Don Krausz to The Star

Allow me to express my gratitude to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who, according to Osman, prays on behalf of my “lost soul”. I have yet to notice any benefit, but it can’t do any harm.

Osman refers to the “respected Russell Tribunal.” I don’t know how qualified he is to state such an opinion. Constitutional Court Justice Richard Goldstone stated on 31-10-2011 in a New York Times article that it was not a tribunal at all. In the same article he described the accusation of apartheid against Israel as

“an unfair and inaccurate slander.”

Osman urges us to “read the facts for ourselves.” I wonder how he can tell one “fact” from a contrary one.

It reminds me of the days when the Nazi newspaper “Die Volkischer Beobachter” was distributed in German concentration camps. The paper related the glorious victories that the Nazis were continuously achieving on all fronts. Providing the inmates with such propaganda was probably designed to increase their demoralisation.

In one such instance the paper reported a massive attack by Russian troops. It proudly described how brave German soldiers in obedience to Fuhrer und Fatherland and in defence of Christian Civilisation had stood their ground against overwhelming onslaughts and repulsed them with terrible losses to the enemy.

The last line in the article informed the readership that thereafter for strategic and tactical reasons, the German troops had withdrawn some 100 kilometres.

Osman writes that “everyone knows that the Israeli ‘occupation’ is illegal under international law.” I think that he ought to ask the Archbishop to add the name Osman to his list of lost souls.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Please check this out, but under international law the victim of aggression is entitled to occupy territory belonging to the aggressor until both have signed a peace agreement. That is how Egypt regained control of the Sinai desert.

At the San Remo conference of 1920 the status of the defeated Ottoman Empire’s former possessions were determined by Britain, France, Italy and Japan. Palestine was placed under the sole mandate of Britain with the explicit directive to ensure the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. Under this document Palestine and Trans Jordan were allocated to the Jewish people.

On July 24, 1922, this decision was unanimously confirmed by all fifty-one members of the League of Nations, was adopted by the United Nations and, to this day, has never been abrogated.  

Victor Gordon to The Star

If, as Iqbal Jassat (Executive: Media Review Network)  claims, “Consumer protection for South Africans in respect of labels reflecting basic information is paramount”,  why is he not lobbying for the same  attention to fall on products that arise from, for example,  Kashmir, Tibet and Pakistan, where 90% of surgical instruments are manufactured but stamped “Made in Germany/UK/USA”.  What about Persian-style carpets knotted by under-age children forced to labour for extended hours under the harshest conditions or Chinese workers who work for little more than slave-level wages?

As concerned consumers should be not be made aware of these injustices?

Considering that total sales in this country of Ahava products are well under 1 million Rands,  the effort that has gone into this campaign directed solely against Israel  by the Dept of trade & Industries  shows that their focus is blatantly political rather  than a matter of mere “consumer information”.

As Minister Rob Davies has refused to consider submissions giving the other side of the story and has listened to only one single anti-Israel NGO, “Open Shuhada Street” (despite the Board of Deputies requesting a meeting and being refused no less than 33 times),  the determination displayed by Davies to push through this legislation shows scant regard for clarity or fairness.

Yet Jassat has the audacity to accuse “Kahn and her board  of “bully tactics” and the “misrepresentation of booty (whatever that means) resulting from colonial conquest of Palestine”. How “colonial conquest”  can arise from fighting and winning a defensive war against annihilation needs explanation.

Jassat’s challenge to the use of the term “disputed territories” suggests that he needs to study the terms laid out in UN SC Resolution 242. He might then ask himself why these terms have never been acted upon and who has been at fault.  It would also appear that he has never heard of the infamous “3 No’s” which effectively blocked any potential negotiations.

To accuse Israel of a “mindset of victimhood” is laughable when one compares the incredible achievements of Israel since 1948 against the degeneration of the Palestinians over this same period. Were it not for billions of dollars in squandered international aid it is difficult to see how these true self-imposed victims would have even survived.

Iqbal Jassat should drop the rhetoric for which he is so well known and put something constructive on the table. 

 

Don Krausz to The Star

Suraya Dadoo’s article of 18 October on the Russell Tribunal’s last session inNew York, refers.

Suraya Dadoo of the Media Review Network attended the final session of the Russell Tribunal in New York. According to Dadoo the Tribunal was convened to consider testimony on US and UN complicity in Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians.

A tribunal is defined as a body established to settle certain types of dispute or a court of justice. Supreme Court Justice Richard Goldstone stated that the Russell Tribunal was not a tribunal at all. If we favour the definition of a court of justice then we would expect to find the structure of such a court with prosecutors, lawyers for the defence and sworn witnesses for both sides.

Dadoo has carefully listed the witnesses for the prosecution, a list of many of the most hostile antagonists of the Jewish state. Alice Walker is one such, a writer who refused to have one of her books translated into Hebrew, despite the Bible having originally been written in that language.

Can she be objective? There are others whose utterances in the press have consistently been challenged and refuted. Dadoo describes them as “renowned figures of social justice.”

What is notable is that there does not appear to be a single witness for the defence. Even the Nazi mass murderers at the Nuremberg trials were provided with lawyers and witnesses if only to prove that their trial was not being held before a kangaroo court.

That brings us to Israel’s alleged war crimes.

Students of history will know that there were 650,000 Jews living in Palestinewhen the UN allocated a small portion of it as a Jewish homeland.

That new state without armour, an air force, navy or artillery was named Israeland was immediately attacked by its Palestinian residents and the armies of its Arab neighbours. Against all expectations it prevailed, but at a cost of 1% of its civilian population, equivalent to South Africa losing 500,000 of its citizens on the battle field.

It has had to fight three major wars of declared annihilation and been under terrorist attack ever since. Terrorists of a kind that would dance in the streets ofGaza and celebrate when a three-month old Jewish child had its throat cut by infiltrators.

Today I was informed that the Arab Lawyers Union (ALU) of Cairo proudly announced that it has been awarded “the highest honour” by the Palestine Committee. One of its lawyers, Hanadi Jaradat, entered a restaurant in Haifa onOctober 4, 2003 and blew herself up, killing 19 Israelis and wounding about 50.

The ALU declares as its mission statement: “To promote and protect human rights, basic freedoms and the primacy of law.”

Israel has been forced to take all measures necessary to protect its population from aforementioned savages.

War crimes, Suraya Dadoo?

Victor Gordon to The Star

Refer: “Action to end global complicity and collusion – Suraya Dadoo  18/10/12)

Take some well-known anti-Israel activists, mix in a few who are themselves Jewish (even better, a couple of Israelis who hate Israel), throw in the usual accusations of “Crimes against Humanity” “War crimes”,  “Israel is guilty of apartheid”, Israel is in violation of International Law”, stir well, let simmer and hand to the Media Review Network to dish up to a gullible audience, hungry for another helping  of Russell Tribunal-style propaganda.

Having experienced a Cape Town visit by the Russell Tribunal in 2011 we are well aware that this body exists not to fairly examine a problem that has existed since 1947, but to simply “mobilise public opinion” against the Jewish State of Israel.  During proceedings, “witnesses” are called to testify against one side only – Israel.  No mention is made of any part played by the Arabs and Palestinians in the creation and perpetuation of this conflict.

Surely common sense dictates that this alone is a reason to raise a very large red flag – or are we really all that stupid?

The blatancy of this infantile, one-sided exercise in bias and hypocrisy renders the Russell Tribunal meaningless with nothing to offer the elusive search for peace other than a reason for the usual suspects to meet annually at one of the world’s high spots and slap one another on the back.

As anticipated, Suraya Dadoo makes no attempt to validate her assertion that Israel is in violation of international law, against the 714-page seminal work by Howard Grief, “The Legal Foundations and Borders of the State of Israel” which clearly explains why this is not the case.

Neither does she back up her labelling of Israel as an apartheid state with a single substantive fact.

However, the best is left to last when she slanderously accuses Israel of practising “Genocide” against the Palestinians. Does Dadoo have the slightest understanding of the meaning of that word? The answer is quite clear.

If she wishes to accuse a Middle Eastern country of practising genocide she need look no further than Syria where 30,000 civilians have been murdered by the Assad regime – so far.  Would the Russell Tribunal not have put its time to far better use in condemning this slaughter which has produced one single UN General Assembly Resolution with none passed by the Security Council?

To boast of the Tribunal’s “significant achievement and very detailed findings” is like praising a child for accepting another helping of ice cream. It takes very little effort to agree with everything one believes to be true.

Victor Gordon to the City Press

(Refer: “Israel labelling battle hits Ahava products” 7 Oct.)  Allow me to correct Ilham Rawoot in regard to one myth that he and so many others regularly perpetuate due to either ignorance or wilful intent – “International law and South African foreign policy also considers the (Israeli) settlements illegal”.

While this is true in terms of South African foreign policy which is based on the self-same ignorance, the same cannot be said for International law, a term that when focused on Israel has been abused and distorted for decades for purposes of propaganda. This is no less than the libellous claim that Israel is an “Apartheid” state.

Those who assert that Israel is guilty of a breach of International Law almost never make the slightest effort to back up their claim with the slightest evidence. The term “International Law” is simply bandied about in the certain knowledge that it appears sufficiently authoritative to escape challenge.  Rawoot’s article is just another example of this practise.

Those who have taken the trouble to study the 714 page seminal study by Howard Grief, “The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law”, will know that according to International Law it is Israel that holds legal title over the territory of “Palestine”  by virtue of the Mandate given to the British in 1922. This recognition, which started with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 was reaffirmed by the San Remo Conference of world leaders in 1920, followed  by the League of Nations in 1922 and finally by the United Nations in 1947. What is of the utmost  importance is that this recognition has never been abrogated to this day!

Ironically, the territory regarded as “occupied” was not only won by Israel in a defensive war in 1967  but never legally belonged to the belligerent,  Jordan, in the first place.  Israel, in truth, merely restored to her control territory that legally belonged to it under International Law and which cannot therefore be  “occupied”.

Allan Wollman Blog Post

A Fraudulent Endeavor

As proof if the fraudulent intentions of the likes of the BDS movement and their supporters who continuously malign Israel on an ongoing basis yet claim that they are fighting for the human rights of the oppressed Palestinian peoples, their agenda must be exposed.

So lets examine the “oppression” of these particular peoples living under “occupation” and compare that to their counterparts in “free” Lebanon and lets be clear that we are comparing the status and lives of the same people:
·     In the West Bank virtually all aspects of life fall under the direct administration of the Palestinian Authority (P.A.), an elected body.

·     In the Lebanon all half a million Palestinians living there have no representative whatsoever or say in governing their lives.

·     Schools, police, health, commerce, etc all fall directly under the P.A.

·     All of the above fall under the authority of the central government of Lebanon and the Palestinians have absolutely no say whatsoever.

·     Human rights in the West Bank are under constant scrutiny by an amalgam of different NGO’s and any abuses are immediately splashed all over the world press.

·     Human rights violations are a daily occurrence in the Lebanon where people live in demarcated areas, are barred from most jobs and professions and prohibited from attending university. Medical care virtually non- existent.


One can compare almost anything that affects the daily life of these peoples living in extremely close proximity but in terms of daily life separated by discrimination that is simply ignored by these detractors. However the “occupation” or “apartheid” terms bandied about without any substantiation are used ad-nauseam fulfilling the Goebbels theory of the big lie told often enough.

The West Bank or disputed territories are awash with journalists – none too partial to Israel and always at the ready to pounce when the opportunity presents itself – add to this the number of monitors from the World Council of Churches and their proxies like sniffer dogs on the prowl for any mischief the IDF could get up to. The question then begs when last has the world press – the Observer, The Cape Times or Mail and Guardian (some of the most hostile towards Israel) have reason to report on massacres, targeting children and all the other horrors that they conjure up in their relentless need to demonize that country.

But then those crafty Jews always trying to outsmart their enemies haven’t perpetrated any atrocities such as defending themselves against suicide bombers lately so best lets bring out the big apartheid lie – lets scream about occupation! But that’s wearing a bit thin – people are tired of that same old repetitive ranting – the world is getting more and more concerned with the violence that was witnessed recently in many capitals against U.S. embassies – people are far more concerned about the slaughter in Syria – yet no mention by these eloquent folk from BDS about this and other real atrocities.

We read almost daily suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan killing scores of innocents in the name of a religious sect. Just recently 5 Buddhist Temples burned to the ground in Bangladesh – have we seen the Buddhist communities attacking the Bangladeshi consulates around the world? Yet all this and more never reach the narrative of the BDS brotherhood.

Is this not proof enough of their agenda – they care less about the suffering of humanity than yesterdays weather report. Their only concern is the destruction of Israel – they have a burning hatred for Israel that is so overwhelming that all other meaningful issues around the world fade into oblivion in their demented desire to destroy the Jewish State.
The Greeks, Persians, Romans, Spaniard, Germans – empires far more resourceful and powerful than the motley BDS movements have all failed miserably in their attempts to destroy the Jews.

AT the annual UN General Assembly jamboree currently winding down the world all but ignored the usual rant of the Palestinian president – the big issue was Iran and her aspirations to achieve nuclear weapons which was adequately highlighted by President Obama and P.M. Netanyahu who alerted the world to the pending Armageddon of the Ayatollahs!