Rodney Mazinter in The Cape Times

Dear Sir

Terry Crawford-Brown’s insulting letter (Cape Times May 28, 2012) refers. Israel has time and again proven that popularity is not a determinant in its humanitarian record and democratic credentials. Despite Crawford-Browns protestations that this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism Jews know differently having born the brunt of “unpopularity” throughout the centuries.

Israel’s north-eastern neighbour, Syria, over the past twelve months has slaughtered anywhere between 7,000 to 10,000 of its own citizens. Of this small occurrence Crawford-Brown is silent, but goes to great pains to ridicule anti-terror practices by the Israeli security units whose sole purpose is to save lives.

Its western neighbour, Egypt, recently dealt with the Ugandan refugees fleeing persecution, starvation and murder, by carrying out enslavement, murder and rape, to the extent that survivors fled, with Egyptian army units hot on their heels to the only country in the Middle East, Israel, where they could expect compassion and help. On this, too, Crawford Brown is silent.

Crawford-Brown’s tiresome hobby horse, Israel’s 800 km security barrier, takes up the rest of his polemic. His hand-to-the-mouth horror at the effrontery of this structure, which incidentally is a wall only for a fraction of its length, is an argument as weak as the minds that cannot accept its true purpose. He wrings his hands and spills crocodile tears while Israeli hospitals are full of sick Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza who enjoy, freely given, the compassion and expertise of Israel’e health system. 

There are walls far longer than Israel’s in the world, but on this too Crawford-Brown remains silent.. To name a few: Morocco, 2,720 kms (to keep out the Polisario,) the over 1,000 kms separating North and South Korea, India’s 3,300 kms to discourage those in Pakistan who would like to kill Indians, Saudi Arabia’s 1,500 kms to keep out the Yemenis and the Iraqis, and Pakistan’s 2,400 kms to keep out incursions from Afghanistan. And then, of course, border walls within Ireland, the USA, Spain, and parts of the old Soviet Union.

But Crawford-Brown’s most risible comment that Israel’s wall is designed to steal Palestinian land takes the cake, Since the barrier was erected between 2002 and 2008, with minor adjustments favouring Palestinian litigants in Israeli courts, the number of victims of terrorism inside Israel fell from 451 to 7, a drop of 98.5%. This result has been continued in the intervening years since then. I would say that it has been a bloody good investment, wouldn’t you?

Bev Goldman Op Ed in SABC News Online

The legitimacy of Israel’s borders, unlike those of any other country, is continually questioned and challenged within the South African political spectrum, and never more closely so than now as it impinges on and threatens the relationship between Israel and South Africa.

 

I refer specifically to the current contentious disagreement between the two countries, that of the proposed relabelling of products from Israel and the disputed territories, the areas better known as the West Bank or as Judea and Samaria.

 

Historians and the most astute legal minds are united in their affirmation that this territory was never taken from the Palestinians, who in fact have no claim to it, but instead from Egypt and Jordan, the latter having illegally annexed it in 1948 and having given up all rights to it after 1967, after the defensive Six-Day War.

 

Jews have had a 3000-year presence in the Holy Land, and were a majority there until the late 1880s. In compliance with UN Resolution 242, which spoke of the Arab-Israeli (note – not Arab-Palestinian) conflict, the Egyptians in 1979 and the Jordanians in 1994 finally accepted Israel’s offer of land for peace. The Palestinians, who only came into being in 1964 as a people with the formation of the PLO, and the Syrians, both refused.  These facts are incontrovertible.

 

In 2003 Professor Talia Einhorn of the TMC Asser Institute for International Law in The Hague wrote that “Nothing in international law requires a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.”  The 1947 UN Partition Resolution calling for an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab (not Palestinian) state was merely a recommendation, and was not mandatory.

 

The territory remains disputed because its final status is yet to be determined. Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority must happen; yet the stalemate persists.  “President Abbas is firm in his refusal to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu who, after the establishment of Israel’s coalition government in May this year, dispatched his personal envoy to Ramallah to deliver a letter to the President reiterating Israel’s commitment to establishing an independent Palestinian state.” He has not yet had an answer to his letter.

 

The decision of the Minister of Trade and Industry, Rob Davies to call for goods made in the disputed territories to be labelled as coming from the occupied Palestinian territories would therefore appear to be nothing so much as a clarion call by government to impose restrictions where none should exist.

 

It is bowing to pressure from a small, vociferous and dangerous NGO, Open Shuhada Street, which appears to be violently and oft-times abusively anti-Israel (the recent public comments by its leader Zackie Achmat are more than enough evidence of that – they seem indicative of an almost  personal vendetta waged against Israel as part of the BDS Campaign which focuses on the delegitimisation of the country, a political, economic and philosophic campaign aimed at reversing the right of the State of Israel to exist and denying the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their homeland.).

 

By its actions, government looks to be on a roller-coaster ride to sabotage its own relationship with a country which has so much to offer to our people, so much intellectual capacity to help South Africa cope with the overwhelming and at times seemingly insoluble health, environmental and agricultural demands made on the government by a burgeoning and needy populace.

 

By all accounts, living and economic conditions in the West Bank are far superior to those in many surrounding Arab dictatorships and kingdoms. According to the Report of the Government of Israel to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC), presented in Brussels in March 2012, in the first three quarters of 2011, real GDP in the West Bank rose by 5.8%, while growth in the Gaza Strip continued to climb, with a 25.8% increase in real GDP.

 

Overall Israeli trade with the PA (goods and services) totalled $4.3 billion, an increase of 2.1% compared to 2010. Israeli purchases from the PA amounted to $815.9 million, an increase of 18.3%. Israeli sales to the PA amounted to $3.4 billion, a decrease of 1.1% compared to 2010; and tax revenue transferred by Israel to the PA increased by 5.9%.

 

In 2011, Israel continued to implement its policy of support for economic growth in the West Bank, inter alia by removing additional check points, upgrading commercial crossings, approving projects in Area C, increasing the number of permits for Palestinian employment in Israel, and pushing forward an agreement to build four electricity substations in the West Bank to increase the amount of electricity available for further economic development.”

 

In addition to these facts, impartial Human Development Indexes have the Gaza Strip and the West Bank both ranked more highly does SA, a sore blot on our reputation.  This assessment must have been based on the reality of the thousands of urban and rural informal settlements around the country where the very poorest of the poor try desperately to survive in both disgusting and tragic circumstances, living conditions that are totally alien and foreign to the inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank.

 

So despite this, and despite Israel’s continued economic involvement in the West Bank and its efforts to bolster its economy and the living standards of the populace there, South Africa has decided in its wisdom to sabotage the employment and income of more than 15 000 Palestinians who people the factories making the goods that are to be relabelled.

 

It has chosen to encourage imports of goods with the label “Made in China” despite many of these products emanating from Tibet which has been occupied by China for many years with almost no justification, and to ignore China’s indescribably appalling and indefensible human rights record.

 

Human rights abuses in India-occupied Kashmir are and have been for a long time a source of grave concern for the United Nations

 

It allows goods from Cyprus, labelled “Made in Turkey”, to be sold freely in South Africa, but chooses to overlook the fact that on 18 November 1983 the Northern Cyprus was unilaterally declared as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a state that no other country, with the exception of Turkey, recognises.  Such goods are not labelled “Made in Cyprus”.  And what of products from Kashmir, which is occupied by India, entering the country labelled “Made in India”?

Human rights abuses in India-occupied Kashmir are and have been for a long time a source of grave concern for the United Nations, but not evidently for our government. An open-and-shut case of double standards, a poor reflection indeed on our democracy.

The agenda is clear and unambiguous: Israel’s enemies are using every distorted, biased and fallacious avenue possible to delegitimise, demonise and isolate it in the eyes of the local populace.  They are systematically attempting to misrepresent history, to propagandise and counter the truth, and to impose sanctions on the country which they hope (foolishly) will bring it to its knees.

 

The SA government is being pressured by a small but vocal activist NGO whose nefarious agenda has in fact had the opposite effect, that of publicising and generally increasing the sales of the high-quality goods that are being targeted for deceptive and illogical relabelling. It appears also to be succumbing to the implied threats, whatever they may be and whatever weight they may or may not carry, from this group.

 

Could this be a ploy by our government to move attention away from its own problems?  From the rampant and heart-wrenching poverty that characterises our informal settlements and rural areas?  From the devastation of weak educational systems that are failing millions of our children?

 

From the astonishingly high levels of corruption present within and outside of government structures? From a police service that has failed miserably in its given task of ensuring the safety and security of the citizens of the country through inefficient and corrupt leadership?

 

Whatever the reasons, the decision by the DTI will have far-reaching and extremely detrimental and injurious effects across the country, for South Africa–Israel trade and other relationships, for the Jewish community, and for South Africa’s wish to be seen as a peace broker in the Middle East.  When trust has been violated, little remains.

Bev Goldman is the Spokesperson for Media Team Israel.

Debbie Mankowitz Op-Ed in Ynet News

The African BDS disgrace
The recent cancellation by University of KZN of the invitation to Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to South Africa Yaakov Finkelstein to freely address students and staff of smacks of racism of the worst kind. Surely, an academic institution is a place where minds should be able to hear all points of view

 

Instead, students are now being coerced into witnessing official representatives from Israel being singled out for opprobrium and sanction, with only insidious disinformation and the proselytizing anti-Israel campaign of the BDS movement available to them.

Does BDS tell the students that the territories were won in defensive wars against Israel? Did BDS inform the students that it is unprecedented in history that a country is obliged to give up land taken in a defensive war? Both Japan and Germany lost land as a result of their aggressions in WWII.

 

This self-same BDS movement is now trying to force South Africa through the Department of Trade and Industry to label goods made in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria as being manufactured in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” unless of course Israel withdraws back to 1948 lines.

 

This demand is ludicrous and ignorant in the extreme. What are the 1948 lines anyway? Do they form part of the 1947 Partition or are these the armistice lines after the War of Independence? So Israel at the insistence of BDS is going to give up its towns and cities and go back to Auschwitz– type borders, or otherwise “Ahava” will have a new label.

 

This would be laughable if it were not so tragic that a bunch of deluded individuals who actually don’t give a damn about Palestinian rights or their future can honestly believe that Israel, a sovereign United Nations member, will capitulate to their new demand, which smacks of arrogance, delusion and racism.

 

Is this organization even representative of Palestinian interests? I don’t think so. Do they know, or even care, that 13,000 Palestinians and their families may lose their jobs if companies are forced to relocate because of the campaign against Israel?

 

BDS has not helped the Palestinians one iota but has given free, unexpected and very welcome publicity to “Ahava.” Their profits internationally are growing exponentially.

 

Ignoring global atrocities

BDS claims to be humanistic in its outlook but from what one can see only has selective humanism towards one conflict in the world, while conveniently ignoring atrocities in Syria, massive human rights violations in China, endless torture and detentions without trial in Iran. The list is endless. Is this because it is acceptable for Muslims to kill Muslims, and for dissident Chinese and activist Tibetans to be incarcerated and tortured by these respective countries?

 

It is very interesting that it is not acceptable for Jews in the only Jewish state in the world to defend themselves in what is now a 100 year old terror-war against the Arabs. Despite an intractable conflict and numerous peace overtures to uncompromising neighbors who do not want peace, these same eight million Jews, Muslim Arabs, Druze, Bedouin, Circassians and Christians too – all Israeli by the way – have contributed in unparalleled ways to the upliftment of the world.

 

South Africa too has benefited enormously from Israeli innovations in agriculture, medicine and technology. Is South Africa now going to ban the use of all these marvelous inventions for a misplaced and propagandist ideology that serves no-one, least of all our needy population?

 

Who cares about the Kashmiri dispute or millions of Zimbabweans struggling and suffering on the other side of the border? Who cares about Eritrean and Sudanese people who, in attempting to flee from some of the worst atrocities perpetrated on them, run to pariah Israel which does not shoot them, torture them or incarcerate them like Egypt does, but allows them to live freely and even feeds them and sends their children to school? Many of them are black Muslims, hated by their fellow more lighter-skinned Muslims. Talk about racism!

 

Sadly the reality is that Israel’s case dates from time immemorial. It fits in comfortably with popular Jew-prejudice, it is fashionable to pick on Jews and the only Jewish country in the world – in truth, it is a soft target and few besides the Jewish people care enough to take a stance.

It is undoubtedly the BDS campaign that has prevented Israel’s deputy ambassador from stating his country’s position. Could it be that something frightens them? Could it be that he will speak the truth, enough of the truth to change the mindset of impressionable young minds?

 

BDS is doing all it can to destroy healthy debate and replace it with a totalitarian way of thinking that smacks of intimidation and Apartheid-style tactics. That is not democratic; it is not just; and in the end, it will be defeated, for history has proven that the truth will out, no matter what.

Don Krausz to The Star

Articles on Palestine by Donald Macintyre and a Star staff reporter on 17 May refer.

 

Once again the Star has printed totally one-sided articles that have more to do with spreading propaganda and hatred than arriving at the truth.

 

Both articles present viewpoints that deal with the ending of a hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. The writers have gone to great lengths to arouse our sympathy for the prisoners. Would we not be better able to assess the necessity of their imprisonment if we knew why they had been removed from society?

 

The staff reporter provides a heartrending letter written by a father to his two-year old daughter. Obviously the child cannot read the letter and would not be able to understand it if it was read out to her. That is how we know that this letter was an exercise in propaganda. It was not written to the child but to you, the reader, in order to arouse your sympathy instead of objectivity.

 

That letter is not peculiar to Palestinians. Every prisoner in the world, no matter what his crime, would have such feelings for his child. Even if he had been justly incarcerated for murdering a child he might write such a heartrending letter.

 

The following true examples will illustrate what Israel has to deal with.

 

Samir Kuntar was 16 years old when he arrived on the coast of Israel on a terror mission. He and others captured and murdered Israeli civilians including a father and his four-year old daughter. Kuntar was found guilty of smashing the child’s head and killing the father and others. He was sentenced to thirty years imprisonment. In any other Middle Eastern

 country he would have received the death sentence.

 

Kuntar married in prison and his wife received a stipend from the Israeli government as is paid to the spouses of prisoners. He was able to study at the Open University of Israel and emerged with a degree in Social and Political Science.

 

Israel released him and other prisoners in order to obtain the return of the bodies of two of its soldiers. That murderer of a four-year old child received a hero’s welcome upon his return. Syria awarded him with its highest decoration, the Syrian Order of Merit!

 

Samir Kuntar then proclaimed that: “God willing, I will get the chance to kill more Israelis.”

 

In the West Bank lies the Israeli civilian settlement of Itamar and the Fogel family used to live there, a father, mother and three young children including a three-month old baby.

Some young members of a nearby Palestinian village entered Itamar and knifed that family to death. The three-month old baby had its throat cut.

 

The murderers were apprehended, tried and showed no remorse. As with Kuntar, that lack of emotional reaction would be typical of psychopaths which one finds in every country.

 

But when the news of this massacre reached Gaza the locals celebrated it by dancing in the streets, as they had done when learning of the 9/11 atrocity. Now that is something very different.

 Were those who decorated Kuntar and celebrated the unbelievable horror of the murder of the Fogel family also psychopaths? Israel knows that such people must never be allowed to perpetrate their insane acts on her population again. And if that means using administrative detention without trial, then Israel’s men, women and children are entitled to the first consideration.

Rodney Mazinter in The Cape Times

Dear Sir

Zackie Achmat (Cape Times Friday May 18, 2012) employs a common calumny against Israel by calling the disputed territories, incorporating what is known by some as the West Bank and others as Judea and Samaria, by its incorrect term of occupied territories. The only time these areas were occupied (illegally) was when Jordan annexed them after the Israeli war of independence.

In 1967 Israel recaptured the territory and restored it to its correct standing pending negotiations to determine its final status, an initiative blocked until today by the Palestinian authority. While the Egyptians and Jordanians accepted Israel’s offer of land for peace in compliance with UN Resolution 242, neither the Palestinians nor Syrians did.

Israel was legally entitled to occupy the territory after its defensive war that drove the Arabs out from their illegal tenure. Israel ended its occupation in 1995, retaining only a few areas to prevent terrorism. In these areas, including those that are undisputedly a part of Israel, it is entitled to produce food, pharmaceuticals and medicines under its name for the benefit of all who live there. It has consistently offered to end the occupation in exchange for recognition, final negotiated delineation of borders and a binding peace agreement with the Palestinian authorities. The door remains open but peace dare not enter; instead it is elbowed aside by terrorism.

Further, other occupations, such as the Chinese occupation of Tibet, have been longer and less justified, and goods manufactured there bear the mark, “Made in China.”