My latest article for New Matilda discusses the troubles ahead for Israel: Radical Zionists made gains under Ehud Olmert, but their actions are pushing Israel towards catastrophe. The new Prime Minister must stop the settlers, writes Antony Loewenstein In mid-September, during the dying days of his leadership, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert boldly stated that…
Showing all posts tagged Israel lobby
Defending the rights of “terrorists”
Al-Manar is the satellite television channel of Hezbollah (which much of the West regards as a terrorist organisation, a view I do not share.) The channel is currently available in many Australian homes. The Lebanese community is massive here and many people regard the group as a liberation movement. Others see it as an aggressive…
Jewish dissent gets a louder voice
The following book review of the Verso release, A Time to Speak Out (in which I have a chapter), appears in the leading Jewish publication in Britain, the Jewish Chronicle: Michael Pinto-Duschinsky September 19, 2008 Edited by Anne Karpf, Brian Klug, Jacqueline Rose, Barbara Rosenbaum Verso, …£9.99 In February 2007, more than 100 “Independent Jewish…
No, it’s not about the occupation at all
A welcome deconstruction of a Christian Australian Zionist rants about Israel’s “pain” over its precarious relationship with the Palestinians.
Time to honestly debate Israel/Palestine
My following post was written for Khaldoun, the blog recently started by Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle East and North African Studies, where I’m a board member: Robustly debating Zionism has existed for as long as its existence. Jews, historically a persecuted people, were unafraid to discuss the merits or otherwise of the plan to…
Just what the US needs
Joseph Biden is Barack Obama’s Vice-Presidential pick. Hold the excitement. Biden will supposedly provide foreign policy “experience” and gravitas to Obama’s youthful exuberance (or so the mainstream media likes to call it, in typically meaningless bluster.) Counterpunch’s Alexander Cockburn tells it like it is: His [Biden’s] “experience” in foreign affairs consists in absolute fidelity to…
Checkpoint Zero
Despite the extensive coverage of the Middle East in the media, there is little understanding of the realities of the Israel/Palestine conflict. For example, does the average person realise that Israel illegally occupies Palestinian land? In this sixtieth anniversary of the Jewish state’s birth, it’s more timely than ever to publicly discuss what is going…
Zionists (mainly) to blame
US Jewish blogger Phil Weiss hears leading Palestinian speaker Rami Khouri talk about the (welcome) shifts in the Middle East since 9/11: I wondered how long it would take him to get to the Arab-Israeli issue. It was about 30 minutes. From then on it was all that anyone could talk about. He did not…
How to starve the Arabs
The following letter appears in the July 26 edition of the Green Left Weekly: Three weeks after the Australian’s Richard Kerbaj whipped up a storm over humanitarian aid by a Sydney-based charity to the suffering people of Gaza, we find our own federal police jumping at this organisation in what seems to be a co-ordinated…
War criminals dine together in style
A leading American Zionist lobby recently shamed itself by celebrating a criminal and a thug: The American Jewish Committee honored Colombian President Alvaro Uribe last night with its Light unto the Nations Award. “President Uribe is a staunch ally of the United States, a good friend of Israel and the Jewish people, and is a…