Year: 2012

Is the UK’s pro-Israel lobby starting to lose?

I was pleased to be invited to be August’s guest writer for MEMO, the Middle East Monitor. I was asked to write about the Raed Salah case, so used the opportunity to revist some of the evidence. The focus of the article is what the case taught us about the waning power of the Israel lobby in the UK:

In Palestine solidarity circles the debate around the pro-Israel lobby often focuses on the chicken-or-the-egg problem: are Western governments supportive of Israel because the lobby is so influential, or does the lobby only seem influential because governments are so supportive of Israel?

A focus on this question neglects another, more crucial, aspect of the debate: how can we win? How can the tide be turned against Western governments’ support for Israel?

In April, a Palestinian political and religious leader won an important victory in the British judicial system. Sheikh Raed Salah’s successful appeal against deportation gives us a glimpse of how to answer this question.

Why does the BBC work with a journalist who has a history of fabrication?

Paul Martin, aka Paul Cainer, aka Sayed Anwar — officially busted in my latest major investigative piece for EI.

A journalist who produced a film defending Israel’s war crimes in Gaza for the BBC is the same man who wrote hoax stories about Palestine and Lebanon a decade ago, The Electronic Intifada has learned.

In 2002, South African-British freelance journalist Paul Martin posed as a Palestinian journalist writing from Bethlehem under the fake name Sayed Anwar. But Martin later had to admit there was no such person. Martin also sometimes uses the name Paul Cainer.

In stories written for right-wing broadsheet The Washington Times in 2002, Martin posed as a native informant reporting a “reign of terror” against Palestinian Christians by “hard-core Palestinian militants” who he claimed had “seized the Church of the Nativity” (“Exiled Palestinian militants ran two-year reign of terror,” 13 May 2002; “Arafat Aided group that besiged church,” 23 May 2002).

I’d like to again thank Tim Horgan, who very kindly put a lot of effort into research for this story. All credit to him for the original tip-off too.

My review of a new film from the makers of Budrus

So yea, short version: I didn’t like it, sorry.

Maybe the Palestinians in East Jerusalem love being swamped by hordes of young liberal Israelis banging drums in their front yard. But we simply can’t know because the Israelis in the film are too are busy explaining their feelings.

Bacha’s earlier film Budrus was also problematic in similar ways, but at least you could learn about Palestinian stories and struggles, and at least it succeeded as a film in itself, even if it did overly pander to American liberal sensibilities. My Neighborhood has all the negative aspects of Budrus, magnified but with few of the redeeming features.

Read the whole thing here.

The Palestine lobby?

EI published my latest feature this morning, on Palestine in mainstream politics. Here’s the intro:

On Wednesday, 4 July, a public meeting took place in the British Parliament’s Grand Committee room. Speaking on the panel of members of parliament were a Conservative former career soldier, a senior minister in two previous Labor governments, and a member of Labor Friends of Israel. What could they all possibly have had in common?

They had assembled to speak at a meeting about the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. This followed a trip they had participated in, organized by the Council for Advancing Arab-British Understanding.

Earlier that same day, during a Westminster Hall debate, the Foreign Office minister responsible for relations with the Middle East had — for the first time — strongly hinted that a ban on importing goods made in Israeli settlements could be on the way.

The events of that day were only the latest examples of how views critical of Israeli policy have entered the mainstream of UK politics.

Read on…

My review of Norman Finkelstein’s new book

 My review of Knowing Too Much was published by EI yesterday. Here is a short extract:

The best chapter in the book is the one dedicated to giving Benny Morris a good kicking. Morris gained fame as one of the “new historians” who dived into the Israeli archives and reassessed old Zionist myths about the establishment of Israel. Morris’ exposure of the deliberate and calculated nature of Israel’s mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 remains significant.

…

If Knowing Too Much had come out in 2008 (as originally intended), the central argument may have been more controversial, but as Finkelstein notes it has by now almost passed into conventional wisdom (299). A more interesting question, though, is why this shift in liberal opinion has happened, and here Finkelstein is most unconvincing.

Flame: the Israeli propaganda war spreads to cyberspace

My new special feature on the Flame cyber-weapon was published by The Electronic Intifada last night. I take an in-depth look at who may have been behind the computer worm that snooped on thousands of computers from the West Bank to Iran. I bring to light evidence that Israel’s teasing intimations it created Flame may be more about propaganda and regaining its lost “deterrence” capabilities against Arabs. Here’s a brief extract:

World-renowned security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier told The Electronic Intifada that Flame was “much more sophisticated than the typical worm.” Over email, he commented that while it “seems definitely the work of a large, well-funded, well-coordinated team” there was also “some hype” about it on the technical level.

…

Flame is able to take screenshots, switch on the microphone and record audio conversations, snooping on Skype calls, for example. Screenshots are triggered when sensitive information is likely to be revealed: such as when instant messaging software is running. It can intercept keystrokes, search for passwords and steal files.

Flame zeroes in on certain files: images, photos with geographic data, presentations, project files and PDFs. Later, more detailed analysis by Kapersky revealed that Flame’s controllers seem especially interested in stealing digital blueprints: “the attackers seem to have a high interest in AutoCAD drawings,” the report said (“The Roof Is on Fire: Tackling Flame’s C&C Servers,” 4 June 2012).

I will be following-up on this story, looking at the possibility that Flame could be used for more aggressive purposes than spying, so watch my EI blog for that later in the week.

UPDATE: the follow-up story on my blog is here.

New feature: Israel’s kangaroo courts for Palestinian children exposed in FCO-backed report

I was quite surprised this week to learn about the publication of a new report that accuses Israel of being in violation of international law. Yes: yet another report, you might well say. But this one is funded by the British government and written by some serious establishment figures. So: interesting. But the question remains:

Karmi later told The Electronic Intifada that the report is “toothless in the end” because there is no way to compel Israel to comply.

“Palestinians are fed up of being studied,” she said. What they really want to know is “how will I get help to end” the abuses of the military occupation. Karmi did however conclude the report was a good thing and the delegation was a “very interesting mission” because it was backed by the foreign office, who could not be accused of anti-Israel bias in the same way that Israel has managed to taint UN missions with “the usual slanders.”

Read my full feature over on The Electronic Intifada. And you can read the full report here.

Review of Tom Hurndall’s first and last photography book

 Tom Hurndall, the British photography student and ISM activist was murdered by an Israeli sniper in 2003. His family and friends got together to put out a book of his photography and writing. Here is my review of it for Electronic Intifada:

The photography here is accompanied by entries from Hurndall’s diary, emails he sent back home and articles he wrote in a student magazine. There are photos from Iraq and Jordan, but half of the book is dedicated to his Gaza work. This high-quality glossy book has been lovingly curated and put together, and judging from the acknowledgments page, his family, friends and supporters even stumped up the money. The design of the book is beautiful, even though the subject matter is often brutal and stark. It is an almost-macabre artifact.

Read the whole review here.

Feature on Palestine Place, London

Palestine Place is a new, temporary squatted social centre in London, expressly focused on the occupation of Palestine. It’s points of unity are the three principles of the BDS movement: end of the 1967 occupation, equal rights for everyone, and full return of the refugees.

Here is my new feature about it: Palestine Place brings resistance to heart of London, The Electronic Intifada, London, 8 June 2012:

“At first I couldn’t really comprehend it, or understand how London squatting can be connected to Palestine,” he said. In the Palestinian context one might normally associate “squatting” with Israelis settlers, I offered. The idea of “a land without a people” is “the base of the Zionist movement,” he said. “But then [I thought] … to be able to create this kind of free space for discussion, for organizing, is fantastic … because solidarity with Palestinians in London has been trapped in certain circles … not to say anything bad about them, but this is new [and will bring in new people].”

You can read the full article here.

Latest Ceasefire column: on popular resistance in Palestine

After a bit of a hiatus, my Ceasefire column returns with this series of notes on what I saw at the demonstrations during my recent stay in Palestine:

Although now partly dissipated after the agreement to end the hunger strike was reached in May, according to the latest information from Palestinian prisoners’ right group Addameer, there are signs that Israel has already reneged on the deal. So the movement is likely to be rekindled soon, especially as several long-term hunger strikers have resumed their campaign of refusing food.

Read the full article here.

My review of the new biography on Leila Khalid

My latest book review, published by The Electronic Intifada last night:

Leila Khaled was only a small child when her family fled Haifa before the Zionist ethnic cleansing operations could reach them. Her father briefly joined the Palestinian resistance before the family ended up refugees in Lebanon, like thousands of other Palestinians (14). There she and others in her family joined the Arab National Movement founded by George Habash, from which the PFLP emerged in 1967.

Eventually, she persuaded the Marxist-Leninist group to train her as a guerrilla fighter in Jordan. Irving describes Khaled’s time camping in the hinterlands north of Amman, learning how to use grenades and to shoot: “I was so happy that for the first three days and night I could not sleep,” Khaled said (29).

Read the full review here.

Feature on the Palestinian family that has four members in jail

Four brothers jailed by Israel for prisoner solidarity activism, published by the Electronic Intifada, 6 May 2012:

This is a scene all too familiar for many Palestinian families living under the boot of Israeli occupation. But there is one difference for the Halabi family that night: all three of Rami’s brothers were already imprisoned by Israel. In a translated interview with The Electronic Intifada, their mother Samira recounted her plea to the soldiers not to part her from her last free son: “I went to hug my son, and I said, no, you’re not taking this one, you have three already, leave this one!”

You can read the full article here.