Monessa Shapiro to the Cape Times

Jeremy Cronin questions: “How much longer will Israel’s agenda be tolerated by the world?”  What should Israel’s agenda be?

 

Hamas, the government voted in by the citizens of Gaza is a  terrorist organization sworn to the destruction of Israel and the murder of all Jews.   On Friday, 25 July, Hamas TV broadcast a sermon in which the cleric stated unequivocally Hamas ideology: “Our belief about fighting you (Jews) is that we will exterminate you, until the last one, and we will not leave of you, even one.” 

 In pursuit of this ideology Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israel with the explicit aim of murdering as many men, women and children as possible.  Since the start of the campaign over 2270 rockets have been indiscriminately launched towards the cities and civilians of Israel.  The Iron Dome and the fact that Israel has built bomb shelters has so far ensured that they have not been successful.  In addition Hamas has developed a virtual underground city of inter-linked tunnels stretching from Gaza into Israel with the purpose of kidnapping and murdering Israelis.  The cost of these tunnels has been estimated to be in the millions of dollars.  So instead of building air-raid shelters to protect its people; hospitals, schools and other infrastructure to uplift them, Hamas has built tunnels in pursuit of its genocidal ideology.  A map showing some of these tunnels discovered by Israel may be viewed onhttp://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/alert-idf-eyes-foil-new-tunnel-terror-infiltration-attempt/2014/07/29/.    Clearly visible is a tunnel stretching from the Al-Wafa hospital in Gaza to Kfar Aza in Israel.   What right-minded caring government burrows under a hospital to dig a tunnel to be used for military purposes?  Hamas has admitted that 160 of its own children have died while building these tunnels.

 For the third time since the start of the conflict, terrorists’ rockets were today found stored in an UNRWA school in the Gaza strip.  Chris Gunness UNRWA spokesperson said: ”We condemn the group or groups who endangered civilians by placing these munitions in our school”.  But this is of course part of the Hamas strategy – place its own citizens in danger and allow them to be killed, thereby ratcheting up more world sympathy. 

 So Israel’s agenda appears, to the likes of Cronin, to be off the mark.  What would he suggest?

Allan Wollman to the Media

Since the start of the latest Gaza conflict we have seen a constant barrage in the media reporting on the disproportionate victims of this conflict, the “majority being innocent civilians” these statistics are issued by “a reliable” Hamas run Health Ministry in Gaza.

The UN also reports on the “innocent civilian” toll but have absolutely no capability to determine whether those victims are ‘civilians’ or fighters – how can they when combatants from the various terrorist factions wear no identifiable uniforms – therefore every casualty must be a ‘civilian’. Again the question of innocent children victims are highlighted and again how many youths are part of the militant forces fighting in that conflict, or are child soldiers only found in West Africa?

Hamas social media guidelines seem very clear that anyone killed in this conflict regardless if a militant or not must be identified as a “an innocent civilian’. How strange that the mainstream media continuously report that “the majority” of the victims in Gaza are “innocent civilians” not a single report of any militant casualties during the fighting.

When the media accepts figures published by the Hamas Health Ministry without question yet cannot report on any combatant victims, how can anyone trust what is published. But the media continue this disingenuous line of reporting creating untold damage at the expense of the truth.

Debbie Mankowitz to The Star

 

 

The Star

 

The Editor

 

Sir

 

If there is one place in the world that political objectivity and agenda setting should matter, it should be in South Africa. However in alluding to South African media consciousness which prides itself on rainbow nation acceptance, understanding  and embracing of the other, this ideal when it comes to Israel, and the right to Jewish nationalism suddenly dissipates, becomes negligible and is often very hostile.

While this attitude is also endemic in many places around the world, the irony is not lost on those of us that have chosen to bask in the wonder of a new South African nation that should have imbibed the horrific and debilitating consequences of irrational racial hatred.

It is so ironic that the worst atrocities can be happening worldwide,  not to say the least in Africa, but regardless of casualties elsewhere,   in South Africa and just like elsewhere, passions become inflamed when the issue of Palestine/Israel rears its proverbial head.  What is it that when Jews defend themselves the world’s ire is raised to unimaginable proportions?  Thousands take to the streets the world over screaming, “death to the Jews” and “Hitler was right?”

 

However when Muslims kill Muslims, and the real-live  events are often cruel, barbaric and incomprehensible, like the slaughtering of Christian women in Mosul, or the beheading of Syrian army officers and the displaying of their heads on pikes, this barely raises a paragraph in a newspaper, and certainly not a photograph?

 

Is prejudice so ingrained that accountability only matters in certain instances?

 

There certainly has not been accountability  in the media regarding Hamas in the now 22-day war which has seen Hamas operatives,  firing at Israeli soldiers  with “a gun in one hand and a baby in the other!” (An Israeli mother of an injured soldier relayed this to the media). Why does this type of cynical misuse of babies not make headline news?

 

More than160 Palestinian boys died while helping Hamas  build their terror tunnels into Israel?  (Journal of Palestine Studies ). Author Nicholas Pelham monitored police in Gaza during the time and said that “nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies.”

There are barely any photographs in the media, written or electronic portraying the current hardships in Israel. My mother who is nearly eighty can barely walk and each time there is a code red alert in Ashkelon,  which  has  sometimes been every twenty minutes, she has to hobble out of her front door, and the furthest she can go is into the stairwell, and hope for the best.  She was sobbing on the phone the other day unable to cope with the anguish and trauma of this war. Or the young children in the nursery schools that sing to block out their emotions of deep fear every time the siren wails, while pretending to be turtles,  lying flat on the floor so as to emotionally survive the constant barrage of rockets on their psyche, and that, at two years old they should need to understand that these weapons of death just might kill them.  There have been on average one hundred rockets a day into Israel, forcing 3,5 million Israelis into bomb shelters.

Regardless of the facts, the only photographs or images that make their way into the media are of  Israeli soldiers fighting Hamas, and the Gazan victims of  “Israel”,  and this comment is not meant at any level to diminish the suffering in Gaza. I would hate to be living in Gaza at this moment in time, with no bomb shelters, and with Hamas openly encouraging their people to “protect their buildings with their bodies.” 

Likewise Israel is not just not made up of soldiers in uniform,  but real live people whose pain is vivid and real as well. Every war, Israel’s best and finest young men die, these are brothers, fathers and sons, and this is a small country where everyone knows someone, and the pain is no less intense and excruciating, just like the people of Gaza.  At no point  is Hamas made accountable for its despicable and cynical attitude towards civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis. It should be of special concern to this media in particular, that understands the impact of thought control, that it is necessary to sometimes expose the failings of  a favourite child in order to protect that child from himself.  For the sake of all concerned in this conflict, it has become imperative to expose the fact that Hamas is committing a double war crime;  forcing their own innocent civilians in Gaza to become human shields, and launching countless rockets that do kill, maim and terrorise innocent civilians  in Israel.

Allan Wollman to The Star

Two articles in The Star today highlighted the extent of just how the mainstream media is complicit, if not guilty of creating an unprecedented wave of ant-Semitism that has swept not only our country but also most of Europe. In some cases resulting in violent attacks on Jews in France.

The Star reported that the ANC has distanced itself from the “Kill the Jews” post on social media published by its youth league. Now this is not the first time that we have heard such calls – not that long ago the BDS group, which is supported by the ANC chanted loud and clear Dubula iJuda (shoot the Jew). Other remarks from high-ranking party members bordering on anti-Semitism and hate speech have also been voiced of late. Perhaps it’s time to takes these threats seriously?

Another article on the opinion page highlighted a call from the Chief Rabbi for tolerance in the face of all this hate, citing the lessons that Madiba sent to our nation that sadly have not been learnt.

When The Star publishes on a daily basis very one-sided op-ed’s sometimes unsubstantiated with hardly the opportunity of another opinion or rebuttal, this can only fan the flames of hatred. Hardly a day goes by without a photograph appearing which sends the subliminal massage creating yet more hatred. The question that must arise is how can we trust those images that appear in print or on TV, when so many of these images look very similar to what was published some time back from the carnage in Syria. Reuters were exposed during the Lebanon war of 2006 for “doctoring” images during that conflict, so how can anyone trust what we see in print or on our screens today. But the damage has been done and the seeds of hatred sown.

Of course the CNN’s, BBC.s etc are certainly the bigger culprit in this “hate campaign” Dead bodies in Gaza paraded for the cameras seem to be the currency of these news channels yet these same networks refrain from showing the dead from the MH17 air disaster, why is it too sensitive to parade the bodies of these hapless victims but ok for those from Gaza. Do some warrant more dignity than others?

Perhaps where teaching little children to aspire to martyrdom life has less value therefore the dead have less dignity! It seems that when Jews are involved the mainstream media will milk every ounce of coverage possible and ‘milk’ it for as long as possible. This is how hatred and anti-Semitism is incubated

 

Bev Price replies to Professor Themba Sono

Beverley Price

Artist

Currently exhibiting at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.

 

 

Deus ex machina ? It’s in the mind of the strategic Other.

 

Yesterday Saturday the 19^th July 2014, was a carpe diem for many anti-Semites – in London, Paris and Chile. Merge all Jew-haters into one! To quote Tom Stoppard ”…(A)nd everybody hates the Jews.”

 

History chooses its neat chronology, its beginnings and endings, causes and effects.

 

Personally this seems to be a time when Gentile non-Moslem people can bring to the surface their  “apology fatigue” for the Jews. Evidently these new colloidal alliances with anti-Zionists, anti-Jews and anti-Israeli peoples, make for a cathartic moment, if not a jubilant relief, from 7 decades of vicarious guilt.

 

On returning to South Africa in 1995, I worked at a Buddhist centre in Ixopo, for 3 years in rural Kwa-Zulu Natal.A German woman colleague said to me one day ”We are tired of apologising to you Jews for the Holocaust. Enough!”

 

Is there indeed safety for these anti-Semites in their numbers? Anti-Semitism has never been as high as it is now. On the Hamas bandwagon, there is a fresh cacophony of anti-Israel rhetoric.

 

Partaking as latent infidels these “the Sunday people”, lemming style, are giving vent to an accumulated melange of pent-up anti-Jewish emotion.

 

The current Great Hatred towards the Jews reflects perhaps a pain of not being able to fathom them, nor hold them still, for long enough to destroy them. Jews do defy logic, even to themselves. Life itself seems to be the Jew archetype commodity. A proof that when Life is desired and selected, that very life-power opens the door to prevail and thrive, while tangentially vanquishing those who would annihilate them. The Jews are an on-going proof that Life is a force greater than evil and death, particularly in its current form as manifest by Hamas and the Islamic extremists.

 

Everything about us defies quantification. Many Gentile and Moslem people have made valiant studies of the Holocaust, the Jewish part I mean, with good intent. Perhaps as a rite of passage to grasp academically and in verbal language, the infinite and latent barbarism of human beings.

 

I relegate my Holocaust Questions to “unanswerable and sacred” status. Jews have no “final solution” to understanding   the Holocaust, claiming answers and reducing the questions to manageable packages, for cognitive economy and ease. This they know is to desecrate by diminishing the memory of their sacrificed ancestors.

 

They died by murder, in their six millions over a six year perpetrated focal period (1939-1945). The techniques used included Nazi gassing, Nazi bursting human skulls on living human bodies during barometric pressure explorations, Nazi human twin experimentation without anaesthetic by the late Dr Mengele. That acquired knowledge, by the way, remains useful to much of contemporary Medicine.

 

The genius Nazi infusion took its time to etch. Impeccable propaganda resulted in a critical mass of willing and ready participants who became aligned to the Nazi system of human annihilation. This was justified and rendered manageable by incremental logic and consent, and applied to the Jews and other Nazi ‘infidels’ of the time.

 

Since 1967 Palestinian propaganda under the wisdom of Yasser Arafat has been offered with the accompanying and the unfortunate losses in the Arabic-English translations. These have been acknowledged even in South Africa when he visited.

 

The Holocaust is no Malaysian-flight “black box”. The human beings who endured the Nazi camps first hand, and who survived the Hell, exercise humble wisdom, rather than lament and blame. They cut their losses a long time ago with the Planet to generate more Life. The actualisation of this is Israel, its infrastructure and its Jewish Diaspora. 

 

Has modern Israel been reliant on an apology from a betraying world? Did it live as a victim state for 66 years, deferring Life and awaiting permission to thrive? For that betraying world to mete out its linear rations of entitlement?   “ Jew! Who said you could be so happy?”

 

In life as in death the Israelis, Jewish Semites, Zionists – whatever semantic intent is apropos the day – have adapted to our fickle Planet. The evidence is that Jews have defied human logic, all linear extrapolations, hypothetical expectations and predictions of their half -life or non- existence.

 

Their unquantifiability in life as in death – of Israel, the Jews, the Zionists – presents a conundrum to those who try to study them.  They prevail no matter what, and despite. This surely irks the significant Others – as a mosquito does a peaceful sleep. For example, Jews have won an inordinate number of Nobel Prizes. They work hard; they are ambitious, driven by their Jewish mothers who are committed to the excellence of their children and the preciousness of their lives. Suicide is abhorred. They are determined to be happy. They have at least 5774 years of a continuous identity. This in the face of hateful Empires who have come and gone.

 

 I was 11 years old during Abdul Nasser’s 1967 “6-Day War” with Israel, and recall images of the boots left in the Sinai desert whose evidence brought shame to those poor Egyptian runners. There is a permeable membrane between admiration and envy. When admired and supported, Jews remained vigilant. When not patronised, but taken seriously this has often lead to a conscious or unconscious envy. Jews supersede their admirers. This gives rise either to respect for them, or to a certifiable mental condition known as anti-Semitism. Then the vitriol, and the violence follow as now.

 

But where does the power of the Jew reside? Prof Sono proposes that the power is ‘the fear’. Fear abides in the mind of those who are obsessed. Leading either to a disempowering hatred or to a safer and distant admiration (awe). Either way Jews seemingly occupy a non-neutral cognitive space often leading to an uncontainable and lustful compulsion to desire them dead.

 

“Jews! Who do you think you are?” Such small numbers and the world is wrapped around your technological pinky? Your expertise… from hydro-technology, and the  i-Phone chips, to actual cardiac flesh! OMG Alert the BDS-mongers. An Israeli-Zionist cardiac stent or shunt may be prolonging your life right now.

 

This irritating Jew-elusiveness, this lack of capacity to pin him/her down, no access to a western “cause and effect” formula, to any logical outcome, is seizing human minds once again, awakening the ever latent and ancient paranoia towards the Jews, aided and abetted by the gullibility of the “Sunday people ” regarding the extremes of the Moslem people and Hamas.

 

As long as Israel’s judges remain as confused, greedy, corrupt and envious as they they are today, starting with the UN and extending to our sadly ill-informed and some of our elected recalcitrant ANC leaders and spokespeople, may Israel, all Zionists and the Jews – both alive and dead – continue to be a law unto themselves, to defy quantification and to choose life over evil, death and victimisation.

Victor Gordon to the New Age

NEW AGE

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 

Refers:    “Jihadism not exclusive to Islam”

 

With reference to the offering by A R Modak, “Jihadism is not exclusive to Islam”.

If Modak cannot see that the scourge of Jihadism is undoubtedly exclusive to Islam he/she quite obviously lives in a world of self-delusion. No other religion has adherents who practise an ideology calling for the killing of those whom they regard as infidels for daring to practise faiths other than their own. No other religion spawns devotees anywhere near as intolerant in their inherent beliefs.

 While some might argue that the number of Muslims involved in this extreme practise is but a small minority, the figure of 7% offered by John Esposito, Professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, Washington, is hardly reassuring considering that with a world-wide Muslim population of 1.3 billion, this “minority” of radical fanatics totals around 91 million.

Modak’s argument that the IDF includes volunteers from other countries, is simply incorrect. In order to serve in the IDF one has to immigrate to Israel and serve a standard period of training. The days of volunteers simply arriving to immediately take up arms in Israel’s defence belongs to the annuls of history.

Ironically, the high number of British, French, German and other Islamists who have swarmed to fight with extremists in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and with the terrorist group ISIS, should, in fact,  be a good reason for Israel to enthusiastically accommodate volunteers in order to protect itself against such threats.

The examples Modak provides to try to establish equivalence between Islam fanaticism and so-called Israeli extremism, are obtuse to say the least.

While the assassination of JFK, the Gandhis, Archduke Ferdinand, Yitzhak Rabin and many others occurred for various ideological reasons with no logical connection to Islam, none of them were based on warped religious ideology, but rather on the desire to change what were regarded by the perpetrators as unacceptable political systems.

I can only suggest to A R Modak that he/she face up to the truth which might lead to finding solutions instead of treading them underfoot.

Don Krausz to The Citizen

The Letters Editor,

The Citizen.

 

RE: FAROUK ARAIE – How others see it.

 

Farouk Araie usually writes a reasoned and balanced article. This one is puzzling.

 

We are confronted with a situation where hundreds of thousands of people are being killed all over the world. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Kenya, Yemen, the Congo, ad nauseum. Arab attacks on Jews in Palestine go back to the early twentieth century, while genocide of the Armenians by Turkey predates even that.

 

Why does Farouk Araie now focus on Gaza? The Gazans have been launching missiles by the thousands for years at civilian settlements in Israel proper, something that no responsible government can tolerate. This is the third time that Israel has been forced to take action to protect its population.

 

The latest threat has come from tunnels dug from Gaza into Israeli settlements. They have been discovered by accident and opened Israel to murderous invasions literally from right under their feet. The reason that Gazan casualty rates are far greater than Israeli ones is not due to respective bloodthirstiness. Israel simply provides its people with far better protection and does not use them as human shields.

 

If Araie insisted on the reason thereof I would understand it, but bewailing the fate of the attackers does not make sense. Where was his protest in the aforementioned cases or when Gaza first launched its missiles with each one intended to maim and kill?

Allan Wollman to The Star

Whilst the worlds press has by and large been condemning Israel for its disproportionate use of force in Gaza, lacing all their reports with subliminal photographs of the suffering of the civilian population, and yes the militants are also in civilian garb, are the press complicit in supporting the Palestinian narrative?

 

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and aren’t Hamas milking the free PR tide streaming from all the leading newscasts and papers. The Palestinian discourse could not have found a better, more efficient and cheaper PR campaign than the images flashed across our screens and in newsprint. What could possibly garner more sympathy (and hatred at the same time) than the TV camera’s focusing on a little child swathed in bloodstained bandages lying in a hospital bed – an image screened every half hour for more than a day on CNN and other images of the dead and wounded continuously paraded in front of the camera’s.

 

CNN’s Ben Weideman describing a “missile of some sort hits a hospital in Gaza”. He claims that he saw this with his “own eyes” – whilst cameras’ follow him everywhere and whilst we see footage of a scene inside that hospital (devoid of any damage) yet he saw an attack on a hospital this with his” own eyes” something his cameraman missed it? So show us the proof Ben! Also much of the footage that we see could well be ‘stock footage’ doctored from other conflicts in say Syria – who would be the wiser?

 

The wreckage of the tragic downing of Air Malaysia MH17 that killed almost 300 people including 80 children and scattered across Ukrainian farm fields where most of the bodies have been decomposing in the sun. Camera crews have been on the scene almost from the time of the disaster and have had a free hand to shoot whatever they want. We need question why no dead bodies of these hapless victims ever made it to our screens or newspapers? Why not even a body bag  – after all this has been THE news story for days?

 

Could the reason be out of respect for the victims of this outrage? Could it be that the media is sensitive to the feelings of their loved ones? Could it be that there is a line in the sand that the press won’t cross? There must surely be a reason why no bodies of this outrage, that has the world up in arms, but no shortage of dead Palestinians paraded in front of our ultra-sensitive press!

 

Perhaps where the civilized world is responsive to and has a respect for the victims of MH17 –where life is sacrosanct. Death on the other hand is the currency that the Palestinians trade and the world’s press is complicit in this trade.

 

Don krausz to City Press

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

RE: ACT AGAINST ISRAEL – 2014/7/20.

 

I don’t know what Prof. Ntozintle Jobodwane’s speciality is but it cannot be history or logic.

 

Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula were controlled by Egypt. In 1948 the United Nations divided Palestine between the resident Jews and Palestinians. The Jews accepted the tiny remainder of what they had been allocated under the Balfour Declaration and called it Israel. The Palestinians did not and promptly attacked the Jews with the assistance of the armies of their Arab neighbours. They declared “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre.” (Azzam Pasha)

 

They nearly succeeded. 6,000 Jews were killed and 30,000 wounded, many of them  butchered by Palestinians as they lay helpless on the battlefield, yet Israel  prevailed. (British Encyclopaedia [BE] page 142)

 

Palestinians never mention this, neither does the Prof. who writes of “the killing of thousands of innocent Palestinians” without offering a shred of proof.

 

Under the banner of Gross Violations of Human Rights, this educator then lists all the essentials for Palestinians that have been “inexorably delayed.”

 

The year is now 2014. What the learned professor does not seem to know is that

Israel, its army and all its settlers evacuated Gaza in 2005.

 

For a great many years now Palestinians in Gaza have been launching 14,000 missiles- and-counting at civilian settlements in Israel proper without gaining their objective of mass maiming and killing. Israel cares for its citizens and provided them with protection against the rockets.

 

But those missiles are a threat, disruptive and cannot be allowed by any responsible government.  Hence the present counter attack with its inevitable casualties.

 

The professor states that “human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and applicable to all people.” Quite so, but does that not apply to Israelis as well? And where does the launching of 14,000 rockets fit in, each intended to maim and kill?

 

Jobodwana then proclaims that “South African academics must reclaim their long-lost academic freedom, integrity and independence…” I am sorry to hear about this, when did it happen?

 

Don Krausz to Cape Times

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

RE: STRONGEST IN MIDEAST. 2014/7/23  MARK JACKSON.

 

Dear Mark,

 

Yours is a most interesting letter because it shows the effect Palestinian propaganda has on people.

 

Israel has defeated its enemies on the battlefield time and again, yet lost every propaganda war. Nothing surprising in that. Some 70 years ago an expert, Nazi minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, stated that lies repeated often enough would eventually be believed. Why does Israel lose out? Perhaps some people are better at lying than others.

 

You state as fact that Gaza is a mass prison. Israel withdrew all its troops and citizens in 2005, leaving Gaza bordering Israel and Moslem Egypt. Since then it has been under Hamas control. Have you been to Gaza? I have read reports from foreign correspondents which state the opposite.

 

You are quite right in pointing out that relatively few Israelis have died as a result of the Hamas rockets which you describe as being feeble. How feeble would you say they are when they are powerful enough to reach as far as Tel Aviv and nearby cities after being launched from Gaza? Even without a payload that would enable them to make a considerable impact.

 

Far be it from me to do injustice to Hamas rockets. If you follow Mid-East news you will realise that Israel is singular in keeping its citizens from harm. Proper and sufficient shelters, Iron Dome protection, double roofs on schools and a very efficient warning system even if it only gives people in Sderot 15 seconds warning from launch to impact.

 

Judging from the “disproportionate” casualty rate that is more than the Gazans have, despite Israel warning them of pending attacks.

 

What is also strange is that Israeli ordinance seems to be able to target children by preference. I have noted the following:

 

• A video of a young woman in Gaza before, as and after an Israeli shell decapitated her, all very graphic. She was wearing a miniskirt. In fundamentalist Gaza?
• A video showing a Gazan father carrying the mutilated body of his child. Another viewer recognised that child as having been shown in Syria some weeks earlier.
• Another mutilated corpse of a child. Someone remembered seeing that same picture in a horror film.

 

Mark, unlike the poor lady described above, let’s keep a clear head in these matters.