Antony Loewenstein

Last updated

Antony Loewenstein
Born1974 (age 49–50)
Occupation
Citizenship
Genre Non-fiction
Subject

Antony Loewenstein (born 1974) is a freelance investigative journalist, author, and film-maker based in Sydney. He describes himself as a Jewish atheist, and is known for his criticism of the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli Government. His grandparents had escaped the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, but Loewenstein decided to take up German citizenship as an adult.

Contents

His 2023 book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, won and was shortlisted for several awards.

Early life and education

Antony Loewenstein was born in Australia in 1974. His father's parents left had left Germany just before World War II, but many members of their family had been killed in the Holocaust. [1]

Loewenstein became a German citizen, while maintaining Australian citizenship, as an adult in 2011, "as a way to rightfully re-claim our birthright", to honour his family that Germany, and to be allowed to work in European Union countries. However, he said in 2013 that he feels neither Australian nor German, describing himself as a "non-practising Jewish atheist currently based in Sydney". [1]

Career

Loewenstein has written for a number of publications, including The Guardian , [2] and Sydney Morning Herald . [3]

Loewenstein contributed a chapter to Not Happy, John (2004), a best-seller in Australia which highlighted the growing disenchantment with prime minister John Howard. It was short-listed for a 2007 New South Wales Premier's Literary Award. The book was criticised in a review in Australian Jewish News . [4]

He is the co-editor with Ahmed Moor of the 2012 book After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine which includes essays by Omar Barghouti, John Mearsheimer, Ilan Pappé, Sara Roy, and Jonathan Cook, among others. [5]

With South African film-maker Naashon Zalk, Loewenstein was co-director of a 2019 Al Jazeera English documentary on abuse of the opioid drug tramadol in Nigeria, West Africa's Opioid Crisis.[ citation needed ] He appears in the 2019 documentary, This Is Not A Movie , about The Independent 's Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk.[ citation needed ]

Loewenstein co-founded Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV). [6] [7]

He won the 2019 Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize, one of Australia's leading peace awards, for his work on Israel/Palestine.[ citation needed ]

In 2021, he co-founded Declassified Australia with fellow journalist Peter Cronau. The news website critically reports on Australia's relations with the world. [8] He and UK film-maker Dan Davies co-directed the Al Jazeera documentary Under the Cover of Covid. [9] [10]

In 2023, he published The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World, in the UK, US, and Australia, with multiple, translated editions to come. It was a long-list finalist in the 2023 Moore Prize For Human Rights Writing, and a best-selling book in New Zealand and many territories. [11] [12] [13] In November 2023 Loewenstein was awarded, in partnership with Banki Haddock Fiora, the Walkley Book Award for Longform Journalism for the book. [14] The book won the People's Choice award [15] and was also shortlisted for the 2024 Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction [16] and the Nonfiction Book Award at the 2024 Queensland Literary Awards. [17]

Bibliography

Author
Contributor
Editor

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zionism</span> Movement supporting a Jewish state in Palestine

Zionism is an ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside Europe. With the rejection of alternate proposals for a Jewish state, it eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, and of central importance in Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism became Israel's national or state ideology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Golda Meir</span> Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974

Golda Meir was an Israeli politician who served as the fourth prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974. She was Israel's first and only female head of government and the first in the Middle East.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chaim Weizmann</span> Israeli statesman and British chemist (1874–1952)

Chaim Azriel Weizmann 27 November 1874 – 9 November 1952) was a Russian-born biochemist, Zionist leader and Israeli statesman who served as president of the Zionist Organization and later as the first president of Israel. He was elected on 16 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952. Weizmann was instrumental in obtaining the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and convincing the United States government to recognize the newly formed State of Israel in 1948.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homeland for the Jewish people</span> Idea rooted in Jewish history, religion and culture

A homeland for the Jewish people is an idea rooted in Jewish history, religion, and culture. The Jewish aspiration to return to Zion, generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Zionism</span> Belief among some Protestant Christians that Jews should return to the Holy Land

Christian Zionism is a political and religious ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with biblical prophecies transmitted through the Old Testament: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant—the eschatological "Gathering of Israel"—is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The term began to be used in the mid-20th century, in place of Christian restorationism, as proponents of the ideology rallied behind Zionists in support of a Jewish national homeland.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), represents the interests of the Australian Jewish community to government, politicians, media and other community groups and organisations through research, commentary and analysis. The organisation is directed by Colin Rubenstein, who was previously a political science lecturer at Monash University. AIJAC has office locations in Melbourne and Sydney. AIJAC is formally associated with the American Jewish Committee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ilan Pappé</span> Israeli-British historian (born 1954)

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. Pappé was also a board member of the Israeli political party Hadash, and was a candidate on the party list in the 1996 and 1999 Israeli legislative elections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anita Shapira</span> Israeli historian (born 1940)

Anita Shapira is an Israeli historian. She is the founder of the Yitzhak Rabin Center, professor emerita of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, and former head of the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University. She received the Israel Prize in 2008.

The Jewish lobby are individuals and groups predominantly in the Jewish diaspora that advocate for the interests of Jews and Jewish values. The lobby references the involvement and influence of Jews in politics and the political process, and includes organized groups such as the American Jewish Committee, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, B'nai B'rith, and the Anti-Defamation League.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Danby</span> Australian politician

Michael David Danby is an Australian politician who was an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1998 until 2019, representing the Division of Melbourne Ports, Victoria. Danby was briefly Parliamentary Secretary for the Arts, from March to September 2013.

This is an incomplete bibliography of the Arab–Israeli conflict.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-Zionism</span> Opposition to Zionism

Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religious anti-Zionism</span> Opposition to the State of Israel within religious contexts

While anti-Zionism usually utilizes ethnic and political arguments against the existence or policies of the state of Israel, anti-Zionism has also been expressed within religious contexts which have, at times, colluded and collided with the ethnopolitical arguments over Israel's legitimacy. Outside of the liberal and socialist fields of anti-Zionist currents, the religious arguments tend to predominate as the driving ideological power within the incumbent movements and organizations, and usually target the Israeli state's relationship with Judaism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Cook</span> British journalist

Jonathan Cook, born circa 1965, is a British writer and a freelance journalist formerly based in Nazareth, Israel, who writes about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He writes a regular column for The National of Abu Dhabi and Middle East Eye.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bundism</span> Secular Jewish socialist movement

Bundism is a secular Jewish socialist movement whose first organizational manifestation was the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and Russia, founded in the Russian Empire in 1897.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanan Ashrawi</span> Palestinian legislator, activist, and scholar (born 1946)

Hanan Daoud Mikhael Ashrawi is a Palestinian politician, activist, and scholar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Middle East Monitor</span> Not-for-profit press monitoring organisation

The Middle East Monitor (MEMO) is a not-for-profit press monitoring organisation and lobbying group that emerged in mid 2009. MEMO is largely focused on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but writes about other issues in the Middle East as well. MEMO is pro-Palestinian in orientation, and has been labelled by some commentators as pro-Islamist, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, and pro-Hamas.

The Walkley Book Award is an Australian award presented annually by the Walkley Foundation for excellence in long-form journalism and nonfiction, with subjects ranging from biography to true crime to investigative journalism and reporting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zionism as settler colonialism</span>

Zionism has been described by several scholars as a form of settler colonialism in relation to the region of Palestine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This paradigm has been applied to Zionism by various scholars and figures, including Patrick Wolfe, Edward Said, Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky. Many early leading Zionists, such as Ze'ev Jabotinsky in The Iron Wall, also described their movement in terms of colonization.

Zionist antisemitism or antisemitic Zionism refers to a phenomenon in which antisemites express support for Zionism and the State of Israel. In some cases, this support may be promoted for explicitly antisemitic reasons. Historically, this type of antisemitism has been most notable among Christian Zionists, who may perpetrate religious antisemitism while being outspoken in their support for Jewish sovereignty in Israel due to their interpretation of Christian eschatology. Similarly, people who identify with the political far-right, particularly in Europe and the United States, may support the Zionist movement because they seek to expel Jews from their country and see Zionism as the least complicated method of achieving this goal and satisfying their racial antisemitism.

References

  1. 1 2 Loewenstein, Antony (23 September 2013). "How I, an Australian Jewish-atheist, became a German citizen". The Guardian . Archived from the original on 25 January 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
  2. ↑ "Antony Loewenstein". the Guardian. Archived from the original on 12 January 2016. Retrieved 17 December 2015.
  3. ↑ "Antony Loewenstein". SMH. Archived from the original on 2 February 2024. Retrieved 2 February 2024.
  4. ↑ Questioning Israel (28 July 2006) Archived 27 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ↑ Antony Loewenstein, Ahmed Moor, After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine Archived 20 September 2012 at the Wayback Machine , Saqi Books, (28 August 2012), ISBN   0863568165 ISBN   978-0863568169
  6. ↑ Andra Jackson, New group takes on Jewish lobby Archived 24 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine , The Age, 6 March 2007
  7. ↑ Australian Jewish leaders blast new NGO as anti-Zionist Archived 25 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine , The Jerusalem Post, accessed 15 September 2012.
  8. ↑ "Declassified Australia - About". Declassified Australia. Archived from the original on 11 October 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  9. ↑ "Under the Cover of Covid". blackleaf-films.co.uk. Archived from the original on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  10. ↑ "Under the cover of COVID". www.aljazeera.com. Archived from the original on 8 June 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  11. ↑ "The Palestine Laboratory: How technology helps Israel cosy up to the world's autocrats". Middle East Eye. 14 June 2023. Archived from the original on 1 October 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  12. ↑ "The Palestine Laboratory". Australian Institute of International Affairs. 17 July 2023. Archived from the original on 18 November 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  13. ↑ "News". www.cgmoorefoundation.org. Archived from the original on 3 October 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  14. ↑ "68th Walkley Awards winners announced". 23 November 2023. Archived from the original on 4 December 2023. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
  15. ↑ Heath, Nicola (1 February 2024). "Debut poet takes home $125,000 in prize money for a verse novel that almost wasn't published". ABC News. Archived from the original on 3 February 2024. Retrieved 2 February 2024.
  16. ↑ "Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2024 shortlists announced". Books+Publishing. 19 December 2023. Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
  17. ↑ "Queensland Literary Awards 2024 shortlists announced". Books+Publishing. 1 August 2024. Retrieved 24 August 2024.
External videos
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Book Discussion on Disaster Capitalism, C-SPAN, 8 October 2015
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.