Don Krausz : RE: They’re a basic right, but family visits are revoked.

 The Letters Editor,

 RE: They’re a basic right, but family visits are revoked.

By Budour Hassan – 16/9/16.

 Shocking, disgusting, inhumane!! That is until one uses some common sense and perspective. This is Hassan’s account of one Hasan Karajah, jailed by Israel. His father was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the PFLP, an acknowledged terrorist organisation. His sister was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment after stabbing an Israeli soldier. His brother spent 10 months in an Israeli jail. This hardly makes him sound like a poor, innocent, persecuted Mother Theresa to me.

 Do Israeli men, women and children have rights to being safeguarded from terror? Not according to 80% of Palestinians! Hardly anywhere in this article is there any mention of the reasons these Palestinians were jailed.

 Jewish residence in their land has been recorded for 3,300 years in the Bible, the Qu’ran and by numerous historians. Archaeological evidence bears it out, despite desperate attempts by Palestinians on the Temple Mount to destroy all traces of the two ancient temples.

 Since 1920, 24,841 Israelis have been murdered by terrorists and 35,356 wounded. Israel has no death penalty, making it unique in the Middle East.

It has an obligation to protect its citizenry, but how?  Other lands do not have that problem. In cases that are highly suspect administrative detention may have to be the answer as is martial law during war time.

 And in times such as these, when 300,000 people have been killed in Syria alone, we are expected to intervene when a suspect Palestinian cannot receive a family visit? But of course this is different; now Israel is involved.

 Hassan points out that 750 Palestinians are held in Israel in administrative detention, i.e. without trial. Out of two million, in a country where school children are taught to hate Jews and how to kill them? Not bad considering the anti-Jewish hatred emanating from party and pulpit. I am sure that by now European countries wish that they could do the same.

 Hassan states that any act of resistance is criminalised. But of course, when that act of resistance has the object of mayhem and murder. After unbelievable acts of terror such as the cutting of the throat of a three-month old baby in the Ittamar settlement, the drive-by shooting to death of an eight-month pregnant mother in front of her young children, after four rabbis at prayer were butchered with axes in a synagogue, suicide bombings in public venues and at religious gatherings or the recent stabbing to death of a 13-year old asleep in her bed…

 And when the perpetrators are lauded and venerated by communal leaders and from the pulpit…Was there as much indignation when the teen girl Mouhala was shot in the head for demanding an education in Aghanistan?

 Hassan writes of one Kayed who spent 15 years in an Israeli jail, but omits to explain the reason. He reports on the outrage of Palestinians but not on Kayed’s crime. One is not given a 15 year sentence for stealing a loaf of bread. Is Israel not obliged to remove Kayed before he does more harm?

 And now Karajah has been denied family visits. I wonder whether his victims have any family left to visit.

Victor Gordon to the Pretoria News: Refers: “UN hails SA peace role in Mid-East”

 

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

PRETORIA NEWS

Refers:  “UN hails SA peace role in Mid-East”

In welcoming South Africa’s contribution to trying to resolve the “intractable Middle East conflict”, Christine Gallach, the UN under-secretary-general for communications and public information, notes Israel’s refusal to participate in yet another seminar launched by the UN General Assembly to “promote the Palestinian issue”.

The irony of this being the 23^rd  UN organized seminar on Peace in the Middle East, which has consistently produced nothing, seems lost on Ms. Gallach who might do better to ask herself whether the right procedure is being followed to possibly produce some result.

If other UN initiatives are anything to go by, the blatant bias against Israel that inherently exists within that body, guarantees Israel’s absence from yet another gathering designed to show the Jewish state up in the worst possible light while leaving the Palestinians free from any form of culpability.

In 2001, the infamous UN-sponsored Durban Conference on Racism, resulted in nothing more than an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate fest, while the UN Human Rights Council instituted in 2006, has passed vastly more resolutions against Israel alone than against all the countries of the world combined.

Just in 2015, this council adopted 20 anti-Israel resolutions against only 3 for the remainder of the entire world, while Syria, where over 250,000 people had been savagely killed over the past three years, earned just one single resolution of condemnation.

When the day arrives that the UN condemns the Palestinian Authority and Hamas for teaching anti-Semitism in their schools; when Israel will be restored to school and institutional maps which currently indicate that it simply does not exist; when suicide bombers and terrorists who kill Israeli children will be condemned instead of glorified by having public squares, sports centres and streets named after them, the UN might regain some semblance of respect by Israel and others who have abandoned hope for some return to honesty, sanity and common sense.

Until then Israel is well within her rights to remain absent from such hypocrisy.

Angela Lurie: Re Allan Horwitz and seminar on Middle East

Dear Sir
I agree that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is escalating. There can be no more inconceivable level of brutality and violence than the murder,by a young Palestinian, of a 13 year old Israeli girl asleep in her bed.
I fail to understand how the Department of International                                                                   Relations and Co-operation  can host a so called seminar on peace without Israel present to discuss the way forward with all other stake holders
If facts are important let us note the the following:
The second Gaza war was a response to the hundreds of rockets sent in to Israel to kill Israelis. The terror tunnels were also of grave concern.
In November 1947 the United Nations approved a two state solution for the area of the Turkish Empire known as Palestine which had been governed by Britain after the First World War.
When Israel declared her independence in May 1948 the surrounding Arab Nations attacked the new State and the War of Independance began. Israel prevailed and the Arabs who against all odds lost the war declared the Nakhbah.
What is meant by historical Palestine? There was a Jewish State known as Israel until the citizens were expelled by the Romans. There was never a country called Palestine.
Allan Horwitz and his Jews for a Just Peace should consider whether the Arabs accept that the State of Israel exists and should continue to exist. The evidence points to the contrary.
Yours faithfully
Angela Lurie

Don Krausz to The Star: RE: ‘APARTHEID RULES FOR PALESTINIANS.

The Editor,

The Star and the Weekend Argus.

 Dear Sir/Madam,

 RE: ‘APARTHEID RULES FOR PALESTINIANS.

By Umar al Ghubari, reported by Siyabonga Sesant, 3/9/16.

 We in Johannesburg, 6,000 feet above sea level and near the southern tip of Africa,

are dependent upon the TV and the press for our world information. This places a special responsibility on journalists and editors to ensure that we are provided with the truth. Surely they must have some methodology that verifies what they print?

 

Unless of course the object is to create as much controversy as possible and thus attract  more customers.

 

I lived for years in Israel and have written to newspapers since the days of the Rand Daily Mail. Time and again I have found correspondence relating toIsrael that is ascertainably untrue. Why bother to continue to “dash the cup from perjured lip?”

Only the fact that knowing the readership is deliberately being misled and then not putting finger to keyboard would be as reprehensible as the lies that are being spread.

 

Which brings us to Umar al Ghubari…

 

He harks back to the totally unprovoked 1948 conflict when the nascent State of Israel was established, promptly invaded by five neighbouring Arab countries and attacked by its resident Palestinians who had avowed genocidal intentions on the 650,000 Jews living there. 6,000 Jews died in that war and 30,000 were wounded according to the British Encyclopaedia, one percent of the total Jewish population, but no mention thereof by Ghubari.

 

He complains that towns and villages were erased. When people start wars such things happen, WW2 Europe being a case in point.

 

He alleges that “the system in Israel was built to benefit ‘only one group of people.’”

Today it has a population of about 8 million people of which 20 percent are Moslem.

2008 census figures show an Arab population of 1,128,000 which by now may well amount to two million. And that is under a system from which the Palestinians gain no benefit?

 

If there was any truth in Ghubari’s allegations we would face the fact that Israel is bordered on three sides by Arab/Moslem countries. The Palestinians are spoiled for choice should they decide to emigrate. Perhaps Ghubari’s “facts” have not yet reached them.

 

Between 1967 and 1994 Israel was responsible for Palestinian welfare until the Palestinian Authority took over. During that period she totally eradicatedpolio, neonatal tetanus and measles from the Palestinian population. The death rate of Palestinian newborns was reduced from 60 per thousand to 19 per thousand within those 27 years of Israel’s presence.

Palestinian patients are referred daily to Israeli hospitals especially in the field of oncology, organ transplantation and acute, severe complications of trauma and pregnancy (11,000 were treated during 2003). Leading Palestinian politicians have ensured that when their close relations needed specialised medical attention, they were transferred into Israeli hospitals.

 

During the Lebanese/Israeli wars Israel kept its borders open for wounded from both sides. Today the wounded on the Syrian side are often transferred across the border to Israeli hospitals.

 

Can Ghubari see this working in reverse and if not then why not?

Don Krausz to The Star:RE: SA SEMINAR ON MIDDLE EAST by Zaakir Mayet – 2-9-2016.

The Star,

The Letters Editor,

 Dear Sir,

 RE: SA  SEMINAR ON MIDDLE EAST by Zaakir Mayet – 2-9-2016.

 Mayet writes of “50 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.”

Shocking, shocking! But of course Mayet and his fellow travellers are entitled to their halucinations.

 Now let’s see what a US legal authority, Professor Eugene Rostow, has to say:

“According to Article 80 of the United Nations Charter and the Mandate for Palestine, the 1967 war of self-defence returned Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) to its legal owner, the Jewish state. Legally and geo-strategically the rules of ‘belligerent occupation’ do not apply to Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria, since the area is not

‘foreign territory,’ and Jordan did not have a legitimate title over the area in 1967.

 

Furthermore, the 1993 Oslo Accord and the 1995 Israel-Palestinian Authority Interim Agreement do not prohibit Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria…

 

The term ‘Palestine’ was a Roman attempt…to eradicate Jews and Judaism from human memory. It substituted ‘Israel, Judea and Samaria’ with ‘Palaestina’, a derivative of the Philistines…whose origin was not in Arabia, but the Greek islands.”

 

Next Mayet informs us that South Africa is hosting the UN International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East. It will be well attended with “key figures” to unpack (?) this conflict which is escalating to “inconceivable levels of brutality and violence.”

 

And now you think that Mayet is writing about Isis, Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria. Not so. He is fulminating about Israel, about the only country in the region where converts from Islam are not executed, raped women not sentenced to death, gays not publicly hanged, Hazaris not murdered in their thousands and where Christians are still safe.

 

And then he quotes Professor Steven Friedman who once wrote that mentioning the 14,000 or so missiles fired from Gaza into Israeli residential areas was wrong “as it made the Palestinians seem at fault instead of the Israelis.”

 

Not too different from saying that the Nazis will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.