Victor Gordon to The Mail & Guardian

 

MAIL & GUARDIAN

THE EDITOR

 

Refer: “You can be Jewish and anti-Zionist”  19/4/2013

 

Reading “You can be Jewish and anti-Zionist” by Mervyn Bennun, I was struck by the

thought – “Why would I wish to?” Zionism is as much part of my being Jewish as Haj is

to a Muslim; except that Haj, being one of the five pillars of Islam, is a religious duty as well

as a demonstration of the solidarity of the Muslim people and their submission to Allah.

Who would have the temerity to suggest that Haj might be anything other than this?

 

Zionism, on the other hand, being no more than the embodiment of the Jewish spirit to return to its ancestral homeland after a 2000 year exile, has for reasons of propaganda and disinformation been wilfully distorted and vilified to become a manifestation of racism in its vilest form.  Judging from that expressed in Bennun’s confused article, this obfuscation is blatantly clear.

 

Reading it, I was reminded of Melanie Phillips, the brilliant British journalist’s new book, “The World Upside Down”, which spotlights this very thing;  even the most obvious no longer makes sense. When facts are redefined and over-ridden by dubious ideology, replacing honesty and logic, one moves further from reality.

 

Contrary to the summation of Bennun (and others) who find comfort in distortion, Zionism is no more racist than is the ideology of any other democratically-based nationalism designed to oversee the cultural, hereditary, religious, historic and social interests of a people or nation who have legitimately earned that recognition.  That is in fact what Zionism represents. Trying to make Zionism appear to be an aberration of civilization because it suites the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel cause, does not make it what it is not, except in the minds of those who wish to pursue an agenda best known to themselves.

 

Referring to Bennun’s estimation that Israel is over-reacting to Iran’s potential nuclear threat, the former ignores the many hateful statements made by none other than the President of Iran which clearly indicate that Israel might well be in imminent danger from nuclear attack. The fact that Israel might also posses nuclear weapons has never posed a threat to any of her neighbours nor to any member of the civilized world, no more so than those weapons in the arsenals of France, Britain, the USA, Russia etc, whose levels of responsibility and control eliminate the possibility of an unwarranted holocaust. The same cannot be said for terrorist-supporting states like Iran and Pakistan nor their proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.

 

If only one lesson is learned from the Holocaust it is that a threat to kill from the mouth of a tyrant should not be trivialised.

 

In his open letter to Pres. Obama (referred to by Bennun), Chief Rabbi Goldstein’s single reference to “the Jewish people”  (“Mr. President, destiny is calling you … on behalf of a generation of world leaders … who preceded you, and who turned their backs on the Jewish people … “) appears to stir Bennun’s ire who, in a leap of contextual acrobatics  claims that this reference is somehow “part of the ideology that conflates being Jewish with being Zionist.”  Huh!

 

In another twist of logic, he quotes a passage by Philosophy professor Joseph Levin;  “…  if they [the Jews] are [a people] and if with the status of a people comes the right to self-determination, why wouldn’t they have a right to live under a Jewish state in their homeland?  The simple answer is because many non-Jews (rightfully) live there too.”

 

This disingenuously ignores the fact that Israel, a true democracy, gives full rights and recognition to all ethnic groups as recognised citizens of the state, all of whom vote, have access to the highest levels of the judiciary, all civil facilities, education, healthcare etc. Would this apply to a Christian or Jew in most Muslim or Arab lands that comprise the Middle East and North Africa?  Are non-Catholic Italians deprived of Italian citizenship because of their religious affiliations?

 

Levin continues; “The right to self-determination of the “Jewish people” … violates the rights of its non-Jewish inhabitants to self-determination, just as apartheid South Africa denied certain population groups their rights on the basis of race.”

 

To even compare Israel to apartheid South Africa reveals the typical lack of understanding of the two issues which have no relationship whatsoever ; however, it is on such ludicrous assumptions that  Bennun bases his argument.

Contrary to Bennun’s hypothesis,  there is no “unavoidable conflict between being a Jewish state and a democratic state.”  Israel has succeeded, under the most challenging circumstances to achieve this for the past 65 years.  While, Bennun  emphasises that “there is nothing anti-Semitic or racist about criticising Israel or Zionism”, this might well be so were Israel not the sole focus of continual rebuke on an unprecedented scale. Thus one is compelled to ask,  “Why?”  Would this sliver of land and its people be the magnet for such intense hostility were it Catholic or Budist?  I doubt it.

Don Krausz to the Mail & Guardian

 

 

Mervyn Bennun’s article headed “You can be Jewish and anti-Zionist” refers.

 

I believe both these concepts to be mutually exclusive.

 

Bennun quotes Joseph Levine, professor of Philosophy, as commenting on the Jews: “IF they are a people…” A very strange remark considering the 3,500 year old history of the Jews in the land of Israel and who had their own kingdoms.

 

Levine continues: “…why wouldn’t they have the right to live under a Jewish state in their homeland? The simple answer is because many non-Jews (rightfully) live there too.” So if millions of immigrants have residence permits or even citizenship in England, does that mean that the British cannot regard Britain as their state?

 

Anti-Semitism has been rife since the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome during the year 300 AD, thereby enforcing the dissemination of the New Testament with its totally false teaching of the Deicide and its 450 anti-Semitic verses.

 

Over the centuries this artificially created hatred of Jews took the following forms:

 

First: –You shall not live amongst us as Jews – e.g. forced conversion.

Secondly: –You shall not live amongst us – e.g. expulsion.

Finally: –You shall not live –e.g. Holocaust.

 

Jews worldwide had no permanent residence or citizenship. They could have lived in a country for over a thousand years and all it would require was a fascist or Arab anti-Semitic government to expropriate them, expel them or, worse, murder every man, woman and child.

 

Even as late as 1938 with the persecution of Jewry well underway in Europe and desperate Jewish men, women and children attempting to flee for their lives, hardly any countries would open their doors to these doomed people.

 

The Jews of Israel then numbered 600,000. Today there are six million. They could have absorbed the Jewish refugees, but Britain, under Arab pressure, limited their immigration to 15,000 per year while millions were being sent to the gas chambers.

 

Zionism is defined as “a movement for the re-establishment and the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel” (New Oxford Dictionary 1998)

 

Six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered during the Holocaust while the peoples of the world stood by and did not lift a finger. Out of the hundreds of millions living in Europe only 22,216 incredibly brave men and women risked torture, concentration camp and execution of themselves and their families to rescue their Jewish neighbours and countrymen. Israel has commemorated these saintly people of all faiths and races, planted a forest in their memory and named them the Righteous Gentiles.

 

Jews and righteous governments worldwide recognised that only a Jewish state with a Jewish government and army could ever be relied upon not to persecute their Jewish citizens. Therefore counteracting Zionism threatens the eventual survival of Jews. The past century has shown this to be a matter of life or death.

 

During war it becomes essential to curtail certain civil liberties, especially where the safety of the population is at stake. Israel may have had to do this, yet its 20% non-Jewish population shows no desire to cross its borders to Arab territories where the standard of living, health, education and freedom leave far more to be desired.

 

As a result of Arab hostility, Israel remains a country at war. On numerous occasions it has publicly been threatened with annihilation.

 As Mandela stated at his inauguration: NEVER AGAIN!

Allan Wollman to BDS South Africa

I am indeed delighted to see this initiative and the action that BDS is proposing and would gladly participate in your protest action as I see this organization steeped in concern for human rights and the abuse of same.

What I would suggest that prior to the protest  planned why we don’t first pay a visit to the Syrian embassy to show solidarity with the 1.3 million refugees displaced by an illegal and immoral regime, also by doing that and marking humanitarian concern for the 120000 victims brutally murdered by that immoral regime, all of which are innocent civilian.

Many of those civilians killed including women and children have been massacred to suit the rebels agenda, as those opposed to the Assad regime have purposely chosen to take refuge in highly populated civilian areas thus ensuring maximum collateral damage to civilians. Every child killed elicits huge sympathy from the world media. Something that the Syrian rebels have learned so well from their Palestinian brothers in Gaza and other areas.

After our protest march on the Syrian Embassy we can then proceed to the Lebanese embassy to mark our concern for the over half a million Palestinians forced to live in special demarcated areas suffering restrictions that make South African apartheid look like a holiday camp.  As a humanitarian organization I together with thousands of other concerned South Africans applaud your concern for those downtrodden peoples of the Middle East. If time permits we could march past the Egyptian Embassy to protest at the slaughter of Christians and rape of women in that country.

But why stop at the Middle East – why not add to our protest those African countries much closer to home some of which still practice slavery in the 21^st century, in Mauritania where human beings are a traded commodity in their slave markets run by the light skinned Arabs. We could also march past the Embassy of the DRC to protest at the rape and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of women and almost 1 million murdered in that country.  No need to protest outside the Sudanese embassy as they will continue with their genocide in that part of Africa. Also no point in a protest at the Zimbabwean consulate as our own government seems to be sanctioning the human rights abuse in our northern neighbor.

You may want to consider a protest action outside our finance department who have extended billions of Rands in “loans” to the despotic little monarch in Swaziland while his subject are starving.

So this will give us a full day’s action which should satisfy all those concerned with the plight of the downtrodden in a fair contextual and comparative manner – I look forward to meeting at say 0900 on Monday 15^th April outside the Syrian Embassy

Julian Pokroy to the Daily News

Dear Editor

 

The article in your Daily News edition of 4 April 2013 entitled “I fail to see what is good about Israel” written by ME Gafoor of Morningside, Johannesburg, is disingenuous to say the least.

 

It contains a host of inconsistencies and untruths which cannot be left uncontested.

 

These are dealt with hereunder in the order in which they appear in the letter under response:

 

·         The condemnation of Israel as a “racist/apartheid” state with aligned policies to these ideologies is devoid of any reality and truth.  These so called “well meaning and morally righteous Jews” who condemn the attacks on Palestinians are an insignificant minority of persons who have no understanding nor personal experience of an unbiased nature, of the situation..

·         Has ME Gafoor not been made aware of the discredited Russell Tribunal and the alleged 82 year old holocaust victim, who has been discredited as a fraud.  He was not even Jewish but of the Christian persuasion.

·         Is ME Gafoor unaware of the untruths published by Gideon Levy, who is described as a “renowned journalist”, whose inaccurate reporting has been discredited, including through the Courts..

·         Is ME Gafoor unaware that Ronnie Kasrils, whilst being entitled to his opinion, is no authority on the Israeli democracy and the open society existing in Israel, otherwise he certainly would not be openly condemning Israel.  In addition, it appears that ME Gafoor is also unaware that the report by ex-Constitutional Court Judge Richard Goldstone and, in specific, many of the allegations made by the esteemed judge have been recanted  by him on the world stage.

·         Archbishop Desmond Tutu, according to the doctrine of Gafoor, is alleged to have stated that the apartheid policy of Israel was “infinitely worse than South African apartheid ever was this after having twice visited Israel and Palestine”.  The report of Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu is slanted, devoid of reality and in his two visits he would never have had sufficient time in any event to evaluate the situation.  It needs to be disregarded.

 

Gafoor goes on and on about issues over which he/she has no knowledge whatsoever, nor firsthand experience.

 

It is my suggestion that ME Gafoor wakes up and smells the roses and gets down to some of the real nitty gritty facts before jumping to unrealistic conclusions.

Don Krausz to the Daily News

Re: Rock-throwing row rages: 8-4-2013.

 

There has to be a clear differentiation between violent or peaceful protests. That difference is surely determined by whether injuries are inflicted, intentionally or otherwise. If the intention is to inflict injuries or worse to people, then one is engaging in a criminal act or an act of war, depending on the numbers involved.

 

To claim that circumstances or conditions give one the right to inflict such injuries would automatically give the victims the right to do the same, if only to safeguard themselves, which would lead to escalation.

 

Giving protesters such right would justify the horror perpetrated in the Israeli settlement of Itamar, where the Fogel family was knifed to death. It included cutting the throat of a three-month old baby. The young perpetrator showed no remorse for the atrocity.

 

The results of such an attitude are devastating, not only for the often innocent victims but also for the moral and emotional development of the perpetrators and their supporters.

Rodney Mazinter to the Daily News

 

The Editor

Daily News

 

Dear Sir

 

In his obviously ill-judged comments about Israel, ME Gafoor asks, “What is good about Israel?” (DN Letters April4, 2013).

 

He goes on to attack the “racist / apartheid policies of Israel” and then lists a host of mainly discredited commentators in support of his argument. For example:

 

The Russel Tribunal was not chaired by “an 82-year old Holocaust victim”, a confused old man who was trotted out and displayed for as long he was useful to this parody of a tribunal and then unceremoniously dropped when he was no longer useful.

 

Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist with Haaretz has on a number of occasions been made to apologise for incorrect or reckless reporting. He has a low standing with the general public and, like Ronnie Kasrils, is viewed as an extremist.

 

Richard Goldstone last year recanted on the findings of his commission saying that “… If he knew then what he knows now, the report would have been very different.”

 

Desmond Tutu must of course answer to his own conscience but, like ME Gafoor, might like to take note of the following:

 

When I visit Israel I see other things: I see schools and youth villages where at-risk children are given the care that will give them hope and a future in life. 

I see Ethiopian children given the means to make that leap across centuries and cultures and find their own excellence. 

I see the power of love to transform lives.

I see the Rambam Hospital in Haifa where, when Israel’s enemies decide to destroy lives, they will continue saving them. 

The new Bar-Ilan Medical Centre in Safed, set up to bring the finest possible medical treatment to Muslims, Christians, and Druze villages throughout the country. 

The Laniado Hospital in the Netanya whose founder, a holocaust survivor who lost his wife and 11 children in the camps of death and there made an oath that if he should ever survive he would dedicate the rest of his life to saving life. 

The Wolfson Medical Centre where free, quality, paediatric cardiac care is provided for children from developing countries who suffer from heart disease and to create centres of competence in these countries. 

I see caring for every life and notice that every life is sacred, where mind-blowing Israeli technology, and eye-opening developments in medical science are applied to the common good.

I see religious freedom upheld and protected by law.

 

That  and much more is what I see in Israel, the will to life with its hospitals, schools, freedoms, and rights. I see, Christians, Hindus, Sheiks, moderate Muslims, and from my experience Israel is a source of inspiration to everyone because it tells every single person on the face of the earth that a nation doesn’t have to be large to be great. A nation doesn’t have to be rich in natural resources to prosper.

 

Israel has been surrounded by enemies and yet it has shown that even so you can still be a democracy, still have a free press, still have an independent judiciary. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where a Palestinian can stand up on national television and criticise the government and the next day still be a free human being.

 

All this and more, ME Gafoor, is what is good about Israel.

 

ME Gafoor does not explain which one or more of the 22 countries surrounding Israel should be the model on which Israel should base its own democracy. 

Gill Katz to the Daily News

Sir,

The letter from M E Gafoor refers:

 

 Some years ago, I shook my head in awe and disbelief when an ombudsman of a niche newspaper ruled against a complaint lodged by Media Team Israel regarding a cartoon by a well known South African cartoonist. He had insinuated in his  cartoon that Israel was the country who caused the 1967 “Six Day War”. MT I showed factually how the cartoon contained fictional material which soiled Israel’s image and was blatantly untrue. The  judgement went against MT I because the honourable adjudicator  felt that there were  two versions of the truth, and so he believed  the cartoonist had a right to express his belief in the version he portrayed in his drawing.

TWO SETS OF FACTS?

 

History doesn’t have  varying facts. It has truth and it has lies. Truths and lies are mutually exclusive.

In Israel’s case, the blockade of the Straits of Tiran – and thus Eilat Harbour –  heralded the start of the 6  Day War.The blockading of a country’s harbor is regarded as an  act of war in international law. The world press  described the Arab armies with their armaments as a ‘ring of steel around Israel’. Israel struck at Arab armies consisting of hundreds of thousands of heavily armed men who –  under orders were massing on her borders.They were always mindful of their Arab leaders’  call, “We will drive the Jews into the sea”. 

This is a fact.

 This is not in  dispute.

Any historian would agree. And yet the ruling was against the truth.

Flabbergasting!

 

When anti Israel groups throw their lot behind fiction, and that fiction is not challenged – those of us who back Israel’s right to exist as a United Nations created State for the Jewish people will not be silenced. With this firmly concreted and set in our very souls, we will and we DO challenge  evil lies, but we do it by thrusting forward facts which can be verified.
I ask your  readers to start responding to challenges aimed at both sides to sit down now and discuss remedies, solutions and how to build bridges and not blow them up  with weapons made of truth, and not  opinions posing as facts.
—

Don Krausz to the Daily News

The Editor,

The Daily News,

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

M.E.Gafoor’s letter of 4-4-2013 refers.

 

I have been writing to the press since the days of the Rand Daily Mail and keep copies of the letters to which I respond and the articles that concern me. Without fear of contradiction I can state that I have written material that completely rubbish Gafoor and contradict his supposed facts.

 

Let us examine them:

 

He states that “the racist/apartheid policies of Israel are legendary.” The dictionary defines “legend” as a traditional story or myth. Enough said.

 

He refers to the “ …Morally Righteous Jews (MRJ) who condemn these attacks on the Palestinians.” He does not state which attacks, and why these MRJ’s are not sufficiently morally righteous to also mention attacks by Palestinians on Jews such as the totally unprovoked 1948 war in which 6,000 Jews were killed.

That equates to South Africa suffering 500,000 of its citizens killed on the battlefield.

 

Judge Richard Goldstone, who investigated the Gaza conflict years ago, is hailed as pronouncing Israel as the “unprovoked aggressor!” Unprovoked? After the Palestinians in Gaza had launched an estimated 12,000 missiles at civilian settlements in Israel proper? In any case, the judge later retracted his earlier conclusions.

 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is quoted as stating that the apartheid policy in Israel was “infinitely worse” than the South African version. Tutu played a revered role during the apartheid years and it is very sad that now he us unable to see the infinite difference between a country that has legislated apartheid and one that has not.

 

The next item in this ludicrous article is the “unashamed theft of Palestinian land by Israel…and its aim of driving the Palestinians off their land.” The land of Israel was allocated to the resident Jews under the Balfour Declaration, legalised at the San Remo conference and unanimously confirmed by all fifty-one members of the League of Nations on July 24 1922. The land of Palestine was partitioned between Jews and Arabs by a resolution of the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947.

 

If Gafoor is referring to the West Bank, conquered by Israel in 1967, then under international law the occupier is entitled to such territory until a peace treaty is signed. That is how Egypt regained the Sinai desert from Israel.

 

So Israel “professes the aim to drive the Palestinians off their land? Then is it not strange that 20% of Israel’s population is Arab?

 

The cherry on the cake is Gafoor’s fantasy that “the people of Palestine gave sanctuary to the displaced victims of the Holocaust.” What, after the British under Arab pressure limited Jewish immigration into Palestine to 15,000 a year, thereby consigning millions to the gas chambers?

 

The British and Americans kept the Jewish concentration camp inmates in their camps. When they attempted to reach Palestine the British stopped them and on occasion returned them to these camps where their families had been murdered. When eventually with the establishment of the State of Israel these unfortunates reached a safe haven, the Palestinians and surrounding Arab countries attacked them in an openly declared “War of Annihilation.”

Victor Gordon to The Daily News

DAILY NEWS

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 

Refer:  “I fail to see what is good about Israel”  4/4/13

 

I regard myself as one of those “well meaning and morally righteous Jews” to whom ME Gafoor refers. The difference is that I don’t subscribed to his criteria to what qualifies me for the title.

I am a Zionist who believes in the concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as prescribed in International Law and supports the struggle to maintain it against all odds. That includes fighting seven wars, countless terrorist attacks and an unending barrage of lies, distortions and hypocrisy prompted by the world’s oldest hatred – anti-Semitism.

 Gafoor’s requirement that a “well meaning and morally righteous Jew” must be an opponent of the Jewish state displays his own bias and bigotry and begs the question of whether he regards those Muslim countries as “moral and righteous” which condone honour killings and the execution of  gays, to name just a few “ moral” practices.

I question every example Gafoor has provided to support his cause. 

The Russell Tribunal, which was no more than a pre-determined Kangaroo Court designed to find Israel guilty of so-called “apartheid” even before the farcical  “hearings” even began, trundled out an 82 year-old Holocaust victim named Stephane Hessel as one of its “expert witnesses”.  The fact that Hessel was a survivor of Buchenwald Concentration Camp no more made him an expert on apartheid than you or I.  Because of his Holocaust connection, one would assume that Hessel would be a Jew, adding to the weight of his testimony  –  Hessel  was Evangelical.

Gideon Levy is, and always has been, an extreme Leftwing opponent of every Israeli government and writes for the daily Ha’aartez newspaper.  Gafoor misses the obvious point that only a democracy like Israel would tolerate a journalist like Levy who, in any Muslim country, would be languishing in a dungeon.

Ronnie Kasrils’s  only qualification as a “spokesman” against Israel is his own Jewish background. Further that that his well aired views are replete with misinformation, lies and bias.  He is an example of the acceptance of anyone (particularly a Jew) who stands against Israel as an “expert” on the conflict but with nothing to contribute towards finding a solution.

To the dismay of the Gafoor’s,  Richard Goldstone unexpectedly revoked his earlier conclusions  as reflected in his infamous Goldstone Report and stated  that “had he known then what he knows now,  he would have arrived at a different conclusion.”

Archbishop Emeritus Tutu’s two short visits to Israel which concentrated on viewing matters only from the Palestinian viewpoint,  hardly qualifies him as a fair and honest broker.  For Tutu, an undeniable expert on apartheid, to say that what he observed in Palestine was worse, shows his disregard for the undeniable facts that clearly prove that Israel is as far removed from being an apartheid state as chalk is from cheese.

As for “the good people of Palestine giving sanctuary to the victims of the Holocaust”, it was predominantly due to Arab opposition that the British sealed the borders to survivors with nowhere else to go. In 1941 from the Grand Mufti Mohammed Amin al-Husseini  who not only offered to create another Auschwitz in Palestine but recruited Muslims to fight with the Waffen SS and instigated riots that resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives, both Jews and Arabs.

There is a great deal of good about Israel, discernable to those who remove their bigoted blinkers. ME Gaffor is obviously not amongst them. 

Rolene Marks to The Star

To the Editor

 

Firoz Osman’s letter “Don’t blow off what is happening to Israel” refers.

 

Osman is a man possessed. He is completely fixated on Israel and spends all his time doing whatever he can to criticise and condemn the Jewish State.

 

His latest foray into the world of anti-Israel vitriol is digging up recording artists like Pete Seeger and parading them as mascots for his support of the BDS campaign. So Seeger doesn’t want to perform for us Israelis? No big deal. If it was 1960-something it might irk us but we have our hands full with Lady Gaga and Rihanna, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Elton John, some teenage idol called Justin Bieber and a whole plethora of massive international artists who are current and contemporary.

 

Oh, and did I mention that Stephen Hawking, the world’s most famed physicist, will be visiting soon? I am sure he can help suggest what we can do with all the investment we are currently receiving from Warren Buffet, Apple, Microsoft, Google et al.

 

I agree, one really shouldn’t blow off what is happening to Israel.

 

Rolene Marks

Modiin

Israel