Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

To its great discredit, the Melbourne Age has republished a Guardian newspaper feature that alleges mistreatment by the Israeli judicial system of West Bank Palestinian youths detained on suspicion of terrorism.

As a previous AIJAC blog post revealed, many allegations of Palestinian children being tortured, kept in solitary confinement, denied legal representation, and forced to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, rely on half-truths, manipulation of facts and figures and unsubstantiated claims by anti-Israel organisations.

That is, organisations with anti-Israel political agendas that extend beyond the remit of the specific goals they profess to be concerned with and into areas of delegitimising the Jewish state.

January 27 marks the day that Auschwitz-Birkenau - the largest Nazi death camp was liberated. In November 2005, the United Nations passed a resolution to designate January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD) to honour the victims of the Holocaust - the genocide that resulted in the annihilation of 6 million Jews, 2 millions Gypsies and millions of others by the Nazi regime.

The UN resolution establishing IHRD urges every member nation of the UN to honour the memory of Holocaust victims and develop educational programs as part of an international resolve to help prevent future acts of genocide. The UN resolution also rejects denial of the Holocaust, and condemns discrimination and violence based on religion or ethnicity.

On this day and on every day, it is important to ask, has the world learnt the lessons from the Holocaust?

The New York Times' Lede blog is commemorating the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian revolution through a post containing reflections by an Egyptian activist, interspersed with footage he took from the protests in Cairo on 25 January last year. The piece is quite moving and manages to recapture the sense of optimism and determination that was being felt at the time:

Although the battles would continue later that evening and over the following days, we all knew that something profound had just happened. There was a raised collective consciousness amongst us...

How different to the feeling now?...

The claim of Israel maliciously depriving Palestinians of water, in order to steal more for its own citizens, has been often repeated amongst Israel's critics. To Jerusalem Post blogger Petra Marquardt-Bigman, the accusation is reminiscent of Medieval accusations of Jews poisoning water supplies:

I think of it as the "water libel" because it often echoes the medieval accusations that Jews were poisoning wells.

Most recently, it surfaced in a formal report by the French parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, which described...

Cabramatta is one of my favourite suburbs in Sydney. It is colourful without being too boisterous, assertive without being too aggressive.

The substantial Vietnamese-Australian immigrant population has contributed in many ways, devoting industry and passion in efforts to ensure that their children were given every chance to be part of, and succeed in, Australian society.

As the SBS documentary series "Once Upon A Time in Cabramatta", broadcast in January, highlighted, there were quite a few factors militating against the migrants who came to Australia in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, China has become a rising power in the Middle East, rivalling the United States and Russia for strategic influence.

Its presence in the region rests squarely on a strategic relationship with Iran, and friendly, interlocking relations with Arab oil states to ensure a constant flow of energy resources to fuel China's insatiable economy, and to contain separatist movements among its Muslim Uighur Turkic ethnic minority in Xinjiang province, northwestern China.

While the rest of the world was following American military retreats, European economic meltdowns, and Middle Eastern bloodbaths, Israel was agog over one eight-year-old girl's five-minute walk to school every morning.

Frail, bespectacled, and shy, Naama Margolese appeared on TV and said she refused to go to her school in the town of Beit-Shemesh after local ultra-Orthodox men spat and shouted "prostitute" at her while she walked the short distance from her home to school. Though she is religiously Orthodox, and wears a skirt and long sleeves, her standards of modesty did not meet those of her attackers.

Lead Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho met with his Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erekat in Amman on January 9 for the second time in as many weeks, with the aim of restarting direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. These were the first direct contacts between the parties since the breakdown of peace talks in September 2010.

How could Qatar's foreign policy best be defined during the Arab Spring? In the midst of the conflict between Gaddafi's forces and the rebels in the Libyan civil war, Qatar was hailed by US President Barack Obama in April for building a broad coalition of international support for the NATO campaign against Gaddafi. Obama also hailed the Emir of Qatar for supposedly being a pragmatic mediator and negotiator in the wider region.

When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas swung through Europe in January he was feted by European leaders for pursuing the two-state formula, while obloquy was, as usual, heaped on Israel - if not for settlements then for roadblocks or water or the wall or the tunnel or the occupation or, most recently, for being niggardly about handing out citizenship on demand to Palestinians... the list goes on.

Judging from media reports, Israel might appear to be in the midst of a radical and violent political and religious polarisation. "Hilltop youth" from the settlements are seen allegedly burning mosques, as well as attacking "peace activists" and even Israel Defence Force officers. Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men are shown assaulting secular women in segregated buses and even on sidewalks, and members of Israel's democratically elected Knesset are portrayed as waging war against the courts and civil society.

As Netanyahu attempted to point out, the assumption that Israel is becoming more isolated in recent years makes sense only if one's focus is mainly on a segment of opinion in Western Europe - ignoring the US, Eastern Europe and Israel's renewal of old ties in Sub-Saharan African. But a most important part of the real world, and an area of major opportunity for Israel, is in South, Southeast and East Asia.

This weekend's Fairfax papers included a report on an all-female Palestinian racing team by Ruth Pollard. While the piece was an interesting read overall, there are one or two small inconsistencies that are worth noting. In addition to this, there were a number of instances where the Age inserted small changes to make the tone of the article seem more anti-Israel. Some of these have been noted below.

Pollard profiles Noor Daoud, a Palestinian woman who won an Israeli formula-three competition last month. In the interview, Daoud explains how it is that she can no longer drive on the road.

''It is not the first time I have driven 200km/h - I lost my licence in 2009 when...

Earlier in the week, Overland editor Jeff Sparrow interpreted remarks from US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that Iran is not trying to develop a "nuclear weapon", but a "nuclear capability" to mean that Iran's nuclear program is entirely legal. While Sparrow was using this quote to help support a perverse conspiracy theory involving Israel, for reasons unknown, trying to dupe the rest of the world into punishing Iran, Panetta is not the only official to have stated that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon. In fact, Panetta himself has made it clear that Iran could have a nuclear weapon within a year, were it to make the decision to build one. Furthermore, Reuters reported yesterday that Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said something similar, albeit in more detail...

According to a recent AP report, after facing criticism from Israeli Knesset members for hosting two Hamas MPs at its recent conference, the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) has reportedly apologised to Israel.

Israel objected because the militant group has killed hundreds of Israelis in attacks over the years. Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the EU. and U.S.

The union's secretary-general, Anders Johnsson...

This Update offers threes pieces related to recent news on the ongoing crisis over Iran's nuclear program.

First up, former security adviser to the British government Andrew Cummings explains the rationale behind the campaign of covert action against Iran, as epitomised by the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist last week. Cummings argues that those who assert that such moves are dangerous fail to understand that the alternatives are even more risky and fraught.

It is lucky that freedom of speech is not the main selling point for Palestinian statehood because the stabbing of a human rights activist in Gaza who dared criticise the Hamas government and resistance groups would undermine the enterprise’s bona fides.

Mahmud Abu Rahma, international relations director at the al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, was “stabbed multiple times by several masked attackers on Friday evening”, according to an AFP report.

Jeff Sparrow, the editor of literary journal Overland, has written a missive in The Drum today on the "terrorism campaign" going on in Iran. This refers not to what first comes to mind when one reads "Iran" and "terror campaign" in the same sentence, but rather a horrendeous campaign of murder and intimidation against scientists being waged, of course, by Israel: (emphasis added)

Last Wednesday, a motorcyclist attached a bomb to a car carrying a man called Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, killing him instantly, and injuring his two companions.

That was merely the latest atrocity inflicted upon individuals and facilities associated with nuclear physics in that country ... this is terrorism, pure and simple - the systematic infliction of deadly violence launched against civilians and their families so as to create a climate of fear among Iranian physicists and other nuclear personnel. 

As Sparrow explains, the assassinations of Iranian nuclear physicists cannot be justified by pointing out that they are working towards a nuclear weapon. You see... 

This Updates leads with two articles on the likely policies of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood now that it has won the parliamentary election, gaining approximately 41% of seats with other Islamist groups taking the Islamist bloc up to something like 2/3 of all seats.

First up is Washington Institute expert on Egyptian politics Eric Trager, looking at the likely agenda of the Brotherhood in power. He says that the agenda will be theocracy internally, and confrontation internationally, and that expectations that the group will moderate are very unlikely to be met - offering some behavioural evidence for this.

The last two weeks have seen two meetings in Amman Jordan between Israeli and Palestinian representatives, in what are being called "preparatory talks", but are the first direct public contacts between the two sides since 2010. (Some more details on the latest rounds of talks are reported here, here and here.)

A good backgrounder from BICOM on both the significance of the talks and the political factors influencing them is first up. It puts the meetings in the context of the Quartet efforts to restart talks and significant pressure on the Palestinian side to renew negotiations, and discusses what is known about the contents of the two meetings.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed on January 10, that Iran has started enriching uranium up to 20 percent at an underground site at ‘Fordow', near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is for civilian peaceful purposes. However, the underground enrichment facility ‘Fordow' casts further doubt on Iran's statements that the facility is for civilian purposes. The site was an Iranian secret that was only revealed in September 2009 by the US, France and Britain.

Iran's enrichment of uranium at 20 percent also suggests that that its nuclear program is not for civilian use, which would enrich uranium at around 3.5 percent - the level needed for nuclear power plants.

Recently Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas claimed that Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader in Damascus, agreed during reconciliation talks between Fatah and Hamas on December 22, that "there will be no military resistance" and also agreed that "the permanent solution is on the ‘67 borders." Abbas and Meshaal also agreed to a new temporary leadership for the PLO, for the first time in tandem with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

However, it is unclear both the extent to which Meshaal accepts what Abbas said they agreed to and more importantly, whether Meshaal is speaking for Hamas - as many in Hamas have openly denied this new strategy, suggesting a rift between the Hamas leadership in Syria and the Gaza strip.

A Palestinian human rights activist has inadvertently confirmed what Israel has always insisted, that terrorist groups live, train, operate and run riot throughout the Gaza Strip's residential neighbourhoods.

In a piece written for the Palestinian website Maan, Gaza human rights activist Mahmoud Abu Rahma reveals that the "resistance movements" are so entrenched and widespread in residential areas that civilians are suffering frequent injuries because of their activities.

Israel has assumed the unwanted role as a world leader in developing medical technology and planning to prepare for disasters, and its innovations are being studied and disseminated to other countries to save lives.

In one example, American politician Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head and almost killed a year ago, but an Israeli-made bandage is credited with stopping her bleeding. Today she is alive and on the road to recovery.

Dr. John Cohn, a Professor of medicine and assistant professor of pediatrics at Thomas Jefferson University, recently wrote about his visit to Israeli medical centres to learn about their medical disaster management plans on a program now in its eighth year run by the Disaster Management Division of Israel's Ministry of Health...

Today's Update features two pieces on the situation in Syria, where 20 civilians were reportedly killed yesterday, bringing the death toll close to 6,000 according to rebel leaders, despite the presence of a team of Arab League observers in the country.

First up is David Kenner of Foreign Policy, detailing the fact that the head of the Arab League observers mission, Sudanese Gen. Mohammad Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, is himself alleged to have been involved in genocide in Darfur. The allegations are that General al-Dabi was responsible for creating the Arab "Janjaweed" militias responsible for most of the massacres there. Kenner makes it clear that given this and other problems with the Arab League mission, which he discusses, "Syrians are still very much alone."