Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

Before the deal that ended it last week, the recent Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike in Israeli prisons was being presented as some kind of grand, Gandhi-esque "resistance" movement, pitting peaceful Palestinian "political prisoners" against cruel Israelis. This is certainly the impression that Randa Abdel-Fattah attempted to give in her recent piece on the subject.

As with many claims in the sadly still-unresolved Arab-Israel conflict, this general narrative is little more than a propaganda exercise, aimed at winning undeserved sympathy for people who are far from innocent.

Following up my previous AIJAC blog post regarding former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's revelations that the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei told him in 2000 that "Israel must be burned to the ground" and forecasting an Iranian war to achieve this end, the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi has also agreed that Iran's goal is to "annihilate" Israel.

In a quick followup to Sharyn Mittelman's recent blog on the growing numbers of international students who are coming to study in Israel and learn how Israelis innovate, the China Daily is the latest newspaper to run a story about this phenomenon, highlighting that China's growing ties with Israel are becoming more public within China and that more Chinese are starting to sit up and take notice of the benefits of the relationship.

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird addresses American Jewish Committee's Global Forum in Washington.

Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has revealed that the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei unequivocally expressed to him, personally, his intention to destroy Israel, not politically but militarily and via Iranian military action.

Aznar told a crowd in Jerusalem on May 16: "In a private discussion we held in Tehran in October of 2000, Ali Khamenei told me that Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the Earth."

The former Spanish Prime Minister also said that Khamenei told him "Iran's war against the United States and Israel is inevitable."

Go figure

An unattributed Age story (12/5) on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails stated that a "fifth of all Palestinians living under occupation - some 700,00 people - have served time in Israeli jails, according to activist groups."

Although the article did not include the origin of the claim of 700,000, it is a number pushed by the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian NGO, and is not credible.

People from around the world are traveling to Israel to learn from its innovation and economic success.

Israel's President Shimon Peres recently told a visiting Australian delegation that included Financial Services Minister Bill Shorten, that part of the secret to Israel's economic success was that Israel had to use its brainpower to carve out a living, "We had nothing and that was our luck," Peres said. Peres also told the group that he wanted Israel to become "the Silicon Valley of the Middle East."

This Update features three pieces on the nuclear talks with Iran, scheduled to resume next week after a five week hiaitus - two of them focusing on the dangers of any agreement which does not adequately block Iran's ability to quickly build nuclear weapons whenever a decision to do so is reached.

First up is Iran scholar and recent visitor to Australia Emanuele Ottolenghi, who looks at some history related to the Iranian nuclear program to make the case that an agreement that does not take account of Iran's past weaponisation achievements will leave Iran able to build nuclear weapons.

Israel is the first country to formally legislate a ban against underweight models. The legislation also bans use of models who 'look underweight', and creators of ads must disclose whether they used Photoshop or graphics programs to manipulate images to make the models look slimmer.

The Australian's John Lyons (5/5) reported on an Israeli law passed during the Second Intifada in 2003 designed to prevent terrorists exploiting family reunion laws to enter Israel.

This has meant Israeli Arab Taiseer Khatib's wife, Lana, who is from Jenin on the West Bank, can only stay in Israel on a temporary residency visa, something Khatib denounces as "beyond apartheid".

The newspaper offensively headlined the piece Living under the cloud of Israel's cruel apartheid implying this was a statement of fact rather than Taiseer Khatib's opinion. The online edition has since rectified this error.

This Update follows up on Ahron Shapiro's blog post yesterday on Israeli PM Netanyahu's shock move on Tuesday night to cancel planned elections and instead form a National Unity government with Opposition Leader Shaul Mofaz.

First up to provide a general perspective on the move is Israeli political scientist Prof. Gerald Steinberg, who argues that the broad political base Netanyahu has created for himself provides a platform to deal with a series of major challenges facing Israel. He stresses the immediate trigger for the move was the court-ordered need to re-write the "Tal Law", dealing with deferral of military service for Israel's Ultra-Orthodox minority - which seemed insoluble within the confines of the existing coalition.

Palestinian refugees and the claims made of "right of return" for them have long been a major issue within the debate over a 'just solution' to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The claimed "right of return'" is still seen as a core obstacle to overcome in any future peace negotiations. Yet the refugees question is even more complex. Palestinian refugees actually represent the smaller of the two refugees groups created by the regional conflict between the Arab countries and Israel - the larger group being Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries.

The voices of these Jewish refugees, sadly, have hardly ever been heard or are generally too quickly dismissed. Listening to these voices could potentially shed light and new perspectives not only on the refugees question, but also on the nature and history of the regional context of the conflict. It might even promote reconciliation.

This year marks forty years since the ‘Munich Massacre' - when during the 1972 Munich Olympics, Palestinian terrorists disguised as athletes attacked the dormitory housing the Israeli delegation and took Israeli athletes, coaches and officials hostages.  By the end of the ordeal, the terrorists had killed eleven Israelis and a German police officer.

For the past four decades, families of the victims have repeatedly sought to persuade the International Olympic Committee to incorporate a minute of silence during the opening ceremonies of the games to commemorate the Munich Massacre.  This year the IOC has again rejected their request.

The latest edition of the Weekend Australian has provoked outrage over an offensive and unprofessional headline used to accompany an article by its Middle East correspondent John Lyons that failed to include some vital facts, resulting in some very questionable journalism.

The last-minute decision overnight by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and newly-elected Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz to create a national unity government and avert early elections planned for Sept. 4 came as a surprise to both most Israelis and most observers of Israeli politics. Yet in retrospect, it was a move that made a lot of sense for both leaders.

This Update contains two valuable pieces on the candidates for the highly important Egyptian Presidential  election (Barry Rubin had an excellent analysis of just how important here), as well as one of the many interesting pieces being written about the legacy of Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu, who died last week age 102.

Israel was abuzz this week with news that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had decided to set a date for early elections. While the official announcement is still days away, government sources reported the likely date of elections to be September 4...

Netanyahu, who is on pace to be Israel's longest serving Prime Minister since Ben Gurion and has benefited from a dearth of political challengers during his term, is seen by poll-watchers as having little to fear from early elections. Latest polling figures show that if the elections were held today, Netanyahu would be a shoo-in, with 48 percent of Israelis preferring Netanyahu stay on as prime minister...

With Netanyahu's re-election bid deemed likely, the more immediate question being asked is what impact, if any, the decision to hold early elections will have on Israel's strategy vis-à-vis Iran.

It is often fascinating to hear true stories from people about how their once fierce hatred for the State of Israel came to be questioned for one reason or another - such as a trip to Israel, a book/research or a meeting with an Israeli - leading them re-evaluate their preconceived ideas.

A common theme among these personal accounts is that prior to their individual journey that led them to learn more about Israel, they had not been exposed to positive information about Israel or Jews, and felt a sense of betrayal when they learnt the ‘truth' about Israel. Often their newly formed pro-Israel perspectives were not welcome in their home communities, and yet they are dedicated to speaking out in support of Israel.

In what was was considered another sign of the rapidly deteriorating ties between Israel and Egypt, a visit to Jerusalem by Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa -- accompanying Jordanian officials -- caused outrage in Egypt's new Islamist-dominated Parliament last week. The Parliament demanded Gomaa's resignation for behaviour that risked "normalising" relations with Israel.

Despite Gomaa's statements that the visit was unofficial and that it took place under the supervision of the Jordanian authorities, the visit angered those opposed to normalizing relations with Israel.

Parliament Speaker Saad al-Katatny read out...

A number of major news outlets, including ABC news here in Australia, have been reporting on the Yom Ha-atzmaut interview with Israeli Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz that appeared in Ha'aretz this week.

Unfortunately, most of these reports have taken the IDF chief's words out of context and in doing so, changed their meaning as well as their significance.

Last night, ABC Lateline featured an interview by Emma Alberici of former New Republic editor Peter Beinart. Beinart has been a figure of much controversy lately due to his new book The Crisis of Zionism -- an extension of his 2009 essay 'The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment' in the New York Review of Books -- in which he makes the case that the Jewish community in America is taking an incorrect line on Israel and provides his own perspective on how the Israeli/Palestinian conflict ought to be addressed.

The book provoked a litany of responses from across the political spectrum, with almost every senior figure in the American foreign policy world deriding or distancing themselves from his contribution. As a result, there is a very substantial body of work from which to draw in order to evaluate every point that he makes. In general, most experts agree that Beinart is largely well-intentioned and does genuinely want the best for Israel, however he is at the same time hopelessly naive and heavily encumbered by a lack of serious research on the topic. His views are those of...

Give him credit for his candour. In an extensive interview with the Forward published on April 19, Mousa Abu Marzook, Deputy Director of Hamas' political bureau and the group's second-highest-ranking official, told the Jewish newspaper that Hamas would not respect a peace treaty with Israel signed by the Palestinian Authority, even if the agreement was endorsed by a referendum of all Palestinians, as Hamas has always demanded.

Moreover, Abu Marzook vowed that Hamas would never recognise Israel. The most Hamas would consider would be a ceasefire agreement, he said.

Following a period of increased international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, the P5+1 nudged Iran back to the negotiating table on April 13. The two-day talks, held in Istanbul, yielded little but an agreement to resume talks in five weeks time, on May 23 in Baghdad.

Whether you agree with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's assessment that Iran had been given a "freebie", or US President Barack Obama's description of the latest talks as an "opportunity for us to negotiate and see if Iran comes to the table in good faith," the fact remains that despite the sanctions and these negotiations, Iran's nuclear enrichment and development continues apace in defiance of the unequivocal Western and UN policy to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

Debate about Israel often leads back to the Shoah, the World War II Nazi Holocaust. The Holocaust is of course a constant background for many Jews both in Israel and out - an horrific presence, but also an important source of shared experience, and nation building, as well as the ultimate argument for the belief that Jews need self-determination in their own state, i.e. Zionism.

But the Shoah is also increasingly being invoked by Israel's critics...

Livni, with her well-to-do background, is history, at least as a prime ministerial contender. Humbly-born Mofaz, on the other hand, emerged from his sweeping victory as a force to reckon with, a battle-tested general who, while an underdog, can be counted on to fight for the premiership tooth and nail.

On Thursday, Israel will turn 64. It therefore seems appropriate to reflect on some of the remarkable achievements this small country has racked up in that relatively short time.

Little Israel, a third the size of Tasmania, is now a global leader in technology, especially in cleantech. Without plentiful natural resources such as water and oil, from its humble beginnings Israel has been required to pursue creative ingenuity - and many believe this is the secret behind the incredible achievements of ‘Start Up' Israel...

The Iranian nuclear question, Yom Hashoah and the controversy surrounding a recent poem by Gunter Grass, were the backdrop for a recent long interview Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gave to the German newspaper Welt am Sontag.

In the interview, published on April 22, Netanyahu explained to the German audience what offended Israel most about Grass' poem "What Must be Said" - which depicted Israel as a potentially genocidal aggressor against Iran. Under questioning, the Prime Minister also defended his positions on the risks of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Later in the interview, he rebuffed claims that the continued existence of West Bank settlements are harming the prospects of peace with the Palestinians...

On the morning of April 25 people all around Australia will decorate their lapels with red poppies as they commemorate ANZAC Day. At the same time (give or take a few time zones) a much smaller nation, both demographically and geographically, will commemorate its own memorial day, as this year ANZAC Day falls on the same day as the Israeli Yom Ha-Zikaron (Israel's "Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism Remembrance Day"). In Israel, lapels will be decorated instead with red everlasting flowers (commonly known as 'Blood of the Maccabees' flowers).

This Update features some analysis of the aftermath of the meeting between Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian negotiators last week, where he was given a letter from Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. Also included is a long but informative interview in which Netanyahu discusses several recent controversies in a German newspaper.

This Update deals with the "P5+1" talks with Iran that occurred on Saturday - with reports suggesting little diplomatic progress accomplished beyond agreement to another meeting in five weeks in Baghdad. On a separate issue, it also contains a look a the significance of the planned meeting tonight between Israeli PM Netanyahu and Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad to present a letter outlining the Palestinian position.

During a recent CNN interview, former Israeli Prime Minister and current Defence Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak noted that the all too common perception of an historically high rate of settlement expansion taking place is just wrong - not a single new settlement has been built under the current Netanyahu government. Barak also notes that construction in settlements is actually currently occurring at a slower rate than under previous Israeli governments.

Each year thousands of Christians make their way to Jerusalem to celebrate Easter. Israel's Tourism Ministry expects 125,000 visitors during Holy Week and 300,000 throughout April.

Over the weekend as Catholics and Anglicans celebrated Easter, there were media reports that claimed many Palestinian Christians were being denied entry into Jerusalem for their pilgrimage, claims which Israel strongly denies.

The question has arisen over Israel's position on the appalling situation in Syria, where the lives of over 9,000 civilians have been claimed in a crackdown on protesters and an insurrection by opposition groups.

Some commentators have unfairly interpreted the Israeli government's comparative silence over the bloodshed compared to other regional and Western countries as cold indifference, others as calculated.

Bizarrely and contradictorily, Israel has been criticised by some commentators for wanting to keep the current government in place and by others for seeking to topple it.

On Friday night, while the Christian world is celebrating Good Friday and the rest of Australia is celebrating a four-day weekend, the Jewish community in Australia will be holding the annual Passover seder, marking the beginning of the week of Passover.

In its first story since December 2011 looking at Iran's nuclear program, ABC TV "7.30" (21/3) reporter Michael Brissenden described the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as "the most powerful Jewish lobby group in the United States". This may surprise the many non-Jews who attended AIPAC's recent annual conference, including pro-Israel Latinos, African-Americans and Christian delegates.

The triumph of Shaul Mofaz, a former Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff and Defence Minister (for a bio of Mofaz see here) over former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in the Kadima party primaries this week has sparked a flurry of commentary and reactions inside Israel.

Widely noted by pundits was Mofaz's poor name recognition abroad. That, together with Kadima's weakened stature in the face of centrist challenges by the revamped Labour party and Yair Lapid's newly-launched party, has put a damper on analysis over Mofaz's win outside the region.

On a family rip back to Australia, Gidon Bromberg, an Australian environmental activist now living in Israel, picked up a copy of Chris Hammer's book The River: A Journey Through The Murray-Darling. Bromberg was inspired by Hammer's description of the process that led to the Federal Government passing legislation in 2007 to protect the river basin; so inspired, in fact, that he decided to bring Hammer to Israel and attempt to replicate the feat and help the long-suffering Jordan River.

Bromberg has written about this in today's Jerusalem Post...

The "Israel Apartheid Week" festival continues to excite students on campuses across Europe (forget those pesky events in Syria, Yemen, Egypt and Iran). But while Apartheid Week has come and gone for another year, the BDS campaign - Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions - plods relentlessly on. Why has the Jewish state, the only liberal democracy in the region, become the obsessive focus of vilification, demonisation and delegitimisation? Why is it considered so uniquely evil - a "racist, genocidal state," in the words of one of the leading Israel Apartheid Week celebrants in London?

After a week of intermittent barrages of mortars, rockets, and missiles, relative quiet befell southwestern Israel, in bizarre synchrony with a blessed winter's belated departure.

The weather has been one happy story in Israel this year. After seven years of drought, the skies opened up and by early March, the Water Authority reported that overall rainfall for this year had already exceeded by more than 10% the annual average. 

Twenty years after establishing full diplomatic relations, India has formed a cordial network of Israeli bilateral ties aimed primarily at upgrading India's technological prowess, economic prospects, and military capabilities. These ties are based on converging strategic interests cemented by diverse cultural exchanges. They run on a separate, though contiguous track, from India's relations with the Arab and Muslim world - which are driven primarily by the need to secure vital energy resources in the Persian Gulf and defend India against Islamic terrorist groups.

The March 5 summit between US President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu marked an important milestone in the US-Israeli decision-making process on Iran's nuclear program. The meeting helped clarify positions and narrow gaps, yet significant differences remain to be addressed in the coming months.

Terror sponsorship has been around for as long as terrorism.

It's a phenomenon that has been widely recognised, which allows a group to use terrorism as a tool while insulating themselves from direct responsibility. As an added benefit, in some cases it allows for additional logistical possibilities in planning a terror attack.

Naturally, nobody should be fooled: a terror sponsor who provides planning and support for a terror attack is as responsible as those who are sent to pull the trigger.

The United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) has done it again - in its annual session it condemned only one country - Israel, while ignoring the human rights violations of women around the world, including especially the current crisis in Syria - where women are being raped and murdered...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently been the subject of much criticism because of what some see as an unnecessarily militaristic attitude regarding Iran, arguing that his statements indicate a clear gung-ho -- even warmongering -- attitude. The reality may actually be the very opposite.

Israel is believed to have previously taken-out two different nuclear programs: Iraq's in 1981 and Syria's in 2007. I say "believed to have" because Israel has never officially admitted to the second one; indeed, no Israeli public official ever even recognised that Syria had a nuclear program and in neither case was there any prior warning (in fact, prior to the strike on Syria's secret reactor in 2007...

Burgeoning relations between Israel and China has been the focus of considerable attention in recent months, including from us here at AIJAC (see here and here)

Now Israeli journalist Oren Kessler has written a new piece which is a must read for anyone interested in this subject - it's entitled "Shalom, Beijing" and appears in the American publication Foreign Policy this week.

Just days after being exposed for fraudulently blaming the accidental death of a 15-year-old boy on an "Israeli airstrike", Hamas officials have again attempted to implicate Israel in the death of a Gaza youth -- this time, seven-year-old Baraka al-Mughrabi. Just after Mughrabi passed-away last night, reports started emerging that he had been killed by an Israeli strike.

Not long after, however, these remarks were retracted as the truth of his death emerged...

The Kony2012 campaign was not the only viral campaign in recent days that spread some dubious information. A number of allegations of Israeli targeting of civilians that surface over the past few days have been outed as downright lies.

The most glaring example is the death of 15-year-old Nayif Shaaban Qarmout, who was killed in northern Gaza on Monday. The first reports emerged from Palestinian Authority-controlled media outlet Ma'an News, citing unnamed "witnesses" who attested that the boy was hit by an Israeli airstrike.

The claim caught the eye of the Israeli military, who were understandably confused, given that they had not launched any airstrikes on northern Gaza during the time that he was killed. An AFP reporter confirmed that there did not appear to be any evidence of an airstrike in the area, but the dead boy did seem to have been killed by an explosive device, albeit apparently one that he himself was carrying...

Former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was quick out of the blocks to suggest Kevin Rudd's successor should still make the case for Australia winning a temporary UN Security Council seat in 2013/14.

"It will certainly be almost impossible if we paint ourselves into a tiny minority corner on the Palestinian statehood issue, should that come to a vote in the General Assembly before October," Evans wrote (Age, 1/3).

However, last October, Australia, the United States, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Palau, Panama, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Sweden, and Vanuatu all voted against admitting the non-existent state of Palestine to UNESCO as a full member state. A further 52 countries abstained from voting.

This Update deals with background to and details of the intensive flare-up over the weekend around Gaza, which saw over 200 rockets fired into southern Israel from Gaza (sending up to 1 million Israelis into bomb shelters) and Israel staging numerous counter-attacks at terrorist targets and rocket sites which reportedly killed around 25 Palestinians, all but three of them armed combatants, according to Israel. The violence was triggered on Friday when Israel assassinated Zuhair al-Qaissi, the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), and an assistant, who Israel said were planning attacks into Israel from Sinai...

Israel's cutting edge advances in water and agriculture are helping the country make commercial and diplomatic inroads into parts of Asia that have previously been difficult to reach.

Context is king and without it the most outrageous slurs can be given legitimacy.

Unfortunately, some pro-Palestinian activists are prone to only offer facts in isolation to give their false allegations the air of authenticity and aid the ongoing campaign to delegitimise Israel.

The most recent example of this appeared on Tuesday in an op-ed hosted on the ABC "Unleashed" website from Professor Stuart Rees called "Palestine matters, not Gillard-Rudd soapies"...

Today's Update contains two pieces focussed around the reality behind claims about "Apartheid" often directed at Israel by radical opponents (they organise something called "Israel Apartheid Week" on some college campuses, including some in Australia, every March. A summary of the various organisations behind it is here.)

The past few days saw an intense period of discussion about the Iranian nuclear crisis in Washington involving both US President Obama, and visiting Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu. The three focal points of analysis were Obama's Speech to the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Sunday (video here), the subsequent meeting between the two leaders on Monday and their public statement following the meeting, and Netanyahu's Speech to AIPAC on Monday evening (video here). We recommend reading all three original texts, and provide analysis of the context of all three below.

On March 4, US President Barack Obama delivered a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) annual policy conference. In his speech Obama emphasised his strong support for the State of Israel, and policy on Iran.

This blog post looks at a variety of resposes to the speech.

As official estimates of Syrian civilians killed in the Assad regime's bloody crackdown climb steadily past the 7,500 mark, a couple of recent Op-Eds in the Arab media have compared the Arab world's strong outrage to Israeli military actions in the West Bank, Gaza and southern Lebanon to their muted response to Syrian slaughter of their own people.

Putting aside the moral inequality of such a comparison (the pieces make no effort to differentiate the defensive nature of Israeli military campaigns from the cold-blooded ruthlessness of the Syrian dictatorial regime suppressing dissent from its own citizens) the pieces nevertheless mark a significant break from the traditional narrative in Arab media that the Palestinians are the region's principal human rights victims...

Seldom has there been such a brazen attempt to pass off pantomime as intelligent debate.

Saturday's edition of the Sydney Morning Herald's (SMH) weekly "The Question" section - which canvasses the opinions of four experts with presumed standing on a specific issue - addressed the topic of "Is the West destined for war with Iran? Deepening distrust is fuelling a new round of sabre-rattling."

A fair enough subject for discussion, however, the range of views left a lot to be desired...

This Update features two new and penetrating analyses of the ructions and political disagreements currently roiling Hamas, as well as an important new expression of Israel's dilemmas vis-a-vis Iran's nuclear program in the lead up to Israeli PM Netanyahu's trip to Washington next week.

First up is the always excellently informed top Israeli journalist, Ehud Yaari, sorting out the power struggles within Hamas. Yaari says that the once unassailable Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal now seems to be in deep trouble, cut off from a base of operations and with increasingly public denunciations of his policies from within Hamas' senior ranks...

On Monday, Wikileaks began releasing an alleged 5 million emails stolen by "hacktivist" group Anonymous from geo-political consulting firm Stratfor. The sensationalist title that Wikileaks gave the material -- The Global Intelligence Files -- as well as the statement announcing the release attempt to make the released emails out to be top-secret information from some sort of clandestine "private CIA".

The Stratfor emails reveal a company that cultivates close ties with US government agencies and employs former US government staff. It is preparing the 3-year Forecast for the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, and it trains US marines and "other government intelligence agencies" in "becoming government Stratfors"...

SIX federal Coalition MPs who recently returned from Israel said they were full of praise for Israel's achievements, more understanding of its challenges and ready to spread the word.

Bradfield MP Paul Fletcher, Tasmanian Senator David Bushby, Paterson MP Bob Baldwin, South Australian Senator David Fawcett, Brisbane MP Teresa Gambaro and Cowan MP Luke Simpkins all travelled as part of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council's Rambam program.

What's wrong with being religious in Israel? Nothing at all - though there is of course much controversy in Israel at the moment over the exemption from the draft for most ultra-Orthodox young men following a Supreme Court ruling last week, and other issues, including views on women's rights.

But these controversies, and the debates surrounding them, have led to the size and influence of Israel's ultra-Orthodox population sometimes being exaggerated in the media in order to make spurious comparisons between Israeli society and dogmatic Islamic states such as Iran or Saudi Arabia. So some firm facts are needed.

Recently, detailed accounts were published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz of the January round of Israeli-Palestinian "negotiations about negotiating" held in Amman, Jordan.

According to the Haaretz account, Israeli negotiators offered a somewhat vague but important statement of the principles which would underly a peace agreement to include a Palestinian state in the vast majority of the West Bank plus Gaza - one which Haaretz described as "similar, if not identical to that which was presented by [then Foreign Minister] Tzipi Livni during the negotiations that took place in 2008 after the Annapolis Conference."

In December, I wrote on AIJAC's "Fresh AIR" blog (available on-line at www.aijac.org.au/news/article/antisemitism-in-the-middle-east-in-1835) about a 19th century book that had been rediscovered which shed a great deal of light on the situation of Jews in the Arab Middle East in the 1830s - before Zionism became an issue, and before there was significant European influence on those societies. I noted that the book in question, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, by Edward William Lane and Edward Stanley Poole, based on numerous visits to Egypt, countered common but erroneous beliefs that the Middle East was largely free from significant antisemitism or large-scale persecution of Jews before these influences.

On February 6, 2012, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal signed a new agreement to create a Palestinian national unity government for the West Bank and Gaza.

The Doha Declaration, like previous Fatah-Hamas agreements, emphasises the need to implement the agreements between the sides - once again demonstrating the difficulty of achieving institutional unity in the Palestinian arena in light of Hamas' declared ambition to assume senior status in representing the Palestinian people. The two sides will have to show great creativity to overcome the many obstacles facing the holding of elections, from unifying the separate civilian and security institutions in the West Bank and Gaza, to budget allocations.

Half-a-decade after it won its first and last general election, Israel's political centre is scrambling for a future in a rapidly changing ideological landscape.

At the heart of the jockeying is a three-way contest over the leadership of the main Israeli opposition party, Kadima, and the emergence of a new rival to the party for the middle of the road voter.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a Muslim-owned café in an east Jerusalem suburb, discussing the complexities of Middle Eastern affairs with a Greek Orthodox Palestinian nationalist.

Hours earlier, I had met with a young, American-born Jewish woman, a high achiever academically who seemed to have the world at her feet in the USA or Europe. She spoke of her decision, as an independent young adult, to emigrate to Israel, where she is currently going through basic military training.

The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council has hosted a meeting in Sydney at which three Australian members of Parliament told of their experiences on a recent visit to Israel.

Liberal Bob Baldwin member for Paterson near Newcastle, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Shadow Minister for Tourism, Liberal Teresa Gambaro represents Brisbane and is the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for International Assistance and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement and Tasmanian Liberal Senator David Bushby spent a week in Israel as guests of the Rambam Program which has in its ten years has hosted more than 500 journalists, politicians, youth leaders, union leaders and clergy on specially guided tours of the Holy Land.

The three politicians formed part of a group of six members of Federal Parliament.

While peacemaking visionaries talk about a future Israeli-Palestinian peace dividend - the concept that peace between Israelis and Palestinians will usher in a new era of mutual prosperity - the two peoples aren't waiting, as both Israeli and Palestinian stock markets continue to impress.

On February 20, the financial news organisation Bloomberg named Israel's stock market number one in the world in its Riskless Return Ranking - a measure of the safest investments for investors over the past decade...

Did you hear the one about the shipments of fuel from Egypt to Gaza stopped by Hamas because they refused to let them pass through the Israeli crossing at Rafah?

No? Well, that's because stories of Palestinian suffering caused by Hamas and Fatah rarely make the grade in most Australian and Western newsrooms. It's a case of news editors saying: "No Israel angle? Then there's nothing to see here folks"...

Binyamin Netanyahu's meeting with Cypriot President Demetris Christofias in Nicosia on February 16 - the first for any Israeli Prime Minister - was not only historic, but likely strategically important for the futures of both Mediterranean countries, which are finding in recent years an increasing number of shared interests.

Once, such a visit would have been difficult to imagine. While Netanyahu said during his visit that warming ties between Israel and Cyprus was a reflection of the "natural relationship" between the two countries, Cyprus and Israel have never been as close as they are now...

This Update includes two new pieces by experts attempting to explain how Teheran views the current nuclear standoff - a vital piece of the puzzle if policies are to be implemented to influence the behaviour of Iran's leaders.

First up is Ray Takeyh of the US Council on Foreign Relations, who points out that the primary reason the leaders of the Iranian regime believe they need nuclear weapons is because, for historical reasons, they both see themselves as the "natural hegemons" of the region, and are a revolutionary regime, whose purpose is to export their revolution to other countries...

Last night, ABC's Four Corners program focussed on the uprising in Syria. The program mostly featured a British Channel Four documentary on the Assad regime's systematic torture of Syrian opposition-members, including children, which gave a shocking insight into the events besetting Syrians opposed to their government's policies. The program ended, however, with host Kerry O'Brien interviewing notorious Middle-East correspondent Robert Fisk for 15 minutes in which Fisk was essentially given a pedestal to promulgate his views unchallenged...

The large crash sounded like something very big and heavy had fallen, hard - at least for those of us at the front of the bus. One friend at the back had grabbed his girlfriend and gone for cover, the loud bang and shattering glass made him think of a gunshot. Thankfully, we were not under fire. We were, however, under attack.

We were 13 Australian students on a tour through Arab East Jerusalem, there to learn about the situation in which the local population finds itself. Our bus was a clearly marked tour bus (albeit from an Israeli company) of a kind that is hardly rare in one of the world's most popular cities for tourists. We had nothing at all to identify us as anything other than Western tourists and, at that moment, we were between stops and not even paying much attention to our surroundings. What, then, motivated a local youth with an impressive arm to hurtle rocks at us as we drove past?

A political storm in Malaysia over controversial remarks by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's on Israel has not yet come to a close.

Back in January, a war of words erupted between Anwar and several top government officials, including his former mentor Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, regarding Malaysia's policy on Israel - a raw nerve among the country's Muslim-majority population...

PROPAGANDA comes in many forms. The British/French mini-series, The Promise, recently shown over four consecutive Sundays on SBS TV, is a particularly insidious example. It tells the story of a British girl, Erin, just out of school, who stays with the family of her closest friend in Israel during the second intifada.

She has taken the diary of her grandfather Len, who served as a British soldier in mandate Palestine from 1945 to 1948, so the action switches between the British battling the treacherous Jews in the 1940s and the brutal Israelis oppressing the Palestinians today.

As was widely reported, Israeli embassy personnel were attacked in Georgia and India yesterday.

In the first attack, Tal Yehoshua-Koren, the wife of an Israeli Defense Ministry official and an employee of the embassy in India was wounded when a bomb exploded in her car.  In the second attack, an embassy staffer in Tbilisi discovered a bomb underneath his car as he was driving to the embassy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of being responsible for the attacks, which occurred one day after the fourth anniversary of the killing of a senior Hezbollah official, Imad Mughniyeh. Both Hezbollah and Iran have blamed Israel for Mughniyeh's assassination, and Hezbollah has repeatedly sworn revenge.

This blog post recommends analysis on what these attacks could mean...

Fascinating reports, interesting analysis and some stories that are just plain funny: a round-up of items from today's media.

The Australian Financial Review today ran an article from last month's Atlantic by Robert Kaplan, which was originally published under the headling 'Why John J. Mearsheimer Is Right (About Some Things)' but republished as 'Great Power Politics'. As revealed by the headline, the piece largely praises University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer, focusing on his self-dubbed "offensive realist" take on China. Mearsheimer, however, is a rather dubious acadamic, particularly for his record of fomenting antisemitism in mainstream discourse, but also for his generally biased and factually questionable material.

Kaplan does acknowledge Mearsheimer's most notorious work, the much maligned 2006 essay and 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy that he co-authored with Harvard professor Steven Walt, as well as his recent endorsement of the abhorrent Gil Atzmon. Kaplan, however, glosses-over these controversies as "tragedies" that threaten to "obscure" his otherwise important work...

It's time to clear the air on an issue which has been the source of a misinformation campaign for years - Israel's environmental record in the West Bank...

A round-up of news stories that readers may have missed today...

Venezuelan Supremo Hugo Chavez often accuses Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians.

And so voluminous is the Chavez definition of the term that it is a surprise he has failed to notice that half of his own country's 200-year-old Jewish community has disappeared since he assumed power in 1998. But then the evaporation of this patriotic, productive, and loyal group is largely a consequence of Chavez's hostile policies and rhetoric...

Last week, Israel Defence Minister Ehud Barak spoke at the annual Davos Forum, and told listeners that tough sanctions on Iran may be too late because Iran was " drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical [military operation] could block them." Israeli concern over Iran's nuclear program is clearly reaching a crescendo. So an article by veteran Israeli security correspondent Ronen Bergman in last weekend's New York Times magazine on Israeli thinking on the possibility of a limited military strike to delay the project has gained considerable attention.

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.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Hamish McDonald (Jan. 21) came away from a recent visit to Israel with the view that the country's "old liberality" is being whittled away by the right and the ultra-orthodox.

The latter, he wrote, "are 20 per cent of the population, breeding three times faster than more secular Jews." In fact the ultra-orthodox are 11 per cent of the Jewish population. He also wrote that they "are spilling out into the lands occupied since 1967, whittling down the territory held out to the Palestinians for their future state."

Wrong again. Settlements themselves take up no more than 1-2 per cent of the West Bank, a fact Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accepted as true last November 3 on Arabic Radio As-Shams...

Two news stories emerged today, both reporting positive steps forward in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. The first of these concerns an online conference being held by a group called YaLa-Young Leaders, designed to bring people together from both sides and have a productive conversation about the conflict, hoping to form some genuine reconciliation efforts.

As Kel Si Loos reported in the Miami Herald, the group has been attracting a large number of members from the Middle East and...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This month's AIR cover story deals with the myths and realities of al-Jazeera televison, the Qatari network that undoubtedly helped to bring about the "Arab Spring" and re-shape the Middle East political and media environment over the past decade. And in its English language incarnation, it has been moving out of the Middle East into the wider world for a number of years now.

As the cover story demonstrates, while it's clear that the English language version of the channel does not contain the blatant radical political agenda that the channel often features in its Arabic incarnation, it is also apparent that, even in English, it is not simply another public broadcaster.

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...

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.

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.

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...

The issue of public gender discrimination and harassment in Israel has received significant media coverage both in Israel and abroad.

It began with recent controversies over women singing in a ceremony for the Israeli army, which was boycotted by religious soldiers, and the informal gender segregation on some buses in ultra-Orthodox (haredi) areas. (See a previous blog post on these issues.)

It has now been compounded by an interview with an eight year old Orthodox girl from Beit Shemesh, Naama Margolis, who was visibly shaken when she talked about her fear of walking to school due to the harassment she has been subjected to by some ultra-Orthodox Jews who have insulted and harrassed her for being dressed ‘immodestly'.

Naama said: "When I walk to school in the morning, I used to get a tummy ache because I was so scared that they were going to stand and start yelling and spitting".

The harassment that Naama experienced has rightfully been strongly condemned by both Israeli political and religious leaders.

A young Italian journalist named Ruben Salvadori has prepared a film about how he and other photojournalists reporting from the West Bank not only report what they see but help to create the clashes and dramatic scenes which helps them sell photographs...

Israeli President Shimon Peres's groundbreaking visit to Vietnam in November with a delegation of more than 60 prominent Israelis, including two government ministers and leading figures in finance, industry, agriculture and defense was a landmark event. The delegation was given a rousing welcome, including a dinner with all the members of the Vietnamese government in which Peres's hosts surprised him with a group of Vietnamese singers who had prepared renditions of Israeli songs in excellent Hebrew.

This document looks at the Israeli legal process regarding Palestinian minors in the West Bank (hereinafter, the "Area") accused of using stones as weapons, including a specific analysis of a recent two month period, August and September 2011.

Two recent stories in the Australian newspaper by Middle East correspondent John Lyons - "Stone cold justice" (Weekend Australian Magazine, Nov. 26) http://tinyurl.com/6puavp9 and "Rudd seeks action on torture allegations involving Palestinian children" (Australian, Dec. 17) http://tinyurl.com/6rdzqjr - have generated a degree of controversy about Israel's judicial treatment of Palestinian minors in the West Bank accused of using stones and rocks as weapons.

On Dec. 3, the Australian published an opinion piece from NGO Monitor's Gerald Steinberg that provides context for the treatment of Palestinian minors and largely disputes the substance of the claims made in Lyons' stories. Steinberg's article can be read here - http://tinyurl.com/7m6j3wf...

There is good reason for being sceptical of reports suggesting Hamas is shifting from armed resistance to non-violent resistance and will settle for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders.

In recent "Media Week" columns, I have reviewed the first three episodes of the British/French drama, "The Promise", shown on SBS TV. This series has been characterised throughout by rampant and crudely propagandistic political messages directed against Israel and Jews and selective, distorted portrayals of history, and it really hit its straps in the final episode (18/12).

The US Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, addressing a conference on antisemitism on November 30, controversially insisted that Muslim "hatred and indeed sometimes... violence directed at Jews generally [is] a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories" and should therefore not be seen as the same thing as "real" antisemitism. He went on to insist that a Mideast peace deal would see a "huge reduction of this form of labeled ‘antisemitism'."

Both Palestinian groups and pro-Palestinian Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) often accuse Israel of seeking to "Judaise" Jerusalem. For instance, following their admission to the UN cultural organisation UNESCO in October, one of the things the Palestinian Authority said they wanted to do was sue Israel in international forums for supposedly "systematically destroying and forging Arab and Islamic culture in Jerusalem." Similarly, at a controversial rally in Cairo on November 25 at which there was also recitation of a hadith [saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad] about killing all Jews, Sheikh Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of al-Azhar University, proclaimed, "we shall not allow the Zionists to Judaise al-Quds (Jerusalem)."

A decade after it last held power, and some two generations after losing its hegemonic sway over Israeli politics - the rehabilitation of Israel's Labor party seems finally underway.

The election in September of Shelly (Rachel) Yachimovich as Labor Chairperson, the eighth election of a party leader since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, appears to reflect an ideological reckoning and a strategic reorientation that, in due course, may well bear electoral fruit.

There has been much written about the impasse in restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in recent years. Most recently, US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta sparked controversy at the Brookings Institute on Dec. 2 when, following a speech, he was asked about what steps Israel "should take now" to move toward peace and replied "Just get to the damn table."

Recently the issue of public female discrimination in Israel has received significant media attention following recent controversies including over women singing in a ceremony for the Israeli army which was boycotted by religious soldiers, and the informal gender segregation on some buses in Ultra orthodox (haredi) areas. According to one stream of ultra-Orthodox tradition men should not listen to women sing. More commonly, Ultra-orthodox men attempt to avoid mingling with women who are not members of their family.

While any form of alleged public gender discrimination must be condemned and addressed, the incidents have been unfairly exaggerated as reflecting a general problem in all of Israeli society...

It wasn't even close. In fact it was a "landslide". That is how pro-Israel media watchdog Honest Reporting describes its decision to bestow the Guardian newspaper the 2011 "Dishonest Reporting Award" for its relentless anti-Israel coverage.

Readers of Fairfax newspapers will be familiar with the Guardian's news stories and one-sided selection of opinion pieces via their regular appearance in the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times.

SBS TV showed a four-part drama, "The Promise", from Britain's Channel 4 and France's Canal+ and Arte France, which was characterised by rampant and crudely propagandistic political messages directed against Israel and Jews, selective, distorted portrayals of historical events, and the sanitising of Arab behaviour throughout the past seven decades.

This Update deals with some claims being made that Israeli democracy is supposedly eroding or under threat as the result of a variety of controversial legislative changes being discussed in Israel, as well as certain recent controversies concerning the treatment of women by sectors of the ultra-religious community in Israeli society.

First up is American law professor and civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz, who makes it clear that the intense arguments he witnessed while recently visiting Israel over the issues in question actually make it very clear that Israel is a vibrant democracy under no threat.

Episode three of "The Promise" (11/12) sees British Mandate soldier Len, who has had his platoon raided and soldiers shot, has been caught in the King David Hotel bombing and has been shot on the street, kidnapped with two colleagues and held in a hole for 15 days, until he is released and his colleagues hanged. He must be the unluckiest soldier in the British army. In the present day, Len's grand-daughter Erin takes a Palestinian to the house, where he very pointedly asks her friend's parents where they are from "originally" and the mother begrudgingly tells him Hungary. She visits Hebron where she hears an Israeli tell a group, "You'll notice most of the streets around here are deserted. It's known as the sterile zone. Why? To make room for 500 Jewish settlers who have no right to be here under international law, almost the entire Palestinian population of Hebron has been moved out." This is a gross exaggeration and ignores the ancient history of Hebron's Jewish community, and its religious significance.

This Update features two pieces on one of the unpleasant surprises to come out of the first round of the Egyptian elections last week, the unexpectedly strong showing of the hyper-Islamist Al-Nour Salafist parties, who got 24.4% of the vote, second behind the also Islamist Muslim Brotherhood with 36%. Both reports are from analysts currently on the ground in Cairo.

Washington Institute scholar Eric Trager describes his own encounters with Salafist candidates and activists, as well as locals who support them. He finds them viewed by locals as honest, even saintly, despite the fact that they seem to have considerable inexplicable money for their campaign and it is unclear where this came from.

SBS TV is showing a four-part drama, “The Promise”. The series, from Britain’s Channel 4 and France’s Canal+ and Arte France, has been widely criticised for its rampant bias against Jews and Israel. The first episode (27/11) introduced the main character, Erin, an 18-year-old English girl who stays with a rich Israeli family. She has the diary of her grandfather Len who served with the British troops in Palestine immediately after World War II, so the story switches between the British battling the treacherous Jews and the Israelis oppressing the Palestinians.

Today both the Age and Sydney Morning Herald published an article by Harriet Sherwood regarding Israel's plans to relocate the Jahalin Bedouin from their camps on land which they do not own to a permanent Bedouin town.

The article, originally published in the Guardian does not provide a balanced understanding of the issues at hand. The Bedouin are living on land to which they have no legal title that has been within the municipal boundaries of Ma'aleh Adumim since 1977. Relocation has been periodically discussed with the Bedouin since the 1980s...

Oft-quoted Australian "strategic analyst" Hugh White had a piece in The Age yesterday day on the Iranian nuclear crisis which betrayed such a lack of serious and logical strategic thought, so many shallow and glib yet ill-informed assumptions, that it seemed to be simply begging for a thorough "fisking" (Urban Dictionary definition: "The word is derived from articles written by Robert Fisk that were easily refuted, and refers to a point-by-point debunking of lies and/or idiocies.") Here's my effort.

The US ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, has shown breathtaking ignorance, insensitivity and naivety by blaming Israel for Arab and Muslim antisemitism in Europe.

Following on from this post concerning an accusation of Israel supposedly "pinkwashing" its public image by spruiking its record on gay rights to hide alleged injustices, a number of gay writers have penned scathing responses in the Jewish and international media.

Writing in the Forward, Jay Michaelson gives a critique of the piece by Sarah Schulman in the New York Times that began the whole kerfuffle...

On 29 November 64 years ago, the UN General Assembly voted on the partition plan, and the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 was adopted by a vote of 33 to 13, recommending the establishment of two states - Arab and Jewish. The Jews accepted the partition plan, the Arabs did not and five Arab states went to war with Israel.

However, November 29, is not called ‘Israel day' but rather the ‘International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People'. Marking this day at the UN was a General Assembly resolution on the "Question of Palestine" which condemned Israel, pre-empted the results of final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and failed to acknowledge Israel's legitimate security rights, amongst other concerning features of the resolution.

In response to the UN resolution, Ron Prosor, UN Representative to Israel delivered a stirring speech that condemned the UN's consistent attack on Israel and outlined the real reasons that have so far prevented peace...

On Sunday night, SBS-TV screened the first of four episodes of a controversial British historical drama set in pre-state and contemporary Israel, entitled "The Promise". When it was screened in Britain by Channel 4 in February, it led to an official letter of complaint by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, as well as strong critiques from Booker prize winning novelist Howard Jacobson, noted British academic expert on the Holocaust David Cesarani, and others....

I include below some of the critiques of "The Promise" from Britain for the benefit of Australian audiences.

Speaking to CNN recently, Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak posed a terrifying scenario:

"Who would have come to rescue Kuwait when it was taken by Saddam Hussein 20 years ago, if Saddam could have said credibly enough that he has three or four crude nuclear devices?"

The answer of course, is that no one would have acted. In all likelihood, Iraq would still be in control of Kuwait and all its oil wealth today and Saddam would still likely be in power.

Watching the debate, both in Israel and elsewhere, surrounding the proposed new NGO (Non-Government Organisation) laws in the Knesset, it is hard not to be struck by the hyperbole being employed. Some Israelis, primarily from the political left, are railing about "threats to the very foundation of Israel's democracy" whereas others, mainly on the right, are decrying the "diplomatic warfare being waged by foreign governments against Israel". Looking past this rhetoric, however, the two proposed laws as discussed below are neither revolutionary nor unreasonable. In fact, they are in many ways following the example of other democratic countries, Australia included.

Europe is peering into the abyss.

And the crisis is far from over. Indeed, it is likely to intensify in 2012 as financial contagion spreads from Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy to France, which holds large quantities of Italian debt, and then to Britain, which is exposed to substantial French debt. Italy, whose debt approaches A$3 trillion, has pushed realistic hopes of rescue beyond reach.

Just as dangerous, the financial crisis is accompanied by social and political upheaval. Already, two European governments - Papandreou's Greece and Berlusconi's Italy - have been swept away on tides of unsustainable debt. Their places have been taken by unelected technocrats. More heads may roll. More unelected governments may be on the way.

"Something like this might really happen," warned the narrator of the 1959 comedy "The Mouse that Roared" while a nuclear explosion was displayed in the background. And then, before proceeding to the story about a remote duchy that saves itself from bankruptcy by stealing a doomsday bomb, the narrator explained: "We thought we should put you in the proper mood."

Faced with a steadily maturing Iranian nuclear program, Israel has long been in the proper mood, but its consequent efforts to convince the world that "something like this might happen" have so far registered partial success at best.

Rioting in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011 unleashed a tidal wave of unrest across the Arab world that was soon designated the "Arab Spring." Enthusiasts in the West hailed a new birth of freedom for a giant slice of humanity that has been living in despotic darkness for centuries. But historians in 50 or a hundred years may well point to the 1979 events in Teheran - the Islamist revolution that toppled the Shah - as the real trigger of this so-called "spring" (which is looking more and more like a deep, forbidding winter). And the Islamist Hamas victory in the Palestinian general elections of 2006 and that organisation's armed takeover of the Gaza Strip the following year probably signified further milestones on the same path.

The Sinai is not only a haven for terrorists, but it also a centre of people and organ smuggling.

The depth of the lawlessness was recently captured in CNN documentary "Death in the Desert", which reported on unimaginable violence experienced by Africans who cross the Sinai in the desperate attempt to make it to Israel.

Africans particularly from Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea fleeing their local hardships pay Bedouin tribes in the border area between Sudan and Egypt around $2,000 to be smuggled into Israel. But these smugglers often imprison and blackmail the helpless refugees or sell them to other Sinai Bedouin, who do the same, rather than fulfilling the deal.  If the Africans cannot pay the ransom, and sometimes even if they do pay, they are enslaved, raped, tortured and killed.

Fast becoming a viral sensation, a new YouTube video (below) shows two Spanish men "photobombing" an al-Jazeera broadcast by engaging in a long, passionate kiss in frame as the reporter is talking. 

The irony of the video is that while the two were supposedly making a point about marriage equality in Spain, they happened to do so on a state-owned network from a country in which homosexuality is punishable by lashings and imprisonment. Indeed, a report from the UN High Commission for Refugees has this to say on homosexuality in Qatar:

Homosexual behavior is illegal [in Qatar]. Islamic laws against homosexuality are applied. [In Qatari society], homosexuality is taboo. There is no visible social support for gay and lesbian rights.

On the topic of homosexuality in the Middle East, Sarah Shulman has written in the New York Times on the prominence of the gay community in Israel and Israeli officials speaking out against the intolerance shown to homosexuals in...

Former DFAT head Richard Woolcott wrote a piece for the Age (11/11) critical of Australia's vote against Palestinian membership of UNESCO. Having spent more than half his article setting out the merits of Australia obtaining a seat on the UN Security Council, he then wrote, "In these circumstances, I find it both surprising and a decisive setback to our election prospects that the Prime Minister decided Australia should vote against the admission of Palestine to UNESCO."

A media stunt by a group of Palestinians trying to falsely tar Israel as an apartheid state not only caused some in the fourth estate to fall hook, line and sinker but to abrogate basic journalistic standards.

Six Palestinians called The West Bank Freedom Riders cynically tried to lay claim to the legacy and imagery of African Americans who fought against segregation in the 1950s/60s in the United States by "proving" they are banned from using Israeli public buses to cross over from the West Bank into Jerusalem.

But an analysis by Simon Plosker from Honest Reporting of the claims made by the six "Freedom Riders" and the media coverage shows the absurdity of the stunt and how easily it could be proved as dishonest propaganda.

A constant talking point on the Middle East is that Israeli building in settlements in the West Bank is supposedly taking up more and more land and supposedly making Palestinian statehood unviable...

So how much of the West Bank is covered by settlements?..

Australians should be proud of the fact that our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister have consistently and publicly supported, with bipartisan agreement, a genuine, negotiated two-state resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This is why Australia wisely voted against the admission of Palestine to UNESCO and why Australia should vote against Palestinian 'statehood' if and when it comes to the United Nations General Assembly.

Following up on the post Tuesday concerning controversial Israeli proposals to limit or tax foreign government funding to "political' Non-Governmental Organisations in Israel, a Jerusalem Post editorial on the subject has an interesting fact that may help explain why some Israelis are so concerned about the issue:

...European governments spend more on left-wing NGOs operating in Israel - between $75 million and $100m. a year - than their total contributions to nonprofit human rights groups in other Middle East countries, according to NGO Monitor.

There has been some controversy in Israel over a proposal coming out of Israel's Ministerial Committee for Legislation which would limit or tax the ability of foreign governments or international bodies like the UN to fund Israeli NGOs...

American law professor David Bernstein has an excellent post challenging the idea that such a law (and it is by no means clear that such a law can get through the Knesset, Israel's parliament, or what its provisions would be if it did) would be undemocratic...

Eric Falt, assistant director general for external relations and public information at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has issued an official letter of protest from UNESCO's director general, Irina Bokova regarding a cartoon which UNESCO claimed constituted incitement.

This could have been an encouraging sign that UNESCO is finally acting against incitement, racism and specifically antisemitism prevalent in Arab and Muslim media, especially in the state-sponsored press. However, the cartoon that so inflamed UNESCO officials was published in Haaretz, an Israeli independent newspaper, which is protected under Israel's laws regarding freedom of the press. Moreover, the only incitement that seemed to concern UNESCO is incitement against UNESCO.

As outlined in yesterday's update, the UN's atomic energy watchdog has just released a report that just falls short of definitively stating that Iran has a nuclear weapons program - seemingly the closest that the UN ever comes to an unequivocal condemnation of a country that is not Israel. The report has emerged amid rumours that Israel is gearing-up for an attack on Iran and is busy soliciting support from allies in the UK and the US.

Predictably, Iran did not respond with steps to assure the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful, but instead blamed an American conspiracy and then threatened to destroy Israel.

Iran denies the allegations and says the evidence used by the U.N. nuclear watchdog was fabricated by the United States and its allies. It has insisted that its nuclear program is aimed only at generating electricity and ensuring an independent fuel supply for its nuclear power plants.

... "If smoke columns rise from our nuclear facilities, then this scenario could happen in other areas," said Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces. "The Dimona station in Israel is the easiest...

Writing in the Australian (4/11) in support of the decision by UNESCO to grant membership to the Palestinians, Izzat Abdulhadi, head of the General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, claimed, "Israeli occupation has not seen the protection and preservation of these riches. Israeli occupation has seen deliberate neglect, damage and the ongoing seizure of Palestine's cultural heritage and territory as its own, violently and with impunity, excluding the interests and rights of all others. Yet Australia voted no to Palestinian membership of UNESCO, preferring, it would seem, the theft and destruction of Palestine's and the world's heritage and saying no to peace." By contrast, he claimed, "Palestine is committed to the protection and preservation of these treasures." The track record shows the opposite to be the case.

As readers may have seen reported, a private conversation between US President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at Cannes last week was accidentally overhead by reporters. In it, the two were talking rather unflatteringly about Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu. According to the reports, Sarkozy said of Netanyahu "I can't stand him anymore, he's a liar" while Obama responded, "You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day."

This story has sparked a fair amount of comment from various quarters concerning what it says about the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu (which all informed observers already knew was hardly notable for its warmth), and the wider US-Israel relationship.

A new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report due to be released tomorrow is believed to contain compelling evidence that Iran is now at the end stage of its nuclear research program and is actively working on weaponisation technologies.

Ahead of the report's scheduled release we present a range of reading that predicts what the report will likely detail, where the effort to contain Iran's nuclear weapons program is at and whether the time has come to move from economic sanctions to military options.

Richard Goldstone's op-ed in the New York Times earlier this week explaining why the claim that Israel is an "apartheid state" is baseless was primarily targeted against the so-called "Russell Tribunal on Palestine", due to take place this weekend in Cape Town, which will allegedly "examine whether Israel's practices against the Palestinians is in breach of the prohibition on apartheid under International Law."

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues "apartheid" policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a "hearing" on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is not a "tribunal." The "evidence" is going to be one-sided and the members of the "jury" are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.

Goldstone seems to have struck a chord with some of the Tribunal's organisers - Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Michael Mansfield have responded to Goldstone in the pages of the Guardian, defending the decision that the Tribunal has yet to officially consider...

On Wednesday a flotilla of two ships - the Canadian ship Tahrir and the Irish ship Saoirse quietly left a Turkish port with the aim to breach the Gaza blockade by Friday.

News of this latest flotilla "Freedom Waves to Gaza" was kept secret until the ships reached international waters.

According to the organisers, the 27 activists on board came from Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United States, and included Palestinians and at least one Israeli Arab citizen.

This Update features two comments on the vote by the UN Educational, Social and Culture Organisation (UNESCO) to admit "Palestine" as a full member on Monday, a measure opposed by the Australia (see AIJAC's media release on the Australian vote here).  It also contains some comments on reports originating in the Israeli press alleging that the Israeli Government is stepping up preparations for a possible military strike on Iran's nuclear program.

Jake Lynch, Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, criticised his university for holding a research forum between Israelis and Australians. He told Imre Salusinszky, "The university risks sustaining reputational damage if the forum goes ahead. It risks being seen as condoning the complicity by Israeli universities in Israel's breaches of international law and indirectly raises problems with the university's social inclusion policy" (Australian, 25/10). Salusinszky reported that, in a letter to the university's Deputy Vice Chancellor, Lynch "says the forum is contrary to the university's social inclusion policy, which requires it to reach out to students in western Sydney. He says most Muslim students live in the west and feel ‘a sense of resentment and alienation resulting from the predominance of pro-Israeli voices in Australia's political and media discourses'." Lynch, who is also an executive member of the Sydney Peace Foundation, which awards the Sydney Peace Prize, seems to have a very skewed notion of what peace actually entails.

A whole series of events last night made an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities suddenly seem far closer than had previously been the case. After a week of speculation in the Israeli press, Haaretz reported yesterday that the Prime Minister and Defence Minister are trying to gain cabinet support for a strike.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are trying to muster a majority in the cabinet in favor of military action against Iran, a senior Israeli official has said. According to the official, there is a "small advantage" in the cabinet for the opponents of such an attack.

Netanyahu and Barak recently persuaded Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who previously objected to attacking Iran, to support such a move.

This report coincided with the test-firing of a new long-range Israeli missile, which could be capable of reaching targets in Iran...

The US-Israel alliance has come under increasing strain in recent time with both academics and US policy makers suggesting that the alliance has become more of a liability than an asset for US national interests. For instance, the infamous Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer based their whole "Israel Lobby" slander on the assumption that being associated with Israel was obviously and unequivocally bad for the US, and only some undemocratic and vaguely nefarious lobby could possible explain the continuing US alliance with Israel, as noted Middle East scholar Martin Kramer analysed and debunked brilliantly a few years ago.

However, a new report released by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy "Israel: A Strategic Asset for the United States" (‘the report'), does even more to refute this trend in analysis and instead argues that US policy makers should acknowledge that the US-Israel alliance strongly serves US national interests in several important ways.

South African Judge Richard Goldstone has written an op-ed in this New York Times on 31 October condemning the false allegation that Israel is an ‘apartheid' state. He writes:

"The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony."

This is the same Goldstone who did a great deal of damage to Israel by lending his name to the biased UN fact-finding mission into the Gaza conflict in 2009 which condemned Israel for deliberately killing civilians and war crimes while all but ignoring the Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel.

Goldstone later recanted his support for the report after realising that much of the information relied upon in the ‘Goldstone Report' was not credible and biased. In an op-ed in the Washington Post in April this year he stated, "if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

Finally Gilad Shalit, who became known in Israel as ‘everyone's son', has returned home. His liberation led to what can only be called a sense of national euphoria across the Jewish state.

The costs to gain his release after five years of captivity were, objectively, enormous. Among the 1,027 prisoners freed were those estimated to have the blood of 599 people, mostly civilians, on their hands. They include the masterminds of some of the most horrific terror bombings in Israeli history.

Sukkot, the feast of Tabernacles, is the only Jewish holiday on which the Bible expressly commands the Jews to be happy. In Israel this Autumn, it turned out not only happy, but euphoric, as abducted Sergeant Gilad Shalit returned home after more than five years of unvisited and unlocated captivity in a Gaza basement. And yet, the national melodrama quickly gave way to a strategic hangover wrapped in moral soul searching.

The public's enlistment for the cause of Shalit's return has been unprecedented. A well organised media campaign, led with remarkable poise by Shalit's parents Noam and Aviva and public relations professionals who say they worked voluntarily, turned a previously anonymous foot soldier into a virtual celebrity and a fixture of the public domain.

Four hundred and seventy seven Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel in the deal to free IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, held captive by Hamas since 2006, with another 550 to be released in November. The prisoners include some of the most notorious terrorists perpetrators against Israel including individuals involved in the Sbarro and Café Moment suicide bombings, murderers of Nachshon Wachsman and the videotaped October 2000 lynching of IDF reservists Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami in Ramallah.

Israel's new "Iron Dome" anti-rocket active defence system made its operational debut in southern Israel in two rounds of escalation in the fighting along the Gaza strip (April and August 2011). The development of active defence systems in Israel that started with the "Arrow" missile defence system in the early 1990s and in which Iron Dome is the latest chapter has always been accompanied by acrimonious public debate and behind-closed-doors battles within the defence establishment. These battles have been mainly between the political leadership and the professional military echelons - which resisted the diversion of resources from offensive to defensive weapons.

This Update features some comment on the outcome of the Tunisian elections last week, and their wider implications.

First up is the Jerusalem Post arguing in an editorial that Tunisia demonstrated why it is the most promising candidate for democracy in the Arab world - as shown by the fair and violence-free elections. Yet the country also gave a plurality to an Islamist party, Ennahda, albeit one often described as "soft Islamist". The paper notes, however, that the head of Ennadha is not only violently anti-Israel, but his comparison of his party to Turkey's AKP is not as positive as some seem to imagine.

The Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange prompted various editorials. The worst, an inaccuracy-riddled effort in the Age (20/10), remarkably expressed the hope that the exchange would "prompt a rethink in Israel" and "be an incentive to renew negotiations". It doubted it would be, continuing, "In part, this is because Mr Netanyahu...refuses to end Jewish settlement activity on Palestinian land." This is clearly untrue, as the recent ten-month moratorium on building of houses in settlements demonstrated. That this did not lead to negotiation shows that Palestinian intransigence, not building within the existing boundaries of settlements is the problem. In addition, the land is not "Palestinian". The borders are to be settled by negotiation. The editorial goes on to advocate that Israel "accept Mr Abbas's conditions for talks." It should urge the Palestinians to talk without preconditions, as the Middle East Quartet proposed. Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald editorial (20/10) stated, "The Israeli Prime Minister should also be reviewing his stance toward the Palestinian Authority."

After four decades of tyranny, Colonel Gaddafi, the Clown Prince of brutal dictators, is dead.

Gaddafi's crimes were many and well documented.

At this time we must reflect on his victims and note that at the height of his brutality some on the left and right in Australia supported him.

His passing, however, doesn't mean we should be unconcerned with what comes next in Libya.

The Australian (13/10) titled its editorial about the deal to release Gilad Shalit "Upholding a hallowed principle". With typical insight, it concluded, "It is galling to see terrorists released. We take comfort however from Shalit's imminent release from detention, which was against all international norms. We will share his joy when he is reunited with his family. The Israelis emerge with honour, having upheld the principle that human life is sacred and needless suffering cannot be endured. We can only hope that the returning Palestinians will do the same." A Sydney Morning Herald editorial (14/10) also sensitively considered Israel's dilemma, stating "To accede to the demands of any kidnapper is repugnant. It is all the more so when Hamas, which controlled Shalit's fate, has never abandoned the destruction of Israel as its stated aim. Yet equally, to abandon a captured soldier goes against human nature, as well as political good sense and the interest of Israel's defence force." 

Kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is free after five years and four months in captivity in Gaza, and the elation in Israel is overwhelming. (An excellent collection of news and analysis on the release and its aftermath has been assembled by Britain's Telegraph. Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu's remarks welcoming Shalit home are here.) This Update focuses on the significance and aftermath of his release.

Interviewed last night by ABC Lateline's Ali Moore, former Haaretz editor David Landau, who once infamously told then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he wished to see Israel "raped" in a US intervention forcibly imposing a settlement to the conflict, expressed his horror at the "weakness" that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is displaying to the world. According to Landau, Netanyahu did so through his sudden reversal of his previous refusal to agree to a prisoner exchange for Gilad Shalit.

I find myself in a strange and invidious situation because I'm not naturally of the right. I'm very much of the peace camp of the side of the sort of, so to speak, political spectrum that's always encouraged dealing with the Palestinians in the hope of making a final peace deal with the Palestinians, yet I find myself frankly horrified and, as an Israeli, also mortified by this shameless turnabout by the prime minister, Mr Netanyahu...

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As the five-year hostage ordeal of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit draws to a close, we offer up some of the standout commentary from the last week on the merits of the deal reached by the Israeli government with Hamas.

The tension in the debate concerns the personal interest and the national interest and how these two forces interact have caused intense heartache and headaches for Israel.

Israel released the names of the Palestinian prisoners to be released in deal to free IDF soldier Gilad Shalit who has been held captive by Hamas since 2006. The prisoners include some of the most notorious terrorists perpetrators against Israel including individuals involved in the Sbarro and Café Moment suicide bombings, murderers of Nachshon Wachsman and the video taped October 2000 lynch of IDF reservists Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami in Ramallah.

Yesterday, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected four petitions against the prisoner swap deal to free Shalit. The petitions were filed by the Almagor Terror Victims Association and relatives of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks.

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Media commentators on the Palestinian prisoner swap deal to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas have at times wrongly insinuated that there is a degree of moral equivalence on both sides.

For example, in Ruth Pollard's "Israel names prisoners to be free" on The Age (17/10/2011), she writes:

"For Palestinians, who have at least 6000 loved ones in Israeli prisons, some for serious crimes, some for political activism and many held without charge or trial, the release of 1027 is not enough. Anxious relatives of prisoners gathered in town squares throughout the West Bank at the weekend, holding photographs of family members and praying their names would be on the list of those to be released."

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There has once again been a plethora of pieces about the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN. Probably the most misguided was by Malcolm Fraser in the Age (4/10). Dismissing as "thin" the sensible argument that agreement should come through negotiations, he disturbingly claimed that Western opposition to the Palestinian bid was "because of the lock that Israel has over the policies of too many Western countries." His "two major stumbling blocks to peace" were not Palestinian intransigence, but Palestinian division and "the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, the daily diminution of what might become Palestine." In fact, building in settlements since 2003 has only been within the existing settlement boundaries, so there has been no diminution of land.

It would appear that there is no room for Jews in the Arab Spring.

Last year, before the Arab Spring, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas caused outrage when she recommended that Israeli Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else."

As an American of Lebanese descent, the 89-year-old Thomas should have known that the Arab Middle East was home to approximately 850,000 Jews known as Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews for thousands of years.

This is a very hopeful announcement, given the many years of effort by successive Israeli governments, with the full support of the Israeli people and all with a genuine concern for morality. If Gilad Shalit is released this will indeed be a joyful end to a terrible violation of  basic human rights...

It won't stop the revisionist propaganda underpinning the Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence campaign, but newspaper accounts from 1949 prove that the nascent State of Israel supported the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza and opposed the land being absorbed by surrounding Arab countries.

The Israeli Government confirmed that a deal has been reached with Hamas for the release of 25-year-old IDF soldier Gilad Shalit - kidnapped by Hamas on 25 June 2006 - in exchange for 1027 Palestinian prisoners.

As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced:

"In the coming days we will return Gilad to the bosom of his parents, Aviva and Noam, to his brother Yoel, his sister Hadas, his grandfather Tzvi and the entire people of Israel".

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As readers are hopefully aware, the big news out of Israel is the approval given overnight by the Israeli cabinet to a deal that will see long-captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit released by Hamas in exchange for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners. (The reported details of the deal have been summarised by AIJAC's own Sharyn Mittelman.) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's statement on the Egyptian-German mediated agreement is here. AIJAC's statement on this news is here.

Speaking to ABC "Lateline" recently, Palestinian Authority (PA) official Nabil Shaath lamented that the Israelis have been "in full occupation of [his] country for years, 62 years." There is a subtle but profound message in that number. Going back 62 years, Israel existed in the territory set by a 1949 armistice agreement with the surrounding Arab countries, within the so-called "Green Line" that now delineates what is internationally recognised indisputably as Israeli sovereign territory.

Until June 1967, the West Bank was occupied and annexed by Jordan and Gaza was placed under military rule by Egypt. That Shaath considers Israel's existence in 1949 as an "occupation" speaks volumes about the true mindset of the PA - for all of the rhetoric about a return to the "pre-1967 borders", even mainstream PA figures consider Israel's existence, even within the 1948 borders, as illegitimate...

In recent weeks, "price tag" crimes, committed by right-wing extremists, have intensified in Israel. Those acts included burning mosques in the West Bank and spraying them with graffiti, setting private Palestinian vehicles on fire, breaking into an IDF military base and sabotaging army vehicles in the base's auto-shop and leaving threatening graffiti at a left-wing activist's residents in Jerusalem. While the police and Shin - Bet are investigating these incidents, last week's signalled yet another red line crossed as price tag acts were committed within Israeli town inside the 1967-lines (the "Green Line"), and fierce condemnations were expressed from all sides of the political spectrum.

Today's Update looks at Syria, Iran and Turkey against the backdrop of the veto by China and Russia of sanctions by the UN Security Council against the Assad regime in Damascus for its ongoing violent crackdown against anti-government protesters. The resolution was supported by nine members but, significantly, Lebanon, which occupies a temporary seat on the Security Council, abstained from the vote, as did South Africa, India and Brazil. After the vote the EU indicated it intended passing its own sanctions against Syria. Meanwhile Turkey's PM Recep Erdogan continues to use the Syria issue and relentlessly attacks Israel for his own regional ambitions. We offer a number of articles that reveal the changing dynamics in the Middle East that are are not receiving sufficient attention in Australia and elsewhere.

The PLO ambassador to Brazil, Alzeben Ibrahim, has told a group of Brazilian university students that "Israel should disappear," according to a Portuguese-language media report.

AIJAC Senior Policy Analyst Jamie Hyams interviewed on ABC News24 (28/9/11) explains why Palestinian intransigence and not Israeli settlement building is the real reason peace talks have not resumed since 2008.

He also discusses why the announcement of approval for a proposed application to build 1,100 homes in the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo does not warrant international attention or condemnation.

Today's Update looks at last week's controversial approval for a proposed plan to build 1,100 homes within the boundaries of the Jewish suburb of Gilo in Jerusalem. Gilo lies just over the Green Line and is now home to 40,000 Israelis. As Commentary's Jonathan Tobin explains, Gilo is a symbol for many Israelis, having been a target for numerous terrorist sniper shootings during the Second Intifada and "was the laboratory where Palestinian terrorists sought to discover whether they could force Jews into abandoning their homes. They failed".

The latest news on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has focused on the announcement of the planned construction of new homes in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Gilo, which is located over the 1967 Green line.

Meanwhile, on October 1, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal also made an announcement that is a serious blow to peace efforts, yet this announcement was barely reported by the media.

Meshal told an international conference in Iran called the ‘5th International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada', that: "Palestinians must resort to resistance no matter how costly it is, until Palestine is free and Israel is destroyed". Hamas' founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel and a Palestinian state in all of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

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Today's Update focuses on the recent events at the UN. The Palestinians submitted their formal application for full membership of the UN, and both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly. The Palestinian application is here, the speech by Abbas is here and the speech by Netanyahu is here. Following the speeches, the Quartet of the UN, the European Union, Russia and the US released a proposal for the resumption of negotiations. Israel has decided to accept the proposal, but the Palestinians seem likely to reject it.

Ladies and gentlemen, Israel has extended its hand in peace from the moment it was established 63 years ago. On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I extend that hand again today. I extend it to the people of Egypt and Jordan, with renewed friendship for neighbors with whom we have made peace. I extend it to the people of Turkey, with respect and good will. I extend it to the people of Libya and Tunisia, with admiration for those trying to build a democratic future. I extend it to the other peoples of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, with whom we want to forge a new beginning. I extend it to the people of Syria, Lebanon and Iran, with awe at the courage of those fighting brutal repression.

But most especially, I extend my hand to the Palestinian people, with whom we seek a just and lasting peace.

On 23 September, when the Palestinians presented their application for full membership to the UN, the Middle East Quartet (consisting of the US, EU, Russia and the UN) announced a proposal to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to direct negotiations.

The Quartet statement urged the parties "to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without delay or preconditions."

The operational paragraphs of the Quartet proposal included:

"1. Within a month there will be a preparatory meeting between the parties to agree an agenda and method of proceeding in the negotiation.
2. At that meeting there will be a commitment by both sides that the objective of any negotiation is to reach an agreement within a timeframe agreed to by the parties but not longer than the end of 2012. The Quartet expects the parties to come forward with comprehensive proposals within three months on territory and security, and to have made substantial progress within six months..."

Tony Blair, the Quartet's envoy to the Middle East, said that if the Israelis and Palestinians are serious about peace, they should respond positively to the initiative.

Israel did immediately respond positively to the Quartet's proposal, however, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas did not, responding instead negatively.

The Question Palestine is intricately linked with the United Nations via the resolutions adopted by its various organs and agencies and via the essential and lauded role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - UNRWA - which embodies the international responsibility towards the plight of Palestine refugees, who are the victims of Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) that occurred in 1948. We aspire for and seek a greater and more effective role for the United Nations in working to achieve a just and comprehensive peace in our region that ensures the inalienable, legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people as defined by the resolutions of international legitimacy of the United Nations.

It has become increasingly clear that, sadly, the Arab upheavals that swept the Middle East this year are not resulting in a democratic "Arab Spring". Rather an "Islamist awakening" seems to be occurring alongside a resurgence of extreme Arab nationalism.

The middle class crowds demanding "freedom" and "democracy" seem to have lost the battle for the streets in Cairo and elsewhere. The old demons of violent, conspiratorial anti-Americanism and antisemitism, which seemed so blessedly absent in the initial demonstrations, are back with a vengeance.

It is hard to remain unmoved by acts of blatant cynicism. Not those small, nasty gestures of crass stupidity that seek to advance a particular vested interest, but grand acts of faux-statecraft that leave the observer unsure whether to laugh or cry. Last month's antics of Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, offered a textbook example.

The unilateralist gambit by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to ram through a resolution on Palestinian statehood in the UN General Assembly will produce little more than the mirage of a fleeting diplomatic triumph.

No matter the hoopla surrounding it, the UN vote will certainly not represent a watershed moment for Palestinian statehood. Like a well-camouflaged detour leading nowhere, the diplomatic kabuki theatre may, in reality, do more harm than good for the cause of Palestine - a cause I have passionately supported since my formative years living in the Middle East.

The year was 1958 and Israel had noticed that Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser's agitation across the Middle East was disagreeable to many of his non-Arab neighbours. Israel therefore emerged with what came to be known as the "Periphery Strategy", which focused on Ethiopia, Iran and Turkey and even wooed Lebanon's and Sudan's Christian minorities, Iraq's Kurds, and Morocco's Berbers.

The diplomatic documents had barely stopped drifting down from the Israeli Embassy in Egypt when New York Times columnist Nick Kristof referenced the root causes of the attack, as he saw them: "Attacking the Israeli embassy doesn't help Gazans, doesn't bring back the dead," he tweeted. "Instead it helps Israeli hardliners." It was the standard response of an armchair analyst, for whom all Middle Eastern current events - and particularly the most outrageous ones - are inextricably linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Criticism of Israel is usually the foregone conclusion of any UN commission, particularly when human rights or humanitarian issues are involved.

However, the recent Palmer Commission report deserves special notice. It investigated events surrounding the deaths of self-styled "peace activists" who were attempting to run an Israeli naval blockade on Gaza in May 2010.

As you walk the streets of Jerusalem's Old City, you may find it hard to believe that Israelis and Palestinians are in their 63rd year of conflict. In the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, Arab shopkeepers hawk their merchandise not only to tourists but also to their Jewish Israeli neighbours; you're as likely to hear Hebrew spoken as Arabic; and most of the time, you can't tell by looking who is a Jew and who is an Arab. At the end of the day, most of the Arabs who work in the Old City return to their homes in east Jerusalem, and most of the Jews retreat to west Jerusalem, but the two communities mix here daily, and they get along as well as people in any other civilised city. There is little crime and even less political violence.

As expected, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas submitted an application for Statehood to the UN Secretary General. The application can be downloaded HERE. In addition to this, both Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly and their two speeches (below) have provoked international uproar, especially in light of the speech one day earlier by US President Barack Obama. As The Australian reported, this was a different Obama from the one who spoke previously in the same forum.

That persistence has put the Palestinians on a collision course with the US and Israel. A frustrated Mr Obama told world leaders yesterday in his UN speech that "there are no shortcuts" to peace...

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US President Barack Obama's UN Speech yesterday was a milestone, in that it Included an unusually lucid explanation of Israel's strategic situation and its right to normal relations with its neighbours.

As readers are aware, the UN General Assembly session for 2011 has begun in New York amidst considerable drama of various sorts. While the media focus has mainly been on the status of the Palestinian bid to gain UN recognition as a state, there's a great deal more going on. This Update focuses on the various dramas occurring.

KEY ISSUES

It will not establish a Palestinian state under international law

• It is expected that the UN resolution will be blocked in the Security Council by US veto, and will pass in the General Assembly where it is non-binding.  The General Assembly cannot by itself establish or recognise a state, it can only admit new members after being nominated by the Security Council.
• The General Assembly has already recommended the creation of a Palestinian State previously and the resolutions have not created a Palestinian state.
• the Palestinians do not meet the traditional test for statehood – particularly the test of effective government – premature and unilateral recognition of an “unripe” Palestinian state could have a prejudicial effect on other regional conflicts. 
• While it is arguable that the West Bank, or Gaza could meet requirements for statehood, the resolution being sought does not meet requirements for statehood as it seeks recognition of a united and independent Palestinian state on Gaza, West Bank and east Jerusalem.

There is little doubt that the phenomenon of WikiLeaks has lost the excitement and positive glow it once sparked among journalists, pundits and activists. Infighting in the organisation, the lack of anything terribly surprising in most of the more recent releases of information and the loss of novelty partly explain this change. But the recent "accidental" release of the entire unredacted database of US diplomatic cables not only led to widespread condemnation, but helped put the final nails in the coffin of WikiLeaks as the global "cause celebre" it once was among many, including in Australia.

Now Nick Cohen of the Guardian has written a piece suggesting the possibility that the unredacted cable leak could well have been an intentional act by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange...

As the day of reckoning for the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN, now reportedly slated for Friday, draws ever closer, there is a frantic last-minute effort to avert the potentially disastrous showdown in favour of peace talks. Such talks are widely recognised as the only possible way to reach a genuine and lasting solution to the decades-old conflict. For example, Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair said yesterday that:

"What we will be looking for over the next few days is a way of putting together something that allows their claims and legitimate aspirations for statehood to be recognized whilst actually renewing the only thing that's going to produce a state, which is a negotiation directly between the two sides...

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AIJAC readers may be interested to read an interesting Q&A featured by the Guardian on the Palestinian bid to seek UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines.

Answering readers questions on this topic are Hussein Ibish is a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli journalist and writer who is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

It interesting to note that Ibish is not enthusiastic about the Palestinian UN bid as he is concerned that it may result in economic turmoil for the Palestinians with the US threatening to cutoff of US aid

In addition, Klein makes a critical point regarding Israeli security and how the establishment of a Palestinian can be both an existential necessity and an existential threat.

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If a Palestinian state is not primarily for the benefit of the supposedly long-suffering Palestinian refugees, then what is the point of it? Nothing highlights the urgency of this question more clearly than the admission by a senior Palestinian diplomat that Palestinian refugees will not automatically become citizens of a new Palestinian state.

Much is being written about the worsening security outlook Israel currently faces - with Turkey, once an ally, now seemingly an irreconcilable opponent, (and Turkish PM Erdogan currently visiting various Arab states and engaging in sabre-rattling against Israel), and, as was highlighted in the last Update, the outlook vis-a-vis the peace treaty with Egypt looking pretty grim. This Update features three pieces focused on both analysing and explaining Israel's apparently worsening strategic situation.

With September 20 the Palestinian Authority's proposed date to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state - also known as the "unilateral declaration of independence" (UDI) - we present selected quotes and links to a series of articles that explain everything a person might reasonably need to know about the issue.

Perhaps one can dismiss the opinion in the Canberra Times (8/09) of Peter Rodgers, former Australian ambassador to Israel, that Israeli intransigence prevents a Palestinian state on the basis that his tenure ended there in 1997.

Perhaps Rodgers doesn't know that Israel offered a statehood deal in 2000 so generous that former US/President Bill Clinton "couldn't believe anyone would be foolish enough to let it go", or Israeli PM Ehud Olmert's even sweeter offer in 2008 was humbly declined by the same leadership now demanding UN recognition for a state previously rejected as unacceptable because of the need to grant Israel peace in exchange.

According to a report by Oren Dorell in USA Today, the Palestinian emissary to the US has told a press conference that no Jews would be permitted to live in the planned Palestinian state.

"After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated," Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.

The territory to which Areikat refers would include places like the ancient city of Hebron. As Jeffrey Goldberg notes, Hebron is not just any city, but is the second holiest site in the Jewish faith...

For the third time in three months, on September 13, the Senate debated the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. In a fiery debate, the Coalition criticised the Greens for failing to condemn BDS in Parliament.

Senator Ron Boswell, (Queensland, Nationals), moved that Senate:

a) Condemns the intensification of the Global Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions campaign being conducted against Max Brenner chocolate cafes;

b) Rejects this tactic as a way of promoting Palestinian rights; and

c) Agrees with the New South Wales Greens MP Mr Jeremy Buckingham's assertion ‘that the tone and the public perception of the Max Brenner protests may be counterproductive to the cause of peace and human rights in the Middle East'.

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There is no question that Israel's strategic environment at the moment is looking grimmer than it has in a while. Its long-standing good relations, at times something close to an alliance, with Turkey appear to be history. Meanwhile, following the Cairo embassy attack last Friday, it became clearer than ever that the cold peace that has prevailed between Israel and Egypt for more than 30 years - a core component of Israel's security planning - is at serious risk...

There is a tendency to assume among many editorialists and pundits that this deterioration must have occurred because Israel has supposedly been intransigent, particularly in terms of offering insufficient concessions to the Palestinians.

Noted American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg has pointed out that this automatic, conventional analysis actually has it backwards.

As readers are probably aware, there was a serious attack on Israel's embassy in Cairo on Friday by an Egyptian mob, which saw the Embassy ransacked, several staff members trapped inside for hours before they were rescued and, eventually, all staff evacuated from the country except for the Deputy Ambassador. (Blogger "Elder of Ziyon" collected some very salient on the spot reporting about what actually happened at the embassy - including how Egyptian authorities refused to stop the crowd's attack, while protecting the Saudi Embassy on the next block, and how both the mob and soldiers reportedly targeted journalists for violent attack.) Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's statement on the attack is here.

This Update looks at the wider implications of the attack for both Israeli-Egyptian relations and the outcome of the Egyptian revolution.

With the approaching Palestinian unilateral bid for statehood during the UN session which started this week, diplomats in New York revealed to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that pro-Palestinian pressure is a major factor underlying their countries' decision-making on whether to support or oppose the vote. According to the diplomats quoted by the newspaper, votes on the matter are largely based on countries' attempts to prevent retaliation against them from regional groups sympathetic or loyal to the Palestinian cause. Moreover, Australia was specifically mentioned in the article as a particular target for such efforts.

Following the release of the UN "Palmer Report", which vindicated Israel's blockade of Gaza, Turkey has not only rejected the findings of the Report and maintained that Israel's blockade is illegal, but the Turkish government has been engaging in extremely provocative posturing regarding its stance towards Gaza, even threatening what could be construed as an act of war against Israel.

For starters, there was the threat that Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayyip Erdogan was to visit Gaza from Egypt on his upcoming trip around the Arab countries in North Africa whose regimes have recently fallen. This embrace of Hamas terrorists has just been revoked, but would have been a snub to the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority if it had gone ahead. That said, Reuters has reported that Turkey is now threatening to send Turkish warships with any future flotilla to Gaza, in order to "protect them from Israel"...

The influence of public opinion polls is having a significant impact on the politics of the Middle East, given that the ‘Arab Spring' has taught us that the will of the people can be stronger than the will of its leadership.

Further, one of the accusations often hurled at Israel by its most vehement critics is that it is supposedly intent on "Judaising" Jerusalem, supposedly forcibly evicting Arab residents from their homes or driving them out of the city. So what do the city's 300,000 Arab residents say about their situation?

The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs has conducted a rigorous survey of east Jerusalem Arabs to find out their views. In east Jerusalem the total sample was 1,039, and it covered the entire city, every neighborhood and was based on face-to-face interviews. The sample was representative of the overall Palestinian population of the city by age, education, gender, occupation, neighborhood, and income.

Interestingly, the survey found that more Palestinians in east Jerusalem would prefer to become citizens of Israel than be citizens of a new Palestinian state. Moreover, 40 percent said they would probably or definitely move in order to live under Israeli rather than Palestinian rule.

The European Union (EU) is divided on how they will vote on the upcoming UN resolution to recognise an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines.

This weekend, European foreign ministers are set to meet in Poland (the current president of the EU) in a final effort to find a unanimous position on the Palestinian UN resolution. However, it is clear that there are stark differences between the 27 members of the EU.

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"Dear government, share in the joy of your people, who will be hitting the streets again, en mass, Saturday night.... share in our joy. You have an opportunity, possibly the last one, to join the people and start marching. If you do not- if you dare not- you shall stay there alone, behind" wrote Stav Shaffir, one of the leaders of the social protest in Israel, just before Saturday night's rally, the last demonstration in this phase of the social protest that swept Israel this summer.

On Saturday night 400,000 Israelis filled the streets in the largest demonstrations in the history of Israel. After 50 days of demonstrations and marches and after dozens of tent sites appeared across the country, the demands for "social justice", solutions to the housing problem and to the sky-rocketing cost of living, were heard loud and clear.

The release of the United Nation's 'Palmer Report' into last year's flotilla incident aboard the Mavi Marmara has vindicated Israel by finding that its naval blockade of the Gaza strip is legal under international law. Moreover, Israel has the right to enforce that blockade - including in international waters. It has also rebutted many of the false claims and assumptions that have been made about the flotilla incident and about the broader situation in Gaza.

The UN investigative committee headed by former prime minister of New Zealand Sir Geoffrey Palmer, an expert on maritime law, was established by the UN to examine the Israeli raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on May 31, 2010.

Over the weekend, the UN's Palmer Report into the Mavi Marmara maritime incident last May was published - the full report is available to read here, a good summary of its key provisions is here.  That report - which takes Israel's side on most questions relating to the Gaza blockade and the background to the incident - has led to an intensification of the crisis in Israeli Turkish relations - with Turkey expelling the Israeli Ambassador and threatening to cut off trade relations.  The response of the Israeli Government to the report - it was accepted with some reservations - is here.

The United Nation's "Palmer Report" into last year's flotilla incident on the Mavi Marmara has vindicated Israel by finding that the naval blockade of the Gaza strip, including Israel's right to enforce the blockade including in international waters is legal under international law and it has also rebutted many of the false assumptions that have been made about the flotilla incident.

The Palmer Report found:

"Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law."

The Palmer Report also urged that all future efforts to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza should be done "through established procedures and the designated land crossings in consultation with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority", discouraging future Gaza flotillas.

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The phenomenon of ‘Temple Denial' is a campaign led by Palestinian political leaders, religious figures, academics and journalists to delegitimise the Jewish historical connection with the area of Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem - which according to Jewish tradition is Judaism's most holy sites.

It also attempts to increase the importance of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and even the Western Wall in Islam as part of the effort to make Jerusalem a Muslim city under Arab governance - and to deny the need for any Palestinian compromise on Jerusalem with Jewish religious and national rights. This trend even includes the removal of archaeological material from the Temple Mount without archaeological supervision (see blog post by Allon Lee).

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Australia should vote against any United Nations resolution that attempts to replace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as the only route to Palestinian statehood.

If a "Yes" vote produced a Palestinian state that resolved all the issues of borders, refugees, settlements, and Jerusalem, Israel would be the first to support it.

Unfortunately, as it stands, the resolution the Palestinians are seeking absolutely will not help end the conflict and will almost certainly exacerbate it.

Clearly piqued by the incessant anti-Israel bigotry, Dr. Denis MacEoin, a former lecturer in Islamic studies, has come out in a passionate defence of the Jewish state in a letter to the Edinburgh University Student's Association committee and separately to the leader of the British Greens party over their support for BDS.

First up, MacEoin, who is not Jewish, expressed his outrage that his alma mater had passed a motion to boycott Israeli goods, services and people on the grounds that Israel is an apartheid regime.

He makes the case that Israel is not a perfect state but to compare it to Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa is not true "even as a metaphor".

In a hard-hitting analysis that raises some important reasons why the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has not been resolved, columnist David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen notes:

The Palestinians, so far as they are a people, have now a long history of being able to do things without consequences.

He compares this with how the world treats Israeli actions that are demonstrably undertaken in the cause of self-defence...

Israel's respected Middle East Analyst Ehud Yaari speaks to Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Weisenthal Centre on the main reason behind Iran's Gaza Missile Gambit; Why Hezbollah is quiet (so far); Post-Tahrir Sq trouble in Cairo, as over 100 groups urge government to sever ties with Israel; Iron Dome's surprising and promising results...

Following the recent outbreak of terror attacks on the porous border between Egypt, Israel and Gaza, debate in Israel has been focussed on how best to prevent this violence from reoccurring. Egypt has been engaged in similar considerations, deploying 1,500 troops in the Sinai yesterday, supposedly to prevent a terror attack by Islamic Jihad that intelligence had warned of. Furthermore, according to MEMRI, reports surfaced last night that the Egyptian Government was considering implementing a buffer zone along the border with Gaza in a bid to crack down on the weapons smuggling that has become rife over the last few months; although these reports were swiftly denied. The Economist gave a good summary this week of the position that Israel finds itself in:

Israel faces a dilemma with far-reaching strategic consequences. Thirty years of peace with Egypt have rested, above all, on a demilitarised Sinai. The peninsula is patrolled by an international force and monitored by America from the air, to ensure that both sides keep their armies out, even though Sinai is sovereign Egyptian soil. Until now, Israel had said no to Egyptian demands to let more troops on to the peninsula...

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With the departure of the Mubarak dictatorship, one thing it would be nice to hope for would be a freer and more responsible and professional press in Egypt. Traditionally, the Egyptian press has been government controlled, and used to both bolster the regime and spread anti-Israel hatred together with, very frequently, conspiracy theories. But achieving anything resembling genuine democracy in Egypt is going to require media independence and a freer, more responsible press.

Early signs are not promising. For instance, following the cross-border terrorist incident near Eilat on August 18, in which five Egyptian security officers were killed allegedly by Israeli fire, it is perhaps not surprising, that the Egyptian media played up the story, and especially the Egyptian deaths allegedly at Israel's hand, big-time. After all, they do need to sell papers and/or attract viewers.

Question: Do the following characteristics/actions/behaviours seem suspicious?

Having (and carrying) more than one passport while travelling. Wanting to contact your family and friends in any way possible after being caught up in a natural disaster. Leaving a country (to go home to your family) as soon as possible after being caught up in a natural disaster. Being a citizen of a country whose government representatives check up on its citizens if they are in a foreign country when a disaster occurs. Being a citizen of a country whose government offers a range of assistance to another country after a disaster has occurred.

Answer: Yes, apparently, they do in New Zealand.

It seemed like a politician's nightmare: hundreds of thousands of people, often young and educated, swarming into the streets across the country, week after week, demanding a fundamental overhaul of domestic policies.

When one August night the demonstrators totalled more than 300,000 people, it became clear that what began with a few thousand tent-pitchers camping out in downtown Tel Aviv had swelled into a grassroots movement whose numbers, backgrounds, drive, and main slogan, "the people want social justice," could potentially shake Israel's entire political system.

The terrorist attack in southern Israel on August 18 in which eight Israelis were killed - six civilians and two from the security forces - was initiated and executed by the Palestinian terrorist organisation known as the "Popular Resistance Committees", which operate as a terrorist arm of Hamas. The operation represents a change in the approach of Hamas toward the issue of the "Arab Spring", from acting only passively as an observer, limiting itself to damage control, to an entirely new stance in an attempt to reshape reality in the Middle East.

Cabinet divisions over a US-brokered reconciliation deal to resolve the Mavi Marmara crisis, and, it was hoped, allow Turkey and Israel to renew a normal strategic dialogue, have exposed a deep suspicion and distrust in Israeli political circles of Ankara's ruling Islamist government. Prospects for emerging regional realignments once the wider revolutionary turmoil in the region subsides have not dispelled these concerns.

The two countries appear headed down a path of increasing confrontation, following Israel's definitive "No" last month to Turkey's demand for an apology over the May 2010 Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, where violent resistance from mainly Turkish activists led to a clash in which nine activists died aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara.

Early Monday morning eight people were injured in south Tel Aviv, when a 20 year old from Nablus in the West Bank, hijacked a taxi and rammed it into a police road block protecting a Tel Aviv nightclub.  He then exited the vehicle and stabbed additional people screaming "Allah Akbar" [god is great]. The suspect was tackled to the ground by Border Police officers and taken into custody.

Tel Aviv District Commander Aharon Eksol said the attack was "definitely an act of terror". Israel Radio reported that the attack was coordinated to target a large youth party being held in the nightclub.

From the Hebrew-language Israeli press comes this rare good news story, showing that the relations between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians is more complex that it often appears from the daily news-reports, which focuses on violence and confrontation.

This Update deals with some new writing exploring the problems and pitfalls associated with the Palestinian intention to unilaterally seek UN recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state - sometimes termed a "Unilateral Declaratation of Independence" or UDI - next month.

We lead with a short primer on the whole issue compiled by Uriel Heilman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Heilman has a useful summary of the various legal rules relevant to the effort, including what the UN General Assembly can and cannot do for the Palestinians. He also has a brief but helpful examination of the many uncertainties that will follow the UN effort and the various ways it could lead to violence or make peace more difficult.

Media and NGOs have always been quick to condemn Israel, yet are often silent about real and much more extensive human rights abuses in other countries.

Therefore it should come as no surprise that news that the Turkish military had killed approximately 100 Kurdish people, while wounded more than 80, and done so across an international border was barely reported in the media.

Sari Nusseibeh's "A Jewish rethink" (AFR, 19 August) is gravely disappointing from someone regarded as a pragmatic Palestinian moderate genuinely interested in peaceful co-existence with Israel.

It is understandable that he endorses J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami's call for the US to impose a solution, although he fails to mention that the proposal he sets out - a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with land swaps and a shared capital in Jerusalem - has three times been offered or accepted by Israel and on each occasion rejected by the Palestinians...

As readers are doubtless aware, Libyan rebels are in the capital, Tripoli, and the fall of the Gaddafi regime now looks imminent. This Update features an article and some good links on the complex question of what might happen next. It also features some material on the ongoing tense situation on Israel's southern border where rockets continue to be fired into Israel from Gaza despite a supposed new ceasefire (see also here and here) and Egypt and Israel have had a public spat over the cross-border raid on Thursday which killed 8 Israelis, but which also apparently resulted in the death of three Egyptian security officers, possibly from Israeli fire.

THE Palestinian Authority's plan to unilaterally seek United Nations recognition of nominal statehood cannot lead to anything good for either Palestinians or Israelis.

It is unlikely to result in significant progress towards a genuine Palestinian state, and could produce several highly negative consequences.

AIJAC guest and Middle East expert Dr. Daniel Pipes appeared on ABC TV Lateline discussing Egypt, Syria and Libya, and was also interviewed by Brisbane Radio 4BC's Gary Hardgrave.

Dr. Pipes says the transition in Egypt, the current violence in Israel and the fates of Syria and Libya all have uncertain and potentially bad outcomes.

From the Epic Revisionist Handbook 2011, comes the kind of story that the West and pro-Palestinian apologists prefer to gloss over, a documentary on official Palestinian Authority TV reveals a bright glorious future.... without Jewish people in Jerusalem.

Broadcast on August 10, the documentary apparently labels Jewish worship as "sin and filth" and that "Jews will disappear from the picture". The show conjures up a nightmarish future, promising that the Western Wall Plaza - the most holy place for prayer in the world for Jews - will disappear and be replaced by an Arab residential suburb.

While Israel's Social Protest movement, which has dominated Israel headlines over the past few weeks, has been eclipsed for the moment by the major terrorist attack in southern Israel on Thursday and subsequent events, it is likely to remain a significant source of debate and political power in Israel for some time to come. I've therefore compiled a longish collection of recommended reading for those who want to better understand the movement and the debate it has sparked in Israel.

As readers are probably aware, there was a major terror attack in southern Israel yesterday, the most serious in a number of years, in which 8 Israelis were killed by a group of terrorists who apparently crossed from Gaza into Sinai, and then into Israel (a useful timeline on the attack is here). Israel responded with airstrikes in Gaza that reportedly killed the leader of the group believed responsible, together with five other terrorists.

The attack raises questions about diminished Egyptian control of Sinai, as well as the growth of extreme Salafist Islamist groups in both the Sinai and Gaza. As Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak stated: " The incident reflects the weakness of Egypt’s hold over Sinai and the spread of terrorist elements."

The Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment campaign became a focal point for passionate debate over the last two days as it reared its head in both the Australian Senate and Victorian Parliament.

First, the Greens maintained their 100 per cent success rate of refusing to vote in favour of any resolutions condemning boycotts of Israeli-owned or affiliated companies.

The Canberra Times (8/8) ran an op-ed by the Guardian's David Hearst who argued that Israel is so irredeemably racist that the only antidote is for the United Nations to first recognise Palestinian statehood on the 1967 borders in September, then subsume Israel into a Palestinian majority state.

An Egyptian religious TV channel has broadcast a mock trial of former leader Hosni Mubarak, who appears as a puppet, and is accused by child prosecutors, of being, essentially, a puppet of Israel.

The clip on al Hekma TV, includes a number of anti-Israel slurs that feed into the recurring motif of Israel and Jews as spoilers and poisoners of Egyptian society.

Contradicting local boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) supporters who claimed their actions in preventing customers entering a Max Brenner chocolate store in Melbourne last month were peaceful, a prominent supporter of the campaign has condemned their behaviour as "indefensible" and "pretty stupid".

In an interview with the Australian, the president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Reverend Jim Barr, warned that heavy-handed tactics which resulted in 19 activists being arrested had backfired.

If called upon to march on Israel's borders from the West Bank in the event a Palestinian state is unilaterally established on the 1967 borders come September; are Palestinians going to spoil their leaders' party by not providing the numbers?

But what do you do if you hold a rally and the main beneficiaries of the event won't show?

Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reports that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is worried because his own people are currently disinterested in attending anti-settlement protests.

Is it too much of a stretch to wonder if the Palestinian campaign to have the UN declare its support for a state on the 1967 borders on September 20 will spill over into the "Third Durban Conference" which starts two days later?

In other words, will Durban III, being held to mark the 10th anniversary of the first, descend into the abject anti-Israel and antisemitic hate fest that marred the original and overshadowed the second?

And will the debate about UN recognition of Palestinian statehood be used to stoke the fires?

Anyone naïve enough to divine any signs of Hamas moderation in its quest for Israel's elimination or that it will play nice for the Palestinian Authority's September UN statehood bid, needs the services of a top ophthalmologist (although preferably not Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad, who is a little busy at the moment anyhow).

According to an August 4 briefing paper from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, Hamas' top echelon repeated in different forums their opposition to Israel's existence or compromise in late July.

Perhaps taking their cue from Iran yesterday, the Libyan Government has released the following statement regarding the London riots (via Reuters):

"Cameron has lost his legitimacy and must go... after the massive popular protests that reject him and his government, especially after the violent police repression unleashed by his government against peaceful protesters... to force the British people to accept a government it rejects... The international community (should) not stand with arms folded in the face of this gross aggression against the rights of the British people, who are demanding their right to rule their country."

If this statement sounds a little familiar, that may be because...

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The "tent protest" in Israel is well into its third week, and shows no signs of dying out. Last Saturday, more than 300,000 people, across the country - from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Eilat in the south, took to the streets, demanding "social justice". This protest is seen by many in Israel as a positive and refreshing awakening of an otherwise dormant public- the middle class. While the Israeli democracy is accustomed to protests, these are usually sectorial and revolve around one specific and limited issue, and many are related to issues of peace and security. This current protest, however, is a different story altogether.

On August 9, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) published an editorial "Fence-sitting, but the wisest course", which advocated that Australia abstain on the UN General Assembly resolution that is expected to seek UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines.

The editorial was commenting on news that Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd held different positions on the Palestinian UN bid. According to the Age's Daniel Flitton, Rudd wrote to the Prime Minister suggesting that Australia abstain on the Palestinian UN resolution, while Gillard has declared strong support for Israel. The SMH editorial declared, "we believe Rudd's advice is the sound course".

Abstaining on the resolution is not a "sound course" but rather a counter-productive course. Australia should not merely abstain but should vote against the resolution in the interests of Middle East peace and a two-state solution. Unilateral acts by the Palestinians will not achieve either peace or statehood, but are likely to escalate the conflict.

AIJAC welcomes the decision of the Government of Victoria to ask the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to investigate whether organisations campaigning for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel have been conducting "secondary boycotts for the purpose of causing substantial loss or damage", in breach of section s45D of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

As the tent protest movement continues to dominate headlines inside Israel, one of the facts often heard in explaining the background to its growth is that economic inequality inside Israel is very high...

Such claims are not necessarily wrong, but they do oversimplify a complex reality. Those widely cited OECD income inequality numbers reflect in part the diverse, multi-cultural nature of Israeli society...

This blog post looks at the Palestinian UN bid and considers analysis from:

Veteran Washington insider Steven Rosen who writes that the current proposal for UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state does not meet the legal requirements for statehood.

Efarim Karsh and Asaf Romirowsky who have written an article in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the UN should not support the Palestinian UN bid, because it threatens to create a precedent of "land for war" rather than "land for peace".

Benedict Brogan, Deputy Editor of the Daily Telegraph who writes that Netanyahu's gesture to negotiate a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with land swaps demands a "swift and positive response from David Cameron and William Hague".

This Update features material explaining the Tent protest movement which continues to dominant the news inside Israel. It also offers an inside view from Cairo on the precarious state of the Egyptian revolution.

We lead with a useful BICOM (Britain-Israel Communications and Research Centre) backgrounder on the tent protests. It offers some detailed explanation of the make-up and goals of the movement - which began over housing but has now increased its demands to incorporate many other social issues - as well as its implications for the Netanyahu Government. It explains that the timing of the movement, which follows on from some previous public campaigns, but is also facilitated by summer vacation and pleasant weather, and relative quiet on the security front.

If two million Palestinians in the West Bank deserve a state, what of the 18 million Kurds in the region who have endured 100 years of persecution?

This is the tantalising question posed by Israeli analyst Dr. Guy Bechor who argues that Turkey should be careful what it advocates on behalf of Palestinians as it seeks regional popularity and leadership.

The Israeli tent movement which began on July 14 as a grass-roots economic protest over housing costs has grown in strength and spread to many other cities in Israel and dominated the news there.

Thousands of Israeli protesters are camping in tents in the middle of central streets in major Israeli cities as a means of protest. Over the weekend police estimated that more than 100,000 people demonstrated in 10 cities across Israel. The protesters shouted: ''the people want social justice!'' and demanded that Prime Minister Netanyahu step down.

For the most part, the international community is tired of the unending Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the prospect of the United Nations "ending" it in September by recognising Palestinian statehood is appealing to many. Moreover, many in the international community consider a solution based on the 1967 borders to be fair.

It may be more Woodstock than Tahrir Square, but the energy springing from a protesters' tent city along Tel Aviv's fashionable Rothschild Boulevard represents economic, social and political realities that challenge Binyamin Netanyahu's leadership in a way he cannot ignore.

Some 300 tents sprang up almost overnight under the trees lining the road between the national theatre Habima and the glitzy skyscrapers housing Israel's major banks, all put there to protest spiralling housing prices.

Not far from Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, the storied birthplace of Jesus Christ and the West Bank's most popular tourist site, there lies a landmark of a very different kind. Sitting horizontally on a gate in front of the al-Ayda Refugee Camp is a 10-metre long iron key, weighing nearly two tons. The seemingly innocuous monument actually represents the most controversial demand made by pro-Palestinian advocates: That Israel must permit up to 5 million Palestinians to immigrate across its borders, effectively ending any chance it will endure another generation as a homeland for the Jewish people.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) "is broke", and according to a recent New York Times article, "the immediate cause of the crisis is the failure of foreign - especially Arab - donors to fulfill promises of aid." According to AP, Arab donations have decreased dramatically over the past couple years, as "in 2009, the Arab countries gave $462 million, a contribution that dropped to $287 million in 2010 and $78.5 million this year."

The predicament has led even the usually optimistic PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to declare that "this is, without doubt, the worst financial crisis the Palestinian Authority has ever faced", noting that there could not be a worse time for this, with the PA's planned unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) coming up at the United Nations in September.

More than 150,000 state employees, whose salaries support a million people, had their wages cut in half this month. Palestinian banks have lent the government more than $1 billion and do not want to lend more. Some ministries have temporarily lost electricity because they have not paid their bills. Last week, the government ordered a reduction in the price of bread, leading to bakery strikes. Garbage is piling up.

While this year's Gaza flotilla barely caused a stir, the ongoing saga of last year's continues. Last night, the UN's Palmer Commission confirmed rumours that the report that the release of the report they have prepared on last year's effort will again be delayed in the hope that Israel and Turkey will settle their differences. As Herb Keinon reports in The Jerusalem Post:

The United Nations on Monday officially confirmed that the planned release Wednesday of the UN's Palmer Commission report on the Mavi Marmara has been postponed until late August. UN spokesman Martin Nesirky gave no specific date for the much-delayed report, which officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday was now expected on...

It appears that for the first time, neither Arabs nor Israelis trust the President of the United States to advocate their interests. A recent poll by the Arab American Institute has recorded a significant decline in support for Obama's Middle East policies. In all six of the Arab countries surveyed, Obama's ratings were at 10% or less, making Obama's policies less popular than those of George W. Bush or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, largely due to disappointment Obama has failed to keep the promises of his 2009 Cairo Speech in the context of the Arab Spring. In addition, majorities in all six countries surveyed said "Obama's handing of the Palestinian issue had worsened US-Arab relations", and many consider him to be too pro-Israel. Conversely, a May 2011 poll showed only 12% of Israeli Jews believe that President Obama is pro-Israel, while 40% labeled him pro-Palestinian, as many Israelis have grown more suspicious of the American leader.

Israel's leaders certainly know where Israel sits with regard to the horrific massacre that took place in Oslo over the weekend. Both President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have expressed their sorrow over the tragic events and expressed Israel's empathy with the Norwegian people, given the terrorist attacks that Israel is all too used to facing. As The Jerusalem Post reports:

After sending a message of condolence to King Harald V of Norway on Saturday, President Shimon Peres on Sunday followed up with a phone call to the King to personally voice his own and the nation's condolences...

The fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February led to a sharp increase in weapons smuggling to the Gaza Strip and continues today, according to a recent piece by Israeli security correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai. In the past six months alone, Bedouin smugglers have transferred three times the quantity of industrial explosives to Gaza as they did in all of 2010, as Gaza's terrorist organisations roughly doubled their number of rockets to an estimate 10,000, an amount equivalent to Hezbollah's arsenal at the start of the 2006 War.

As the world continues to search for ways to meet the growing global energy demand without further damaging the environment, a new technology that harvests energy from the pressure caused by cars driving on roads is currently being tested in Israel. Developed by the Israeli start-up Innowattech, the innovation could soon be powering streetlights and homes in Israel. As Sara Toth Stub writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Using piezoelectric technology-the same technology that enables cigarette lighters to produce a spark-the pressure of vehicles on metallic crystals embedded under the surface produces electrical energy, explains Haim Abramovich, professor of aerospace engineering at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and founder of the start-up Innowattech.

It would appear that the photo used online to illustrate pro-Palestinian activist Randa Abdel-Fattah's latest anti-Israel screed features a recycled picture from 2010 that has been discredited as a piece of confected theatre.

Lawlessness in North Africa appears to have opened up a new route for weapons smuggling into Gaza. Reuters has reported Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon explaining that weapons are now being smuggled from Libya through Egypt and into the Palestinian enclave.

"Weapons are available in Libya as a result of the unstable situation there, and Hamas has exploited it to buy weapons from Libyan smugglers," Yaalon told foreign journalists in a briefing, without elaborating on the kind of munitions involved.

The prospect of more weapons being funneled to Hamas is rather grim for Israel, suggesting that the conflict will never end...

What do Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Egypt have in common?

In the past week, all four countries have been abuzz with conspiratorial news stories suggesting that Israel has been maliciously meddling in their internal affairs.

This Update features a couple of pieces on the apparent continued prevalence amongst Palestinians of the goal of eliminating the State of Israel, as well as an important comment on the problems created by the overwhelming importance of aid to the Palestinian economy.

A new video from the Israeli Foreign Ministry does a good job of explaining, in a very brief and easy to understand way, some basic facts about the history and legal status of the West Bank.

After New Zealand media outrageously accused an Israeli victim of February's Christchurch earthquake of being a Mossad spy, Prime Minister John Key yesterday publically announce that an investigation demonstrated that neither the victim, Ofer Mizrahi, nor any of his friends, had any involvement in espionage. In a statement on Wednesday, Key said, "Security agencies conducted the investigation and found no evidence that the people were anything other than backpackers." It turns out Mizrahi held two passports, his Israeli and his EU one, rather than the five that a Southland Times article initially alleged. The story quickly spread throughout New Zealand newspapers, and was covered as one of the biggest stories of the week.

Only hours before Key's announcement, Fred Tulett, the journalist behind the initial story, said he was "unshakable in his conviction his facts are accurate."

In response to the passage of a controversial new anti-boycott law by the Israeli Knesset last week, AIJAC has issued the following statement:

AIJAC believes that anti-Israel boycotts represent a serious and significant political and diplomatic challenge to Israel as part of a larger campaign of delegitimisation, and that the Israeli government is fully justified in taking serious legal and political action to counter these threats wherever they originate. However, in AIJAC's view, overall, the anti-boycott law passed last week appears ill advised, will have opposite effects to those intended and may provide opportunities for Israel's detractors to further misrepresent the reality of its vibrant democracy.

On Wednesday, the Sydney Morning Herald featured a rant by Australian-born-Egyptian-Muslim-Palestinian pro-Palestinian activist Randa Abdel-Fattah arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the latters' ongoing suffering stems from Israel supposedly seeking to safeguard the ''purity'' of a Jewish-only state.

The ostensible motivation for her article was a desire to share the numerous experiences of racism she claims to have witnessed when visiting Israel and the West Bank in May. Yet nowhere in the article is she able to recount a single example of the alleged racism because her real motive is to justify her support for a one-state solution.

The 2011 flotilla saga ended quietly yesterday when the only vessel to actually sail for Gaza was boarded without incident. As Isabel Kershner reports in The New York Times, the ship's crew lied to Greek authorities about their destination - claiming to be sailing for Egypt before diverting in international waters and heading towards Gaza. Then, when the Israeli authorities were certain of its destination and had given up on convincing the crew to change course, the ship was boarded by Israeli naval commandos...

The New York Times has featured an article on Israel's remarkable in vitro fertilization program (IVF), whereby all Israeli citizens - Jews and Arabs - are entitled to free and unlimited IVF for up to ‘two take-home babies'. The article also appears on the Age Website.

Amid the cheers over the birth of the new nation state of the Republic of South Sudan, some commentators are noting the largely overlooked significance of what has just occurred, not least for an Israeli-Palestinian peace process eventually leading to a two state solution.

Compared with South Sudan, Palestine is the French Riviera. This raises serious questions about the moral justification for the Palestinians to take extreme stands that make compromise so difficult, while they continue to act as a bottomless drain on the ultimately limited resources the developed world can provide in aid.

Readers interested in the source of the UN's entrenched biases and hostility to Israel would do well to have a look at a new video (included below) which does a very good job of explaining the matter graphically.

In his column in the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph and Adelaide's Advertiser (6/7), Andrew Bolt vented his disgust at the attempted picketing of a Max Brenner shop by pro-Palestinian activists. He wrote, "[In Australia] I never thought I'd see people picketing shops because their owners were Jewish...I've seen pictures of Jewish shops attacked before, of course, but they were in black and white, in another country at another ghastly time."

Israeli civil rights organisation director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner has written a good primer in the Jerusalem Post on why the blockade of Gaza is legal and how flotilla activists are likely breaking US law.

Pursuant to the Oslo Accords ... the Palestinians agreed that the Gaza coastline would be placed under Israeli control and that no foreign ships would be allowed closer than 12 nautical miles from the shore.

Israel demanded this out of concern over widespread import of conventional and unconventional weapons into Gaza.

On Monday, ABC Radio's The Spirit of Things  broadcast a fascinating interview with Sharon Rosen and Suheir Rasul from the Jerusalem offices of a peace initiative called Search for Common Ground. 

Sharon Rosen: Search for Common Ground is an international conflict transformation organisation that was founded 29 years ago by an American; his name is John Marks. It has now developed into the largest conflict transformation organisation in the world, with 37 offices in 25 countries. And the Middle East program, which was basically focussing on Palestinian-Israeli relations, began in 1990 and the actual office in situ on the ground in Jerusalem was opened in the year 2000. I became the acting director of the Jerusalem office in 2008 and Suheir joined me as co-director in 2009.

The prominent Friends of Israel Initiative formed under the leadership of former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar in 2010, has argued that a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state and international recognition of it would be a "huge mistake".

In an article published by the Jerusalem Post, the Friends of Israel Initiative (FII) argue that a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state is dangerous having "unforeseeable consequences" and maintain that peace can only be achieved though bilateral negotiations.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Federal MP Mr Michael Danby should be highly commended for their visit yesterday to a branch of Max Brenner in Melbourne, a target of recent anti-Israel protests, where they took a strong stance against the boycott of Jewish and Israeli-owned business. Two weeks ago, Palestinian supporters of the boycott launched a protest outside the café that took a violent turn, leaving three policemen injured and 19 protesters arrested. The Herald-Sun reported Rudd calling the boycott "archaic" and saying, "I went there deliberately to make a point and that is I don't think in 21st century Australia there is a place for the attempted boycott of a Jewish business...I thought we had learned that from history." The Age also reported Rudd stating that: 

"As an individual citizen - that is me, K. Rudd - I am here because I object to the boycotting of Jewish businesses."

AIJAC's latest email Update looks at why and how the 2011 Gaza flotilla gambit fizzled out. In contrast to 2010's headline-grabbing political stunt that acted as a Trojan Horse for the Turkish Islamist IHH charity resulting in needless deaths and injuries, this was no replay.

AIJAC's latest email Update looks at US foreign policy positions in the Middle East that many analysts describe as alarmingly passive and which will effectively deliver the region into the anti-Western clutches of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Israel's new "anti-boycott" law has understandably attracted plenty of criticism, but not all coverage of it has been as balanced as it should be.

The myth that Lebanon's miseries are the result of Israeli policies has once more been punctured, with former Lebanese PM Saad Hariri blaming Hezbollah's weaponry for the country's chronic problems.

The Middle East Quartet (the UN, the US, the EU and Russia) concluded a high-level meeting yesterday, aimed at re-starting Israeli/Palestinian peace talks, without agreeing on a concluding statement. As Barak Ravid reported for Haaretz, the disagreement was over whether or not the Quartet could demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish State.

"The goal was to give each side something that was important to them," a Western diplomat said. "The Palestinians were supposed to get 1967 borders with land swaps and the Israelis wanted to receive in return the recognition of Israel as the Jewish homeland, but...

This blog has been closely following the inexplicable failure of the Western World to apply proper scrutiny to Iran, as well as the internal strife that is currently gripping the Islamic Republic. A very poignant editorial in today's Jerusalem Post argues that the UN, too, has failed to apply adequate attention to the Ayatollah regime. The Post points-out the incredible amount of attention that the Palestinian Authority's upcoming statehood bid in the UN is receiving, juxtaposing this with the relatively negligible consideration given to Iran.

Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, noted this disturbing fact in a meeting Tuesday with The Jerusalem Post editorial staff.

Moammar Mashni of Australians for Palestine had a letter in the Australian Financial Review about the Gaza flotilla. Here's AIJAC's response in today's edition.

Although the UN ‘Palmer report' on last year's Mavi Marmara raid was postponed until July 27 to enable talks to continue between Israel and Turkey, it is expected to justify Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip.

The UN investigative committee was headed by former Prime Minister of New Zealand Sir Geoffrey Palmer who is an expert on maritime law and was established by the UN to examine the Israeli raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in May 2010.

The Jerusalem Post reported on July 7, that Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, commenting on drafts of the Palmer report, indicated the report would rule mostly in favour of Israel. Stenitz stated: "From what we understand, the report justifies the [Gaza] blockade. It says the blockade is legitimate, that Israel took legitimate steps."

While AIJAC has covered news about this summer's attempted Gaza flotilla in several recent posts by Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz and Tzvi Fleischer, the story of last year's flotilla has still not come to an end. Haaretz reported that the release of the UN's report on last year's flotilla incident, due to be issued yesterday, has been postponed until July 27 pending current talks between the two governments.

While the delay itself does not come as a surprise, the fact that the talks are occurring may highlight a major shift in the priorities of the Turkish government and the future of Turkish-Israeli relations. Coming amidst the recent break in relations between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad due to the latter's violent crackdown on protesters, these talks may very well offer the possibility of a turning point that sees Turkish foreign policy somewhat realigning itself with Israel and America and moving further away from the rejectionist front led by Iran. 

The news that Lebanon's government has hired a Norwegian firm to "conduct a seismic survey on the border of Israel's exclusive economic zone" in the Mediterranean Sea has the worrying potential to trigger new confrontation between the two countries

Hezbollah has been going into overdrive this week as it tries to stop implementation of the indictment of four of its members by the special UN tribunal investigating the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in 2005.

In the lead up to the flotilla's proposed departure, Israel's Government Press Office wrote to journalists warning that any who sailed on it would be subject to exclusion from Israel for up to ten years, as is anyone who enters Israel or its territorial waters illegally. A June 28 Age editorial, however, made it seem journalists were singled out. It stated, "it is most disappointing that the Israeli government is threatening journalists with reprisals" and referred to it as a "threat to punish journalists." At least the following day, when Israeli PM Netanyahu intervened to ensure that journalists would be exempted from this routine policy, a Jason Koutsoukis article made it clear that was the case. However, the Israeli letter to the journalists should never have been misrepresented as it was, and had Netanyahu not intervened, Age readers may well have remained unaware of the true situation.

Proving that the flotilla organisers are nothing if not persistent, the Canadian flotilla ship, the Tahrir, which had been prevented from leaving a harbour in Crete to sail for Gaza, issued the following press statement last night:

With the support of Greek civil society and people from all around the world the Tahrir is casting off from Greece today...."

Shortly afterwards, however, this news item was making headlines:

In a sign of growing ties, the Israeli and Greek air forces have held a fourteen-day cooperative drill at Greece's Larisa Air Base. Joint drill participants included several elite Israeli squadrons, the IDF's top rescue unit, and their equivalents in the Greek military.

The exercise took place as Greece has been working to stop the second Gaza flotilla from leaving its ports for Gaza. As reported in a recent post by Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz, Greek authorities arrested the captain of one boat several days ago for failing to ensure that the boat had proper safety equipment. More recently, the Greeks proposed a compromise, accepted by the Israeli government, which would involve the Greek government transporting the flotilla's aid to Gaza under UN supervision.

As AIJAC has been reporting, the planned flotilla to Gaza has been facing a number of obstacles in recent weeks. In the wake of the Greek decision over the weekend to prevent any vessels planning on sailing to Gaza from leaving Greek ports, the flotilla organisers appear to be looking to shift tack, dropping all pretences that they may have had of bringing any humanitarian aid to Gaza.

While it will not revoke the order preventing the ships from leaving, the Greek Government has offered to transfer all humanitarian aid that was on board the flotilla to Gaza through other means; this offer was accepted by the Israeli Government but the flotilla organisers rejected it outright, opting instead to try and pressure the Greek Government into reversing its policy. Similarly, Israeli authorities offered last year to...

Following up on Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz’s post yesterday - now that Turkish authorities have found baseless widely-reported claims by leaders of the Gaza flotilla that an Irish boat was sabotaged by Israel in a Turkish port, it is worth noting that the Australian media has, to date, largely failed to report this (one exception was The Australian today.).

In terms of journalistic ethics, this is particularly problematic with respect to the Sydney Morning Herald.

It is often pointed out that there are shortages of medicines and medical supplies in Gaza, implying that this is the result of Israel's blockade. But while there are such shortages, they actually have almost nothing to do with either Israel or the blockade. Rather, they are primarily the result of an internal Hamas-Fatah dispute.

After Greek authorities ordered a directive on Friday that no ship aiming to sail for Gaza be permitted to leave from a Greek port, the captain of the US vessel The Audacity of Hope, deliberately named as an affront to US President Barack Obama, has been arrested - effectively preventing the ship from sailing out of Greece. As Scott Sayare reports in the New York Times:

A judge contended that the boat, The Audacity of Hope, was not carrying proper safety equipment and charged the captain, John Klusmire, with...

Israel has jumped 9 places to number 14 in the 2011 Global Innovation Index (GII). Coming from a rank of 23 last year, Israel flew past Australia - which fell from 18 in 2010 to 21 in 2011 - into the top 15 most innovative countries in the world, blitzing the other Middle East and North Africa (MEA) countries, with number 27, Qatar, being the only other country from the region in the top 30.

The GII is a project led by...

In a move against Palestinian unilateralism, the United States Senate passed a resolution yesterday that threatens to withdraw aid from the Palestinian Authority if they continue with their commitment to go to the UN and request statehood in September. The resolution also rejected any Palestinian government that would include Hamas, until the group, which is a designated terrorist organisation in the US, renounces violence and recognises Israel. JTA reports:

Led by Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), the resolution had 88 co-sponsors.

Jordanian opposition to the UN Resolution on Palestinian statehood, as discussed in Arsen Ostrovsky's blog post earlier today, comes after a number of recent articles noting mixed feelings within the Arab world about the upcoming UN vote.

One is a two-part piece in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot by their Arab Affairs report Roee Nahmias about the Arab states' inability to intervene constructively, as well as the mixed feelings of both Arab leaders and publics. Another is a report on how Arab media are covering the declaration by Israeli Arab journalist Linda Menuhin Abdul Aziz, in a paper she did for the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs.

This Update features two pieces which describe the reality of the situation in Gaza - in contrast to the way it is often described by activists and even in general media reports.

First up is recent visitor to Australia Dr. Michael Rubin, who compares Gaza to a whole variety of countries around the world on a whole variety of statistical measures - and finds Gaza better off than a very large percentage of them. For instance, Gazans have a life expectancy both higher than the global average, and higher than in dozens of countries, many far from the poorest in the world. The same applies to infant mortality, while Gazans are also far from comparatively very badly off in terms of unemployment - and they actually outstrip many countries in terms of cell phone and internet use.

A new study has indicated that two-thirds of all Egyptians support maintaining the Arab republic's 1979 peace agreement with Israel.

The poll, conducted by the Egyptian government's Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC), showed that 67% of those responding want to uphold the historic Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty signed between Anwar Sadat and Menacham Begin. Of the 1,062 respondents, only 11% want the deal entirely scrapped, 2% want some clauses removed, and 20% declined to respond. Among those surveyed, 56% said they were satisfied with the country's current situation, and 87% plan to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

There has been a great deal written and said about the second flotilla of activists supposed to be departing for Gaza very shortly in defiance of Israel's naval blockade.

However, an internal document from flotilla organisers published by an Israeli newspaper suggests the whole event may be something of a fizzer. According to the document, the flotilla is expected in the end to carry fewer than 300 passengers - possibly much fewer...

Jerusalem has always been used as a pretext for conspiracy theories and propaganda campaigns against Israel in the Arab world. A perennial claim throughout the Arab-Israel conflict is that something Israel is doing presages the destruction of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

One of the key questions that always comes up in debates on the Middle East are the details of what happened during the 1948 war. Among Palestinians and their advocates, the whole war is generally presented as a Zionist plot to steal the land and expel its indigenous inhabitants - which was understandably resisted by both Palestinian militias and the armies of neighbouring Arab states. This is the Palestinian "narrative" and more or less what is meant by the common use of the word Nakba, "catastrophe", for the events of 1947-48.

But as US statesman Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously quipped, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own facts...

An Australian man who was arrested in Israel recently has now been formally charged with spying for Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation both in Australia and in Israel, and has faced an initial court hearing.

As reported by the ABC:

Eyad Abu Arja was arrested along with his wife when he arrived at Tel Aviv airport in March, and has been in custody ever since.

Haaretz is reporting that senior Israeli officials have received information that organisers of the Gaza flotilla may be bringing chemical substances on the ships to use against Israeli soldiers to prevent them from boarding the ships.

Barak Ravid reported that the senior officials also said that Israel had been notified that several extremists among the Gaza flotilla participants had recently claimed that they intend on "shedding the blood of IDF soldiers"...

This latest reports also only strengthen the case that the Freedom Flotilla organised by the Free Gaza Movement is an unnecessary and potentially dangerous provocation with no humanitarian purpose...

AIJAC guest and Middle East expert Dr. Michael Rubin spoke with 2GB's Alan Jones in Sydney on the current situation in the Middle East.

Initial reports emerged yesterday of an Israeli delivery driver who narrowly avoided being lynched by an Arab mob. This follows a similar incident last November, when four students, including one Australian tourist were stoned by a mob after taking a wrong turn and driving through an Arab neighbourhood. Melanie Lidman has now written the rather shocking full story of yesterday's incident in The Jerusalem Post:

Nachson was going towards Ma'aleh Adumim to deliver a package for his delivery company, Cheetah, when he attempted to make a shortcut near the Hadassah Har Hatzofim Hospital to avoid traffic.

This September, the Palestinian Authority (PA) intends to go to the United Nations to seek support for a unilateral declaration of a sovereign Palestinian state - a move that will intensify rather than end the conflict, setting the entire peace process back by years if not decades.

Having shunned repeated Israeli attempts to negotiate a two-state solution without preconditions over the past two and a half years - including during Israel's historic settlement freeze in 2009-10 - the Palestinians' goal in approaching the UN is, as noted historian Benny Morris put it, "to establish a Palestinian Arab state encompassing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, but without recognising Israel or making peace with it."

When US President Barack Obama first made his controversial reference to the 1967 lines as the basis for future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on May 19, 2011, he introduced one main caveat that stuck out: the idea that there would be "mutually agreed swaps" of land between the two sides. He added that both sides were entitled to "secure and recognised borders." But the inclusion of land swaps also raised many questions.

Israel is being offered a chance to improve its parlous relationship with Turkey - but at the cost of softening criticism of Ankara in the UN report on the Gaza flotilla clash in May 2010 that resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish citizens on board the Mavi Marmara.

Tomorrow will mark 5 years since kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has been held illegally by Hamas in Gaza. As Isabel Kershner has reported in the New York Times, Hamas has again refused a request from the Red Cross to visit Shalit - so that they could merely ascertain what kind of conditions he is being held in and whether he is alive or dead.

The International Committee of the Red Cross on Thursday publicly demanded that Hamas provide proof that an Israeli soldier captured five years ago and held in Gaza is still alive. Hamas promptly rejected the demand.

NEXT week a flotilla carrying so-called activists from various countries under the guise of "humanitarian concern" will set sail for the Gaza Strip, determined to break what they call "the siege of Gaza". Four Australians, including former Greens MLC Sylvia Hale, will be aboard.

This latest anti-Israel provocation comes on the anniversary of last year's ostensibly "humanitarian" flotilla which, likewise, sought to breach Israel's legal naval blockade of Gaza.

During that incident, nine Turkish passengers on board the Mavi Marmara died following a premeditated and vicious attack on Israeli soldiers by a group of shipboard activists.

Last year's flotilla was organised by the Turkish group IHH, which has extensive links to Islamist terror groups, including Hamas. Although IHH has now pulled out of the upcoming flotilla, citing "technical reasons", it has nonetheless been extensively involved in its preparations.

In a press release a few weeks ago, the Australian contingent said their goal was to "break the Israeli blockade of Gaza".

They believe that "Gaza will not be free so long as the Israeli siege destroys the territory's economy".

No, Gaza will not be free so long as Hamas continues to control the Gaza Strip. But then again, there was not a single mention of Hamas in their press release. Why?

Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour has just come out and stated that even if negotiations with Israel were to recommence, the Palestinians will go to the UN and ask for recognition of statehood. Haaretz reports:

The Palestinians will seek membership as an independent state at the UN in September even if peace negotiations with Israel are underway, the Palestinian UN envoy said on Thursday.

On 22 June, Federal MP Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Lib.) made a speech in the House of Representatives drawing the Parliament's attention to the arrest in Egypt of American-Israeli Ilan Grapel. Mr. Grapel was arrested earlier this month for alleged involvement in espionage and formenting sectarian strife in Egypt. As Mr Briggs rightly points out: "These allegations at best seem far-fetched and when you consider that Mr Grapel is a regular visitor to the Middle East and had entered Egypt under his own name on his own passport [and] was posting daily messages on Facebook, the allegations do raise significant concern."

Mr Briggs also commented: "This is similar, sadly, to the five year anniversary of the detention of Israeli citizen Gilad Shalit, who has been held by Hamas since 2006."

Amid increased tensions surrounding the impending UN vote on Palestinian statehood and the new unity deal between Hamas and rival Fatah, Israel has been quietly easing its blockade on Gaza - which is in place in order to prevent Hamas militants from smuggling in weapons with which to attack Israel. News surfaced overnight that Israel has approved $100 million of new buildings in Gaza, which is a significant development seeing that Israel is often criticised for its restrictions on importing building materials - which can be used to build military infrastructure such as bunkers - into the enclave.

Former US Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams has written a piece in this month's Foreign Affairs magazine that brilliantly outlines the history and current political issue of the settlements in the West Bank and the relevant policies of the US, Israel and the Palestinians. In the piece, Abrams reviews two books - Occupation of the Territories: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies 2000-2010 by Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence and The Settlers: And the Struggle Over the Meaning of Zionism by Gadi Taub.

Haaretz is reporting that they have information from a senior Israeli source that Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Al-Quds force troops are operating throughout Syria to suppress anti-regime demonstrations and that Iran's Revolutionary Guard also helped organise the violent demonstrations attempting to breach the Israeli border on "Nakba" and "Naksa" Day, that is, May 15 and June 6.

Haaretz is reporting that Israel and Turkey have been holding secret talks to try and solve their diplomatic rift and that the negotiations are receiving US support.

Israeli newspaper Maariv published a report over the weekend alleging that a group of rabbis in Jerusalem had made a bizarre ruling to stone to death a dog that they believed was a reincarnated rabbi. The story was picked-up by Ynet, the English-language website for Israeli tabloid Yediot Ahoronot, and subsequently made it into the world’s media, including the News Ltd tabloids in Australia.

A JERUSALEM rabbinical court has condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court's judges 20 years ago. ...Clearly still offended, one of the judges sentenced the animal to death by stoning by local children. The canine target, however, managed to escape.

If this sounds a little far-fetched to be true, that’s because it is. As observed here, a simple story involving a dog that was safely removed from a rabbinical council by the municipal dogcatcher became "sexed-up" somewhere in the Israeli secular press. It also seems like the fact-checking department had a day off at a lot of normally reputable publications.

Radio National's Geraldine Doogue spoke to top Israeli journalist Ehud Ya'ari about the situation in Israel and the wider Middle East:

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2011/06/sea_20110618_0744.mp3

This Update deals with the proposed additional flotilla to Gaza being organised - probably for later this month - by the same people who organised the Mavi Marmara flotilla last year. It further includes some material on the way various non-governmental organisations (NGOs), often with support from Western governments, are making a two-state Israeli-Palestinian peace more difficult, including by prompting efforts like these flotillas.

First up is British columnist Melanie Phillips, who points out that the latest flotilla effort is more nakedly than ever a propaganda stunt to attempt to make Israel look bad, with no conceivable humanitarian purpose, despite the claims of the organisers. She notes that it comes at about the same time that Gaza is about to open its second shopping mall. She also discusses a plan by flotilla organisers to attempt to organise masses of protesters flying into Ben Gurion airport to disrupt traffic and create a propaganda stunt.

This Update features three notable pieces on the Palestinian efforts to have the UN recognise a Palestinian state in "the '67 lines" in September, without negotiations or compromise with Israel.

First up is noted American Middle East expert Prof. Fouad Ajami, who strongly argues that the effort is futile. He deals at length with the contention often heard that the UN "created" Israel and can therefore likewise "create" Palestine, noting that it was not the UN, but the concrete achievements of the "Yishuv", the Jewish community in Palestinian, which actually created Israel. Ajami also puts the Palestinian tactics in some historical perspective, arguing they are redolent of Yasser Arafat's past delusions that the Palestinian could have "it all" without compromising with Israel.

Following a week of dramatic speeches and meetings in Washington featuring US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, two conclusions have emerged. On the positive side, the United States and Israel alliance, though not always perfect, is strong and enduring. Worryingly, however, prospects for advancing peace between Israel and the Palestinians appears more elusive today than for a very long time.

On May 19, President Obama's major State Department speech outlining US foreign policy in the Middle East focussed primarily on American reactions to the "Arab Spring" sweeping the region, but also reflected US thinking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We need to be wary of the rise of the polemicist. Polemic is different from journalism."

This simple statement from veteran journalist Paul Kelly at a session of the recent Sydney Writers' Festival seems as if it should go without saying. Unfortunately, it served as a rather ominous warning for those attending other sessions at the partially tax-payer funded Festival.

On Israel/Palestine issues, this year's Festival featured two high-profile international guests with important things to say related to the Middle East - Palestinian doctor and writer Izzeldin Abuelaish, who lost three daughters in the 2008-9 Gaza war, and British novelist Howard Jacobson. Both of these figures have very positive messages, promoting a genuine Israeli-Palestinian two-state peace and reconciliation. However, the program and atmosphere of the Festival managed to both prevent their positive views from being fully explored, and constantly pitted them against much more extreme Australian voices.

When Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited London last month, Cameron recited the familiar mantra of Britain's "unshakeable commitment" to Israel's security. But he went on to seamlessly warn that unless Israel sits down with the Palestinians to negotiate a peace deal, Britain will recognise Palestinian statehood if the UN General Assembly votes on the issue in September.

In Cameron's bizarre view, the "Arab Spring", the killing of bin Laden and the Fatah-Hamas unity agreement had opened up opportunities not only to defeat terrorism but also to expand democracy, spread liberty, and, not least, to make progress at the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating table.

If only. If Cameron's assessment were true, Israelis of all political hues would already be initialling treaties and rolling out red carpets for dignitaries who would be preparing to descend on Jerusalem for a full-blown peace ceremony.

Israel has learned in recent weeks that despite the social upheaval and political turbulence across the Middle East, Washington continues to focus on delivering an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. This is what President Barack Obama made plain to Netanyahu during a meeting May 20 after which the two exchanged carefully phrased but pointed statements of disagreement during a joint appearance in the Oval Office.

Obama's call, both during the meeting and in a speech the previous day, to set the 1967 borders as a basis for future peace talks between Israel and a prospective Palestinian state, prompted Netanyahu to tell Obama, in the media's presence, that the 1967 borders "were boundaries of repeated wars," and that the nine-mile distance at one point between the West Bank and the Mediterranean "is half the width of the Washington beltway."

Peace is not made solely through agreements, it is made through both sides accepting each other's legitimacy and working together. BDS and other attacks on Israel's existence have only ever served to vindicate the voices saying that peace and reconciliation are impossibilities. Well-meaning people have been duped by this movement into thinking that they are fighting for human rights. However the policy today is as malicious as the boycott of Jewish settlements was in 1922. For all its carefully-framed rhetoric, its leaders have but one true aim, which they occasionally admit - to end the Jewish state.

Although PA officials have indicated that security cooperation with Israel will continue, it is difficult to imagine how the Palestinian power-sharing arrangement will not hinder that partnership - Hamas has long called for Israel's destruction and most of the Israeli-PA security efforts have been based on preventing Hamas terrorists from gaining a foothold in the West Bank. This is perhaps the biggest test of Abbas' credibility; while he is assuring Washington, the EU, and Israel that little will change given his commitment to coexistence, questions abound.

Howard Jacobson is a master of the craft of entertaining, thought provoking and humane fiction. While his latest novel, The Finkler Question, has been applauded as the first work of humour to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize, that label is a little misleading. The book is rather a wonderfully written, engrossing story featuring, interestingly, three-dimensional characters, with comic devices employed to flesh out their successes, doubts and fears.

As the author admits freely, it is a very "Jewish" novel. In fact, it is arguably the most "Jewish" English novel ever published.

Not only are many of the central protagonists Jewish, but the book revolves around the relationships of the broad cast of characters to Jews, their own Jewishness, their own perceived Jewishness, Jewish ritual, history and contemporary culture.

Even in the year 2011 - as happened in the year 1948 - even a relative moderate like Abbas simply cannot bring himself to say in Arabic: "Let's share this land in a two-state solution."

Ironically, Netanyahu is taking a liberal and flexible position while Abbas is taking a reactionary, imperialistic stance. Talk about accepting the "other"!

And yet not a single professor in any university class, not a single journalist or expert in the mass media will raise or even report that point. President Obama won't pick up on it to chide the Palestinians. Nobody will start calling Netanyahu moderate and peace-seeking while saying that Abbas is extremist and peace-rejecting.

Was there ever a time when anti-Israel students felt afraid? Certainly, anti-Zionist fundamentalists, thuggish Israel-bashers and others have been in institutions where they have lost sympathy, debates and votes. But have they ever had to navigate an environment of threats and intimidation?

Have pro-Palestinian, pan-Arab or expansionist Islamist voices been shouted down, physically attacked, bullied or harassed on Australian campuses or in other forums?

I am not talking about anti-Muslim or anti-Arab prejudice, bigotry and racism - which does exist and can have violent manifestations - but thuggish attacks on people seeking to advocate a political position.

On May 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a historic address to a joint meeting of the US Congress, saying he was willing to "make painful compromises", including relinquishing "parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland", in pursuit of peace with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu acknowledged that, "a Palestinian state must be big enough to be viable, independent and prosperous". However, as US President Obama recently noted, the border will have to be different to the 15-kilometre ceasefire line that existed prior to Israel's defensive war of June 1967.

Simply put, Israel cannot return to those indefensible borders.

While most Middle East observers have felt considerable hope in the wake of the "Arab Spring" mass movements, this has always been mixed with varying degrees of trepidation. Today, some very knowledgeable key analysts are increasingly saying that the trepidation now looks more appropriate than the hope. This Update is devoted to a few of these more cautious and pessimistic views about what is currently occurring across the region.

First up is Professor Barry Rubin, who predicts a major collapse of the Obama Administration's policy hopes for the Middle East in September - not because of the Palestinian unilateral efforts at the UN, but because of the Egyptian elections.  He predicts very a destructive and radical government in Egypt following that poll, and presents a variety of evidence to support his view. He then enumerates a number of dangerous problems he sees arising, and also raises other problematic trends across the region, including in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey.

Events in Washington relevant to the Middle East continue apace. Following US President Obama's Middle East policy speech last Thursday, Obama met with Israeli PM Netanyahu on Friday (a video of Netanyahu's remarks is here and a transcript is here, while video of Obama is here) and then spoke to the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC on Sunday (a text of his remarks is here.) This Update deals with some of the key issues raised by the statements at all three events.

First up is former senior US official Elliot Abrams, who looks at how the AIPAC speech clarified the more controversial elements of the speech on Thursday. He notes the statement on Hamas was clearer, and the words President Obama used on borders was a correction to a mistake on Thursday, where he seemed to be suggesting that Israel could be forced completely back to the 1949 armistice lines if the Palestinians did not choose to agree to land swaps. Abrams notes a contradiction, however, that seemed to continue in the AIPAC speech, a recognition that Israel could not be expected to negotiate with a Palestinian Authority containing an unrepentantly rejectionist Hamas, and yet a demand seemed to be there for Israel to find some way to negotiate.

US President Barack Obama's speech outlining US Middle East policy in the wake of the Arab Spring movements was a watershed, detailing US support for reforms and democratisation.

However, its section on Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts unfortunately weakened several important points with flaws that may impede peace prospects.

As readers are probably aware, US President Barack Obama gave an important speech last night on US Middle East Policy in response to the Arab Spring - which can be read in full here, and can be viewed here. This Update deals with its policy statements across various issue areas as well as their ramifications.

First up is Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who discusses the implications of what Obama said particularly with respect to Israeli-Palestinian issues. He is critical of three elements of the speech which go beyond the Clinton parameters for a deal set back in 2000 - his enunciation of the principle that a deal should be "based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps," a rejection of an Israeli military presence in the Jordan valley in a deal, and "a borders-and-security-first approach, leaving the subjects of refugees and Jerusalem for future negotiations". Satloff points out that these are all US movements toward the Palestinian position - just as the Palestinian Authority had signed a highly destructive agreement with Hamas, and is likely to lead to a rift with Israeli PM Netanyahu, currently due in Washington.

This update deals with two related Israeli-Palestinian developments - a relatively hardline piece by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the New York Times on Tuesday, plus the "Naqba Day" clashes over the weekend (video here and here, some photos here), which for the first time saw major efforts by Palestinian residents of Syria and Lebanon to try to cross the border into Israel, leading to considerable casualties.

First up is a response by David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, expressing disappointment and concern at the content of Abbas' opinion piece, which Harris argues, not only effectively says no to a negotiated peace, but re-writes 60 years of history. He takes particular issue with the matters Abbas elides or misrepresents regarding what happened in 1948 and the period up until 1967. He says that Abbas' defence of moves to gain unilateral support for Palestinian statehood without negotations is likely to "effectively end the Israeli-Palestinian peace process."

Professor Amin Saikal's one-sided ode to Hamas, published on The Drum, overlooks one issue - that Hamas is a terrorist organisation which refuse to recognise Israel's right to exist.

Saikal would have us believe that "Hamas has emerged as a pragmatic Islamist movement" and that therefore Israel and the international community should embrace Hamas as a negotiating partner.

If Hamas is pragmatic, then I would not like to imagine what an extremist group looks like. Perhaps a brief reminder as to Hamas's raison d'être is in order.

In Amin Saikal's article "Palestinians' High Hopes" (May 6) he naively describes the Fatah-Hamas unity pact as likely to enhance prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. In fact, the effect is very much likely to be the reverse.

Saikal, like some other analysts, implores Israel to negotiate with Hamas and insists the internationally-designated terrorist group has become "pragmatic." Yet he makes no suggestion that Hamas should be required to amend its Charter to recognise Israel and abide by the pre-conditions for participation in the peace process established by the International Quartet (the UN, US, European Union and Russia) in 2006. Hamas has refused to accept these eminently sensible pre-conditions for a seat at the table, namely: recognition of Israel, renouncing terror and accepting all previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements and obligations.

On 10 May, that little slither of land, Israel, about one third the size of Tasmania but burdened with decades of unremitting attacks on its very legitimacy and existence, celebrates her 63rd year of independence. There are good reasons why many Australians should celebrate that.

We could talk about the historical bond between our two nations dating back to the ANZACS. A bond that is underpinned by our shared commitment to freedom and democracy, and respect for women's rights, gays, minorities and the rule of law. We could celebrate that we are both thriving multicultural states that have successfully absorbed and integrated millions of refugees and immigrants from around the world.

And it wouldn't hurt to reflect on the irony that Israel's Arab citizens enjoy more rights, freedoms and liberties than do their neighbours in any number of Middle East nations - where they are currently dying while fighting for these very same rights and privileges.

That perhaps explains why despite the sea of violence, uncertainty and uprisings currently gripping the Middle East, Israel continues to be the sole oasis of stability.

This Update deals with the implication of the surprise Fatah-Hamas Palestinian unity deal, announced on Wednesday.

First up, summarising what is known and not known about the details of the deal, and their possible ramifications, is a useful briefing paper from the British-Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM). The paper points out that while the deal is ostensibly based on an Egyptian-brokered agreement rejected by Hamas in 2009, it is clear that further modifications have been introduced, but it is not publicly known what they are. It goes on to outline the dilemmas the agreement will pose for both Israel and other international players.

The Palestinian Authority's actions speak louder than words. As Jews around the world prepare to celebrate Passover, the Palestinian Authority has offered its own unique gift to the Jewish people honouring Hamas terrorist Abbas Al-Sayed, and in the process, demonstrating yet again why genuine peace is so elusive.

Probably no document in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict has done more damage to the reputation of Israel, nor contributed more to the international campaign to boycott and delegitimise it, than the Goldstone Report. That is why Justice Goldstone's mea culpa in a Washington Post op-ed on 1 April was so breathtaking.

Richard Goldstone, chair of the commission which authored the UN Human Rights Council's (UNHRC) Goldstone Report into the Gaza War of 2008-09, has now conceded that, regarding Israel, "if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

In particular, he now agrees that the most inflammatory and absurd of the report's conclusions - that Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians "as a matter of policy" - is baseless. He also concedes that Israeli authorities are reasonably investigating every specific allegation of misconduct by its soldiers during the Gaza war. Hamas, by contrast, he points out, has done "nothing."

Unfortunately, Justice Goldstone's change of heart cannot undo the massive, irreparable damage he and his co-commissioners originally inflicted through their report. This damage is not only to Israel's reputation but also to Middle East peace prospects, and to the very notion of a responsible and universal system of international law.

There was no possible mistake; the Hamas operative who fired it hit exactly what he was aiming at - a clearly identifiable, distinctively yellow school bus.

This was not a weapon Hamas could ever hope to manufacture for itself in Gaza. In fact, the Kornet is made only in Russia by KBP Industries, and then sold only under licence from the Russian Government - usually exclusively to states.

So how did Hamas get one? Very likely from Syria, which has bought Kornets from Russia, and is known to pass on advanced weapons to terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. It was probably smuggled via Egypt and through the tunnels under the Sinai border into Gaza.

Netanyahu has been under pressure from some of his aides to preempt the Palestinian initiative with a diplomatic plan of his own. If he has indeed been working on such a plan, the Prime Minister has been doing a good job keeping it secret.

Amid efforts to relaunch and sustain Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israel's claim for recognition as a Jewish State continues to generate controversy. While Israel's leaders have insisted that such recognition is fundamental to any peace agreement, Palestinian and other Arab leaders have responded to the claim with consistent and widespread antipathy. To begin to explore how this issue might be appropriately addressed in the context of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, we must consider the nature and legitimacy of the interests at stake and examine the alternatives for addressing them.

While Canberra's Australian National University (ANU) is generally regarded as a quality institution, some of the public comment emanating from its Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, headed by Professor Amin Saikal, should properly raise eyebrows.

In an exclusive interview with Simon Wiesenthal Center's Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Ehud Ya'ari-Israel's foremost expert on Arab Affairs, provides quick insights on seismic developments in Israel's volatile neighborhood,including Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Libya. Why Hezbollah is quiet for now and what's Hamas' strategy in Gaza.

Israel's 'guilt' had in fact already been pre-determined before the world even knew of Justice Goldstone, when the original resolution establishing the fact-finding mission declared Israel had committed "grave violations".

Unfortunately, Goldstone's change of heart cannot undo the massive, irreparable damage he and his co-commissioners have inflicted through their report.

As readers may or may not have heard, there was a particularly heinous attack from Gaza on an Israeli school bus yesterday, which fortunately did not kill anyone, but did wound one child severely, as well as the bus driver. Reports says Hamas' military wing claimed responsibility. This was accompanied by a large rocket and mortar barrage on Israel from Gaza.

As most readers are probably aware, Justice Richard Goldstone, the head of the UN Human Rights Council's much-discussed "Goldstone Commission" into the 2008-2009 Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, published a recantation in the April 1 Washington Post of many of the report's key findings. This Update deals with the implications of his volte face.

This Update contains new expert analyses of the developing situation in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad, responding to escalating unrest, first sacked the cabinet, but then unexpectedly failed to end a 45-year-old legal "state of emergency".

The Itamar massacre highlighted that, for far too long, the international community has ignored or downplayed the ongoing and systematic contributions to this infrastructure of incitement by the official organs of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

International law is useful. But to use it properly, the differences from domestic law must be recognised, along with the dangers of creating perverse incentives.

Lewis regards a dash toward Western-style elections, far from representing a solution to the region's difficulties, as constituting "a dangerous aggravation" of the problem, and fears that radical Islamic movements would be best placed to exploit so misguided a move.

Israel has accidentally emerged with a clear long-term energy strategy: no nuclear energy, less oil and coal, and more natural gas - especially Israel's own.

The popular usage of the term "lawfare" is the use of law as a weapon in itself. Its goal is to weaken an enemy, primarily through demoralisation.

This Update concentrates on the possibly highly significant outbreak of widespread unrest in Syria, and the growing Israeli-Palestinian violence, especially around Gaza.

We begin with a report on the unrest in Syria from Roee Nahmias, an Israeli journalist specialising in Lebanon and Syria. He points out the current unrest is the most significant in Syria since the Hama massacre of 1982, and the first time Bashar al-Assad has had to use significant force to put down opposition, and thus a test of his willingness to shed blood.

This Update focuses on the implications and aftermath of the Itamar terrorist attack on Friday night, when assailants entered a home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar and murdered five members of the Fogel family, including a three-month-old baby and two other children. This horrific attack has political implications, because, as Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post documents, the Palestinian Authority's initial response appeared half-hearted, leading to both an American implication that more was expected, and some critical words from Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu. Moreover, official Palestinian media claimed that it was not Palestinians who carried out the attack.

Israeli lawyer and activist Nitsana Darshan-Leitner speaks on "Fighting Terrorism: One Lawsuit at a Time" for the Hans & Gini Bachrach Memorial Oration in Melbourne, Australia, 14 February 2011

This Update features an interpretation of the Middle East unrest by probably the world's greatest scholar of Middle East history - 94-year-old Prof. Bernard Lewis. But first it also features some important new commentary on the ways in which an excessive focus on Israel has distorted both understanding of the Mideast region, and more importantly, policy toward the Arab dictators.

Libya and the Arab revolutions had to play second fiddle to a Palestinian resolution to condemn Israel, which was always likely to fail thanks to a US veto

America was correct to support Egypt when it came knocking, even if the latter was a dictatorship. If America said no, Egypt might have continued its bellicosity and, like Syria, eventually turned to Iran.

In the long run, the feeling in Jerusalem is that the mayhem across the Middle East will serve Israel's interests. The precedent whereby Arab citizenries demand their leaders deliver jobs, education and personal dignity is priceless.