Israel is facing a revolt from the Jewish Diaspora.
"Intifada" is an Arabic word meaning "shaking off," as one would violently discard a scorpion. Israel is managing its own "intifada" from within.
I write as a 36-year-old Australian Jew who has recently signed, with 37 Australian Jews, a petition in which I renounced my right of return to Israel. I simply couldn't accept the dispossession of Palestinians while my rights were deemed more important than the indigenous inhabitants.
Following similar initiatives in America and Britain, Australia -- a country long-counted as a major supporter of Israel -- now sees prominent Jews, including world-renowned ethicist Peter Singer, claim in the statement that the right of return is a "form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians."
This could not be more different from the atmosphere surrounding last December's Australia-Israel Leadership Forum, the largest contingent of Israeli politicians and journalists to ever visit Australia. They found a very receptive audience. The Liberal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was effusive: "I'd like to think that nowhere in the world [does Israel] have stauncher friends than us."
Israel has always found bi-partisan support in Australia. Ever since 1948 -- when the United Nations chairmanship was held by the pro-Zionist, Australian Foreign Minister "Doc" Evatt -- Israel has taken Australia's unquestioning friendship as a given. The current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labor government is no exception. Rudd once said that support for Israel was in his DNA.
This history makes the current strain in diplomatic relations between Israel and Australia all the more unusual. When it emerged in late February that Israel's Mossad had allegedly forged Australian passports -- as well as those of other foreign nationals -- for its assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January, the Rudd government was publicly livid.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith called in the Israel Ambassador Yuval Rotem and used uncharacteristically harsh diplomatic language. If evidence was found that directly implicated Israel, Smith averred, "then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend."
A headline in the Sydney Morning Herald captured the mood: "Betrayed PM [Prime Minister] should not be taken for granted by Israel". The Melbourne Age's Diplomatic Editor Daniel Flitton argued that, "a long friendship is on the line".
I was saddened to see the leaders of the Australian Jewish community remain either silent or incapable of condemning the abuse of Australian passports. They will defend every Israeli action like a mantra.
There was almost no precedent for navigating these choppy waters. Australia's cast-iron backing for Israel in the United Nations began to falter, with the country abstaining from a resolution about the Goldstone Report that demanded Israel and the Palestinians investigate possible war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. Australia had wholeheartedly backed the original invasion with vigour.
But any short-term troubles in the relationship won't last. Canberra is too intimately tied to the US alliance to seriously undermine one of Washington's other key allies. During President Obama's upcoming Australian visit, the Mossad hit is unlikely to be discussed. Believing in Israeli infallibility is almost a matter of faith within Australia's governing elites.
One rare example of an ally of Israel pushing back was New Zealand, which suspended diplomatic ties with Israel from two years in 2004 after it was discovered that Israeli citizens were trying to steal the identity of a man with severe physical disabilities. Two Mossad agents were sentenced and imprisoned for conspiring against the country's sovereignty.
New Zealand until recently had a history of diplomatic freedom. In 1984, then Prime Minister David Lange banned the arrival of American nuclear-armed war-ships, causing a rift with Washington but signalling a world-leading example of fierce independence.
Media coverage of the Dubai scandal has been devastating. London's Guardian was scathing: "Our government seems to be fine with letting the Israeli secret service wage its war with Hamas under a British flag."
This incident strikes at the heart of Israel's declining reputation, benefits the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against individuals and corporations that profit from Israel and highlights frustration over Israel's intransigence in the West Bank and Gaza.
I am a Jew who feels deeply implicated in Israel's reckless behaviour and cannot remain silent anymore.
While a recent Gallop poll in America found that for the first time since 1991 more than six in ten respondents said their sympathies in the Middle East lay more with the Israelis than the Palestinians, these figures are deceptive. Studies of young American Jews finds a growing disillusionment with the Jewish state and inter-marriage is contributing to the Zionist brain-drain. The internet has opened my eyes to these trends, a rejection of the post-Holocaust reliance on blind adherence to Israel.
The extra-judicial murder in Dubai merely adds fuel to the growing voices of Jewish dissent. Jewish writers Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv claimed in the Atlantic Monthly that, "Mabhouh's passing definitely sets Hamas back, at least for a few months."
I suspect the cost to Israel's image will last far longer.
Follow Antony Loewenstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/antloewenstein
Mira Sucharov: Dilemmas of a Diaspora Peace Marcher
They fought for civil rights alongside Martin Luther King for example and were involved in many other basic rights issues.
The McCarthy era served as a channel for not only anti Communism but also anti Semitism. It flushed out the lefties and in the void came the ultra right wing. This is the right wing that claims to represent the struggle of the Jews today, or is it?
The nature of right wing people is to bully others, as can be witnessed every day but it is becoming difficult to maintain total control. The plight of Israel has long been a beacon of solidarity for obvious reasons but the relentless grip of the right wing has alienated an ever growing number. It is becoming more and more difficult for many to have a clear conscience and support Israel’s right wing attitude.
The disapproval of the policies and heavy handed treatment of the Palestinians is creating a rift.
You’ve heard of Jewish guilt? Well, there are certainly many who disapprove of Israel’s comportment but will not turn their backs on their brothers and are just wishing this problem would go away. What we are seeing here is a growing movement but the sentiments are far more widespread and the internet as the ultimate vehicle for free speech will change things.
Meanwhile, hypocrites decry Israel's extra-judicial killing in Dubai whiile praising Obama's extra-judicial killings in Pakistan (what else do you call the drone attacks on suspected terrorists?)
Peace is a two-way street. Israel would gladly trade unsavory war craft for peace; but the moslem world fears more the loss of a unifying cause than peace and sovreignty for it's Palestinian brethern.
Israel has been in an unabated state of war with Palestinians and many of it's Arab and muslim neighbors for over 60 years. Their modeis operandi has little changed; it's public opinion which has wavered.
My observations are borrowed from Sartre; I'd like to apply them, not to Solzhenitsyn, but to myself, as a specific individual, and to the American cheerleaders rooting for the State of Israel, as a specific choice.
Anthony Loewenstein writes with passion and integrity. His book, "My !srael Question" is excellent. Fredy Perlman also had great insight on !srael/Z!onism and a supurb essay can be read online. see - http://libcom.org/library/anti-semitism-beirut-program-fredy-perlman
[intro]Drawing on his personal experiences and family history, Perlman dissects the disturbing irony in the use of the Ho!ocaust as justification for Z!onist state brutality.
ANTI-SEM!TISM & THE BEIRUT POGROM
(Fredy Perlman - 1983)
Escape from death in a gas chamber or a Pogrom, or incarceration in a concentration camp, may give a thoughtful and capable writer, Solzhenitsyn for example, profound insights into many of the central elements of contemporary existence, but such an experience does not, in itself, make Solzhenitsyn a thinker, a writer, or even a critic of concentration camps; it does not, in itself, confer any special powers. In another person the experience might lie dormant as a potentiality, or remain forever meaningless, or it might contribute to making the person an ogre. In short, the experience is an indelible part of the individual's past but it does not determine his future; the individual is free to choose his future; he is even free to choose to abolish his freedom, in which case he chooses in bad faith and is a Salaud (J.P. Sartre's precise philosophical term for a person who makes such a choice [The usual English translation is 'B@stard'].
No one really cares if you renounce your right of return to israel, Anthony, but for these Jews who sought a refuge in Israel, it was a matter of life and death - and you have no right to speak for them.
Similarly, the US has gone to great pains to back Israel, and received a slap in the face for it's troubles.
If part of Israeli strategy is to alienate all of it's friends, it's doing a great job.
Goodness, what do you know that the rest of the world doesn't? Have you contacted the Dubai police so that they can finally stop embarrassing themselves and actually provide evidence instead of lip service?
1. The author opens with "Israel is facing a revolt from the Jewish Diaspora". The evidence of such revolt consists of a petition by 38 Australian Jews, in which they renounce the right of return (to Israel). The petition has no practical significance, since it is doubtful that they were going to exercise that right, anyway. Considering also that there are over 100,000 Jews in Australia, does Mr. Loewenstein believe that his opening statement is a true description of events, or just wishful thinking? IMO, bombastic overstatements are usually designed to impart undue importance to insignificant fringe opinions.
2. Loewenstein seems to claim that a new phenomenon is taking place. After stressing his Jewishness (twice), he states: "[I] cannot remain silent anymore". In fact, Mr. Loewenstein has hardly been silent before. For years now, he has been a fervent critic of every single Israeli action & policy. Question: out of the other 37 Jewish "rebels", how many are "new" (i.e. persuaded by the alleged Mossad operation in Dubai) and how many are, like Loewenstein himself, "old critics"?
3. By orders of President Obama (& despite Pakistan's protests) USA has intensified lately attacks by unmanned drones against Taliban leaders in Pakistan. Narrowly interpreted, this is a breach of Pakistan's sovereignty, arguably much more blatant (& riskier in terms of potential loss of innocent lives), compared to the alleged Mossad killing. Yet Loewenstein has not protested as loudly. Why?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return
"Jordan has a law of return that explicitly denies citizenship to all Jews, even those who lived there for generations. Saudi Arabia similarly bases eligibility on religious affiliation. Germany long had a law of return, as do China and many other countries. Yet only Israel, which has citizens of virtually every religion, ethnicity , race and national origin, is characterized by its enemies as racist or apartheid.
"Despite the imperfections of the Israeli Gov't approach to religion, it is far more accepting of religious pluralism than any other country in the M.E."--- "The case for Israel"
(Not much to crow about.)
"Yet only Israel, which has citizens of virtually every religion, ethnicity , race and national origin, is characterized by its enemies as racist or apartheid."
(South African apartheid culture also had a plethora of races, ethnicities, races, and religions.)
Secondly, you have not demonstrated here one valid point of the comparison between South Africa Apartheid & Israel. Only your opinion and some others. The evidence of that fallacy would be apparent to you if you were to visit Israel.
Third, " the difference between the current Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa is emphasized at a very human level: Jewish and Arab babies are born in the same delivery room, with the same facilities, attended by the same doctors and nurses, with the mothers recovering in adjoining beds in a ward. Two years ago I had major surgery in a Jerusalem hospital: the surgeon was Jewish, the anesthetist was Arab, the doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. Jews and Arabs share meals in restaurants and travel on the same trains, buses and taxis, and visit each other’s homes. Could any of this possibly have happened under apartheid? Of course not."
-- Benjamin Pogrund is well equipped to write about apartheid and Israel. He was born in South Africa, where a leader in the fight against apartheid and outspoken proponent of equality as editor of the Rand Daily Mail. He now lives in Israel, where is is founding director of Yakar's Center for Social Concern in Jerusalem. he is also co-editor of the newly published book, "Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israel Dialogue".
Yes. So does America.
Jews ARE indigenous to Israel.
And they pre-date Muslims by about as much time as Islam has even existed.
As to your personal feelings on the subject...
I can only hope that you grow out of your delusions.
Furthermore it is irrelevant and misleading to state: "And they [Jews] pre-date Muslims by about as much time as Islam has even existed." The definition of indigenous (i.e., having originated in and being produced, growing, living, or occurring naturally in a particular region or environment) does not include anything about religious affiliation. If you are referring to genetics, the various branches of Semites, including Arabs, all come from the same line. In that sense all are equally indigenous.
You speak of someone else having delusions yet your own dialectic is errant and vulgar.
I wish it would be binding.
It's hard for me, raised in 1950s/60s liberal California, to perceive people's strong attachment to religious in-group behavior. Religious in-group fanaticism in Israel is scary (read or listen to interviews of "settlers"). The Israeli theocracy is directly contrary to American values. In my view it is on a par with the old South African apartheid government. My vote is for withdrawing U.S. support and campaigning against the fascism of the Jewish theocracy. I do not support any violent means, direct or indirect, for doing this.
Why, oh why, would Jews want on safe haven?
Well if you don't want to look at history that is fine, at least read up on the history of Jews in the Middle East. The now-gone ancient Egyptian Jewish communities, the Yemen, Iraqi...
Amazing you have so much to say about Israel, but not one sentence on the Jews who were driven out of their homes and murdered all across the M.E.
Try to get some perspective.
Jews murdered all across the Middle East? Oh yeah. Those myths about the pogroms that never materialized, the zionist flyers sent into Jewish communities in the region warning of extermination attempts in order to drive them to Israel like they did in the 1990s within the collapsing Soviet Union? What happened to the Soviet pogroms that never materialized?
Sixty Minutes did a piece on Syrian Jews thriving some years back, and Roger Cohen of the NYTimes did a whole recent series on the Jewish community in Iran for which he received tremendous flack. You need to get some perspective yourself.
And as for the comment posted here regarding the "rush to condemn" Israel when there have been no charges, I would offer that their failure to deny it completely offsets your criticism.
You must be like one of those cops that believes asking for a lawyer as proof of guilt.
I also like how you described your 40-person petition as "a revolt from the Jewish Diaspora."
Anthony,
Thank you for having the courage, integrity, humanity to stand up for the Palestinian people & culture. I also think that if the mainstream media (both news & entertainment) in the USA presented all the players on an equal field, without the prejudices, stereotypes, demonization of all things related to one side only, the Gallup stats would be different. I also think 6 out of 10 is not as impressive as it might be, really considering how much one side has been exalted (for yrs., literally decades), while the other has been allowed none or next to nothing, not even a small platform. I see a change, however, in coverage as the media titans are not able to finesse all the news these days, thankfully as a result on the new technologies.