Follow the money: Counter-terrorism and terror financing
November 9, 2017 | Shmuel Levin
A new book co-authored by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel M. Katz reveals that Israeli security services have made attacking terror finance a major part of their counterterrorism efforts for more than 15 years under the codename “Operation Harpoon”…
The terror tunnels are back
November 1, 2017 | Shmuel Levin
The Israel Defence Forces have discovered several new terror tunnels emanating from Gaza and crossing into Israel.
Australia joins UNHRC: Can Canberra help catalyse badly needed UN reform?
October 18, 2017 | Sharyn Mittelman
Australia has achieved a significant international win in being elected to join the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for a three-year term starting in January 2018. However, Australia may face great challenges in promoting its agenda for human rights at the UNHRC, as the Council has long been marred by politicisation and undermined by the election of members who are serial human rights offenders, and not human rights advocates.
Ha’aretz reveals claims about major settlement expansion are wrong
October 17, 2017 | Ahron Shapiro
Talking about building settlements and actually building them are two different things. It’s an important distinction that isn’t made often enough.
Conspiracy theories about the Kurds and the Mossad
October 11, 2017 | Shmuel Levin
In the wake of Kurdistan’s recent independence referendum, all manner of creative accusations have emerged alleging that the referendum was part of a secretive Israeli and/or Jewish conspiracy. Admittedly, Israel has been supportive of an independent Kurdistan, but Kurdish national aspirations predate Israel’s existence. The Kurds were first promised an independent state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, following World War One.
The Kurdistan referendum – the aftermath
October 4, 2017 | Shmuel Levin
As discussed here on FreshAIR a few weeks ago, despite significant opposition, Iraq’s Kurds proceeded on 25 September with an independence referendum resulting in an overwhelming ‘yes’ vote of 93%. The referendum was opposed with near-unanimity from multiple countries, including most prominently, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Now these countries are threatening retaliation.
Settlement housing construction plummets to five-year low
September 15, 2017 | Ahron Shapiro
In January, coinciding with the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government advanced plans for thousands of new homes in Jewish neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem as well as the West Bank (the vast majority within settlement blocs.)
Yet since then – according to the latest figures released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, actual housing starts have dropped to its lowest point in five years.
Strangely, the media has been silent about this disparity.
The crackdown on Palestinian freedom of speech – and why you probably haven’t heard about it
September 14, 2017 | Shmuel Levin
In the last few months, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza have been busy. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority has introduced a new “ban on websites”. Like all laws passed since 2007, the new Electronic Crimes Law was passed in July 2017 by presidential decree without consultations with Palestinian civil society or the public.
Israeli PM’s historic visit to Latin America
September 14, 2017 | Sharyn Mittelman
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Argentina on Monday – the first visit by an Israeli leader to the region since Israel’s creation in 1948. Netanyahu is also visiting Colombia and Mexico before travelling to New York, where he will address the UN General Assembly.
Israel and the UN: A new page?
September 5, 2017 | Gareth Narunsky
In September 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stood at the podium of the United Nations General Assembly and declared that “Israel has a bright future at the UN”.
He also declared “the war against Israel at the UN is over” and that “a decade from now an Israeli prime minister will stand right here where I am standing and actually applaud the UN.” Given some of the events at the UN which have transpired since… the prediction that it may take a decade for things to change at the UN today appears to be on firmer ground than the claim that the war on Israel at the UN is over.
The “targeting” and “pressure” that so annoyed John Lyons
September 4, 2017 | Tzvi Fleischer
Former Australian Middle East correspondent John Lyons – now headed for the ABC as their new “head of investigative and in-depth journalism” – apparently does not like AIJAC very much.
He’s certainly been making that very clear of late in repeated public statements…
So what did we do that so upset Mr. Lyons? Mainly, we criticised some of his journalism when he was Middle East correspondent with the Australian from 2009 until January 2015…
So here are some examples of some of AIJAC’s past critiques of Mr. Lyons – as well as several related critiques from other sources…
Is an independent Kurdistan finally about to be born? And if so, what does it mean for Israel?
September 1, 2017 | Shmuel Levin
Despite being delayed several times before, Iraqi Kurdistan is now set to vote in an independence referendum on 25 September 2017.
The Kurdish people are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, at approximately 30 million people. They speak “various dialects of their own language, Kurdish, although governments have sometimes banned its usage”, and are largely Sunni Muslim. Although they have no state of their own, they are indigenous to a mountainous region which covers territory in present day Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia.
