An Israeli Truth – Fact or Fiction (Monessa Shapiro)

This blog is featured in The Times of Israel:

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/an-israeli-truth-fact-or-fiction/.

An Israeli Truth: Fact or Fiction

³When there is no-one left to bear witness, how far can we trust the
evidence of our eyes alone² Yael Hersonski, director of the movie,  Film
Unfinished¹ questions.  Even when there are those to bear witness, how far
can we trust the evidence of the eyes?¹ we must ask after viewing The
Invisible Men,¹ and Within the Eye of the Storm¹, two Israeli movies that
have recently been screened in South Africa.¹

Yael Hersonski¹s  Film Unfinished¹ is a gripping rendition of actual life
in the Warsaw Ghetto. In May 1942, just 2 months before the liquidation of
the ghetto, the Nazis sent in a film crew in order to film the Jews as a
means of propaganda.  Four reels of raw film entitled as Ghetto¹ were
found in a German archive. Hersonski skillfully weaves this raw footage into
a documentary of unforgettable proportions.  We see the poverty and
degradation of the Jews living in the ghetto, and at the same time we see
the Nazi propaganda machination at work.  Through the wonderful narration
and Hersonski¹s masterly direction we are made aware of how easy it could
have been for the Germans to depict that that they wanted to, rather than
the truth. 

Both The Invisible Men¹ and Within the eye of the Storm¹ purport to
represent the truth. And both probably do.  But herein lies the crux.  There
are two types of truth: the whole truth and segments of truth.

The Invisible Men¹ depicts the lives of three gay Palestinians who seek
refuge in Israel because as homosexuals their lives, in Palestine, are in
danger.  Yet they cannot gain legal status in Israel because Palestine¹ is
considered enemy territory.  A below-the ­radar Israeli organization assists
them obtain asylum in a country in Europe.  But this means leaving their
language, their culture and all that is familiar behind.  The mens¹ anger
at Israel for not granting them asylum is palpable.  So while Israel is
positively portrayed as a free and open society it is this message of being
closed to Palestinians – ³I was born here,² says Louis, one of the
protagonists – that is all pervading.  And so the viewer leaves the theatre
with confirmation that his pre-conceived view of Israel as a racist,
apartheid-type state is correct.  How sad that in his many on-screen
conversations and interviews with the three Palestinians, the director Yariv
Mozer never saw fit to contextualise and explain the predicament faced by
Israel, if only so as to ensure that the audience would understand it.  But
then, had the movie conveyed Israel¹s standpoint, would it have proved as
popular?

  In her movie, Within the Eye of the Storm¹ director Shelley Hermon
follows two fathers, both members of the peace organization ŒCombatants for
Peace¹, one an Israeli, and the other a Palestinian, who have each lost a
daughter in the conflict.

The Israeli girl, Smadar Elhanan, was killed in a suicide bombing, while the
Palestinian, Abir Aramin was shot by an IDF soldier outside her school, at a
range of 40 metres, with no provocation whatsoever.  Many Palestinian
children have died as a result of the conflict, but so many more as a result
of being human shields, or because they were in the line of fire during an
attack, and yet Hermon saw fit to make a movie centred round the extremely
rare occurrence of an IDF soldier purposefully shooting a ten year old.
Did Hermon consider that this feeds into the very prevalent belief that IDF
soldiers shoot children for target practice, or were such considerations
irrelevant in the making of her movie?  Interestingly, when questioned,
Hermon had no idea how many Palestinian children have been killed in this
manner, and yet she chose to make a movie with this as its central theme.

The movie is replete with images that feed into the preconceived belief that
Israel is a racist apartheid state: the fence is depicted as concrete and
only concrete; the slogans displayed by Israeli protesters eg, ³Occupation
is racist²; the attitudes of the Israelis interviewed are harsh and
unbending, far-removed from wanting peace.

Sadly both The Invisible Men¹ and Within the Eye of The Storm¹ are
traveling the world, and are screened for gullible, ignorant audiences who
are only too happy to have their perceptions of Israel confirmed by loyal¹
Israeli film directors who profess deep love for their country.  These
movies are veritable fodder for the BDS and other such nefarious groups. The
damage they cause is irreparable.  At what point will film directors such as
Mazor and Hermon realize that to present half-truths is to obfuscate the
truth?  It is as good as the untruth.

Victor Gordon to The Cape Argus

 

CAPE ARGUS

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 

Refer: “Christian voices must speak up”  26/11/13

 

At best the Rev. Lloyd E Thomas is either sadly misinformed – at worst he is a bigot to the core.  To say that the modern state of Israel ignores the biblical command that “citizens and foreigners are to be treated the same” shows a woeful ignorance of fact, quite unbecoming someone of his background.

While ignoring the slaughter of 120,000 Syrians by Bashir al-Assad, the good Reverend suggests that Israel is guilty of maltreating “citizens and foreigners” despite the Jewish state bestowing full citizenship on 1,4 million Israeli Arabs, (some of whom serve as Knesset MP’s;  sit as judges on the bench of the Supreme Court and have represented Israel as ambassadors in foreign lands), and accommodating 60,000 Eritrean and Sudanese illegal refugees under the most trying of circumstances.

In 2012 alone, “inhospitable Israel” treated 180,000 West Bank Palestinians in its hospitals, including the brother-in-law of Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Hanieyeh. Does the Rev. Thomas know that Israel operates a field hospital just inside its border with Syria to assist injured Syrian refugees? Perhaps not.

It might interest the Reverend that as a direct result of Muslim persecution the Christian population of the Middle East has dropped from 20% to  5% in the past century. The only Middle Eastern country to show a steady growth in Christian numbers is – Israel.

In Egypt, 200,000 Coptic Christians fled their homes amid anti-Christian violence during the “Arab spring” uprising that saw over 40 Coptic churches and 160 Christian-owned buildings burned to the ground.

In 2012 Saudi Arabia’s top Muslim leader, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Shaikh, issued a fatwa to demolish all churches on the Arabian peninsula.

Throughout all this, where was the Rev. Thomas’ voice of protest and despair? Nowhere, except in slanderous disapprobation of Israel. 

Perhaps the Rev. Thomas should embark on some much needed introspection before expressing such snide and uninformed remarks.

Victor Gordon

Victor Gordon responds to JJ Cornish

Dear J. J. Cornish,

For the second time of which I am aware, you have expressed your opinion that Israel, having “depended on the kindness of others”,  sees fit to turn its back on the 60,000 illegal refugees that have flooded into the country from Sudan and predominantly Eritrea. The implication is that a nation that suffered so during the Holocaust, where every door was slammed shut against the need of Jews to find a place of refuge, should simply “know better” than to close its doors to others I need.

I take grave issue with both this assertion as well as your failure to enlighten your listeners to the facts which you could have summarized in no more than a few words.

“Israel”, you could have said, “ is a country no larger than the Kruger Park. To absorb 60,000 largely unskilled refugees is an enormous drain on the resources of a country that has already rescued 22,000 Ethiopian refugees and struggled to absorb them into Israeli society. None of the surrounding Arab states have done anything to assist the Sudanese/Eritrean’s in this regard.  Despite this, Israel has not forced the Sudanese refugees to leave but is understandably encouraging them to do so.”

Instead, J.J. you appear set on casting aspersions against the morality of the Jewish state which, you suggest, because of the history of Jewish persecution, should allow itself to become a haven for all and any refugees seeking refuge from their own persecution.

 

As for the so-called “kindness of others”, perhaps you can let us know to which countries you refer as it was the very lack of kindness – particularly from your own Vichy France which co-operated whole-heartedly in turning its Jews over to the Nazis – that contributed towards the slaughter of the Holocaust.

Your are sadly misinformed, sir.

Victor Gordon

Pretoria

Victor Gordon to the Sunday Times

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 

Refer: “Israel apologist’s racism accusation is arrogant”

 

When will Dr. Firoz Osman realise that when it comes to Israel and Jews in general, South Africa’s history of apartheid is not the panacea for all ills. In fact they have little or nothing in common.

South African Jews have every reason to accuse Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane of racism for one obvious reason; when you target one country and one country only for specific negative treatment (in this case a ban on visits to Israel by senior SA cabinet ministers), yet fail to apply the same protocol to any other country on the planet – even those which kill hundreds of thousands of their own citizens while others hang gays from cranes and publicly stone to death women accused of adultery, this will inevitably raise a number of eyebrows.

But  when this isolated country happens to be the only existing Jewish state, (a mere 70 years following the horrors of the Holocaust), the labelling of the minister as a racist is fully justified. The bias and hypocrisy is simply too obvious to deny.

If Dr. Osman can find fault with Monessa Shapiro’s criticism of the Minister for losing sleep about the “dots” on a Palestinian map, perhaps he might be interested to view the dots on a map of Eastern Europe indicating the Jewish villages that were razed from the face of the earth after their communities were carted off to Auschwitz in cattle trucks. Indeed, I would have a great deal more respect were the countless deaths in the wake of the so-called “Arab Spring” the reasons for the minister’s debilitating insomnia.

Dr. Osman finds it ironic that the creation of Israel stemmed from a conference at San Remo in 1920 as two of the signatories (Italy and Japan) were fascist and sided with Hitler 20 years later. Whilst ironies abound in history, there is far greater irony in the fact that Japan carries no history of anti-Semitism while the same San Remo Conference concurrently established the formerly non-existent states of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Here, Dr. Osman doesn’t appear to be bothered by fascist influence. Neither is he concerned  that the Palestinian Arabs of the time not only sided openly with the Nazis, but that their leader Haj Amin al-Husseini offered to assist Hitler with the extermination of the Jews.

How history can be distorted in the hands of a master.

 

Monessa Shapiro to Politicsweb

How do you respond to something seemingly so credible, so benevolent, so
sincere, and so genial as Neeshan Balton¹s statement on behalf of the Ahmed
Kathrada Foundation, ³Being opposed to Israeli occupation is not
anti-Jewish?²

Well, you respond with facts, indisputable, incontrovertible facts.  And
fact number one is that the Jewish people are as bound to Israel as a baby
is to its mother.  Prick Israel and we, the Jewish people, bleed.  For
millennia the Jewish people have yearned and prayed for a return to Zion and
three times daily Jews turn towards Jerusalem in prayer.  Now this is
certainly not to say that you cannot criticize Israel, the people and her
government.  Jews grow up on a diet of debate, argument and discussion. But
that criticism must be fair and balanced.  It must also be impartial and
unbiased. 

Ahmed Kathrada and the members of his foundation petition for the rights of
Palestinians while totally ignoring the rights of Israelis.  Never once do
we hear a call for the cessation of terrorism; a plea to stop the murder of
innocent Israeli men, women and children.  Never once do we hear a call for
Palestinians to cease in their indoctrination of their children in the
hatred of Jews and Israelis, and for them to work rather towards
reconciliation and peace.  And so the criticism of Israel becomes tainted
with bias.

The Middle East is a region fraught with problems, with violence and hatred.
In excess of 100,000 Syrians have been killed, many as a result of the use
of horrific chemical weapons. Moslems are killing Moslems. Egypt has seen
tens of thousands of its own people killed.  More than 100,00 Iraqis have
been murdered as a result of violence, not in combat.  And Ahmed Kathrada
and his foundation are silent.  They do not decry the dastard human rights
situations in these countries nor do they plead for the innocents being
murdered on a daily basis.  Yet they criticise Israel, and in addition call
for the boycott of Israel:  Israel which runs a field hospital on her border
with Syria to assist Syrians wounded in the conflict with fellow-Syrians,
Israel which treated 219,464 Palestinians free of charge in Israeli
hospitals in 2012, including the brother of Hamas Prime-minister Ismail
Haniyeh.  And thus the criticism of Israel becomes so replete with bias that
the motives must be questioned.

Ahmed Kathrada and his foundation term the murderers of Israeli civilians
Œpolitical prisoners.¹  Marwan Barghouti was found guilty of murder in a
transparent trial in an Israeli court in June 2004 and sentenced to 5 life
sentences.  He was found guilty of the murder of a Greek monk in Maale
Adumim in June 2002, a terrorist attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in
January 2002, the murder of three civilians in a Tel-Aviv restaurant in 2002
and a car bombing in Jerusalem. The Times of Israel recently carried an
article on the 26 prisoners released from Israeli jails as a goodwill
gesture towards the peace process.  All 26 of these prisoners had blood on
their hands, the blood of innocent Israeli men, women and children.  All 26
planned and executed with precision the most brutal and barbaric murder of
innocent civilians.  Men women and children savagely mowed down while simply
going about their daily activities.

So fact number two must be that if you criticise Israel and only Israel, and
if you term the murderers of Jews Œpolitical prisoners¹ and call for their
release then your actions, and your calls are as anti-Jewish as they are
anti-Israel.  And undoubtedly, fact number three is that you reveal by both
your calls and your silence that the suffering and blood of Jews falls low
on your agenda.

Don Krausz to The Star

RE: DR. FIROZ OSMAN – LETTERS PAGE STAR 7-11-2013.

 

Dr. Osman is one of the Star’s regular denigrators of Israel. No matter what contrary proof is presented, he doggedly insists on presenting the same propaganda that has been shown time and again to be false.

 

One wonders what motivates him? There could be several explanations. The most likely one is Jihad, the holy war undertaken by Moslem fanatics against unbelievers. Don’t present facts to a Jihadist ; he believes himself divinely inspired and even if he has to lie he knows that it will be for a good cause. Good for him, but that does not mean that you have to believe him.

 

The second explanation is less inspired but also devastatingly effective. Dr. Josef Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, taught that a lie repeated often enough will eventually be believed. The upsurge of Neo-Naziism and its thugs has proved him right.

 

A Jihadist is meant to be a warrior, a fighter. But if one is able to contribute to the cause in other ways then that is also acceptable.

 

But supposing that Osman is right in all of which he accuses Israel. Let us assume that he does not have an agenda, but is genuinely concerned with the plight of the victim, the widow and the orphan. Over the years his target has been Israel. Is that land the only one guilty of all the evil in the world? Hardly likely. Yet who has heard Osman breathe one word against Syria with its 110,000 casualties, or against China for its brutalisation of the Tibetans, or the Russian subjugation of the Chechnyans, the deprivation of civil and human rights of women in many Moslem countries, little Mohala and the Taliban come to mind?

 

I lived in this country in the years of apartheid. I also lived in Israel for years and returned there for visits as recently as three years ago.

There is no legislated apartheid in the Jewish land. Instead one finds one and a half million Palestinians living there as Israeli citizens who show no desire to emigrate to the neighbouring Moslem countries.

 

Don’t write of apartheid Israel, Dr. Osman!

Dr Steve Berger – From a Victim of Apartheid in Palestine

From a Victim of Apartheid in Palestine

 

Like many South Africans, Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane  sees a parallel between Israel and White South Africa.   In fact, apartheid does rule in Palestine, but the Minister has mis-identified the victim.  We Jews are the Blacks of the Middle East.  We are the original natives, and we are in the majority.   There was a Jewish country named Israel 15 centuries before the first Moslem was even born, and Jews have persisted in their only land for over three millennia.  Each Sunday, South Africans flock to Church in praise of a West Bank Jew Settler.   Jesus never heard a single word of Arabic, or saw even one mosque.

 

Arabs are merely the latest in a long line of foreign colonialists who have attempted to take over my country.  They are an elitist element which strives for minority apartheid rule.  Unlike the Arabs, Jews have never been slavers and have never repressed Christians.  Indeed, Israel is the only country in the Middle East which grants religious freedom and full democracy to Arabs. 

 

If Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane is afraid of losing Arab oil and Arab money, she should at least be honest about her motives.   If she truly loses sleep over a map of Bantustans in the West Bank, she will be horrified at a parallel map of Arab settlements in Israel.  Abu Mazen openly brags that Jews will not live in his country.   Jews are already banned from Jordan and the West Bank, 80% of Palestine.   Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are cleansed of Jews.  How would the Foreign Minister feel if Arabs announce that Blacks shall not live in Jerusalem?   If she advocates a racially-pure Arab state in the West Bank, why not establish a White state on the occupied west bank of the Vaal River? 

 

Lacking any true “tragedy” of their own, Palestinians cynically kidnap the suffering of others.  We hear of pogroms, Bantustans, ethnic cleansing and the Palestinian holocaust.  Sadly, the South African Foreign Minister encourages Arabs to cloak themselves in Apartheid, the unique tragedy of her own people! 

 

Israel is the only country in the region that does not repress minorities, women, gays or Blacks.  It is the only country does not hang, decapitate, dismember or muzzle Arabs.   The only country in the Middle East which carries the banner of Nelson Mandela: “One man, one vote.”

 

Prof. Steve Berger

Director, Geographic Medicine

Tel Aviv Medical Center

Victor Gordon to the Pretoria News

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 

Refer: “SA Jews should emigrate to Israel, says ex-minister”

I am a 72 year-old born and bred Jewish South African.  In 1994 my enthusiasm for the new dispensation was boundless. At last I could start disengaging from the shackles of guilt that we as South African whites had for so long borne as the polecats of the world. I, like millions of others of all persuasions, colours, creeds and religions, bought into what Archbishop Desmond Tutu termed “The Rainbow Nation”. It was inspirational to have something to contribute and a part to play.

Sadly, for me this is in serious jeopardy as I, a Jew, have been singled out by a senior minister of our present government to feel like a pariah in my own country because I dare to associate myself with Israel, the Jewish homeland. According to International Relations Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the Jewish state is so tainted; so beyond the pale, that all senior South African cabinet minister are banned from visiting its shores.

It should be carefully noted that this exclusion does not apply to any other country in the world; not Syria where the ruling regime have accounted for the slaughter of 120,000 of its citizens; not China nor Russia where the most terrible abuses of human rights are rife; nor Iran where gays are hung from cranes and women adulterers are stoned to death.

The fact that none of this happens in Israel, the only true democracy in the entire region (audaciously referred to by the minister as the “regime”) appears to be meaningless while buried beneath lies, misinformation and blatant hypocrisy. Nowhere was it reported that just last week a pregnant Syrian woman underwent a complicated labour on the border with Israel only to be whisked to an Israeli hospital in an Israeli ambulance where both she and her child were saved. Nowhere is it reported that Israel quietly operates a field hospital inside the Syrian border to assist injured civilians.

In your Wednesday edition your headline, “SA Jews should emigrate to Israel, says ex – minister”, revealed the concern of the former Israeli  Foreign Minister about the future safety of South African Jews.  Whether this reaction is misguided or not, the mere fact that Nkoana-Mashabane’s statement elicited this reaction is an indication of the perception currently generated by the dangerously irresponsible attitudes and utterances of people like her and her deputy, Marius  Fransman, who has lost no opportunity to suggest that Jews are a South African ethnic minority to be mistrusted, feared and ultimately shunned. This is base anti-Semitism at its very worst.

In the true traditions of so many of our most vile enemies, stretching over 2000 years, the ANC, whose Freedom Charter sometimes appears to be gathering dust, has embarked on a calculated campaign to create a Jewish scapegoat, particularly in view of its fears of losing ground in the coming election. It is a well-worn tactic, tried and tested and usually with dire consequences.

The question is whether the greater South African public do or do not see it for what it is. If South African Jews are no longer welcome in this, their own country, let the government stand up and say so.  But if this is not the case why does President Zuma and others of influence not publically censure his ministers for their dangerous and destructive rhetoric?

If South Africa wishes to play a meaningful role in finding a solution to the age-old conflict in the Middle East (as it claims to desire), it cannot expect to do so with so biased and one-sided a viewpoint.

Ironically, ANC stalwart, Ben Turok stated that local Jews would not move to Israel as “Israel is in far greater danger from surrounding states … (and) this would be going into the danger zone”. Seemingly,  Turok failed to realize that in acknowledging this danger he finally recognises why Israel has been compelled to take the measures it has to safeguard the security of its citizens.

An open letter to Foreign Minister Maite Nkoane-Mashabane – Moness Shapiro

Dear Minister,

I read with much incredulity and I must confess a certain amount of relief
your remarks about Palestine and the fact that it keeps you awake at night.

You see, as a South African grandmother I often find myself lying awake at
night worrying about my grandchildren.  I never slept two weeks ago, when
the Sunday Times carried on its front page pictures of the scores of
children murdered and raped in South Africa.  Some months back I remember
not sleeping when reading about the dismal standard of maths, science and
literacy in this country. According to the TIMMS international survey South
Africa was placed second last, 8 places lower than the Palestinian
Authority.  I never slept the night I read of the 32 miners being shot by
police in Marikana.  The horrific stories we read about our hospitals keep
me awake at night, as do the scores of malnourished street-children I pass
each day begging at robots.

And then, I read your remarks and decided that I was probably
over-exaggerating the problems of this country, and that you and other
government officials must be aware of them and must have definite plans for
remediating them.  Otherwise of course it would be they and not Palestine
keeping you awake.

But lets turn to Palestine and these little dots that prevent you from
sleeping.  You do know that these little dots are all on Israeli territory.
The whole of Judea and Samaria (today know as the West Bank) was to be part
of the Jewish Homeland as mandated in 1920 at the San Remo Conference and
farther ratified by the League of Nations in 1922.  This has never been
abrogated.  You must also be fully aware, as we all are, that settlements
have never been an obstacle to peace as regards Israel.  All the settlements
were dismantled in the Sinai Peninsula in order to make peace with Egypt in
1979, and every Jew was removed from Gaza in 2005 in the hope that the
Palestinians living there would build a future Palestinian state on the
billion-dollar infrastructure, left them by Israel.  Do I need to elaborate
on what the residents of Gaza did instead?  You surely know of the thousands
of rockets fired from Gaza aimed at Israeli civilians with the intent of
murdering as many as possible. Do you not think that you would have so much
more credibility if the Israelis living in areas besieged by these rockets
received just a little open-eye from you?  But permit me to ask you a
question. Why should settlements ever be an obstacle to peace?  Why should
Jews not be allowed to live in a Palestinian state under a Palestinian
government as Arabs do in Israel?  You do know that Mahmoud Abbas has stated
categorically that no Jew will be welcome in a Palestinian state.  Do you
not find this abhorrently racist, coming as you do from our rainbow nation?

Your message that South African government officials cannot or should not
visit Israel seems so ill timed if not incredibly racist.  Ill timed,
because you know that the Israeli government is at the moment in talks with
the Palestinians aimed at ensuring a negotiated peace agreement and an
independent Palestinian state.  Surely now more than ever dialogue should be
encouraged, an understanding of the other, of the problems and concerns of
the other.  Racist, because you have chosen to prohibit visits to the only
Jewish State in the world.  Yet you allow, nay encourage, visits to the
disputed territories and Gaza, where the Hamas Charter calls for the
destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews everywhere.  I truly need to
understand this, because as it stands your singling out of the Jewish State
cannot but be seen as innately anti-Semitic.

Don Krausz to The Star

 

The Letters Editor,

The Star.

 

Fadheelah Patel’s letter of 4-11-2013 refers.

 

How refreshing to find an anti-Israel advocate presenting something that is positive. Patel quotes Hillel the Elder, who is reputed to have lived from 70BCE to 10AD. Hillel became renowned for teaching what has become known as the Golden Rule:

 “Whatever is hateful unto thee, do it not to thy fellow,”

 

It is interesting to speculate what made Patel quote Hillel. Her letter is highly opinionated and interspersed with information for which no proof is offered. We are expected to just take her word for it. What is beyond distortion is the fact that Barghouti was sentenced to five life sentences after being found guilty of five murders. To paraphrase Hillel: Those are the facts: all the rest is commentary.

 

It is useful to remember that when pointing a finger at another, three fingers remain pointed at oneself. “What is hateful unto thee, do it not to thy fellow.” Is Patel sure that this message must be directed at Israel only and not at the Shia, the Sunni, the Taliban, Al Queda, in fact the whole Moslem and anti-Semitic world? 110,000 human beings are said to have died in Syria alone!

 

Hillel’s words are of interest worldwide. “That is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary.”

 

Note that in proclaiming that expression as the “whole Torah,” Hillel makes no mention of God, heaven or hell, eternal damnation, miracles, immaculate conceptions, dying for another’s sins, raising people from the dead, only coming to the Father through me, etc. etc.

 

It would seem that Hillel’s religion is concerned only with Man and his fellow man – reality. All the rest is commentary.