Rodney Mazinter to The Witness

Dear Sir

 

I am curious, if not more than a little puzzled. Fadheela Patel makes some quite egregious statements that are completely unsubstantiated by credible sources and draws conclusions from them in total opposition to reality (The Witness 24/02/2014 Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right).

The Witness and many other newspapers carry daily reports on their pages, itemising atrocities from around the world. A few I picked up in various papers I regularly read, in no particular order of savagery: the public lynching of a suspect in the Central African Republic by soldiers of the regime, the mass torture of Iraqi women by the Iraqi authorities, war crimes uncovered in Sri Lanka and the “unspeakable suffering of children” in Syria, a country that has already slaughtered over 120,000 of its own civilians, 10,000 of whom were children.

The apartheid charges leveled against Israel are based on phony or nonexistent sources. Patel tells us that the Jewish state is, by nature, a racist, colonial and oppressive. This is the theme of rigid ideologues, who distort facts about the country while ignoring genuine oppression in the Middle East and across the world.

Israel, which among other humanitarian practices opens up its hospitals and medical facilities to Syrians and Palestinians, feeds and supplies fuel oil to winter ravaged Gaza, sends recue and medical teams halfway across the world to help countries hit by natural disasters, provides employment to hard-pressed Palestinians that raises their standard of living significantly, and, yes, opens its borders to Africans, who far from being flown to Israel for nefarious reasons, have fled oppression to trek across huge, waterless deserts, dodged bullets from Egyptian soldiers to be given food, water and medical attention by Israeli soldiers at the border.

And yet Patel targets the only demonstrably humane, peace seeking country in the Middle East for demonisation. Does the word hypocrisy occur to anyone, particularly those being drawn into this unsavoury feeding frenzy against the only free country in the area?

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that Israel, which he described as “one of great outposts of democracy in the world”, has an “incontestable right to exist.” This push against King’s truth can only impede the dream of peace and justice in the Middle East.

There is apartheid in the Middle East, but it will not be found in Israel. The apartheid accusations are merely a pretext in the hands of activists who are bound and determined to be anti-Israel, regardless of the facts.  The activists who accuse Israel of apartheid and similar charges therefore deserve absolutely no credibility whatsoever.

Monessa Shapiro to The Witness

Over the years of responding to various nefarious, disingenuous lies by members of the Media Review Network, I have always put the same challenge to the writers, and through your newspaper, I wish, once again to do so.    I ask Fadheelah Patel to tabulate and date the over 30 apartheid laws she claims have been passed by the Israeli Knesset.  

Never have I had a response, because, well, it’s just not possible to list that, that does not exist.

Debbie Mankowitz to The Witness – Two wrongs don’t make a right!

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it…” Joseph Goebbels on the Big Lie.

Fadeelah Patel (The Witness 24/2/2014) brilliantly perfects the art of Hitlerian –style Goebbelsian -speak and I must commend her for this.

The Media Review Network that Patel represents is unable to face the unpalatable realities of their co-religionists rejectionist attitudes towards peace with Israel so they continue to employ the worn-out “racist” punt, and dredge up every so-called misdemeanor in the “racist book of knowledge.”  Anything goes in this fantasy encyclopedia of misdemeanors, and of course, all of it in their bigoted minds would describe anything Jewish and Israel. The MRN being the so-called news purveyor that their name disingenuously suggests, do not objectively look at the situation of the Middle East conflict with a modicum of balance. Their information, obviously and understandably, emanates from the West Bank and Gaza where Hitler’s “Mein Kampf “ is a bestseller, and the anti-Semitic protocols of Zion, another DVD favourite is part of the  wave of subversive anti-Israel/Jewish publications that flood the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. In these places, the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine, and outer wall remnant, of the Jewish Holy Temple, “was built by Arabs”. In the PA the media, schools, literature and sermons given by the Imams constantly abound with portrayals of “Nazi, fascist and racist” Israel that is persistently accused of “injecting children with the AIDS virus, of pushing drugs and marketing poisoned food.” The libels against Israel are vicious, on-going and infectious and indoctrinate young minds who as a result become intent on committing heinous suicide bombings or other crimes against humanity, hence the need for a security barrier that protects the lives of innocent Israeli civilians, both Arab and Jew.

Contrary to what the MRN might have heard, and without looking at the facts, African refugees fleeing political violence or poverty of their home countries actually choose to flee to Israel. Israeli soldiers generally find these poor men, women and children battered, bruised and sometimes barely alive at the border as a result of ill-treatment and torture at the hands of unscrupulous Bedouin tribesmen or Egyptian soldiers. This blatant human rights violation vis-à-vis Egypt or the rest of the Arab Middle East for that matter, is callously ignored by the MRN. It is simply overlooked and ignored because it does not fit in with their agenda-driven portrayal of the region and its problems. That these same refugees are then housed and fed and their children sent to school by the Israeli government is not worth a mention. Yes some of these refugees are disgruntled and unemployed and live in south Tel Aviv which is also a very poor Jewish area, but when these same African refugees are offered repatriation, and a sum of money to help them set up again in their countries of origin, most refuse.

A few Eritreans and Sudanese have been accused of the rape of local girls raising the ire, and distress of  local people in these communities. And as a result, there will be anger, and sometimes racism, like parents and community members the world over. This is the nature of man; not Jewish men and women, but man in general. To answer every Jewish transgression that Patel describes would just be sinking to her level of ill-placed fantasy or wishful thinking, but what is profoundly clear here is that she and the MRN are peddlers of bigotry of the worst kind, and are certainly not purveyors of peaceful solutions in the Middle East.

Victor Gordon to The Witness: Two wrongs don’t make a right”

 LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Refer:  “Two wrongs don’t make a right”   2014/2/24

 When confronted by an article antagonistic towards Israel, I make it  a habit to check the name of the writer before proceeding.  It gives me a clear indication of what to expect.  Noting that “Two wrongs don’t make a right” was submitted by a member of the Media Review Network,  an organization as rabidly ranged against the Jewish state as one can find, I was neither surprised nor disappointed. While their venom has never wavered, this offering represents a new standard, even for them.

The writer, Fadheelah Patel, has not missed a trick in her litany of accusations,  resorting to innuendos, false claims and accusations  based on “facts” which she not only never attempts to substantiate nor contextualize,  but gleans from the most dubious of sources.

Patel digs up a racist statement made by a single Right-wing member of the Knesset, Miri  Regev,  and offers it as an example of the  sentiments of Israelis in general.  There are 120 members of the Knesset and Regev is just one. For this she relies  on the notorious “Bilzerian Report”, an on-line hate-fest  whose raison de’etre  is the demonisation of Israel and Jews in general.  So much for context.

Digging through the trash within that “Report” she comes up with “erudite” investigative articles such as “Why do many Jews hate Black people?”,  penned  by none other than the editor of the Report,  Alcibiades Bilzerian who concludes that “the Jewish-controlled media  ignored the Rwandan genocide”. 

While, laughably,  Jews have been accused of controlling the media, world-wide, for more than a century, Bilzerian fails to explain why the UN did so little to prevent that self- same genocide while Bill Clinton openly admitted that his lack of action in intervening in the Rwandan genocide was his greatest failing.

Perhaps, muses Patel,  Israeli inaction “was most likely because they didn’t care about black people they once enslaved and didn’t want to take away from the sympathy of the Holocaust”; a slanderous,  defamatory statement if ever there was one.

Interestingly, Patel remains unperturbed that Australia, a country with far greater space and resources than Israel, has resorted to shipping Vietnamese “boat people” (refugees)  off  to the remote island of Papua New Guinea.

While slamming Israel based on selected comments by a few politicians, Bilzerian devotes a lengthy article to the apparent  Jewish penchant for (as he claims) accusing critics of Israel of anti-Semitism, based again on selected comments.  Surely you can’t have it both ways! 

While Patel focuses on a list of damning accusations, all designed to prove her claim that Israel is a racist state, she writes not a word about Arab racism that has caused all the tensions between Arab and Jew in the first place;  racism that has encouraged the Arabs to attempt, time and again to annihilate the Jews from the face of the earth and to still hold on to that dream to this very day. (See the charters of both Hamas and the PLO.)

For examples of true racism, read “Deception” by Itamar Marcus which lists over 1500 incidents of racism at its very worst, directed daily at Israelis and Jews in general, with each example backed  by date and website for reference.

Will Fadheelah Patel and the organization she represents never tire of this deceit and shock us all by coming up with a suggestion that just might contribute to the furthering of peace between the warring parties instead of stoking the fires of conflict.

Monessa Shapiro on BDS in the Daily Maverick

 The BDS campaign has used every ploy possible to discredit and delegitimize the State of Israel.  The recent appeal by Kalim Rajab to consider ‘expanded Israel’ as opposed to ‘contracted Israel’ is yet another tactic in this never-ending sport.

 So let us consider ‘expanded Israel’ – the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be more explicit.   Territories that Israel did not ask for, but found herself in control of after the 1967 defensive 6-Day War.   Territories that in 1967 she was happy to give up in exchange for peace.  Instead she was met with the now infamous three no’s at Khartoum: No to peace, No to negotiations and No to recognition of the State of Israel.   When Israel annexed East Jerusalem and made it once again the undivided capital of the Jewish people she offered all the Arabs living there Israeli citizenship.  Some accepted but many refused.  Those who refused were given residency of Jerusalem.

Until the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993 and the concomitant upsurge in terrorism, the Arabs in ‘expanded Israel’ lived very well.  They travelled freely, and worked and shopped together with Israelis.  According to Professor Ephraim Karsh, the West Bank and Gaza comprised the 4^th fastest growing economy in the world during the 1970s.  By 1999 the per-capita income among Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza was double that of Syria, more than four times that of Yemen and 10% higher than that of Jordan.  Life expectancy rose from 48 in 1967 to 72 in 2000.  Israeli medicine reduced the infant mortality rate of 60 per 1000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1000 in 2000.  By 1986 92.8 % of the inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank had electricity whilst in 1967only 20.5% had; 85% had running water as compared to 16% in 1967.    When Israel began administering the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 not a single tertiary institution existed.  By the 1990s seven universities had opened.   So much for the horror of Israel’s occupation.

 But the terrorism that began after Oslo continued unabated.   Hence the need for checkpoints. In 2000, at Camp David, Ehud Barak offered Arafat the whole of Gaza and 95% of the West Bank.  He refused and the 2^nd Intifada broke out.  Israeli men, women and children became the targets of murderers intent on killing as many civilians as possible.  Women were caught going through checkpoints with explosives hidden under their burqas.  Ambulances were found to be carrying explosives.  Finally, in an attempt to protect her citizens the Israeli government erected a security fence.  95% of this fence is chain linked with only 5% concrete and that is to prevent sniping onto Israeli villages and roads.

 In 2006, in order to pave way for a future Palestinian state, Prime Minister Sharon unilaterally removed every Jew living in Gaza thus making the area Judenfrei for the Palestinians living there.  The Jewish citizens of Gaza left behind an infrastructure worth billions.  Instead of building on this the Palestinians began raining rockets down on Israel, aimed at murdering as many Israeli civilians as possible.  The world’s first nursery school ‘in a shelter’ had to be built in the town of Sderot.

 As I write we await eagerly and with much trepidation news of whether John Kerry will succeed in drawing up a framework for peace acceptable to both parties.  But the outcome is already clear.  Mahmoud Abbas has stated categorically that he will never recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jews, nor will he relent on the right of return for Palestinian refugees, nor will he accept borders other than the 1949 armistice lines.   And yet the proponents of the BDS campaign will continue to blame Israel.  And the likes of Kalim Rajab will continue to expound that ‘expanded Israel is not a democracy.’  Neither will acknowledge that ‘expanded Israel’ comprises a people unwilling to make peace, a people whose unashamed aim is Israel’s destruction.  By denying this reality the proponents of BDS merely stoke the flames of hatred and enmity.  If Palestinian suffering is their raison d’etre  then truth and honesty should become their point of departure.

Chuck Volpe to The Witness

Mandisi Majavu levels the overused all-purpose swearword ‘racist’ at Israel for refusing to give refugee status to the 60,000 African infiltrators that have crossed its border illegally. These “economic” refugees are no different to the thousands seeking a better life elsewhere in the West.

As a sovereign state, Israel is right to treat these travellers with suspicion. It is well-known that they cross many countries, mostly Arab, to get to “racist” Israel. Some come from as far away as West Africa. Under the circumstances, does Israel have a special responsibility to them?

Yes, says Majavu; because Israel is responsible for “destabilising” their home countries. He reaches this conclusion via a balletic leap of Baryshnikov proportions from the questionable premise that Israel once provided “short courses” to certain military groups in these countries. I would have thought this a rather minor factor in countries chronically plagued by tribalism, religious sectarianism and general backwardness.

Africa has been in a state of instability for centuries and remains a “cocktail of disasters” in the words of Kofi Annan. Surely, the way forward for Africans is not to blame others but to start taking responsibility themselves.

They could start by looking at Israel where a people emerged from the depths of hell to farm a barren land, industrialise it, build cities, do world-breaking research, win by Nobel prizes, establish chamber orchestras, write books, and sustain a great moral tradition – and with almost no help.

Or, on the other hand, they can choose not to.

 

Victor Gordon – SA backing for Palestine lauded (New Age)

Ref: “SA backing for Palestine lauded”  11/2/14

 

Parliament’s resolution to support “the people of Palestine, Cuba and Western Sahara” comes as no surprise. Neither does the accompanying blatant hypocrisy displayed by both Parliament and the BDS movement.

While Parliament went even further in deciding to host a solidarity conference in support of the Palestinians, no mention was made of a similar event in support of the Cubans or Western  Saharan’s.

Neither has BDS expressed any intention of calling for like measures to be applied against the US or Morocco, both of whom they have found guilty of abuses against these respective countries.

To take this hypocrisy further, the underlying reasons for action adopted by Israel, the USA or Morocco against the three defined “victims” are so different to not warrant comparison. But this has made no difference to neither Parliament nor BDS who have obviously included Cuba and Western Sahara  in order to make their opposition against Israel appear to be fairly distributed.

If, however, the focus is on all abusers of human rights, why omit China, Russia or Iran, all of whom are perpetrators  in ways that are in direct contrast to both our own moral compass as well as our constitution?

What is conveniently  overlooked is that the Palestinians continually refuse to acknowledge the existence of  Israel as a Jewish state while making it clear that any future Palestinian state established in the West Bank and Gaza will not countenance the presence of a single Jew.  How, therefore, is Israel to make peace with a neighbour that has adopted so blatant a policy of apartheid while openly calling for its destruction? 

Once our Parliament and the BDS movement can answer this fundamental question, only then do their resolutions and conferences deserve to be regarded with a modicum of seriousness. Until then they will remain the hypocritical waste of time that they are. 

Victor Gordon to the New Age

Refers: “D J Black Coffee fends off firestorm over stint in Israel”

In their desperate quest to bring down the State of Israel, the BDS movement becomes increasingly disingenuous and hypocritical.  I say “bring down” the State of Israel  without hesitation, as clearly, their expressed objective of helping the Palestinian cause is as hollow as their self importance is large.

There is nothing more patronising than one who professes to know more about the plight of another than does the object of its “generosity”.  In this case it is boycotting, divesting and applying sanctions against the State of Israel. This, it would seem, will bring the Jewish state to its knees and magically solve the region’s problems.

What is overlooked (other than the backbone of the Israeli people) is that the President of Fatah, Mahmud Abbas has openly condemned any boycott of Israel in any form as it would inevitably be counter -productive to the interests of his people.  In an interview given to the Christian Science Monitor, Palestinians employed by SodaStream, the factory located in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, unanimously opposed any move that would jeopardise their jobs. The salaries they receive are ten times greater than those paid in the Palestinian territories while they would struggle to find equivalent work elsewhere. 

That’s correct … the Palestinians themselves do not want the interference of BDS who sanctimoniously claim to know what’s better for them than they do themselves. Even that darling of the Left, Norman Finkelstein, has criticised the BDS movement for its blatant hypocrisy and the dishonesty of its motives.

While I commend DJ Black Coffee for having a mind of his own in deciding to perform in Israel, let me assure him that he is in good company and joins the likes of Elton John, Alicia Keyes,  Rihanna, Paul McCartney,  Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Metallica, Madonna, Julio Iglesias,  Cyndi  Lauper,  Beyonce , Tom Jones, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Alanis Morissette, Rufus Wainwright, Aerosmith, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Justin Beiber,  plus many others who have either recently toured or plan to do so in the coming months. All refused to be dictated to about where they can perform.

Were the BDS movement sincere in their motives they would turn their attention to Syria, North Korea, Iran or China, all of which are desperate for a moral makeover.

Victor Gordon responds to “Between a fizzy drink and a hard place” – The Times

Refers:  “Between a fizzy drink and a hard place”

 

While Jackie May reaches for a can of her favourite bubbly instead of a glass of the same , dispensed by a tainted Israeli SodaStream machine, perhaps she should consider an interview given to the Christian Science Monitor (no friend of Israel) by some of SodaStream’s  500 Palestinian employees. 

Unanimously, they stated their opposition to any boycott of the company that ensured, not only their steady employment on exactly the same terms and conditions as their 600 Israeli co-workers, but provided them with wages ten times higher than anything they could expect to earn elsewhere in the West Bank – if a job could even be found.

It appears that Jackie remains unaware that West Bank President Mahmoud Abbas has also openly stated his opposition to boycotts in the interests of his own people.

Of course, this wouldn’t mean much to Ms. May. She would no doubt lose little sleep over a Palestinian family with no income in favour of the feel-good sensation derived from knowing that you’ve sanctimoniously declined to use an Israeli product having decided that this must be in the best interests of someone asking you to do the exact opposite.

How many Chinese products has Ms. May shunned that might well have utilised child labour?

The fact is, SodaStream could move their factory (one of 20) out of the West Bank at any time but are mindful of the negative impact it would have on the livelihood of all their employees.

Concerning May’s statement that “the … the Geneva Convention, the Rome Statute and the International Court of Justice are right in stating that a settlement like this one has been built illegitimately”, she would be wise to read the 714-page seminal work, “The legal foundation and borders of Israel under International Law” by acclaimed jurist Howard Grief.  

Therein she would discover that her claim has absolutely no foundation and is, in fact, as hollow as an empty can of Coke.  But who cares about facts when it’s so much more emotive to bandy about terms like the ‘Geneva Convention’ and the ‘ Rome Statute’ which carry such gravitas. It appears that explaining their true meaning requires a great deal more than Jackie May is willing or able to offer.