The cat is well and truly out of the bag concerning the attempt to prosecute the journalist Anat Kam for revealing state secrets. She has been under secret house arrest since December and is to be put on trial on treason and espionage charges. She is accused of appropriating 2,000 documents, 700 of which were classified as “top secret” while serving in the IDF’s Central Command in 2007.
The minuscule Workers Party of NZ is opposed to the establishment of an Israel Embassy in NZ for all the usual rejectionist reasons, and news reports are filtering over the internet.
This is dumb dumb dumb and reinforces stereotypes about Kiwis not always having good political sense.
The minuscule Workers Party of NZ is opposed to the establishment of an Israel Embassy in NZ for all the usual rejectionist reasons, and news reports are filtering over the internet.
This is dumb dumb dumb and reinforces stereotypes about Kiwis not always having good political sense.
The Israeli government, while using propaganda to deny the facts, continues to besiege the Palestinian population though collective punishment for rocket attacks from Gaza. 13 Israelis have been killed by rocket attacks, 3 of whom were civilians.
I’ve been searching for words to express what I see as a fault in much of the current criticism or campaigning against the occupation and other actions of Israel, because it offers no positive, detailed option for the future that brings all communities forward. This seems to be the case, for example, in the websites and publicity in Australia produced by Palestinian advocates.
In a recent report published in the Forward, Nathan Guttman reports that ‘delegitimization’ is being used at the buzz-word against critics of Israel, particularly those involved in the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement such as Naomi Klein. It is a term that has been picked up in the US and the subject of extensive study and promotion by the well-resourced and apparently influential Reut Institute in Israel, which also goes for ‘Brand Israel’ (see Tikkun Olam for Reut’s bizarre world).
The image to the right of this post is taken from the Facebook site of the Melbourne University Jewish Students Society and sent out very recently. Click on it for details. It was sent out to several hundred students. It was forwarded by a concerned member of the society.
[Middle East News Service comments: Australians have been angry at a trial in China where an Australian was tried behind closed doors. Prime Minister Rudd pointed out to China not being a democracy, the law operates differently there. I wonder what he would make of a country in which a journalist has simply disappears and a gag order has been imposed on the whole matter so that nobody knows what happened to her. Even when her trial began a few weeks back, it was still illegal to mention the very existence of the case.
Middle East News Service comments: For a few months now the Israeli Ethernet has been buzzing with mysterious rumours. I am told indirectly that there is a severe gag on mentioning a certain story in Israel. I cannot be told directly as there is a gag on the news of the gag itself. Quite apart from the gag, I have also been approached by someone’s friends with the request not to disclose any further information that I may (or may not) know. It is sufficient to say that former Haaretz Editor Hanoch Marmari probably did not write the item below for the fun of it.
[A version of this was also published in New Matilda 31 March 2010]
When I first saw Greg Sheridan’s op-ed piece , I burst out laughing, because it reminded me of capucchino froth–he sure must have been raging and frothing when he wrote this in today’s Australian: