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Antony Loewenstein speaks at Melbourne Uni
Tonight I saw freelance journalist and blogger, Antony Loewenstein speak at Melbourne University about opposing Israel as a Jew. He’s the author of My Israel Question and more recently, The Blogging Revolution (pictured) as well as the author of a blog and writer for various media, print and online.
He’s a great speaker, and set out his thoughts clearly despite my disagreements of his emphasis on the media and blogging as a force for change.
The significance of him being so publicly against Israel is of course that he is Jewish and he is committed to destroying the myth that all Jews support Israel and that the Jewish establishment speak for all Jews.
He’s come up against all sorts of opposition, been called an anti-Semite, self hater etc. for his criticisms of Israel, but he pointed out that in an attempt to shut down any debate within the Jewish community, even moderate criticisms are denounced as anti-Semitic.
My disagreement was what he said about the media and blogging as if it was the key to changing the situation, rather than real actions. He didn’t state this explicitly, but his constant mention of the media and blogging, whilst not mentioning mass movement implied these conclusions all the same.
But this wasn’t the key argument to have (and I’ll reserve it for another post). The event was encouraging as it attracted a lot of people around the campaign for solidarity with Palestine which is much stronger than the likes of the crazy Zionist (pictured) who greeted people as we left the lecture theatre with an Israeli flag over his shoulders and telling people robotically to ‘support Israel.’
So I bought his book, The Blogging Revolution and had it signed 
It will be hard to put off reading it straight away despite all of my other reading material.
Technorati Tags: Antony Loewenstein, Israel, Palestine, Jewish, blogging, My Israel Question, The Blogging Revolution, Melbourne University
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Huh – snap! I reviewed that book last year for an Adelaide newspaper… I’ll be interested to hear/read what you think about it.
Kath Lockett’s last blog post..
Wow, do you have a link to the review?