Gill Katz to The Argus in response to Firoz Osman

Gill Bayer Katz

 

Re: Dr. Ozman’s letter about Israel and the Pope’s visit.

As an active member of Media Team Israel when I lived in South Africa, my introduction to the Media Review Network was rather like meeting up with that childhood night-time terror – The Boogieman! This scary creature would arise in frightening manner from the newspaper  much like those childhood scary images did when I read my big “Grimms Fairy Tales” book – only this Boogieman was not a fantasy but a reality.

 

Dr Firoz Ozman together with fellow worrisome cohorts would leap out the pages of the South African papers and fill my mind  with nightmarish stories of starving , brutalized men women and children at the hands of Jewish people in uniforms of authority . The words ‘brutal’ and ‘murderous’ were flung at my psyche and horrified  , I contemplated the plight of these poor wretched souls at the hands of MY HEROES – the  Israelis who I had admired so deeply and for so long.

And then I started to research, together with the Media Team , whose task it was to read accounts in the media and then set about discovering if they were true stories based on facts or big fat fairytales.

Phew!!

All it took was serious professional hardcore research to turn Dr Ozman and the other Boogieman and women into characters who loved playing with dragons and trolls and other mythical monsters. 

 

I sighed a sigh of relief . The Boogieman were simply people armed with another demonic book – the Palestine Propaganda  book much loved by those who hate the existence of Israel and her feisty citizens .  

Dr Ozman – I once challenged you to a serious indaba with mature and informed men and women from Media Team Israel but you never accepted the challenge.
I challenge you now.
Sit face to face with Don Krausz and Victor Gordon and Monessa Shapiro and arm yourself with credible proof of the fairytales you have spun for all these years.
Come on!
Will you?
Or are you chicken?
Gill Katz

Victor Gordon responds to Firoz Osman: Refer: “Pope’s actions in Holy Land astonishing”

It is challenging to reply to Firoz Osman’s “Popes action in Holy Land astonishing” as it takes some effort to lower oneself to this level. However, such outrageous statements must be shown up for what they are.

He criticises the Pope for laying a wreath at the grave of Theodore Herzl, the architect of the Zionist movement which resulted in the founding of the State of Israel. Herzl died in 1904 yet is blamed by Ozman for the demolition of Palestinian villages and so-called “ethnic cleansing” of the indigenous Arab population which occurred 44 years later as a result of the 1948 War of Independence which the Arabs launched against the new Jewish state, and lost in the process. How this can be attributed to Herzl takes a huge leap of “Osmanian” imagination.

He then further admonishes the Pope for visiting Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial because it lies within sight of Deir Yassin, an Arab village where 125 Arabs were killed in an attack during that same war. Despite former residents of the village themselves subsequently denying that women were raped during that battle, Osman quotes this lie, all for the negative reaction he knows it will elicit.

 How Osman  can reconcile the systematic murder of 6 million defenceless  Jews with the loss of 125 Arabs during a battle for control of a village in which the Jews suffered 38 casualties, is also questionable but predictable. Anyone familiar with this history knows that the circumstances surrounding  Deir Yassin are far more convoluted than Osman makes them appear.

The Pope comes in for further criticism for “kissing the hands of Holocaust survivors while ignoring the plight of starving Palestinians under siege in the concentration camp in Gaza”.

Firstly,  far from ignoring the plight of the Gazan’s, the Pope made a point of comparing the security barrier, designed to keep terrorists out of Israel, with the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto which imprisoned several hundred thousand Jews with the express purpose of starving them to death. Despite being an avid follower of the news, I have yet to see a starving Palestinian on my TV screen. In contrast to the Nazis, Israel  sends truck-loads of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid into “the concentration camp” of Gaza on a daily basis.

Finally, Israel has never prevented Christians from gaining access to their Holy sites unless temporarily, for reasons of security. In contrast, Jews and Christians are forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount while Jews were also prevented  from visiting the Western Wall for 19 years while under Arab control. During that period every synagogue in the Jewish quarter was destroyed.

Perhaps Osman should refrain from his usual twisted propaganda and become part of the solution instead of the problem.   

Don Krausz responds to Firoz Osman

The Letters Editor,

Cape Argus.

 Firoz Osman’ article of 16 June refers.

 I have followed his writings over many years and his strategy does not vary. Repeat lies often enough and the ignorant and useful idiots will believe and repeat them. The method used by the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

 The end justifies the means.

 

Perhaps he believes that those of us who experienced the events that he chooses to distort will eventually tire of bearing witness. He is wrong. We too have an obligation, not to wishful thinking, an ephemeron, but to the truth and must continue to “dash the cup from perjured lip.” Not with propaganda, but with ascertainable facts taken from the British Encyclopaedia (BE)

 

The Jewish Viennese journalist, Theodor Herzl, witnessed vicious anti-Semitism in France and realised the necessity, after millennia of persecution, expulsion and murder, of Jews having the protection of their own state. He advocated Zionism.

 

He died in 1904.

 

With the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 the Palestinians and five Arab states, launched a totally unprovoked war against their Jewish neighbours. 6,000 Jews were killed, 30,000 wounded, of which many were later butchered by these Palestinians as reported by survivors. Those hostile and murdering Palestinians were eventually expelled from their villages by the counter attacking Israeli forces. (BE page 142)

 

For all this Firoz Osman holds the late Theodor Herzl personally responsible.

 

Osman mentions one of those villages, Deir Yassin, and claims that women and children were raped. Fifty years later, in a BBC broadcast, a reporter of the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation, Hazam Nusseibi, admitted that the claim was false.

 

The inhabitants of Deir Yassin knew it, Nusseibi did and so did the BBC. How did these facts escape the attention of Firoz Osman?

 

He is severely critical of Pope Francis. Palestinians hosted the Pope during his visit, taking him to places that they felt he should see. How is it possible that they forgot to show the Pope those concentration camps in Gaza with their two million starving Palestinians that Osman writes about?

 

Osman quotes Archbishop Tutu at length on Israel practising apartheid. If it did then the Pope’s visit would be open to severe censure all over the world. The Vatican must be aware of this. Surely they would have enquired from the multitude of eminent Catholic clergy in the Holy Land as to the truth of the situation?

 

The Pope’s visit speaks for itself. He knows the truth, the Vatican and the Catholic authorities there confirm it. But the venerable Bishop and Firoz Osman don’t?

 

Please!

Monessa Shapiro responds to S. Parker

I have pondered and pondered whether to respond to S. Parker (Spotlight on anti-Semitism).   To do so is to almost lower myself to his level of hatred and racism.  On the other hand to allow such blatant racism to go unanswered is an insult to those millions of Jews murdered through the ages, and still being murdered, simply because they were or are Jewish.

 For whilst what he says is bad enough, it is the language in which he couches it all that exposes him for the rabid racist he so obviously is.   What sir, is “Judaic ‘sheep’s clothing’?”  Are you insinuating that Jews went to the slaughter- houses of Nazi Germany as the proverbial ‘lambs to the slaughter?’  Or worse still, are you implying that Jews have never truly been victims of racism but merely ‘dress up’ in a cloak of victimhood?  How dare you!  Quite obviously, not being Jewish yourself, you have no concept of what it means to be irrationally hated simply because of a quirk of fate.

You speak of Jewish “refugees”, and again you use inverted commas.  In so doing, you openly and without any shame, infer that the people who attempted to find refuge in Palestine (and in most cases were turned away) were not true refugees.  They were but Jews, simply masquerading as refugees.  After all, they were only fleeing mere gas ovens.

Need I say more?   There is much racism in the world, but there is only one type of racism, so illogical, so deep-seated and so prevalent that it has been given a name and that is Jew-hatred: anti-Semitism, Sir.   And were there a club of anti-Semites, you S. Parker, would wear the badge of honour as chairperson of that club.

Don Krausz ” Spotlight on Anti-Semitism – The Weekend Argus

The Editor,

The Weekend Argus

 

Re: S.A.Parker’s  “Spotlight on anti-Semitism” of 8-6-2014.

 

I cannot be bothered to respond to his insults and prejudices.

Let us deal with the facts.

 

He states that the majority of Jews are safe in Iran and remain as equal citizens.

 

That is if they are not bothered by Iran repeatedly vowing to “wipe Israel off the map,” which could involve family, friends and co-religionists, and are not homosexual which could get them hanged in public. Should Iran attempt to make good on her aforementioned vow and not succeed, Israel would retaliate, probably atomically. Not much joy there for resident Jews.

 

Assuming that there was any one left in Iran’s major cities, then the same scenario that took place after Israel defeated invading Arab armies in 1948 might recur, when those Moslem lands in revenge for their humiliation by the despised Dhimmies, (second class citizens, infidels, unclean creatures descended from apes and pigs), attacked their resident Jews, expropriated and expelled them.

 

And S.A.Parker believes that those Jews feel safe!

 

I am convinced that Iran is keeping those Jews as hostages as they did with the US diplomatic personnel in 1979, otherwise those Jews would have left long ago. At the time of the establishment of Israel in 1948 there were an estimated 150,000 Jews living in Iran. The 2012 census put the figure at 9,000. (Wikipedia)

 

Parker is correct when he writes that Muslims only became anti-Zionist with the establishment of the Israeli state. Prior to that they were merely anti-Jewish as the periodic persecution and murder of Jews during the previous 12 centuries testifies.

And yet when the good Christian “love they neighbour” Spanish and Portuguese expelled their Jews during the 15^thcentury, it was largely the Moslem countries that gave them refuge.

 

When the state of Israel was declared on 14 May 1948, its Jews were promptly attacked by five Arab states and their friendly Palestinian neighbours. Azzam Pasha, the secretary of the Arab League, then declared: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

 

Mr. Parker writes that there is “absolutely no proof that Arabs and Muslims contemplated a (Holocaust.)”

Rolene Marks to the Mail & Guardian “De Klerk warns Israel about Apartheid”

Dear Editor

 

The article “De Klerk warns Israel about Apartheid” refers.

 

I live in Israel and watched De Klerk’s interview on our Channel 2 with much interest. I am terribly confused. The contents of the interview and the way that it has been reported in the Mail & Guardian are very different. Now, I know we are a Hebrew speaking country and things tend to get lost in translation but De Klerk was very clear, in English, and did not “warn Israel about becoming an Apartheid state” as this article infers.

 

He spoke about the window of opportunity to negotiate two states closing if a consensus is not reached and the possibility of what could happen if Israel became a binational state. He did NOT say that the Jewish state was hurtling fast towards Apartheid. He also stated quite categorically, I am sure much to the disgust of Israel’s detractor, that the country does not practice Apartheid. He gave enlightening insight into negotiations between himself and Mandela and made a little jab at the international community by saying that foreign intervention was not needed. But then he had a negotiating partner that was not sworn to the destruction of his people. Using an omelet analogy, De Klerk spoke of the blending of people. When one element of our Middle Eastern omelet has a rotten egg, how does Israel negotiate effectively?

 

I know that castigating Israel has become the sport du jour of certain publications but one would caution to listen carefully lest things get lost in translation.

 

Rolene Marks

Modiin

Israel

Victor Gordon to The Mail & Guardian “De Klerk warns Israel about Apartheid”

 

Ref:  “De Klerk warns Israel about apartheid”

 

Your report on the interview with FW de Klerk on Israeli Channel 2, bears a subtle change of context.

The opening sentence; “South Africa’s last president under white rule has suggested that Israel risks heading toward apartheid if it does not reach a peace deal with the Palestinians”,  proposes that FW has taken the view that apartheid in Israel is inevitable unless the latter and the Palestinians make peace.

The opposite is true. What de Klerk, in fact, said, was that “it is unfair to call Israel an apartheid state. … In fact, the idea of separation could not have worked in SA  … but could be the most moral solution in Israel.”

The closest de Klerk came to saying anything about Israel adopting any form of apartheid was, “there will come for Israel a turning point where, if the main obstacles which at the moment exist to a successful two state solution are not removed, the two state solution will become impossible.” There was no mention of apartheid which also brings the ambiguity of your headline into question.

By quoting John Kerry and “a number of prominent centrist Israelis” in the context of them aligning themselves with the possibility of the apartheid analogy,  there is an undeniable  slant to your article designed to deliver the impression that de Klerk endorsed his recognition of potential Israeli apartheid.  This unwarranted emphasis on apartheid is both unfair and misleading.

What was left unreported was de Klerk’s careful comparison of the constructive attitude of co-operation during the South African negotiations. Against this, we are faced with the intransigence offered by the Palestinians, who look for every reason not to negotiate any form of a peace deal with the Israelis.  Not even the most fundamental gesture of recognising the existence of the Jewish state is forthcoming.

That, in itself, would have been worthy of a report.