Science Museum accused over links to Israel

Protesters claim it is promoting universities that aided recent military assault on Gaza

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent

Tuesday, 3 March 2009

The Science Museum, one of Britain's most prestigious public institutions, was embroiled in a row last night after being accused of promoting Israeli universities whose research was used in the country's military campaign in Gaza.
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More than 400 academics, a Nobel laureate and the former chair of the Science Select Committee called on the museum to cancel workshops due to be held this week that promote Israeli scientific achievements to schoolchildren.

The critics plan to picket the event and accused the museum of promoting scientists and universities who are "complicit in the Israeli occupation and in the policies and weaponry recently deployed to such disastrous effect in Gaza".

Many of the critics were behind a campaign in 2002 to impose an academic boycott on Israel. That campaign failed but it provoked debate worldwide over whether Israeli academics should be penalised for the actions of their government.

Forty professors are among the signatories who want the workshops cancelled. They include Jonathan Rosenhead from the London School of Economics, who is leading the protest, Steven Rose from the Open University and the architect and historian Charles Jencks. The Zionist Federation is running the "educational seminars" at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry today and at the Science Museum on Thursday.

Israelis react with fury to British boycott call

Israeli scientists and officials reacted angrily yesterday to calls by more than 400 British academics for the Science Museum to cancel educational workshops planned to promote Israeli science tomorrow.

The cancellation call and claims that Israeli universities are "complicit" in the occupation of Palestinian territories and this year's "disastrous" offensive in Gaza, reported in The Independent yesterday, were condemned as "absurd" by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Its spokesman, Yigal Palmor, said: "These calls cannot but be motivated by extreme blindness and silly ideology. This of course does not promote the good causes which the boycotters are presumed to promote – not peace, understanding, nor compromise."

The British academics, among them 40 professors, include many of those behind the eventually unsuccessful campaign to impose a full-scale boycott of Israeli academics. The "educational seminars" – in Manchester yesterday and at the Science Museum in London tomorrow – are being run by the UK Zionist Federation.

The more I learn by research regarding the history of Israel and the Zionists the more I understand why they are considered to be dangerous to any incumbent authority. When King David conquered the Canaanite city of Jebus, he moderated with a cult based on Mt. Zion.

Did he rule them or did they rule him?

Webdiary would not print what I believe but I cannot ignore the historical fact that most nations of the world are at least cautious as to how many Zionists they allow into their country.If the Zionists believe in what their ancestors have told them about being God's chosen race and that killing is okay as long as it is not "murder" - then they would have to be a problem for any government no matter of what political persuasion.I am also of the opinion that religion itself is human nature's way of helping people to deal with the fact of their inevitable demise - and what comes after. But when that belief becomes aggressive and unforgiving to any other belief, there has to be a conflict or a collapse of the weaker group.I may sound a smart arse but I only write what I believe.NE OUBLIE. 

 

A draft of the closing statement prepared for the upcoming United Nations-sponsored conference against racism, dubbed Durban 2, states that Israel's policy in the Palestinian territories constitutes a "violation of international human rights, a crime against humanity and a contemporary form of apartheid."

The conference, to be held in Geneva next month, is a follow-up to the contentious 2001 conference in the South African city of Durban which was dominated by clashes over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery. The U.S. and Israel walked out midway through that eight-day meeting over a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism - the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state - to racism.

Israel, Canada and the U.S. have already announced that they will boycott the upcoming summit. The draft statement, obtained by Haaretz, goes on to say that Israel's policy poses "a serious threat to international peace and security and violates the basic principles of international human rights law."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068076.html

Human rights investigators say Israeli forces engaged in "wanton destruction" of Palestinian homes during the recent conflict in Gaza.

Amnesty International has told the BBC News website the methods used raised concerns about war crimes.

Israel's military said buildings were destroyed because of military "operational needs".

The Israeli Defense Forces said they operated in accordance with international law during the conflict.

However, the use of mines to destroy homes contradicted this claim, the head of the Amnesty International fact-finding mission to southern Israel and Gaza, Donatella Rovera, has argued.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7926413.stm

"When have lentil bombs been going off lately? Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" asked Congressman Brian Laird.

It was only after Senator John Kerry, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised the issue with Defence Minister Ehud Barak after their trip last month that Israel allowed the pasta in.

Macaroni was considered a luxury item, not a humanitarian necessity, they were told.

The total number of products blacklisted by Israel remains a mystery for UN officials and the relief agencies which face long delays in bringing in supplies. For security reasons such items as cement and steel rods are banned as they could be used by Hamas to build bunkers or the rockets used to target Israeli civilians.

Hearing aids have been banned in case the mercury in their batteries could be used to produce chemical weapons.

Yet since the end of the war in January, according to non-government organisations, five truckloads of school notebooks were turned back at the crossing at Kerem Shalom where goods are subject to a $1,000 (£700) per truck "handling fee".

Paper to print new textbooks for Palestinian schools was stopped, as were freezer appliances, generators and water pumps, cooking gas and chickpeas.

And the French government was incensed when an entire water purification system was denied entry. Christopher Gunness, the spokesman for the UN agency UNRWA responsible for Palestinian refugees, said: "One of the big problems is that the 'banned list' is a moving target so we discover things are banned on a 'case by case', 'day by day' basis."

Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said: "Israel's blockade policy can be summed up in one word and it is punishment, not security."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-pasta-paper-and-hearing-aids-that-could-threaten-israeli-security-1635143.html

We had already visited this house, belonging to the Abu Eida family. It is the only one of the family's nine large houses that remained standing at the eastern edge of the city of Jabalya following Operation Cast Lead. The demolition of the family's houses and its four cement factories spells the loss of 40 years of hard work.

One Hebrew word scrawled on a wall tells the story of the 10 days when young Israeli soldiers became the ostensible prison wardens of five people.

The youngest is Suheila Masalha, 55; the eldest is her mother Fatma, who is perhaps 85 or 90 or older. The only man is her brother Mohammed, 65, who is paralyzed and dependent on the women of his family. And there were two more women from the Abu Eida family - Rasmiya, 70, who owns the house, and her sister-in-law Na'ama, 56, who is blind.

In the midst of all of this were plastic bottles of urine and many closed bags - in some houses, olive-colored ones - of excrement. People assumed that the commanders stayed there. There are houses where excrement was smeared on the walls, or where dry piles of it were found in corners. In many cases, the smells indicated that soldiers had urinated on piles of clothing or inside a washing machine. In all the houses the toilets were overflowing and clogged, and there was filth all around. When the Abu Eidas returned to house No. 5 in Jabalya, they discovered pots of urine and excrement in the refrigerator.

The soldiers ordered the five people to go into one room and stay there. They let them take some food: bread, olives, oil, water. They confiscated the mobile phones when they saw Na'ama holding one: "You want to call your brother to come with Hamas, to shoot at us," said one of the soldiers. "Liar," they said a lot, as well as "shut up, you donkey," in broken Arabic.

They imitated her mockingly when she said "Ya Rab" ("Oh God"). The five prisoners could not pray, as they were not allowed to clean themselves up before prayer and were forbidden to stand up. They were given two blankets, which were not enough, especially because the windows were smashed and the door was always open. A soldier always sat next to the door aiming his rifle at them. All five still have colds.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068989.html

Of course, none of this is really surprising when …..

In the words Anthony Quainton, US Ambassador to Nicaragua, who said in 1984, when explaining the difference between US government actions & the violence it condemns as terrorism elsewhere in the world: "If they do it, it's terrorism, if we do it, it's fighting for freedom."

There are nearly 300,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and nearly 200,000 in East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli information centre for human rights B'Tselem.

Under international law, including various UN Security Council resolutions, the settlements are built illegally on Palestinian land.

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit an occupying power from undertaking permanent changes in the occupied area unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.

Nevertheless Israeli settlement building on the West Bank has accelerated at an unprecedented rate in the last few years.

This has included the enlargement of already existing settlements and the establishment of new ones, contrary to every understanding and peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli human rights group Peace Now released a report several weeks ago stating that the Israeli government is currently building an additional 73,300 illegal housing units in the West Bank. The report added that this would increase the total number of Israeli settlers in the area by 100 percent.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22185.htm

The Zionists chose to locate their Jewish State in Palestine, of all places.

Actually, the idea was first cooked up by the British Home Office in the early 19th Century, one of many strategies contemplated to establish and secure the Empire. That came to nought, but the notion was popular in some circles and gained renewed momentum when Theodor Herzl popularized a paranoid scheme to create an impregnable ghetto somewhere, anywhere, where the Jewish People would at long last be insulated from the consequences of their actions.

After shopping around, Palestine was chosen. This was the result of various coincidences; the sentimental attachment to their supposed origin in the Holy Land, as expressed in the venerable saying "Next year in Jerusalem," that it also happened to promise proxy control over the resources and markets of the Middle East, as well as offering a simple and convenient means for the Europeans to rid themselves, once again, of the accursed Jews (as they were nearly universally perceived).

The land, however, was already populated, and thus began the organized hasbara (Heb: propaganda) campaign that has reached a crescendo in our time, to the point that Zionism now has effective control of the entire Western world, with even the Vatican paying obeisance to their Zionist Inquisitors. They said, "A land without a people, for a people without a land" (coined by Lord Shaftesbury, 1853).

The brazen self-deception and lying had begun, and has only gathered steam over time. And how were they going to reconcile a dream based firmly within the tradition of the Western Enlightenment, replete with democratic ideals and socialist idealism, with the stark reality of colonizing someone else's land against their will?

The idealists at that time were in the firm majority, so, in the spirit of Cecil Rhodes and their own version of Manifest Destiny, they conjured up a vision of enlightened Westerners (never mind that the new settlers were the widely detested Eastern European ashkenazim , the scattered turko-finnic remnants of the Khazarian Empire, established by tribes allied with Attila the Hun) uplifting the primitive peoples of the Orient (never mind that the Palestinians were a highly cosmopolitan and civilized people consisting of Muslims, Christians and Jews - largely secular - who all got along rather swimmingly).

So let us examine this curious notion that Israel has some sort of inherent "right to exist," a claim that no other nation-state has ever felt it necessary to make.

We would all agree that human beings have a right to exist, although there are many who would make an exception for those who commit murder. Some even go further and say that all sentient beings have a right to exist, but only in this one peculiar case is there this insistence that a particular nation-state has such an inalienable right.

Why is that? Is it, perhaps, because in this particular case the contention is on particularly shaky ground? Sorry, but methinks the lady protesteth too much. We can't, particularly as Americans, question Israel's right to exist on the basis that they commit mass murder - so many nations, including our own, have routinely done so. Nor can we merely point to the fact that Israel is an ethnocentric colonial-settler state - patterned on the now universally abhorred orgy of 19th century European colonialism - which has established itself through a long, ongoing process of genocide against the indigenous population.

Would pointing out that Israel is a xenophobic, racist state that has been practicing ethnic cleansing since its inception do the trick?

How about making the case that Israel practices a form of apartheid that observers like Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu say is worse than what existed in South Africa - would that suffice? What about the numerous crimes against humanity, serial violations of the fundamental principles of the UN enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

 

Then, of course, one might say that Israel's flagrant flouting of International Law would be sufficient, or the fact that Israel has refused to even acknowledge numerous UN resolutions, let alone abide by them, or the commission of numerous war crimes, as perpetrated during the recent holocaust in Gaza,.

Wasn't the not forgotten false flag attack on the USS Liberty in itself sufficient cause to change course? Still not enough?

How about the clandestine development of nuclear weapons irrespective of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Israel refused to sign? These facts are beginning to add up - perhaps the combination of the above would be sufficient to make the case.

http://www.countercurrents.org/tucker140309.htm

I do indeed perceive much of the discussion about a “future holocaust” as camouflage intended to keep the present reality of Palestinians in the shade, hidden from the world’s knowledge or attention, and to provide a pre-emptive answer to anyone who would lament Israel’s occupation.

Today, in effect, it is Palestine that has been erased from the map; many Palestinians, including myself, hold identity papers referring to us as unidentified. It is Palestinians who live under siege, in small ghettos created by the apartheid wall -which is twice the height of the Berlin wall.

Palestinians’ daily lives are subject to the whim of the lowest ranking Israeli soldier, who has the ultimate power to prevent any Palestinian from going to work, home, hospital, school, to interfere with what items of food we can eat, with whom we can socialize or marry, and in many other brutal ways make life for many of us an option worse than death.

When I think of how many times I have been strip-searched and interrogated at airports, how often my professional and identity cards have been taken away or thrown in my face because a checkpoint soldier deemed them false; when I listen every day to the heart-wrenching experiences of torture victims; when I have dinner every night against the background of bloody TV images from Iraq and Afghanistan; when I learn about the horrors of Abu Ghreib and Guantanamo, secret renditions of Arab- or Muslim-looking persons via special flights from the United States to countries where they will be tortured - and as I know that the world is silent about these routine experiences - is it at all strange that I diagnose the selective, repetitive discussion of anti-Semitism - while xenophobia, Islamophobia and other kinds of racism are ignored - as an obsessional neurosis?

http://www.wrmea.com/archives/Jan_Feb_2009/0901018.html

For the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948 the government is facing serious allegations of war crimes from respected public figures throughout the world.

Even the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, normally so cautious about offending sovereign states – especially those aligned with its most influential member, the United States – has joined the call for an investigation and potential accountability.

To grasp the significance of these developments it is necessary to explain what made the 22 days of attacks in Gaza stand shockingly apart from the many prior recourses to force by Israel to uphold its security and strategic interests.

The Israelis and their friends talk of “retaliation” and “the right of Israel to defend itself”.

Critics described the attacks as a “massacre” or relied on the language of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In the past Israeli uses of force were often widely condemned, especially by Arab governments, including charges that the UN Charter was being violated, but there was an implicit acknowledgement that Israel was using force in a war mode. War crimes charges (to the extent they were made) came only from radical governments and the extreme left.

http://www.countercurrents.org/falk190309.htm

If I were the Israeli government, I would be laughing all the way to my next colonial adventure in destroying Palestinian homes and infrastructure, uprooting Palestinian Arabs and replacing them with imported settlers from Israel, or Brooklyn, or Russia, or from wherever the world's longest running modern colonization venture gets its human ammunition and reinforcements.

It is bad enough when two of the world's powerhouses pull back from their previous positions of branding Israel's contraventions of international law and United Nations resolutions as illegal and impermissible and instead call them "unhelpful" or just a threat to a lasting settlement. It is infinitely worse when the United States and the European Union, who spend half their waking hours trying to spread democracy and the rule of law to the rest of the world, end up watering down Israeli contraventions of international law so that Israel spends half its waking hours laughing at every American and European official in sight.

The rhetorical downgrading of Israel's criminality is a problem (assuming it is still okay to use the word criminality to describe undermining the law). That, at least, is what my British and American teachers in primary and high school taught me when I learned English: Use the precise, accurate word when you have it at hand, and do not beat around the bush. Clarity is good for communication.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22270.htm

from Crikey …..

IDF testimonials tell frightening version of Gaza war

Overland editor Jeff Sparrow writes:

How much more do we need to learn about Israel's war against Gaza? A full-scale assault upon a densely packed urban environment, the strikes against schools, hospitals and universities, the use of white phosphorus, the massive civilian toll -- is that not sufficient to impel the inquiry demanded by the UN high commissioner of human rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch?

Evidently not. But now we have (oh, depressingly apt metaphor) the smoking gun, in the form of confessions by the troops themselves.

That is, the Israeli newspaper Hareetz has now published transcripts from a discussion held by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military course at Oranim Academic College.

One soldier explained:

We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier called an Achzarit [literally, Cruel] to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside and then ... I call this murder ... in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified -- we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this?

From above they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn't fled. I didn't really understand: On the one hand they don't really have anywhere to flee to, but on the other hand they're telling us they hadn't fled so it's their fault ...

That's what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon, you don't have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him. With us it was an old woman, on whom I didn't see any weapon. The order was to take the person out, that woman, the moment you see her.

Another veteran said:

And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers.

Though the authorities dismissed the allegations as unrepresentative, Israeli TV has now shown actual footage of a pre-combat briefing in which a commander tells his men:

I want aggressiveness -- if there's someone suspicious on the upper floor of a house, we'll shell it. If we have suspicions about a house, we'll take it down. There will be no hesitation, if it's us or them, it'll be them. If someone approaches us unarmed, shoot in the air. If he keeps going, that man is dead. Nobody will deliberate -- let the mistakes be over their lives, not ours.

Haretz has also uncovered a battlefield note suggesting that soldiers were instructed to fire upon those rescuing the wounded, an allegation repeatedly made (and denied) during the conflict.

But that all palls next to a story about the t-shirts IDF soldiers have been making and wearing. Thus a shirt made for snipers displays a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills". Another, for a different unit, shows a dead Palestinian baby with his mother crying beside him. The text reads "Better use Durex" -- the implication being that it would have been had the child never been born. A third group wore shirts picturing a bruised woman with text reading "Bet you got r-ped". A fourth design features a child in the cross hairs under the slogan "Smaller is harder". Others shirts boasted about the destruction of mosques and the execution of the wounded.

The designs come from the soldiers themselves but, as Haretz says, "in many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the unit's commanders".

Where does the culture of atrocity celebrated in these vile shirts come from?

It's nothing to do with religion, ethnicity or race. In fact, what's most striking about the confessions of the Israeli soldiers is how similar they seem to the testimonies from "Winter Soldier" forums organised by American veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A military occupation means the imposition of control over a civilian population by overwhelming force. It necessarily depends on dehumanisation, not simply of combatants, but of the subject populace as a whole. If the IDF scrawls "death to Arabs" inside Gazan houses, US troops designate all Iraqis as "hajis", a twenty-first century version of "gook" or "dink".

Not surprisingly, in the wake of Gaza, Israeli society has lurched even further to the Right, so much so that its next Foreign Minister will most probably be Avigdor Lieberman, a man who has built his career out of referring to Arabs in pretty much the way that anti-Semites discuss Jews and who once suggested that Israel might resolve matters in Gaza by dropping a nuclear bomb.

This is not simply an abstract discussion of a land far, far away. In the early days of the Gaza war, Israel Today ran the following headline: "US, Australia back Gaza strike; rest of the world doesn't". In other words, we were seen as one of the key enablers of that war. Isn't it long past time to reassess?

A new UN report exposes a bit of misinformation peddled by the US and Israel and shatters the Zionist illusion that the Gaza war was legal.

Israel and the democratically elected Palestinian government confined to the Gaza Strip agreed in mid June 2008 to a six-month truce.

While reports indicated that Tel Aviv had initially broken the truce with its tanks and bulldozers crossing the southern border of the Gaza Strip on November 4 and 5, echelons in the United States and Israel insisted otherwise.

A widespread campaign in support of the alleged Israeli right to enter the Palestinian territory was then launched by US and Israeli media outlets.

"Records show that, during the ceasefire, it was predominantly Israel that resorted to conduct inconsistent with the undertaking, and Hamas that retaliated," Falk responded in a report presented Monday at the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

The report outlined the incidents leading up to the three-week Israeli offensive on the tiny coastal strip. The carnage caused by the Israeli operations killed nearly 1,350 Palestinians and wounded around 5,450 others - most of them civilians.

Israel's staunch ally, the United States, on Monday commented on the report, which calls for an investigation into Israel's war crimes in Gaza, as "biased".

"We've found the rapporteur's views to be anything but fair. We find them to be biased. We've made that very clear," State Department spokesman Robert Wood told a press briefing.

The US has so far vetoed at least 45 anti-Israel resolutions at the UN and has blocked official condemnation of crimes committed against the native Palestinian population.

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=89480&sectionid=351020202

"Do any of your Investigations ever lead to a prosecution" Regev is asked?

Mark Regev, the Aussie guy who now speaks for the Israeli Government, is busted yet again as he has to defend the indefensible, all the time insisting their will be "another" investigation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtVEtKXUVs4

The Israeli army should make public the full details of the findings of its probe into some of its attacks during the 22-day Gaza military offensive, Amnesty International said today in reaction to the army’s conclusion that its forces had committed no violations and only rare mistakes, some of which may have resulted in the killing of Palestinian civilians.

A briefing paper distributed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to journalists yesterday, which states that “All findings are to be used as background information to be attributed to the reporter only”, lacks crucial details. It mostly repeatsf claims made by the army and the authorities many times since the early days of Operation Cast Lead, but without providing the necessary evidence to back up the allegations.

Amnesty International sets out below its initial reactions to the limited number of specific incidents addressed in the army’s briefing paper.

There is a strikingly large gap between the “very small number” of mistakes referred to in the IDF’s briefing paper and the killing by Israeli forces of some 300 Palestinian children and hundreds of other unarmed civilians. The army briefing does not even attempt to explain the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths nor the massive destruction caused to civilian buildings in Gaza.

In the absence of the necessary evidence to substantiate its allegations, the army’s claims appear to be more an attempt to shirk its responsibilities than a genuine process to establish the truth. Such an approach lacks credibility.

Ultimately, it is up to those who carried out bombardments and artillery and other attacks to provide evidence that their strikes were indeed against legitimate military targets – not for the victims to prove that they were not involved in combat activities.

The information provided by the army so far fails to do so.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGUSA20090424001&lang=e

from Crikey .....

Survey puts Israel and Zionism under scrutiny

Freelance journalist and author Antony Loewenstein writes:

Monash University's Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation has released the preliminary findings of its survey of Australian and New Zealand Jewry in which 6200 Jewish people answered 144 questions on a variety of subjects, including anti-Semitism, Israel and Zionism, inter-marriage, education and identity. It's the biggest study of its sort in nearly 20 years.

Thirty seven per cent of Jews are traditional, 21% secular, 19% modern orthodox, 14% progressive, 6% strictly orthodox and 3% conservative. The majority of Sydney and Melbourne Jews say they have experienced anti-Semitism, though "the term anti-Semitism was not defined in the survey, but left up to individual perception".

The majority of Jewish families share Sabbath dinner on a regular basis, students who attend Jewish and non-Jewish schools express interest in their "Jewishness" and inter-marriage doesn't faze anybody living in a secular home.

But the most intriguing results -- and ones already dishonestly spun by the AJN -- are attitudes towards Israel and Zionism. According to this week's AJN editorial:

"Four in five Australian Jews classify themselves as Zionists and claim some type of emotional attachment to Israel. It is a figure we should take great pride in and it should finally put to rest the absurd notion pushed by the likes of Antony Loewenstein, and Jews Against the Occupation, that there is a large and silent group of Australian Jews who don't support Israel. Perhaps the survey has unwittingly revealed that these types of people are merely self-promoters who add nothing to the Australian Jewish experience."

Methinks they doth protest too much. In fact, the results should deeply concern the Zionist establishment.

Of the appropriately 100,000 Australian Jews, roughly 20,000 do not identity themselves as Zionist (10% say they are not Zionist and the other 10% decline to answer). One of the survey's benefactors, Ron Goldschlager, tells the AJN that, "Zionism has a different meaning and feeling for all individuals, but broadly, it brings a sense of identity and belonging".

But what does attachment to Zionism and Israel really mean? The survey provides no real answers, but let me suggest a few. A Zionist can be opposed to Israel's occupation of Palestine. A Zionist can be a staunch supporter of Israel but vehemently disagree with the recent onslaught against Gaza. A Zionist can believe in engagement with Hamas. A Zionist can oppose the fundamentalist Jewish settlers in the West Bank maiming and killing Palestinian civilians. A Zionist can be thinking about embracing anti-Zionism. We simply don't know from the information we currently have what these Zionists actually believe.

The past six months have seen a growing public debate between Israel and Washington. The latest poll in the Jerusalem Post finds that 4% of Israelis think Barack Obama is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian. Meanwhile, the vast majority of American Jews still back Obama's Middle East policies. Who are the real "supporters of Israel" in these groups?

Zionist fanatics in Israel have their own understanding. "Four percent of the public evidently didn't understand the question," said National Union politician MK Arye Eldad. "If they did, 99.9% would say that he is extremely anti-Israel. The only Israelis who would say he is pro-Israel are those who join Fatah and call for anti-Israel boycotts."

Independent Australian Jewish Voices blogger Michael Brull (disclosure: I'm the co-founder of the initiative) writes that the Australian results should worry, not please, the Zionist lobby (which the AJN largely supports):

"Jews overwhelmingly only hear pro-Zionist (and basically right-wing Zionist) claims from all the Jewish organisations (educational, communal, spokespeople and so on). Yet a serious minority don't trust them. Ten per cent non-Zionist is about the same as the vote the Greens get. The Greens obviously won't win an election, but Australian politics means they get a voice and hearing. The AJN, on the other hand, thinks their equivalent is so marginal that they add nothing to the Jewish experience."

The Monash study also highlights another growing trend. What are the realities of leftist Zionism and Judaism, who represent anywhere between 10-20% of Australian Jewry? Who are their spokespeople? Are they being ignored by the mainstream, hardline Zionist groups? Where are their voices in the media? Are all the major Zionist organisations simply repeating pro-occupation and pro-war sentiments from the Israeli state? Does the Zionist lobby continue to try and bully and silence alternative Jewish views, despite this study proving they represent a sizeable minority?

The increasing disaffection of Australian Jews towards Israel and Zionism isn't about unrepresentative communal bodies (though it's probably a factor). Slicker PR on the part of Jewish groups isn't the answer. You can't sell a sick product.

The problem is more profound. Israel is killing itself through its own actions, ignoring global opinion (something even some British Jews are acknowledging: expanding West Bank settlements, blockading Gaza and violently removing Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.

The images of these actions, through the web, blogs, Al-Jazeera or even articles in the Sydney Morning Herald, are having a cumulative effect. The wider community is understandably becoming more sympathetic to the Palestinians. I've been hearing for years that many Jews feel distinctly uncomfortable with Israeli actions but are unsure what to do with these attitudes.

A growing minority of Australian Jews are turning off the ideology that they supposedly can't live without.

Antony Loewenstein is a journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution

A detailed and damning UN inquiry into January's war in Gaza has found evidence that war crimes and possible crimes against humanity were committed by Israel and Hamas.

The investigation, led by the former South African judge Richard Goldstone, is the most serious international inquiry into the three-week war in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died, and which triggered criticism across the world. It presses for prosecutions.

Goldstone and his three colleagues said in their 575-page report, released today, that their work was based on an "independent and impartial analysis". The findings are among the most serious ever against Israel, with its policies towards the Palestinians and its conduct of the war highlighted for extensive criticism.

The inquiry looks not only at the war but at the months before and after the conflict and accuses Israel of many violations of international law. It says Israel may be guilty of the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, in its policies towards the Palestinian people.

It said the international criminal court has jurisdiction to investigate and that individuals responsible for violating the laws of war should face prosecution. Each country that has ratified the Geneva conventions had a duty to search for and prosecute those responsible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/15/israel-blamed-for-gaza-war-crimes

meanwhile .....

The Israeli Knesset is working on a bill to grant more immunity to Israeli soldiers as the number of Palestinian lawsuits against the Israeli army hits a record high.

The bill - an amendment to the 1952 Civil Wrongs (Liability of the State) Law - says Israel is not civilly responsible for damages incurred during a military operation launched in a situation of war, providing a broader defense for soldiers' actions in military operations.

Under the current law, soldiers must prove that their lives were in danger for their actions to be considered a military operation. But the new proposal calls for removal of the obligation on all Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and foreign countries since it assumes that the lives of soldiers operating outside Israel are inherently in danger, the Israeli publication, The Jerusalem Post, reported.

Another provision of the amendment allows the Israeli army to declare an area "hostile territory" whenever it likes, which absolves Tel Aviv of liability for damages sustained by residents of that area. Thus, whenever - and for as long as - a certain area of the West Bank, or the entire West Bank, is declared a "hostile territory", Palestinians do not have the right to sue the Israeli army for the incidents that occurred.

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