Don Krausz to The Cape Times: RE: SAMOAEN OSMAN – End Israeli Apartheid.

The Letters Editor,

Cape Times.

Dear Sir/Madam,

RE: SAMOAEN OSMAN – End Israeli Apartheid.

Full marks to Samoaen Osman – Apartheid anywhere must definitely be ended.

But I have a problem. I lived in South Africa during apartheid and saw its evil and dehumanisation of people. I also lived in Israel for years and have revisited there from time to time without seeing any apartheid. But I agree with Osman: End Apartheid.

But no where in his letter does he give a single example of the Israeli apartheid that he condemns. I know exactly what is involved but did not see any vestige of this South African apartheid in Israel.  All citizens had the vote, could live where they wanted, were not prohibited from socializing or marrying….

I was engaged to an Egyptian Jewish girl, who, because of the colour of her skin, would not have been allowed into South Africa and our marriage would have been prohibited.

No such problem in Israel.

Wherever we went, to bioscopes, the beach, restaurants, social gatherings, public transport, she and I had no difficulty in gaining entry. When visiting people in hospitals we saw them being treated and cared for by doctors and nurses of all colours, even Arab.

I also think it very strange that when Osman mentions the 900,000 Palestinians that he says lived in the “Zionist State of Israel” he claims that the majority of them were expelled. Now if that is true should he not also mention the cause of their expulsion?

The fact that upon the UN authorised declaration of the State of Israel in the land that had been the home of the Jewish people on and off for some three thousand years, the 650,000 Jews living there were promptly attacked by the resident Palestinians and the well-equipped armies of at least 5 neighbouring Arab states?

In that totally unprovoked and one-sided genocidal attack 6,000 Jews were killed and 30,000 wounded according to the British Encyclopaedia, one percent of Israel’s population, proportionally equivalent to SA losing 500,000 of its citizens on the battlefield!

I am not surprised that after such a horrific loss at the hands of its erstwhile neighbours

the Zionist state of Israel did not  welcome the return of their murderous fellow citizens!

Don Krausz to The Sunday Independent – RE: A MUDDLE EAST WAR OF THE POSES – by Don Makatile.

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

RE: A MUDDLE EAST WAR OF THE POSES – by Don Makatile.

This article relates to a correspondence between Ronnie Kasrils and Mosiuoa Lekota on the advisability of the latter’s visit to Israel. Kasrils strongly tries to persuade Lekota not to go as Israel is, in his opinion, a most evil state and Lekota stands to be misinformed there. What Kasrils tells him he is supposed to believe.

Kasrils is a Communist and therefore supports what the Party ordains. I remember reading a statement from a leading Communist that: “Truth was a Bourgeois concept!” By now we ought to know that Communists were murderously opposed to the Bourgeoisie, the Middle Class. Stalin is said to have killed 20 million of his people in his Gulags.

During the 1936/37 purges of suspected opponents, children were urged to give evidence in court against their parents as part of their patriotic duty. The powers that be even got one young boy to appear in court and plead with the judges to sentence his parents to death. He would be held up as an example to Russian youth.

Hitler’s policies were openly and unabashedly anti-Semitic and anti-Communist. He established his first concentration cum death camp, Dachau, in the year he came to power. By 1935 he had promulgated his Nuremburg Laws which deprived German Jews of all civil rights.

A great many ardent Communists were Jews and anti-Nazi. But when Hitler formed a non-aggression pact with Stalin known as the Ribbentrop/Molotov Pact, one could hardly find a Jewish Communist who would denounce it. The Party was sacrosanct.

Islam has a similar concept, Taqiyya. If something is to your benefit you may lie.

The Hamas Charter declares it openly and states that it will only be bound by written agreements for as long as it suits them.

You can now understand Kasrils. He writes copiously of Israeli aggression but not one word about the Palestinian and Arab genocidal attack against one-day-old Israel in 1948 during which 6,000 Israelis were killed and 30,000 wounded according to the British Encyclopaedia. He totally distorts history and is highly selective with his facts.

He unashamedly writes of the “Brutal slaughter of Palestinians” without one word about the 14,000 missiles and mortar bombs fired over the last 10 years from Gaza into civilian areas of Israel proper. Or of the 263 Israelis murdered and 733 wounded in terrorist attacks since 1948. Not to mention the tens of thousands of casualties resulting from the Arab/Israeli wars or the +/- 800,000 Jews attacked, expropriated and expelled from Arab countries after that defeat.

Yes, Mr. Kasrils, truth is a bourgeois concept, isn’t it?

Mike Berger to Politicsweb (Dead ends)

I sit at my typewriter staring at the mountain looming above my home, silhouetted against a serene blue sky, seemingly permanent and imperturbable, and struggle to reconcile this peaceful scene with the daily news of human irrationality, violence and cruelty which washes at the borders of my consciousness.

Our own country delivers its  regular bouquet of murder, assaults, abandoned children, horrific traffic “accidents” and other horrors. But for the moment these are eclipsed by the sight of endless streams of Middle Eastern refugees streaming into an anguished Europe, torn between impulses of pity and the instincts of self-preservation.

The sheer figures are astounding. According to Amnesty International in 2014, now out of date, 45% (10 million plus) of the Syrian population has been displaced and approximately 200 000 have been killed. In the Middle East, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan have carried most of the burden whereas the Gulf States (including such giants as Saudi Arabia) have taken in none at all. Similarly good, liberal Europe is bearing the brunt whereas Russia, Singapore, Japan and South Korea have offered zero places.

And that is only half the story. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the recent deluge is not entirely Syrian; in fact only 44 000 of the of 213 000 refugees from April to June came from Syria. The rest come from the other failed or failing states of the region, including 27 000 from Afghanistan. By common consensus the destination of the vast majority of the refugees are the rich Northern (and more tolerant) European states – which makes sense.

But this is only the latest convulsive death spasm of a process going on for decades. The Muslim population of Europe is now about 21 million and is growing steadily. Over 20 of Europe’s large cities have a Muslim population in excess of 10% and 8 over 20%.

This surely is not news for anyone who hasn’t spent the last decade in a coma. The endless diet of atrocities by the long list of proliferating Jihadist groups – each one more horrific than the next – and the unravelling of large parts of the Middle East into sectarian anarchy and violence is a backdrop to our daily lives. That is, to all except Mohammed Desai and his merry disciples of BDS and their penumbra of organisations and individuals focussed upon the sole stable, democratic and Westernised state in the Middle East populated, coincidentally no doubt, mainly by Jews.

One may be tempted to dismiss Desai’s latest lame justification of his campaign against one of the most innovative and socially conscious businesses in South Africa, Woolworths, as just another example of the idiocy which afflicts publicity-addicted, chronically-outraged activists disconnected from reality. And while that is true as far ss it goes, it does not go far enough. I want to address what lies beyond the obvious irrationality and its implications for the rest of us, and this requires a brief diversion

Basically humans are prone to mind viruses. Crudely expressed, mind virus (called “memes” by Richard Dawkins after genes) are ideas of various kinds which lodge in our brains and influence the way we see the world and the way we behave. They make use of our brain’s inherent cognitive and emotional “biases” to invade. Many of these are good for us; think of healthy eating or justice and mercy or the value of a good education. Many are innocuous or neutral; eg. infatuation with Justin Bieber. Some are bad and some are truly horrendous. It is the latter two categories which concern us.

Our brains have defenses against the bad and horrendous viruses. By and large healthily functioning people and societies are able to see that some ideas are not exactly conducive to happiness or social harmony, which most of us prize. And some cultures reinforce such defenses. Democratic cultures tend to reject ideas which promote excessive domination of one group over another or totalitarian values which glorify a leader or diminish human freedom or interfere with the freedom of information and opinion. It is a rough and abrasive process, but it works – most of the time.

But people, circumstances and cultures vary and some people are simply extremely receptive to horrendous or just bad ideas. Only when such ideas take root in a population and by their prevalence and through the actions of those infected, they spread and become dominant within the political collective, we see the creation of dysfunctional or dangerous political movements.

We are all familiar with the rise of totalitarian ideas within Europe and Asia in the last century and the havoc they wreaked. We are now seeing the same phenomenon in an even more insidious form taking place within Islam mainly located in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region. The name of the family of viruses driving the implosion of the region is called Islamism and is characterised by a  fanatical adherence to a fundamentalist and politicised interpretation of Islamic sources which promote totalitarian values and condones limitless brutality in the spread of their doctrine to the rest of the world.

It is for historians and political analysts to clarify the reasons for the dissemination of these ideas within the MENA region. But the consequences are revealed in the horrific events of the past 50 years culminating in the human flood pouring into Europe, some of whom harbour the viruses and the supportive religious and cultural ideas which facilitated its spread in the first instance. Hence the agonising dilemmas faced by the potential hosts.

What does it mean for South Africa? I suspect that the matrix which facilitated totalitarian Islamism is largely absent here. We have many bad ideas of our own but a   tendency to a totalitarian fundamentalism is likely confined to a small segment of our population.

The BDS campaign is a relatively benign (at least relative to what is happening to our North) offshoot of the MENA phenomenon but shares in some of its toxic features. The technique of the BDS propagandists is to tap into envy and opposition to supposed Western imperialism and power in order to equate Israel with a  mythologised version of Western exploitation and, of course, Apartheid.

It is adept at camouflaging its goal, the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state, under a professed concern for universal humanitarian values and moral outrage. The increasingly bizarre disconnect between reality and these professed concerns would seem to be overwhelming, and accounts for some of the BDS hysteria, but that does not exclude the possibility of such ideas diverting South Africans from its own issues and problems.

These are topics for another time. In the meantime, GO SHOP AT WOOLLIES.

Allan Wolman to The Saturday Star

The Saturday Star reporting on a letter from Ronnie Kasrils “lambasting” Mosiuoa Lakota for his recent visit together with five other opposition leaders to both Israel and Palestine.

 

Kasrils criticizes Lakota for accepting a free trip – rich indeed coming hot off the recent trip by Cyril Ramaphosa’s trip to Japan in a chartered private jet costing taxpayers a tad more than all five of the opposition leaders fact finding trip.

 

Why is Kasrils so vociferous about a trip that didn’t cost the taxpayers one cent when we read almost daily about his former comrades traveling at will and traveling “large” at the expense of taxpayers – something that doesn’t seem to bother him?

 

Perhaps Kasrils is annoyed that Lekota had the temerity to not believe the world according to Kasrils and that there might just be two side to this tale? Perhaps Kasrils should also have joined this group after all has he never accepted a freebee before????

Victor Gordon to The Pretoria News: Refers: “Trade with Israel undermines strides Woolworths makes in the right direction”

It is amusing to read Kwara Kekana refer to the BDS movement as “The Human rights and Palestine solidarity organisation”.

Were BDS so concerned with Human Rights it would hardly be so openly anti-Semitic,  as demonstrated by chanting “Kill the Jew”  outside a concert at the Wits Great Hall by an Israeli jazz group.  It was also BDS which threatening to expel  South African Jews during a demonstration outside the venue of a conference in Sandton and who placed a pigs head amongst the kosher food in a branch of Woolies.

So much for “human rights”.

Were BDS in ‘solidarity’ with the Palestinians as they claim, they should have shown more concern when destroying over 600  Palestinian jobs having been partially instrumental in the Israeli manufacturer,  Sodastream,  moving its factory from the West Bank to Israel proper.  When the potential  loss of employment  was pointed out to BDS their response  was that it was in the interests of the Palestinians to endure this setback.

Off the 600 retrenched workers,  only 120 have been re-employed.  While this hardly deprives  members of BDS South Africa from having food on their tables,  the subsequent suffering of the now unemployed Palestinians  should surely have been paramount.

Against the very real tragedy that is unfolding in Europe,  effecting not only the hundreds of thousands of refugees, but millions of Europeans, we have BDS committed to force Woolworths to stop importing Israeli pretzels, figs and pomegranates ( less than 0.1% of Woolies food purchases) which, we are told, will eventually  bring Israel to its knees.

All of this because of the alleged suffering of the Palestinians (180,000 of whom are annually treated free of charge in Israeli hospitals),  who face far greater persecution by their Hamas leaders than ever by Israel.

BDS claims significant victories in Roger Waters, Stevie Wonder, Lauren Hill, Sinead O’Connor and others refusing to perform in Israel, as though Israel, which has fought 7 wars for its very survival cares two hoots about such trivia. For every cancelled act we can name one who has honoured his/her contract.

While BDS try to convince the public that their noble cause is directed purely against Israeli “intransigence”,  it is difficult to understand why they have never demonstrated outside the Embassy of Syria whose government has slaughtered well over 200,000 of its citizens, causing the tragic upheaval that we now witness in Europe.

In the lopsided, hypocritical world in which we live, “Israeli tomatoes” (actually grown in Limpopo) are far more important.  Go’n figure.

Monessa Shapiro to The Cape Times

I recently watched two videos that kept me awake most of the night.

The first was of a group of Palestinian children, many of them not older than my little grandchildren, possibly 5 or 6, being addressed by the cleric Khaled Al-Maghrabi .   He spoke to these children about death, martyrdom and finding virgins in heaven.  The video ends with the children chanting by rote (just as my little ones recite Jack and Jill): “We shall sacrifice our souls and our blood for you, Ala Aqba.”

The second was of a Hamas children’s summer training camp, called the “Vanguard of Liberation.”  According to the camp counselor, “The goal of these camps is to instil the spirit of Jihad and of fighting in these cubs, these youth so that they will become the next generation of liberation.”  Hamas aims at these camps to provide 25,000 children and teenagers with training for future acts of terrorism.  These videos can be found at https://warsclerotic.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/palestinian-summer-camps-preach-jihad-and-train-youth-to-become-terrorists/

Usdin is worried about the ‘emotional damage’ on Jewish boys who enter the IDF.  She would do well to watch the above-mentioned videos, for she would then see true child abuse and emotional scarring.  But then these children are being taught to hate and kill Jews, so perhaps, just perhaps, she would overlook the emotional scarring, and see it instead, well, as necessary.

Don Krausz: RE: THE BDS BOYCOTT OF WOOLWORTHS FOR SELLING ISRAELI PRODUCTS.

The Letters Editor.

Dear Sir/Madam,

RE: THE  BDS BOYCOTT OF WOOLWORTHS FOR SELLING ISRAELI PRODUCTS.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement has singled out Woolworths for its attacks on those selling products and services originating in Israel. It has placed a pig’s head on the firm’s shelves and interfered with the firm’s activities including organising demonstrations against musicians brought in by the company.

It alleges that such actions will prevent Israel from practicing apartheid against Palestinians, an accusation that is demonstrably false. This is proven by a simple comparison of the life and rights of Palestinians in Israel with the life that non-whites led in SA under apartheid.

Besides the idiocy of singling out Woolworths in connection with this totally untrue assertion, have these people considered the repercussions of what they are doing? Is Woolworths the only establishment worldwide handling Israeli products? And why such action only on behalf of Palestinians and against Israel?

In today’s world there are unfortunately many cases of alleged discrimination against minorities, the Tibetans, Kurds, Chechnyans to name but a few. To show their impartiality the BDS would have to boycott products made in China, Turkey and Russia as well, but they don’t, only Israeli ones.

Judging from Woolworths increase in overall profits, their actions have had little effect.

But supposing that they were harmful, then who would actually be effected?

The Israeli, let alone Jewish, contribution to the field of medicine has been phenomenal.

In cases of Multiple Sclerosis, paralysis, childhood breathing problems, Parkinson’s Disease and Flu to name only a few.

Our computers would not function without Israeli technology, nor would the cell phone.

Israeli electronic devices are used the world over and by major countries to detect and prevent terrorist activities and establish security.

Until recently Israel was the highest immigrant absorbing nation in the world relative to population. These immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom and expression, economic opportunity and quality of life. Women have full rights while homosexuals and people of other religions are not persecuted. Palestinians employed in Israeli industry are paid four times as much as in the neighbouring Arab countries. Should the boycotts be effective then these Palestinians would be the ones to suffer.

Israeli Palestinians know this and are against these BDS boycotts. So are the latter acting for the benefit of Palestinians or out of hatred of Israel?

Debbie Mankowitz to The Sunday Times

Open letter to Mr. Bapela

 

Long before you were born, my ancestors came to this country in order to escape the pogroms of Eastern Europe, looking for a better life away from the persecution that Jews knew so well.

They were very poor but also very hard-working and they strove to make the “Golden Medina” (“Golden land”- late 1880s) their home. Although both my maternal grandparents  were born in Lithuania,  they arrived in this country stateless. In fact I still have their documents proving that no government in the world  would claim them as their citizens. Luckily they arrived in South Africa before WWII in the 1920s as those who stayed behind, which included the rest of their entire extended families, were burned in the ovens of Europe;  aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.

 

My maternal great-uncle left his village in Lithuania at the age of 13 years old, straight after his Barmitzvah, in order to find work in South Africa so that he could feed his family back home in Lithuania. He found work in a bicycle shop and five years later, having saved whatever he could, he managed to buy the bicycle shop. He then slowly saved some more, and eventually bought most of what is today known as Percelia Estate Johannesburg. In fact this place is where a number of roads are  also named after our family.

 

My father’s great grandfather opened the first dairy in Johannesburg, which was when  cows still walked the streets of central Johannesburg.

In fact there are at least two streets in Johannesburg named after him.

 

My paternal grandmother was a First and so she and the late Ruth First were first cousins. Ruth married Joe Slovo, and so I am also closely related to two struggle icons in this country who gave their lives, comfort and family security, in order to bring justice to the disadvantaged people of South Africa.

 

Let us also not underestimate the energy and time that we have all since invested into skills development of many people of all colours during this generation as well.

In spite of our small numbers which at our zenith in South Africa numbered about 140,000 souls, Jews as a community have helped build this country, and have contributed enormously to its success.

 

Ironically wherever  Jewish people have been welcomed they have worked with the same sense of pride, endeavour and have always been loyal citizens.  That, however,  counted for nothing when the evil forces of anti-Semitism needed a scapegoat or a convenient place to vent their incomprehensible anger and hatred. In fact some Jewish communities had lived in Germany since the 5th Century CE, despite having to flee  a number of times to Poland to escape numerous pogroms. Whole communities were wiped out by marauding  German Crusaders, or citizens who just chose to blame the Jews, of course, incidentally for the Black Death plague as well, and we all know how that story ended.

 

Well Mr. Bapela this was long before there was a re-established state of Israel. In this state of Israel despite its very open democracy where 1.5 million Muslim Arabs have the same rights as every other citizen, this Jewish country can do no right in the eyes of the world. It seems to be the one and only place that really gets up people’s noses, and especially when those pesky Jews try and defend  their tiny strip of land against  very committed enemies who are dedicated  to its total destruction.

 

Honestly Mr. Bapela how can the defence of  one-sixth of one percent of the lands called Arab, be responsible for the political dissatisfaction of 22 Arab countries? How can the 14 million Jews in the world be blamed for the problems of the 250 million Arabs, who have solid ties to 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide? 

 

Mr. Bapela, you and those who share your “ideology” seem to think that defending Israel against apocalyptic enemies  is a crime against humanity. This must be  a crime much bigger than the horror that is today  Syria, where more than 300,000 people have been brutally murdered, one million maimed and 4 million displaced. We are seeing those poor displaced Syrians on the front pages of every newspaper this week worldwide.

 

And it is at this juncture in history, Mr. Bapela, when the rest of the world is trying to decide what to do with these poor hapless survivors of a terrible genocide, that you have felt it more important to single out loyal  Jewish citizens of South Africa for opprobrium. This is because they happen to stand behind the one country in the world that does guarantee them the right to live as free citizens. It seems now, Mr. Bapela, that in spite of our deep commitment, loyalty and dedication to this country, you have just proved my point!

 

Should we thus assume that as loyal  Jewish South Africans we can now only rely on the state of Israel to ensure our right to freedom of speech, movement and association, rather than the hard won and sophisticated constitution of the Republic of South Africa?  And when we choose to leave South Africa because of your threats, will the country be a better place for all?

Victor Gordon to the Sunday Times

SUNDAY TIMES

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Refers:  “ANC threat to ban dual citizenship”

In the later part of May 1967, just 19 years after its creation, Israel was threatened with annihilation by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, supported by Syria and Jordan and fuelled by Russian lies and propaganda. Two previous wars had already been fought and won by the Jewish state at enormous human cost.

Facing insurmountable odds, 10,000 graves were prepared in city parks in anticipation of the worst.  This threat of Genocide was just 21 years after the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in Europe.

Just prior to the outbreak of the war I found myself at the Israel Embassy in London volunteering to work in any capacity to support what seemed  the desperate defence of my historic and spiritual homeland  just recently proven to be the only reliable haven for Jews throughout the world. Before my papers could be processed the war was over and my services cancelled.

In stark contrast to the magnanimous move by Germany to admit 800,000 Syrian refugees, this same nation slaughtered 180,000 of its own Jewish citizens,  aided and abetted by Vichy France, Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania to name a few.  Heartlessly, the doors of Europe and Palestine were firmly shut to Jews desperate to escape.

In 1947, during a short period of guilt, the newly established United Nations, voted to establish an independent Jewish state surrounded by openly hostile Arab nations, all committed to its destruction.

With nowhere else to go, the Jews fought and won for which they have never been forgiven.  Their subsequent victory in the Six Day War only made matters worse as the world tried to make sense of a country and people which, by all logic should not have survived. This hasn’t changed. In fact it is said that  “Europe has never forgiven the Jews for Auschwitz”.

Since then, Israel has fought 5 more wars, all aimed at it’s annihilation; which brings me to the inane and at times incoherent utterances by Obed Bapela.

It is clear that Mr. Obed Bapela has little, if any, understanding of the history or dynamics that define and drive the Jewish people. It is also obvious that his living in a country with little, if any, experience of wars of survival  has failed to enhance his appreciation of Jewish fear when faced with Iranian threats which openly call for Israel’s destruction;   a terrorist group like Hamas whose charter repeatedly calls for, not only Israel’s annihilation, but the killing of Jews world-wide,  or Hezbollah, with 100,000 rockets directed at Israel’s heartland.

Strangely, Bapela suggests that there exists a steady stream of young Jews travelling to Israel on dual citizenship passports for military training while, in fact, the number of South African Jews also carrying Israeli passports must be very few indeed.  Within our current global village, South African citizens can travel anywhere (including Israel) on SA passports alone and are free to exercise that right.

Furthermore, in his paranoia that local Jews are volunteering for training in Israel, he fails to explain why they would do so and why, if true, defending the Jewish homeland is so objectionable to our authorities.  Would this apply to Cypriots defending Cyprus from a Turkish attack or Pakistanis standing against Indian aggression?

Indeed,  the intensely trained and technological IDF has no interest in spending time and resources on casual holiday-makers who wish to play Rambo.

Bapela’s pre-occupation with Jews travelling to Israel in order to defend their spiritual homeland is severely misguided and obviously based on second-hand information gleaned from an uninformed  media and those hostile towards Israel.  He would undoubtedly benefit from a little self-study and circumspection.

Rolene Marks to The Sunday Times

To the Editor

The front page of The Sunday Times carried the heart wrenching picture of little Aylan, the 3 year old Syrian refugee whose dead body washed up on a Turkish beach. The plight of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees desperately seeking asylum in Europe after fleeing a Middle East where ISIS are killing Christians and Yazidis as well as Muslims who don’t follow their particular creed has the whole world debating what can be done to help these displaced people.

Cut to the second part of the page where headline editorial is dedicated to singling out Israel, which ironicallyhas brought Syrian citizens to its hospitals for medical treatment despite Syria being an enemy countryresponsible for the occasional artillery fire and rockets that spill into Israel. The ANC is obsessed with Israel, at the expense of many domestic issues facing South Africans. The open hostility shown to Israel and the singling out of the Jewish community is alarming and very worrying. Especially in a country that has made headlines for xenophobia. But of course, focusing on Israel is the best way for SA to gloss over its own increasing problems and make the citizens feel that without Israel, the world will become a Utopia.

I am a South African who lives in Israel and holds dual citizenship. I have not had the honour of serving in the IDF, an army that serves and protects the Jewish people, especially against our hostile neighbours. The possibility of stripping me of my South African citizenship because the ANC has a bone to pick with the Jewish State is both shocking and outrageous. Threatening students who visit our country and learn the truth on the ground is exceptionally short sighted and discriminatory. All this behaviour reminds me of a time in South Africa’s history that was disgraceful and isolating. And it is noteworthy that South African citizens serving in other armies like those of Iraq or Afghanistan and, yes Britain too, are conveniently not mentioned. Only Israel and Jews are singled out. Again.

Anti-Semitism?  Absolutely!.

And for the record, his name was Aylan, Mr Bapelo. I am sure he would appreciate it if you advocated for him and the others who need a voice instead of focusing obsessively on the Jewish State which you are using to hide South Africa’s ills.