I was interviewed on Democracy Now! TV last night about the Prisoner X case, Mossad and Israeli/Australian relations: NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show looking at a scandal gripping Israel and Australia centered on a man once known simply as “Prisoner X,” who was found dead in a maximum security prison in Israel in 2010.…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
How Britain sells weapons to the world and still claims to be responsible nation
Penetrating story by Andy Beckett in the Guardian: In the town centre of Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, between McDonald’s and Carphone Warehouse, there is an unusual statue. Four firm-jawed figures in factory clothes stand back-to-back. One wears a flat cap, one wields a sledgehammer, one has a welder’s visor. All of them are in purposeful poses,…
New video on boycotting apartheid Israel
A few years ago friends Palestinian Rihab Charida and Aamer Rahman (from Fear of a Brown Planet) asked a number of people to read some lines for a video about boycotting Israel. This included the known rappers Lowkey and M1 of Dead Prez. I was happy to be involved. It’s been released today and will…
ABC Radio’s World Today on Australian Israel lobby blindness
I was interviewed this morning by ABC Radio’s World Today: ELEANOR HALL: Now to the latest from Israel on prisoner X. The Israeli parliament is planning to carry out what it calls an “intensive” inquiry into the death of the Australian-Israeli who was found dead in a secret prison near Tel Aviv in 2010. The…
Prisoner x scandal should be wake-up call for myopic Zionist establishment
My following investigation appears in New Matilda: The death of Ben Zygier has exposed Israel’s repressive censorship over national security – and shown how closely Australia works with Israel on military intelligence, writes Antony Loewenstein The case of Australian and Israeli citizen Ben Zygier and his alleged suicide in an Israeli jail in December 2010…
The real Wikileaks and Julian Assange
Amidst all the (mostly) slamming coverage that occurs in the media against Julian Assange and Wikileaks, it’s a welcome relief to read this long interview of Assange by John Keane in The Conversation: Julian Assange could be described as the… Tom Paine… of the early 21st century. Drawing strength from distress, disgusted by the hypocrisy of governments,…
Australian Jews play victim card again over prisonerx case
The following story appears in Israel’s leading online news service, Ynet: Australian Jews express concern over Zygier affair; ‘this is our Pollard affair,’ says Jewish lawyer. Jewish activist Antony Loewenstein: This is a wake up call, Jews should reexamine stance on Israel, IDF service MELBOURNE – The “Prisoner X” affair has raised concerns in the…
Bush tortured and Obama drones; discuss
Jane Mayer in the New Yorker teases out the issues: There are some disturbing similarities between the Obama white paper and the Bush torture memos. Both use slippery legal language to parse dark government programs. Both have been deliberately hidden from public and even congressional oversight. And both involve the blurring of C.I.A. and military…
How being a “Jewish, democratic state” is a contradiction
Ben White, Al Jazeera English: Yet the ADL [Anti-Defamation League], and every other pro-Israel group in the West – including self-professed “liberals” – fail to see the inconsistency in calling a KKK member’s demand for America to “remain a white-dominated country” abhorrent, while Israel “remaining a Jewish country” is a “red line”, consensus issue.
Life today in blighted Iraq
Australian film-maker David Bradbury and Australian writer and activist Donna Mulhearn are currently in Iraq witnessing the devastation that the West has bought in the last decade. Here’s a message from Bradbury in the city of Fallujah: Met two very interesting women doctors today. Dr Samira is the doctor at the frontline of birth defects…