Don Krausz to The Star:RE: ARAB LEAGUE, ISRAEL AND THE WEST ARE IN A COVERT ALLIANCE.

The Letters Editor,

The Star.

RE: ARAB LEAGUE, ISRAEL AND THE  WEST ARE IN A COVERT ALLIANCE.

By Nabila Ismail, Media Review Network, 12 February.

Dear Nabila,

First of all congratulations on having been made a researcher for the MRN.

It is a relief for us readers to learn that statements issued by the MRN are now based on research. Previously we could never be sure whether the evidence eminated from the left or the right thumb of the MRN writer.

You assert that the Arab League is not interested in peace as it serves the interest of Israel and the West. You may be partially right.

In his book “A STATE BEYOND THE PALE,” Robin Shepherd states on page 22, inter alia:  “If Israel’s enemies had not started a war in 1967 there would be no settlements…

In the immediate aftermath of that war the Arab states made it clear that they had NOT been chastened by their defeat and that their rejectionism would remain as implacable as ever. The infamous Khartoum Resolution was issued, the so-called Three Nos: No peace, No recognition and No negotiation withIsrael.”

As for the interests of the West, the following may be instructive: Same book, page 204.

“Britain’s former Europe minister Denis MacShane gave a sense of the pressures that can be brought to bear on principled politicians and diplomats in reflecting speculatively…on what he correctly termed the “anti-Semitic orgy” that was the UN anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.

“I hope…I would have had the courage to pull out the UK delegation and risk the wrath of superiors in Whitehall who were bending over backwards to placate Islamist idealogues, including those who have supported the murder of innocent Jewish women and children.”

“The central point to recognise is that diplomats are not bad people. It is that there are powerful dynamics at play… There is only one Israel. There are fifty-seven members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. All 57 of those members of the OIC are virulently hostile to Israel – hatred of Israel is often turned into a fetish.”

“There is in fact convincing circumstancial evidence that diplomatic relations between Europe and Israel have been very significantly influenced by a need to placate Arab and Muslim hatred of the Jewish state.” (Sorry, Nabila, you would have had me say “Zionist state.”)

“One highly significant way in which this manifested itself…was the specious Arab interpretation of UN Resolution 242. That interpretation attempts to suggest that Israel is duty bound by international law to withdraw unilaterally from all the territories occupied following the 1967 war. In reality, the resolution, drafted by the British, quite deliberately and consciously refused to call on Israel to withdraw from all the territories in recognition that the pre-1967 borders were not defensible.”

“The extent to which indulgences of Arab prejudices against Israel was taken sometimes beggars belief.”

Don Krausz to the Cape Times: RE: WORLD MUST CONDEMN ISRAEL’S DETENTION PRACTICES

The Letters Editor,

THE CAPE TIMES.

Dear Sir/Madam,

RE: WORLD MUST CONDEMN ISRAEL’S DETENTION PRACTICES

By Diana Butto, 26-2-2016.

Diana Butto, a lawyer, has taken up cudgels on behalf of Palestinians held in administrative detention in Israel. Once again the country is being subjected to terror attacks with Israelis murdered almost on a daily basis often at the instigation of the clergy and with the approval of the Palestinian leadership.

She acknowledges that the Israeli legal system is lauded by scholars worldwide.

How many other lands have courts that will dismiss a prominent soldier and politician for negligence, sentence a president to prison for sexual misdemeanours or jail a prime minister?

So when Butto regards the Israeli legal system as unfair and tries to strengthen her case by the use of emotive words such as apartheid, she is on shaky ground.

Israel’s legal system has no death penalty and since 1948 has only once executed a war criminal, Adolph Eichmann. But when faced with suicide bombers and such maniacs it still has to safeguard its population, both Jewish and Palestinian. Compare that to what has been happening elsewhere in the Middle East.

Until lately it was rare for a terrorist to act alone. He had to be motivated, armed, transported and eventually provided with an escape and shelter. He or she may not have survived their attempt but the assistants did. This left the security forces with no other option than to arrest such people, interrogate them, and if necessary keep them in administrative detention where they could do no harm. That is what security is for and they owe it to the population, not only in Israelbut world over.

Why would Israel imprison a Palestinian journalist for months on end? There is no lack of highly critical Jewish journalists and even Palestinian politicians there! Israel knows full well that such detention provides people like Butto and her fellow travellers with a great deal of ammunition. It would be utter stupidity to commit such an act unless judged essential.

We are aware that in Syria and other Moslem countries people have been killed by the hundreds of thousands. Similar numbers are risking their lives to escape. Not from Israel where 20% of the population is Palestinian.

Don’t you think that this ought to generate some doubt as to the truth of your accusations, Diana Butto?

Victor Gordon to the Star: “Is Israel anti-African?”

 

THE STAR

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 

Refers:  “Is Israel anti-African?”

 

Take an independent website named Mondoweiss launched and run by a Jewish journalist named Phillip Weiss;  mix in an article, viciously critical of Israel by another Jewish journalist named Dan Cohen; stir in an emotive subject focussing on Israel’s alleged discrimination against people of African descent; add a good dollop of refined misinformation and claims devoid of context and leave to boil and boil and boil. The result is “Is Israel anti-African?”

The only difference between this and other articles in the same vein, is that two Jews are responsible for its origin which, for the average reader, adds to its authenticity. Would I personally label them as self-hating Jews? Indeed I would.

A visit to Google introduces one to Mondoweiss which clearly states the reason for its existence ; providing a platform for the leftist, liberal voice.  That would be fine were it not guilty of openly espousing the virtues of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Movement which finds nothing wrong in identifying with the destruction of Israel while, encouraged by members of its leadership, openly chanting “Kill the Jew” at a Jewish/Israeli cultural event at Wits University.

Should I regard this as anti-Semitic?  If “Kill the Jew” is not anti-Semitism (and therefore racism) at its very worst, please tell me what is.

Although the editor makes every effort to excuse the overall anti-Zionist, anti-Israel tone of his blog, (his reasoning being that Israel’s refusal to recognise the negative effects of occupation is the root cause of the Israel/Palestinian conflict), he makes no effort to suggest an alternative approach when one’s adversary has no other wish but to kill you.

Under these conditions, finding someone with whom one can discuss peace becomes somewhat tricky.

The second component – American journalist Dan Cohen, can also be ‘Googled’ to reveal his anti-Israel credentials. Cohen focuses on 5 topics, each with its own flavour of contention: Afro-Palestinians; African refugees; Ethiopians; African Hebrews; Arming despots in Africa and the undesirability of Beyonce’s forthcoming visit to Israel (which he regards as a propaganda victory for the country).

While each of the first five topics deserve a book, they get a paragraph of some 200 words in which Israel is castigated and vilified  for the alleged abhorrent treatment they have continually received.

Negative statements by politicians are carefully chosen and displayed as though the norm.

Forgotten by Cohen are the 14,500 mostly illiterate and poverty-stricken Ethiopian Jews who were airlifted to safety by Israeli planes in 1991, irrespective of their future value to the country other than their shared heritage. Cohen should compare this to the number of Syrian Muslim refugees absorbed by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States during the past four years. The answer – NIL. So much for Muslim brotherly love.

Cohen makes heavy weather of the tragic death of nineteen year-old African–American, Toveet Radcliffe who was found dead at her guard-post while on duty in 2015. The tone of his report suggests that Israel was guilty of covering up the truth behind her death, suggesting yet another dastardly conspiracy involving Israeli Blacks. Again, an exhaustive search of the internet reveals a recent official report following an inquest by the authorities which reveals that while her death was inconclusive, it appeared to be suicide. We can only assume that Cohen knows something unknown to anyone else.

While rushing to accuse Israel of supplying arms to “despotic African regimes”, an examination of a lengthy expose by Amnesty International  (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2012/06/big-six-arms-exporters/) lists the “Big Six” arms exporters  (to Africa) as China, the USA, Russia, France, Germany and the UK. Israel is not even mentioned.

Finally, another example of Cohen’s reliability can be found in an article which  he penned claiming that 100,000 houses were “destroyed” in Gaza by Israel during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. On repeated sites on the internet (including those of the United Nations and the BBC) the figure is never more than 18,000 of which many were said to be severely damaged but not destroyed.

So much for the authenticity of Mondoweiss and Dan Cohen. I can hardly wait to read their next report.

Monessa Shapiro to The Sowetan

So Obed Bapela went to Israel, saw it, returned and reported on his experiences.   But Alex Mdakane questions the truth of his reports.

There are certain facts that cannot be disputed in Israel.  Every single citizen, Jew or Arab, black or white, has an equal vote.  Every single citizen, Jew or Arab, has equal access to education, primary, secondary and tertiary.   Every single citizen of Israel, Jew, Moslem or Christian can practice the religion of his choice without any fear of intimidation. Every single citizen, Jew or Arab, can live where she or he chooses, and travel where he or she chooses.  The communities that Mdakane mentions have certain criteria with which they accept residents – age is one, religious leanings is another, the age of the family children is yet another and of course the financial status of the family.  I, were I to immigrate to Israel, would, as a new immigrant, not be able to enter most of these communities.   It is in actual fact no different to the complex in which a friend lives that stipulates that owners of pets may not buy into the complex.  

It is a fact that Israel removed every single Jew from Gaza in 2005 in order to allow the Arabs living there the opportunity to build on the infrastructure, worth billions, left behind by the Jews, and create their own state.   This resulted in thousands upon thousands of rockets being fired into Israel with the sole purpose of murdering as many Israeli men, women and children as possible.

But to objectively assess how badly people are living and how oppressed they are one needs to look at criteria by which the countries of the world are compared.   Life expectancy in the West Bank is 76 years.  Life expectancy in the Arab states was 71 years in 2012 and 70 years in the rest of the world.  In 2014 life expectancy in South Africa stood at 62 years.   The infant mortality rate in the West Bank was 13 per 1000 live births in 2015, 27 per 1000 live births in other Arab states and 34 in South Africa.  So people live for 18 years longer in the West Bank than in South Africa, and more than twice the number of babies die In South Africa at birth than in the West Bank.   Were it not for the expert medical care and training provided by Israel this could never be the case.   Do statistics like these truly remind you of Apartheid South Africa Mr Mdakane?  Is there just a chance that what Obed Bapela experienced was the truth?

Monessa Shapiro to The Cape Times

I am thrilled.  I am relieved.   I have just learned that I have not spent the last number of years wasting my time.   According to Philip Giraldi, I and others like me, who try our utmost to promote the truth about Israel, have in actual fact managed to ‘shape the media message and the political response.’   What an achievement!  But I must laugh and I have no doubt you, the editors and journalists of the Cape Times, are having a good chuckle too.  You know as well as I, that my success has been almost zero, that I have failed hopelessly in my attempts to persuade you and your readers.

So why has Giraldi made such a ridiculous, implausible statement?   Because to make Jews all powerful, financially and politically, capable of changing the media, and the opinions of world leaders has been a canard used against Jews for millennia.  When Jews lived impoverished in the ghettoes of Europe, they were accused of causing all the ills of the world.  And today, for the likes of Giraldi, little has changed.

The only difference is that today the all-powerful Jew is Israel, the Jewish state.   Like the Jew of yesteryears, the Jewish state, according to Giraldi, is capable of wreaking unspeakable havoc while at the same time capable of swaying the most important governments of the world.  Were it so that Israel would have been able to stop the Iran deal! 

But Giraldi has gone a step further.  By involving the Jews of the world in this private ‘underworld’ type club out to protect Israel at all costs, he has added a sinister element.  An element of Jews lurking behind shadows ready to report to the government of Israel or take instructions from them.  To use the word  ‘sayanim’  to describe those of us who advocate for Israel evokes  both menace and threat.  How wicked and what a blatant lie.

 There are no facts behind Giraldi’s diatribe, but mere hate-filled invective.   Mendacious invective whose sole purpose is to create both fear and hatred of Jews and the Jewish state.   Giraldi must be warned:  words precede actions.   But then perhaps his intention is to see the destruction of Israel and with it that of world Jewry.

Don Krausz to the Star: Is Israel anti-African

Dear Sir,

 

RE: IS ISRAEL ANTI-AFRICAN? By Dan Cohen: 17-2-2016.

 

Any honest student of history knows that past events are seldom one-sided.

There are almost always cause and effect, attack and counterattack. History is interpreted and updated on an ongoing basis; new facts are revealed as the years go by, casting new light on past events. And as memories deteriorate and witnesses pass on, so it becomes increasingly difficult to determine the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

 

And yet history has to be recorded and authenticated. A most reliable guide to arriving at the truth is by determining whether the author has presented a balanced account. Sure the Blitz killed 51,000 Britons, but Churchill vowed to return every bomb tenfold and did.

 

Dan Cohen has presented us with a litany of Israeli misdemeanours and atrocities. He has used terms such as Zionist colonisation, military occupation, colonial violence, separation walls and mega assaults without the slightest attempt to place these highly emotive terms into their proper truthful context. These amount to half truths and half truths add up to lies.

 

Writing of Afro-Palestinians, Cohen states: They have been subject to Israeli colonial violence since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, most recently the 2014 mega assault on Gaza. It killed more than 2,200 Palestinians including 551 children.

 

Afro-Palestinians participating in that totally unprovoked assault on Israel in1948? Highly unlikely. Local Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states, yes. And why no mention of the fact that in that unequal war the Jewish population of +/- 650,000 suffered 6,000 dead and 30,000 wounded? (cf. British Encyclopaedia, page 142.) One percent of its total number!

 

As to the “mega assault” on Gaza in 2014, not one word about the estimated 14,000 missiles fired from Gaza at civilian areas in Israel proper over some eight years while having 15 seconds in which to gather your spouse, children and pets and find shelter.

 

Two blatant examples out of many:

Gill Katz to the Star

It is with sadness that I read this letter. It serves as a reminder of the time I met Palestine Solidarity’s Mohammed Desai at a Radio 702 live debate where Brenda Stern debated members of the U J . Following a lovely debate, Mr. Desai and I became acquainted and spoke fervently about the importance of young people engaging in constructive dialogue concerning Israel and the Palestinians. I had no idea who he was- certainly I was not aware I was talking to an insincere hater if Israel who had no desire whatsoever to engage in a fruitful debate with Jewish students . Later, I tried to foster this engagement  with the people who chanted hateful anti Israel slogans I found a shut door from the P S supporters who said, ” We don’t debate with ‘ Israel apologists’ and “We don’t talk to ‘hasbara ‘ – in other words – ” We can’t argue facts because facts are undeniable proof and so let’s hastily exit from any further chit chat with this person”

Thus any idea of adult, mature debate died and instead the hate campaigns continued.

I was privileged to meet and spend quality time with the incomparable Nelson Mandela in 1995 and this mighty and beloved icon of peace and reconciliation lit a fire within my heart to wipe away negative hateful  people who talk with 2 tongues and who seek victory with bloody prints on the underneath of their boots. With his words in mind,

I wish SAUJS well but warn them that sometimes it’s better to choose ones battles and a war with a deaf dumb and unwilling group of brainwashed individuals is simply not worth the trouble

Don Kraus: RE: ARAB LEAGUE, ISRAEL AND THE WEST ARE IN A COVERT ALLIANCE.

The Letters Editor,

The Star.

RE: ARAB LEAGUE, ISRAEL AND THE  WEST ARE IN A COVERT ALLIANCE.

By Nabila Ismail, Media Review Network, 12 February.

Dear Nabila,

First of all congratulations on having been made a researcher for the MRN.

It is a relief for us readers to learn that statements issued by the MRN are now based on research. Previously we could never be sure whether the evidence eminated from the left or the right thumb of the MRN writer.

You assert that the Arab League is not interested in peace as it serves the interest of Israel and the West. You may be partially right.

In his book “A STATE BEYOND THE PALE,” Robin Shepherd states on page 22, inter alia:  “If Israel’s enemies had not started a war in 1967 there would be no settlements…

In the immediate aftermath of that war the Arab states made it clear that they had NOT been chastened by their defeat and that their rejectionism would remain as implacable as ever. The infamous Khartoum Resolution was issued, the so-called Three Nos: No peace, No recognition and No negotiation withIsrael.”

As for the interests of the West, the following may be instructive: Same book, page 204.

“Britain’s former Europe minister Denis MacShane gave a sense of the pressures that can be brought to bear on principled politicians and diplomats in reflecting speculatively…on what he correctly termed the “anti-Semitic orgy” that was the UN anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.

“I hope…I would have had the courage to pull out the UK delegation and risk the wrath of superiors in Whitehall who were bending over backwards to placate Islamist idealogues, including those who have supported the murder of innocent Jewish women and children.”

“The central point to recognise is that diplomats are not bad people. It is that there are powerful dynamics at play… There is only one Israel. There are fifty-seven members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. All 57 of those members of the OIC are virulently hostile to Israel – hatred of Israel is often turned into a fetish.”

“There is in fact convincing circumstancial evidence that diplomatic relations between Europe and Israel have been very significantly influenced by a need to placate Arab and Muslim hatred of the Jewish state.” (Sorry, Nabila, you would have had me say “Zionist state.”)

“One highly significant way in which this manifested itself…was the specious Arab interpretation of UN Resolution 242. That interpretation attempts to suggest that Israel is duty bound by international law to withdraw unilaterally from all the territories occupied following the 1967 war. In reality, the resolution, drafted by the British, quite deliberately and consciously refused to call on Israel to withdraw from all the territories in recognition that the pre-1967 borders were not defensible.”

“The extent to which indulgences of Arab prejudices against Israel was taken sometimes beggars belief.”

Monessa Shapiro responds to Robert Fisk

We have recently commemorated International Holocaust Day.  Our computer screens were once again filled with the most horrific visual images, and stories from survivors flooded our televisions, newspapers and social media.   Stories too gruesome to comprehend.

Six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.  Men, women and children, the young, the old and the infirm, simply because they were Jewish.   But even prior to the death camps, the degradation that Jews suffered, the beatings and torture was for them a living death.     Demeaned, degraded, spat upon, stripped of their livelihoods, treated like vermin Jews suffered indescribable traumas.  And this lasted for many years.  Those who survived, witnessed and lived through the unspeakable.

And yet, despite all odds and having lost all, including their own humanity, survivors sought immediately following the holocaust to rebuild their lives.   They sought life and peace.   They sought love and family.   They sought a future.   They did not resort to violence or revenge.  They did not roam the streets murdering Germans.   They did not teach their children to hate.

And so, no Mr Fisk, Netanyahu is not bonkers for calling Ban-Ki Moon to task for excusing the barbarous, indiscriminate murder of Jews on the so-called occupation.   No occupation in the world legitimises the stabbing of a young mother in front of her children, or that of a pregnant woman or an aged grandfather.  So too, nothing legitimises destroying the future of children by teaching them to hate so much that they seek murder and death over peace.

Unfortunately, Mr Fisk, Jews have learnt that when we are stabbed, rammed with a car or blown to bits, it is because we are Jews.   Were it to do with occupation, the world would be littered with the bodies of murdered Turks, stabbed Armenians, or blown up Russians.   If suffering creates murderers then the generation of Jews post the holocaust should have perfected the art.

Don Krausz to The Star: RE: LAWN IN DISPUTE THIS ISRAEL APARTHEID WEAK.

The Letters Editor,

The Star.

 

Dear Sir,

 

RE: LAWN IN DISPUTE THIS ISRAEL APARTHEID WEAK.

 

This article is typical of the Israel/Palestinian dispute.

 

Different groups of people live in countries. There may be antagonisms but very few use legislation against their minorities as happened in South Africa. That is why to accuse Israel of practising apartheid is blatantly false.

 

Scots want their independence, Kurds likewise, Australian aborigines recognition, Walloons in Belgium, Armenians, Shia and Sunni, Yazidis, Basques….

 

Jews have resided in Israel for thousands of years, had their kingdoms there and built their temples. Moslems appeared much later.

 

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire the British were given a mandate which did not bring peace. The resulting strife resulted in the British Peel Commission which came, saw, and recommended partition as a solution. The Jews accepted, the Palestinians did not. Perhaps the latter wanted the whole country for themselves, just as they are now demanding “Palestine from the river to the sea.”

 

The result was the declaration of the State of Israel and its immediate attack by local Palestinians and surrounding Arab countries. The 600,000 resident Jews suffered 6,000

dead and 30,000 wounded (cf. British Encyclopaedia p.142) Seldom mentioned, as it detracts from Palestinian victim propaganda.

 

There have been endless strife and terrorist attacks since 1948 including major wars which the Arabs lost. In each case Israel has offered to exchange conquered territory for lasting peace and always been rejected.

 

Now that principle is being re-enacted on the lawns of Wits University. Different groups that each feel entitled to make their voices heard. The Wits management, run by educated, reasonable and intelligent people, suggests sharing the facility.

The Palestinian Solidarity Committee believes that to be “unconstitutional, unethical and prejudicial.” The S.A. Jewish Students have accepted; the PSC not. Déjà vu!

 

I am not sure whether the lawn is symbolic. Some thousands of years ago during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar, His Royal Highness heard a heavenly voice and the prophet Daniel was summoned to provide an interpretation (Daniel 4.24). The Voice spoke and said:

“O King, the kingdom is departed from thee. Thou shalt be driven from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field; thou shalt be made to eat grass as the oxen…until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of Men.”