Victor Gordon to The Witness

THE WITNESS

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 

 

Refer:  “Like apartheid but worse”, 24 April:

 

The article by Julia Denny-Dimitrou based on an interview with Hildegard Lenz, is an example of not only bad, but irresponsible journalism.

 

While sporting credentials which, to the uninitiated, would appear to elevate Lenz’s status as a reliable source of information vis-à-vis Israel/Palestine, her affiliation to the World Council of Churches through the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme inPalestine, in fact, robs her of credibility.  In short, the WCC is no friend ofIsraeland its historical condemnation of the Jewish State is well documented.

 

Giving Lenz the benefit of the doubt and assuming that during her 3 month stay with a Palestinian family inEast Jerusalemshe did encounter people who provided the anecdotes she mentions, there is no attempt by Denny-Dimitrou to verify a single one. Each claim by Lenz is simply accepted at face value. Single incidents are presented as if they represent official Israeli policy.

 

Her tales of Jewish settlers occupying the homes of Palestinians overnight; Jewish males parading in these homes naked in order to embarrass the former occupants and Israeli settlers deliberately opening sewers to allow raw sewage to run down steps used by Palestinian school children and teachers – “every morning and afternoon”, are not only far-fetched, to say the least, but unverifiable after extensive searches on the internet.

 

Lenz ignores evidence of Israeli justice, like the case heard only last week by the Israeli Supreme Court which found in favour of a Palestinian family whose home was illegally  occupied by Israelis.

 

As for Palestinians being forced to carry identity cards, it should be kept in mind that all Israeli citizens, both Jewish and Arab carry ID by law. Those subject to Palestinian authority carry ID issued by the Palestinian Authority, notIsrael.

 

It is hard to accept that during her three month visit Lenz never came across a single act of Palestinian abuses against Israelis which necessitate the various checkpoints, roadblocks and other security methods to which she scathingly refers.

 

The problem with this article, like others before it, is that single isolated incidents are presented, creating the impression that the latter brutalizes Palestinians as a matter of course. Immediately, the accusation of “apartheid” is leveled againstIsraelindicating that such acts are official policy. This is nothing but false propaganda and should be seen as such.

Victor Gordon to the Pretoria News

PRETORIANEWS

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 

 

(Refer: “Palestinians reduced to second-class citizens inIsrael”)  Like so many of her anti-Israel cohorts, Haneen Zoabi is adept at bending the truth to suit her own purposes – in this case accusing Israel of official discrimination against her 1.5 million Arab citizens and the practice of apartheid.  To the average reader it would all seem quite reasonable.

 

Bandy about words such as “Jewish privilege” “racism”. “restricted”, “distorted” etc, not to mention the accusation that in Israel there are more than 40 laws which discriminate against her “Palestinian” citizens (they are not Palestinians but Arab Israelis) and one cannot be blamed for believing that in terms of her Arab community, Israel must be guilty of behaviour most foul.

 

What Zoabi, the first female Arab Israeli member of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), fails to acknowledge is that, were it not for Israeli democracy, which recognizes its Arab population as full citizens with the full civil, social and political rights applicable to any other Israeli, she would not be occupying the seat that she does. Neither would an Arab judge be a member of Israel’s Supreme Court; neither would there be 4 Arab political parties in parliament,; neither would Arab Israelis have served as Israeli Ambassadors to Finland and Greece and neither would an Arab, Majalli Wahaba have served as Acting State President in 2007 in the absence of the Israeli incumbent.

 

There are many other examples of Arab participation in what is a very normal and fully democratic Israeli society fromIsrael’s Miss World to her representative in the Eurovision Song Contest.

 

Zoabi cites discrimination through Citizenship Laws, Education Laws, Nakba Laws and “various loyalty laws” but fails to explain that the Citizenship Laws, for instance, apply not only to Arabs but to anyone who is not Jewish by birth or conversion.Israelis, after all, a state for the Jewish people, the same way thatSaudi Arabiais a state exclusively for Muslims. Many other countries have laws governing the right of entry based on religious, social or other factors.

 

Without wasting further space in refuting Zoabi’s other allegations, I wish to quote the words of Dr. Tashbih Sayyed, a Shi’ite Pakistani scholar who visited Israel, (more than the vast majority of Israel’s critics have done) expressly to determine whether “there was any truth in the media allegations that Israel was an apartheid state”.

 

In his report (“A Muslim in a Jewish Land”,  Muslim World Today. June 2010 http://www.muslimworldtoday.com/land30.htm ) he concluded that, “Israel Arabs are protected by Israel’s democratic principles and that the Muslim Arab citizens of Israel are afforded all the rights and privileges of Israeli citizenship” He further noted that “Israel is one of the few countries in the Middle East, in contrast to the non-Israeli Arab world, where Arab women enjoy the same status as men and have the right to vote and be elected into public office. Muslim women”, according to Sayyed, “are more liberated inIsrael than in any Muslim country, as Israeli law prohibits polygamy, child marriage and female sexual mutilation.”

 

Amazingly, within her tiny borders,Israelhas accommodated 1.5 million indigenous Arabs who lived in this region prior to the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1948. Despite the potential dangers presented by this presence,Israel, from the very beginning, granted her Arab population full rights of citizenship without discrimination – hence Ms. Zoabi being the very vocal entity that she is.

 

Any thinking person would acknowledge that for a country as vulnerable and threatened asIsrael, her level of democracy is unprecedented and the continual charge of her being a race-based apartheid state is no more than devilish propaganda and an horrendous lie.

 

Rodney Mazinter in The Cape Argus

To: The Editor, Cape Argus

Dear Sir

Knesset Member, Haneen Zoabi, is, of course perfectly entitled to state her opinion, which is the right of citizens in any democracy. She is a member of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, a position absolutely unique in the Middle East where opposition to the ruling oligarchies is not tolerated.

Apart from the distortions manifest in her article there are a few other curiosities that should be borne in mind when reading it.

On virtually the same day that she had her op-ed published in the Cape Argus, another Israeli Palestinian luminary, Sheikh Raed Salah was given space in the London Guardian to vent his spleen on very much the same subject, but using even more offensive words that actually reduced it to outright, demonstrable lies.

Then there is the timing of this upsurge in anti-Israel invective. It takes place at a time when Jews, Christians and other groupings commemorate the most heinous crime in all humanity—the Shoa or Holocaust.

Please excuse me if I smell collusion. How many other newspapers throughout the West have seen fit to allow space for this kind of attack on Israel?

Of course it would be naive to suggest that the status of Israeli Arabs is perfect. But it is a far cry from Zoabi’s and Salah’s claims of deliberate persecution, particularly because it is manifestly untrue.

In February in Haaretz Alexander Yakobson, a noted Hebrew University historian, givessome enlightening statistics gleaned from the Israel Democracy Institute’s scientific research assessment. According to the Institute’s Index for 2011, 52.8% of Arab citizens (as opposed to 88% of Jewish citizens) respond in the affirmative when asked whether they are proud to be Israelis.

The details are even more eye-opening:

While a majority of Arab Israelis don’t like the Prime Minister or the government 69.4% trust the Supreme Court (almost identical to the percentage among Jewish Israelis). The IDF enjoys the trust of 41% of Arab citizens and 45% agree that it is “very important” or “quite important” to strengthen Israel’s military capability.

Israeli Arabs like being Israeli, are proud to be Israeli and want Israel to remain secure. If  hundreds of thousands of Arabs are proud Israelis, what should we make of the claim that a Jewish state can’t accommodate proud minorities?

Raed Salah has spent the last 10 months fighting deportation in England, finally returning home to the very country that he savages.

That Zoabi and Salah have the freedom to incite within and outside Israel and then continue with their lives, all rights intact, is something of a testament to the liberties provided by Israel to all of its citizens, even those who wish to see the state destroyed.

Don Krausz to The Sunday Independent

Iqbal Jassat’s letter of 1 April in the Sunday Independent refers.

 

Once again he is stuck with the tiresome formulae involving “Israeli-inspired frenzy,” “Israeli-manipulated economic sabotage” and “American/Israeli interests intent on undermining South Africa’s legitimate trade ties with Iran.”

 

If his dearest wishes come true and Israel ceases to exist, then what will the poor man have to foam at the mouth about?

 

Yet his line of thinking, I won’t say reasoning, demands comment. His argument appears to be that as long as our economy benefits and jobs are created, we should cheerfully do business with the devil himself and ignore the moral imperatives that prompt the civilised world to sanction Iran.

 

I am sure that Mr. Iqbal Jassat is not a Catholic and yet he appears to worship the Trinity – Pounds, Shillings and Pence. He brings to mind an apparently true story written by Pierre van Paassen ( I think) and that dates back to the First World War.

 

The British arms manufacturer Vickers Armstrong invented a special fuse for artillery shells and patented it. The German armaments giant, Krupp, bought the manufacturing rights to this patent on a commission basis. Then, thank heaven, the First World War began and everybody was in business.

 

Germany used those fuses by the million against British, British allied, French and French colonial, Russian and American troops. Being men of honour the Germans regularly paid the commission owed to Vickers Armstrong via neutral countries right through the war. I am sure that the accountants at Vickers Armstrong even learned to say: “Danke schon!” (Thank you!)

 

After the war, when the figures could be calculated, it was estimated that Germany’s Krupp paid Britain’s Vickers Armstrong nineteen pence for every British soldier killed in that terrible war.

 

So what is wrong with that? It makes sound business sense. Just ask Mr. Jassat.

Don Krausz to The Business Day

Attention: The Letters Editor,

Business Day.

Philip Lloyd’s letter of 27-3-2012 headed: Israel at fault, not Iran,” refers.

Lloyd complains that “fears of an Israeli attack on Iran … are sending oil prices unsustainably high” and he blames Israel for this. He justifies this attitude by listing Iranian compliance with the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and agrees with its decision not to adhere to the amendments.

The United Nations and the rest of the world are of the opinion that Iran is racing to build an atomic bomb and consider this such a menace that they are doing everything in their power to force Iran to cease such development.

Lloyd is obviously not too worried about this bomb. He is only concerned about the hole that increased oil prices will make in his pocket.

I am sure that Israel sympathises with Lloyd but it has greater problems than the financial aspects. There are plenty of countries that have nuclear armament but none of them have ever threatened to “wipe another country off the map” as Iran has done.

So why should Israel feel targeted? The answer is overwhelming:  

The President of Iran is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and he has been abusing and threateningIsrael for many years. In 2005 he said, quoting the Imam Khamenei,

“Israel should be wiped off the map.”

Just a slip of the tongue perhaps? Michael Axworthy, Britain’s consular officer in Teheran, testified that slogans draped over missiles in Iran’s military parades stated

“Israel must be wiped off the map.” Ahmadinejad’s own speech was peppered with

threats of “Death to Israel.”

In 2011 he likened Israel to “a cancer that spreads through the body, stating that

“This regime infects any region [and must therefore] be removed.”

There are about seven million people living in Israel of which 75.8% are Jews and the balance Arabs, Christians, Druze and other races. President Binyamin Netanyahu is responsible for each and every one of those men, women and children. I am sure that the “unsustainability of oil prices” is not his greatest worry when faced with a hate-filled lunatic armed with nuclear weapons.

He must act while there is still time.

Don Krausz