Vast Zionist Empire Grows

Bestselling Author Antony Loewenstein writes:

This is so desperate it’s comical. Those backing Jewish colonies who live in the Zionist Diaspora want nothing more than no debate over the growing numbers of young Jews turning away from Israeli occupation policies.

"Jewish colonies who live in the Zionist diaspora?"



Where are these colonies? Bondi? Toorak? Walgett? Run and hide, people!

Every single time Antony Loewestein complains about a lack of debate, he should reflect on what he does to comments on his blog (delete them without a trace) and how he responds to his critics (he doesn't).

His post has a typically hate-filled sneer against Ted Lapkin:

American Ted Lapkin (who used to work for the Zionist lobby AIJAC and now lurks with a right-wing think-tank)

Lurks? I think Antony will find the word is 'employed'. Something with which Antony is not very familiar

Antony doesn't like Ted Lapkin, who when they appeared on TV together, showed Antony as both clueless and dishonest.

Lapkin pointed out basic (and terribly embarrassing) errors in Loewenstein's book. Antony, as always scoffed at the idea he could be wrong and instead thought such criticism was part of a smear campaign, rather than basic fact-checking. It's all an eeeeevil Zionist conspiracy in his mind.

TONY JONES: Let me bring Mr Lapkin back in here. You've read Antony Loewenstein's thesis. You've actually read his book, My Israel Question.

TED LAPKIN: Correct.

TONY JONES: How do you respond to it coming from a young Australian Jewish person?

TED LAPKIN: Well, I think that it is a far-left anti-Zionist book. It's rife with factual errors, beginning with the map that appears on page nine of the preface even before you get into the meat of the book. If you look at that map, Antony Loewenstein has Lebanon placed midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa, so he suffers from some geographical confusion. But even worse are the factual errors and the factual confusion that really renders the book a piece of very shoddy scholarship at best.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: It is interesting how I was expecting this kind of response. This is exactly the kind of response that Mearsheimer and Walt got in the US. They were accused of being extreme. They were accused of making factual errors. They were accused of being anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic. This is the kind of tactics that we expect. The reality is that my book, My Israel Question simply is asking a question: is the Australian Jewish community happy to accept a Jewish state in the Middle East which conducts itself, especially since 1967 when the occupation began of the West Bank and Gaza, in a way that has Jewish only roads, a wall that essentially does not allow children to get from one part of the country to another, a situation where there is bombardment from the air of civilian infrastructure, a situation where the Israeli state is more than happy to allow olive groves from settlers to destroy them? I mean, I was in Israel last year and in Palestine last year, in the West Bank and Israel proper. If you go to a town like Hebron, which is of religious significance to both Islam and also for Judaism, there's a situation where you see literally Palestinians are not actually allowed to leave their own house. They are actually told they have to leave their house another way. This is an Israeli Army directive. You have roughly 1,000 Jewish settlers who are extremists and over 100,000 Palestinians living there. That kind of dynamic and that kind of apartheid is something the world needs to understand.

TONY JONES: OK. Ted Lapkin, it's a really fundamental critique of the Jewish state from beginning to end with an historical context. What's your response?

TED LAPKIN: If I can point out that I haven't uttered the word anti-Semitism tonight. The only person who has been uttering it is Antony Loewenstein. You talk about factual errors - he talks about Jewish only roads. That's one of the errors that he makes in the book. What you have in the West Bank are roads that are limited to Israelis and Arab Israelis can use them and the reason why they were built is because Israelis driving through the West Bank were subjected to gunfire and sniping attacks and so to portray this as some kind of apartheid when, in essence, these roads were built after many Israelis, including Israeli rabs who were using, them were shot to death using the regular road system I think is just absurd and it's factually incorrect. These are not Jewish only roads. They are roads that are limited to Israelis for security reasons.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: Exactly. This is the thing - everything is for security. In other words, when there is a town which is cordoned off, it's for security. When there are roads only for Israelis, it is for security. My point is, this kind of rhetoric is always used to justify security measures, which in reality means that the Palestinian people don't actually have...

TED LAPKIN: Do you concede your error that these are not Jewish only roads.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: No, I don't.

TED LAPKIN: I'm sorry but you are mistaken.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: Far from it.

TED LAPKIN: Israeli Arabs use them all the time.

Antony stopped short of adding "Nyah nyah ya boo, sucks to you". Such a scholar...

The man is a hypocrite and a truly awful writer.