I have read and re-read the speech delivered by Prof Farid Esack at the BDS commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day, in an attempt to understand the motivation behind it. His words are caring and concerned, replete with empathy for the suffering of his fellow human beings. Yet in spite of this two points jar.Firstly Prof Esack attempts to universalize the Holocaust. Whilst ‘others’ were murdered by the Nazis, it is the Jews and only the Jews who were systematically murdered simply because they were Jewish. It was for the Jews, and the Jews alone, that the ‘final solution’ evolved. To deny this is to deny the very essence of the Holocaust.
Secondly, Prof Esack has used the opportunity, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, to promote his own agenda and that of the BDS and Open Shuhada Street groups. To sandwich the plight of the Palestinians between what the Nazis did to the Jews and that that he suffered under Apartheid, is to insidiously bring to the fore the constant odious message conveyed by both BDS and Open Shuhada Street.
And so his motivation, and the motivation behind the entire commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day by BDS and Open Shuhada Street becomes clear. Whilst duplicitously portraying themselves as non-racist and non-anti-Semitic they provided themselves with a platform from which to sprout their nefarious views to a gullible audience and an equally gullible world.
Monthly Archives: January 2013
Don Krausz to The Star
Farid Esack article in the Star, page 14, of 29 January 2013 refers.
It is headed: If the Jews disappear, so do we.
The manner of the Jew’s disappearance would be significant for it would demonstrate the state of morality by which man lives. Who is meant to disappear after the Jew? The Nazis perfected their methods by using euthanasia on their own people, their own soldiers who were maimed beyond recovery. That projects a mindset that comes close to cannibalism.
I know of no people anywhere in the world who do not have a religion. This is not surprising for religion is the answer to our fears. Unfortunately, religion has also become the conveyor of our hatreds and must be cleansed thereof if we do not wish to continue being a threat to our fellow man.
The pagan worship of Moloch involved human sacrifice as did the Skandinavian Pagan religions.
The New Testament contains 450 anti-Semitic verses – I have looked them up. So whom must we blame for the Holocaust, the murder of six million human beings including one and a half million innocent children and millions of other human beings?
It is not our religions that are to blame, but how Man has distorted them. Let us compare two interpretations: Quran 49:13: O Mankind! Most certainly, it is WE (God Almighty) who have created you all from a single pair of a male and a female, and it is we who have made you into nations and tribes, that ye may recognise each other (Not that ye may despise each other.)
The Time magazine displayed a front-page photo not long ago and published an interview with a terrorist. The man stated that he was convinced that one day he would meet Allah who would ask him how many infidels he had killed during his lifetime.
Did his belief reflect the teaching of the Qu’ran?
The Jewish religion by contrast teaches “Whatever is hateful unto thee, do it not unto thy fellow.
That is the whole Torah. All the rest is commentary.” No immaculate conceptions, no original sin, no dying for our sins, no feeding of multitudes or raising of the dead. It is possible that once this kind of logical reasoning is removed from mankind, that humanity will be worse off.
Farid Esack draws our attention to the hateful statement: “The only good Jew is a dead Jew,” which is a common expression among Moslems. Is it any worse than the statement made in 1948 by Azzam Pasha, Secretary of the Arab League:” This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”
This was said on the eve of the attack by Palestinians and their Arab neighbours on fledgling Israel, an unprovoked war during which 6,000 Israeli men, women and youths were killed. It is equivalent to South Africa suffering 500,000 dead on the battlefield.
Farid Esack affirms his abiding commitment to the struggle for justice for Palestinians. This implies that these Palestinians have suffered an injustice. Yet it was they who refused their own state when it was offered to them in 1947 by the Peel Commission and later by the UN. Israel is thriving and Palestine could have been equally well developed.
Instead they launched terror attack upon massacre against the civilian population of Israel.
Israel had to go to war in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and again in 1982 to protect itself from people announcing: “This will be a war of extermination etc.”
Does Farid Esack support those statements as well?
Victor Gordon to The Star
Refer: “If the Jews disappear, so do we all”
Reading Farid Esack’s article (“If the Jews disappear, so do we all”) I was impressed and even moved by his apparent sincerity. Here was a Muslim who appeared to have taken the trouble to understand and acknowledge the enormity of the crime that we know as the Holocaust and was
In the back of my cynical mind I kept waiting for the sting in the tail. I was not to be disappointed. There it was, six paragraphs from the end.
Earlier, having fooled myself into thinking that perhaps this avowed critic of Israel had penned this sympathetic observation about Jewish suffering with no ulterior motive, it came as no surprise to discover that there was more chance of Bafana Bafana beating Spain.
I had been temporarily disarmed by the article’s heading as well as his condemnation of the Nazi, Hans Frank’s infamous statement, “Ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear”.
Refreshing also was Esack’s reference to the anti-Jewish hatred that exists (and which he decries) within his own community. Even his admission that he does not have the courage to confront those responsible and resorts to taking the easier path of silence is in itself humane and honest.
However, everything fell apart when he wrote, “This is not the place to be speaking about another place (obviously Israel) where “most” Jews (my quotation marks) may be complicit in other crimes against another people.” Well then, if “not the place”, why proceed to do just that?
While devoting the lion’s share of his article to the genocide aimed at Europe’s Jews by the Nazi’s, Esack subtly ensured that this was linked to what he regards as crimes perpetrated in turn by Jews against Palestinians. This was couched in comments like, “we (those who struggled against apartheid) were diminished as human beings when we spat this poison at others”.
The implication is clear: Those who suffered as did the Jews should know better than inflict suffering on others. It is a simplistic accusation without basis that has managed, through endless repetition, to enter anti-Semitic folklore and misses the very obvious point that, while the Germans embarked on a systemic campaign to murder each and every Jew, Israel has the awesome military wherewithal to eliminate each and every Palestinian but has never had the slightest intention of doing so.
The fact that over 1200 Israeli air strikes resulted in the astonishingly low number of 140 deaths in the last war in Gaza (most of which were Hamas fighters) is testimony to the efforts by Israel not to do more harm than absolutely necessary.
In contrast, there is little doubt that given the chance, the Arabs would wipe out every Jewish soul that exists in Israel. They have said so time and again and have attempted to do so in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Iran is the latest Muslim nation to openly express this wish.
Espousing sanctimony at its best, Esack then says, “I am grateful for the sake of my own humanness, that the tendency of non-racialism overtook the politics of our Struggle”. Well, bully for him! How sad that us Jews lack this attribute in our make-up, governed as we are by our overwhelming and uncontrollable urge to inflict pain and suffering on those who wish us nothing but goodwill, love and friendship.
Strangely, Farid Esack appears to miss the very obvious point that it is the very experience of the Holocaust and the dramatic world-wide surge of anti-Semitism that is the root cause of Israel taking steps necessary to ensure her security. Action results in reaction.
Esack need only examine the website of Palestinian Media Watch to see that Hans Frank’s disgusting sentiments are endlessly repeated by Mullahs at Friday prayers throughout the Middle East, the UK and Europe.
Were Esack to devote the same zeal to his appraisal of Palestinian behaviour as he has to his accusations against Israel, his contribution could well have some substance. As it is, his sympathy remains unconvincing and no more than an excuse to display some self-proclaimed humanity while accusing the very people with whom he supposedly identifies of lacking the same.
Victor Gordon to The Jewish Report
Talk about hollow victories and severe doses of self-delusion.
For a prime example we need only turn to Alan Horwitz, National spokesperson of StopTheJNF South Africa and to BDS SA, its prime affiliate.
Some months ago, STJNF launched a boycott of Reggies Toy Stores, identified as supporters of Israel’s long established JNF, responsible for (amongst other projects), the rejuvenation of thousands of square miles of formerly arid land. Targeted, was Reggie’s then director, Mr. Issy Zimmerman, who received an ultimatum to either cut his company’s ties with the JNF or face a country-wide boycott of Reggies stores.
Undaunted, Mr. Zimmerman ignored the threat and maintained his long-existing relationship. This resulted in an embarrassing ‘demonstration’ outside one or two of Reggies stores on a particular Sunday, much to the bemusement of other shoppers. As a demonstration of their iron-willed commitment, some of the demonstrators were caught later, on surveillance cameras, making purchases at Reggies of video games. Talk about principle!
Twelve months ago Mr. Zimmerman entered into negotiations to sell Reggies and ‘Toys R Us online’. The sale was completed in December. This negotiation and subsequent sale was in no way influenced by the planned boycott which occurred much later on. As neither new owner has any ties with Israel, Reggie’s previous commitment to support the JNF was promptly and understandably terminated.
Here’s the rub: Desperate to show that StopTheJNF has earned its keep, this has been hailed by Alan Horwitz and crew as a victory for the principles of the BDS campaign. Further, he congratulates the new owners of Reggies for “standing on the right side of history by taking this ethical position” while all they in fact did was purchase a successful company.
The fact is that Reggies, as a company, now have no reason to support Israel than would the local cafe on the corner. Yet this appears to elude this collection of bright sparks who seem unable to differentiate between punishing a company for doing something deemed ‘ unacceptable’ against claiming to have successfully punished one that has simply changed ownership.
In fact, in all probability, Mr. Izzy Zimmerman will simply carry on supporting the JNF in his personal capacity, or via his new venture, while Reggies will continue doing what it does best – sell toys.
If this is the best StopTheJNF can produce its efforts are indeed pathetic.
Rolene Marks to The New Age
To the Editor
Heidi Jane Esakov’s “Analysis” – Israelis face up to poll which will shape near future (22 January 2013) refers.
It has become incumbent on those who are fiercely critical of Israel to excuse the facts and go straight for the jugular, painting Israel in as bad a light as possible. Ms Esakov is rather well know for the large stick she wields to dish out the hidings to Israel.
As an Israeli citizens who pays tax and voted in the elections on Tuesday, I feel a need to respond. Ms Esakov’s editorial piece ignores the issues that motivate Israel’selectorate.
First of all we are concerned with the rising cost of living. Esakov lambasts party leaders like Labour’s Shelly Yachimovitch, who has not made the “occupation” a fundamental part of her campaign. Well, our negotiating “partner: Mahoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, has made his reluctance to speak to us well known. Well, that and the comment that “no Jews would be welcome as citizens in the State of Palestine” are factors that just reinforce the fact that we need to prioritize our own issues. We Israelis are concerned about housing costs, the standard of education, employment and medical aid and that all sectors of the community contribute to the tax pool. You know, kind of like citizens of any other country.
Eligible voters selected their candidates in the highest numbers since 1999 and the real winner was democracy.
The results speak for themselves. While Netanyahu and his Likud-Biteinu coalition won in a narrow victory, centrist party, Yesh Atid (There is a Future) led by former journalist, Yair Lapid, came from virtually nowhere to clinch the second highestnumber of seats in the Knesset. It will be Lapid and not Netanyahu who can dictate the coalition manoeverings. This is proof that Israelis are first and foremost concerned with issues that affect their daily life and would prefer a more broad, inclusive, centrist government as opposed to a dogmatic, hawkish one. Israelis voted for change and even rising star, Naphtali Bennett from the more right wing Bayit Yehudi did not perform as expected. He garnered more seats than in the previous election but was trounced by Yesh Atid. Arab parties have more seats in the Knesset than Bennett’s party. But if the Arab community want more mandates in the Knesset, more members of the community have to vote. Low voter turnout does this community a disservice.
Ms Esakov, we Israelis are kind of like our weather – unpredictable, passionate and interchangeable. Before you lay on the criticism and accusatory statements, perhaps it woulkd behoove you to not only know the facts but also try to understand us.
Don Krausz to The Star
Ben Ami writes: “Likely to head the second or third largest party in the next Knesset, Naftalie Bennett advocates immediate annexation of 60 percent of the West Bank.”
Yes, that will put the cat amongst the pigeons, but I cannot see how anyone can blame Bennett. Israel is surrounded by Moslem countries that consider Jews anathema and insist on their physical destruction.
The mildest of a bad lot appears to be Mahmoud Abbas with whom Israel has been trying to negotiate a two state solution. That worthy has already declared that Jews will not be allowed to settle in Palestine.
The same applies to nearly every Moslem country. If one has a passport with an Israeli entry stamp one is not allowed in.
Historically the West Bank was Jewish and between 1948 and 1967 the Arabs had ample opportunity to create their own state there. They neglected those opportunities.
People need to realise that in dealing with Moslems one is not dealing with people that are open to reason.
The Qu’ran calls for the killing of Jews, thus making their murder a religious obligation. The Hamas Charter repeats that injunction. It also states that the Hamas is opposed to any negotiation that may render any part of Palestine to be occupied by infidels.
To illustrate what one is up against, the Time magazine ran an interview with an Arab terrorist. It even put his picture on the front page. When asked what he expected to hear when he met Allah after his demise, he stated that he would only be asked how many infidels he had killed…
So what is the point of negotiating with people that believe any agreement is of a temporary nature? One only needs to abide by it for as long as it suits one. Something like the Ribbentrop/Molotov agreements.
And forget about tables. Israel has attempted negotiations with Arabs since the Oslo Accords and has nothing to show for it.
After the Hamas had fired some 12,000 missiles at civilian settlements in Israel proper, Israelwent to war amid a great outcry and gnashing of teeth worldwide. Just remember, each and every one of those rockets was fired with the intention of maiming and killing. Well, they are still launching missiles, longer range ones. So what would the powers that be advise Israel to do now?
Ambassador Segev -Steinberg to the Cape Times
It seems as if it is Mr Hendler (CapeTimes 9th January 2013) who needs to get his facts right. Let me assist. Mr Hendler states “that there is no evidence of widespread calls from neighbouring Arab states for the people to flee – if anything, there were calls to stay”. I will provide Mr Hendler with the evidence he so sadly lacks by quoting directly from Arab and objective sources at the time before revisionists such as Mr Hendler attempted to change history. The calls to stay were – by the Jews!!!
“Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. The most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit. It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.” The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948
“It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem.” Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949
“The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city…By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.” Time, May 3, 1948, p. 25
The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies. Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949
We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah (“The Secret Behind the Disaster”) by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952
“The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.” from the Jordan daily Ad Difaa, September 6, 1954
“The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war.” General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948
“The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews” Yunes Ahmed Assad, refugee from the town of Deir Yassin, in Al Urdun, April 9, 1953
“[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel.” Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949; and, yes, no less than the Times of London , reporting events of 22.4.48 “…the Jewish hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country.”
So the evidence is, Mr Hendler, that the Jews asked the Arabs to stay and the Arabs forced other Arabs to leave. I am sorry to disappoint you, but the evidence not of historians but of Arabs themselves and journalists on the spot is that there was no ethnic cleansing and no wanton destruction but simply abandonment of property, no different from any other war.
Actually, I admit that there was some wanton destruction of property and some ethnic cleansing. The illegal Jordanian occupiers of Jerusalem destroyed 57 of the 58 synagogues in Jerusalem`s Old City and expelled its 20,000 plus Jewish inhabitants.
There is a bona fide dispute about the number of Arabs who left Israel in 1948. Walter Pinner in his “How many Arab Refugees?” arrives at 430,000 and the UN figure based on Arab census figures is about 539,000. Many who left were part of the huge illegal immigrants doing as immigrants do today: leaving poverty struck Arab countries and following the prosperity. It seems that by the 1930s the standard of living of Palestinian Arabs was approximately twice that of Arabs in surrounding countries, whereas in Ottoman Turkish times it was lower than in surrounding countries. Mr Hendler`s number of 750,000 refugees (more than the then total Arab population! The Statistical Abstract of Palestine in 1944-45 set the figure for the total Arab population living in the Jewish-settled territories of Palestine at 570,800; there were only about 696,000 Arabs within the Armistice lines prior to the commencement of fighting!) is clearly an exaggeration but is still substantially less than the 850,000 Jews expelled by Arab countries whose confiscated properties in todays currency amount to about $100 billion dollars. There was a population exchange similar to the 1948 Indian – Pakistan population exchange or the 13 to 15 million German refugees expelled from Eastern Europe in 1945 following World War 2. What is not subject to dispute is that those Arabs who remained became full and equal citizens of Israel in the Middle East`s only functioning democracy.
I suggest Mr Hendler make a better effort at getting his facts right.
Dov Segev Steinberg
Ambassador of Israel to South Africa
Allan Wolman to The Saturday Star
Robert Fisk writing “my view” in the Saturday Star, and what a contorted view he presents. Vintage Fisk has outdone himself with his rant on the greatest evil to have ever visited our world!
As usual but with much more venom off he goes blaming all the ills of the Arab world on Israel and of course the U.S. One must wonder what lies behind the love affair between the Independent Group (IG) and Fisk? One must also wonder how the editors of this groups newspapers can continue to print the drivel that Fisk vomits out? But there is no accounting for hatred and envy and one supposes that in order to get the job the candidate must pass the hate Israel (disguise for Jew) test.
His prediction for the Arab World in 2013 demand for “dignity and freedom … will continue to ravage the Middle East.” When will he and this newspaper ever face the reality of history that the Arab world has, other than the gift of geometry over 700 years back, contributed a whole lot of nothing to humanity other than the oil that they were fortunate enough to find beneath their barren sandy deserts. And sorry Mr. Editor it wasn’t even an Arab who discovered that vast pool of wealth. Dignity is something that the Arabs will never achieve due to the backward regressive mentality of its demented leadership!
So what have the Arabs done with the untold riches that they have siphoned from their oil wells? Well to mention one or two great things, they have indulged their every selfish fantasy to the point of obscenity, they have subjugated their subjects with minimal education, health care and housing, which in order to gain some respectability in the corridors of world forums, some have reversed that these last two decades. But still almost every Arab country’s leaders have exploited its mineral wealth for their selfish or ideological interests. Even in the ‘enlightened’ Gulf States a woman’s place still remains lower than a goat. Women in the Arab world have little or no rights and find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order completely subservient to man. Little girls as young as 9 years sold into forced marriages, which according to the U.N. almost 90 million ‘arranged’ marriages per year in the Arab world! How’s that for a dignified culture?
In almost every Arab country the savagery of the middle ages still prevail, limb amputations for theft, stoning of women victims of rape, honor killings and extra judicial executions, yes Mr Fisk extra judicial executions in Gaza and Palestinian West Bank, of people simply suspected of passing information to Israel, even the selling of property to a Jew can bring about the death penalty. Interesting how our author cites the “WAR CRIME of building Jewish colonies on other peoples land”. And building houses is most definitely a war crime much more so than summary executions or stoning of women. So conveniently does he omit the well publicized statement of Mahmoud Abbas that a Palestinian state would be Jew free! But on and on he goes about the plight of the poor Palestinians.
Do he and this newspaper really give a damn about the Palestinians? Well yes but only some Palestinians – certainly not those living under the most oppressive apartheid conditions in Lebanon or those being slaughtered together with the other 60000 Syrians by their despotic Arab leader? Has either Fisk or this newspaper ever made mention of these peoples? But lets not get sidetracked, Israel’s crime of building houses on disputed land must warrant far more space in your columns than those mild human tragedies in Syria or Sudan and Darfur or even the DRC or Zimbabwe or Korea or Tibet to name just a few minor problems of this world. However nothing comes close to the Israel’s crimes of a free democratic country that affords its Arab citizens every opportunity that no other Arab country allows.
But Fisk’s backward Arab world supersedes the miracle of Israel’s incredible contribution to humanity from agricultural innovation (don’t forget that 65 years ago Israel was mainly a swamp and desert which today blooms like no Arab desert will ever), to scientific, medical, and biochemical innovation unsurpassed by most western countries and having produced more Nobel Laureates per capita than any other country in history.
Fisk will never change his spots but one does expect better and more integrity from a newspaper charged with the responsibility of “honest and accurate reporting”. Isn’t that what journalism is about?
Don Krausz to the Sunday Times
Two letters criticising Stephen Mulholland in today’s Sunday Times refer.
Farid Vallie describes Mulholland’s legitimate opinion as drivel and states that he knows nothing about Israel. Costa Gazi claims that Mulholland twists facts and is confused. According to Costa Gazi Israel is a serious threat to world peace by wanting to attack Iran and helping to destabilise Syria.
A few years ago I was a member of a group that visited Israel and so was Mulholland. Farid Vallie, when last did you visit Israel?
In Costa Gazi’s opinion Israel is a threat to world peace and is destabilising Syria When did Israel ever threaten to “wipe another country off the map” as Ahmadinejad did? I thought that it was Assad that was destabilising Syria at whose hands the population has already suffered 60,000 casualties.
One of many memorable events was our visit to Sderot, a civilian settlement in Israelproper within sight of Gaza.
Sderot has had some 4,000 missiles fired at it from Gaza. We arrived on a weekday and found hardly a person in the streets. Every block of houses had an air raid shelter in front of it.
The schools had double metal roofs to withstand rocket and mortar impact. The only structure built to withstand being hit by some of the missiles fired at the town daily was the crèche, and yet the little children showed signs of trauma.
In civilian Sderot the pause between the launching and impact of a missile is fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds to gather your spouse, children and pets and get into a shelter.
One telling refinement was the fact that the missiles were primed to be fired at the times when children were either on their way to school or heading home according to the townspeople.
What was it that Farid Vallie wrote about Israel massacring thousands of innocent women and children without offering one shred of proof?
Media Team Israel 