hatred against Muslims amongst many in the pro-Israel rabble.
There are so many factual inaccuracies in these screeds, it’s hard to know where to begin. Suffice to say, since I’ve been writing about Israel/Palestine from 2003, and publishing books and investigations about the issue (with a lot more to come), Israel-aligned lobbyists have constantly attacked my work (a few examples here and here from over a decade ago and there are so many more). Throughout this time, public opinion has massively shifted on Israel and there’s far more public sympathy for Palestinians and against Israeli occupation than ever before. This must infuriate Israel propagandists who spend their days ranting about the supposed evils of Palestinians.
Keep it up, please, you’re hugely helping the Palestinians cause.
In late 2015, I was interviewed on TRT World’s The Newsmakers program from London about Israel/Palestine and the one-state solution. My interview begins at 3:37:
During my recent trip to Gaza, I shot this short film on daily life. It was published alongside a feature story in the Sydney Morning Herald/Melbourne Age:
My feature story in the Sydney Morning Herald/Melbourne Age (alongside my short film and photographs):
Umm al-Nasr, Gaza Strip: Everybody in Gaza fears another war. After the 2014 conflict, which killed 2250 Palestinians and 70 Israelis, little has changed on the ground for the territory’s 2 million residents.
A local psychiatrist, Khaled Dahlan, recently told me in Gaza that Palestinians had multi-generational trauma, having been dispossessed and attacked for decades. “We have had so many conflicts” in the last 70 years, he said.
The World Health Organisation estimates that at least 20 per cent of the population has severe mental illness.
Daniel Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel under former US president Barack Obama, recently warned that “the next war in Gaza is coming”.
Israel’s military Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Gadi Eisenkot, explained in late March that his country reacts “disproportionately” to rocket fire from the strip. “The reality in Gaza is volatile,” he said.
Eisenkot warned that the Hamas authority in Gaza was “continuing to dig [tunnels] underground and to build their abilities and defensive capabilities”. Israel claims Hamas has new heavy rockets with which to attack Israeli border towns.
Israel’s State Comptroller released a report on the 2014 war that found the Israeli government was uninterested in avoiding a military conflict. “There was no realistic diplomatic alternative concerning the Gaza Strip,” it stated.
Hamas recently elected a new leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who reportedly opposes reconciliation with Israel. He served 22 years in an Israeli jail before being released in a prisoner swap in 2011. Tensions rose again after the alleged Israeli assassination in late March of a senior Hamas militant in Gaza.
Yet Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in late 2016 that his country would help rebuild Gaza – if Hamas disarmed.
“We will be the first to invest in a port, an airport and industrial areas”, he told a Palestinian newspaper in October. Israel’s Transport Minister Israel Katz proposes building an island near Gaza to service its people – but Israel would control its air, sea and land borders.
Hani Muqbel, head of the Hamas Youth Department, told me in Gaza that his group’s philosophy was different to Islamic State’s or al-Qaeda’s. “They’re destroying the image of Islam,” he said. In contrast, Hamas had built a “national liberation movement”.
He acknowledged the current difficulties in Gaza but blamed the “Israeli occupation, siege and the [rival Fatah-run] Palestinian Authority [in the West Bank]”.
Muqbel said that Hamas did not want another war but that its issue with Israel “wasn’t between Jews and Muslims. It’s not a religious war, it’s about land.”
He demanded that Western powers stop claiming Hamas “wanted to kill Jews because they’re Jews. We do not.”
The Israeli media largely ignores Gaza and Israelis are not legally allowed to visit. Yet former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo recently said that the occupation was the country’s only “existential threat“.
An editorial in the liberal newspaper Haaretz urged the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “immediately consider other ways of halting the deterioration in Gaza – first and foremost by alleviating the wretchedness of life there”.
The Israeli human rights group Gisha recently found that Israel had massively reduced the ability of Gazans to leave in the last months, dropping 40 per cent compared to last year’s average. In February, only 7301 people went through the Erez checkpoint, which connects Gaza to Israel and the occupied West Bank. It was the lowest number since the end of the 2014 war.
Countless Gazans haven’t left for years. Many told me that it was impossible to plan anything major in life, such as marriage or travel, with certainty because applications to leave Gaza were routinely rejected by Israel with no reason given. Often they were ignored entirely.
The effect of the wars and isolation has been dramatic on the domestic lives of men and women. The last years have seen an explosion of Western aid organisations in Gaza working with local NGOs on furthering women’s rights in a male-dominated society. Many women said that these courses gave them awareness of their legal and social rights along with the ability to resist and leave a violent marriage.
The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women recently released a draft resolution that highlighted the status of Palestinian women. It expressed “deep concern” about the “ongoing illegal Israeli occupation and all of its manifestations”, including “incidents of domestic violence and declining health, education and living standards, including the rising incidence of trauma and the decline in psychological well-being”, especially for girls and women in Gaza.
A lawyer with the Gaza-based NGO Aisha Association for Woman and Child Protection, Asma Abulehia, said that she met six to seven women every day who faced domestic abuse or economic uncertainty. However, many women couldn’t leave their houses to seek help, trapped by an abusive husband or family.
“The Israeli occupation is the main reason for these problems,” she told me. “The bad economic situation has worsened social problems, along with ignorance of Islam and unfair laws against women in Gaza.”
Due to the suffocating 10-year blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, support for Hamas has decreased. Many people long for a return of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority that governs Palestinians in the West Bank, though they aren’t convinced it would make much difference to their daily lives. Many said they wanted to leave and build a life elsewhere.
This month, Human Rights Watch released a new report, Unwilling or Unable, detailing Israeli restrictions on human rights workers entering Gaza to document breaches of human rights and international humanitarian law. It accused Israel of severely curtailing the ability of Israelis, Palestinians and internationals to enter or leave Gaza and dismissed its reasons for doing so.
Human Rights Watch asked the International Criminal Court, currently investigating possible war crimes committed in Palestine including Gaza, to determine the “credibility” of Israeli domestic investigations and its restrictions of human rights workers in and out of Gaza.
In a 2015 report the United Nations voiced fears that Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020. It stated that the 2014 war had “effectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid”.
“Hamas doesn’t care for the people,” Abulehia said. “They deny violence against women and drug abuse [of the opioid Tramadol] even exists.”
Abulehia said violence against women was worsening, though there were no reliable government figures. The Safe House, funded by the Hamas government and run by women in a secure location, is the Gaza Strip’s only women’s shelter, where up to 50 people can sleep overnight. The average stay is three months.
Many women I met at the Aisha office faced troubling options. Nineteen-year-old Noura al-Reefy married her husband three years ago and wanted a divorce. Her father-in-law sexually harassed her and her husband did nothing.
“He wanted to see my husband and me have sex in front of him and me naked without my hijab,” she told me. During multiple visits to Gaza, I’d never heard such graphic accounts of abuse from a woman.
Reefy had attempted suicide twice. She hadn’t finished high school but planned to complete her education after divorce. She was forced to marry her cousin “but it was a bad idea from the start. I wish it was easier for women to get divorced here..”
Buthaina Sobh, head of the Wefaq Society for Women and Child Care, told me in conservative Rafah, in the south of the territory, that sexual harassment at work, at home and on the streets was commonplace.
“In our society,” she said, “women can’t demand sexual pleasure, they’re considered a slut. Only men can. However, intellectual women now recognise that women have sexual desires and can ask for it privately.”
Sobh said the constant Israeli attacks made Palestinians “used to suffering”. She was pessimistic that women’s lives could change substantively until the siege was lifted.
Training facilities for women are still rare but slowly growing. In the conservative, Bedouin area of Umm al-Nasr in the strip’s north, I visited a multi-storey centre where women learnt tailoring and toymaking for local consumption. A showroom displayed the work for sale. Carpentry classes for women were initially resisted by traditionalist men in the village, but now the teaching of skills in a territory with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world – at least 43 per cent – is being welcomed. The Hamas authority backs the centre and wants similar facilities established throughout the strip.
The centre also runs English courses and exercise classes. Working for the Italian NGO Vento Di Terra, project manager Sara Alafifi said that before the 2014 war many people thought that exercise for women was a waste of time but now healthy bodies were seen as a sensible way to manage stress.
There are alternatives. A group of Israeli and Palestinian economists recently released two studies with the World Bank that outlined a blueprint for economic development in the West Bank, Jordan Valley and Gaza. At the launch in Jerusalem, former Israeli ambassador to South Africa Ilan Baruch was blunt.
“There has been a deliberate Israeli policy to create deficiency,” he said. “The international community has to get involved – not as a donor, but to exert pressure.”
The constant threat of war against Gaza makes normality impossible. Hypertension, deep anxiety, increasing domestic violence and insomnia are ubiquitous amongst the population.
With hawkish Israeli commentators demanding another war with Hamas, and advocating the assassination of its leaders within days of any conflict commencing, prospects will only improve if the international community can put concerted effort into finding a new direction.
Antony Loewenstein is a Jerusalem-based independent journalist and author.
