Victor Gordon:Refers: “Stand with Palestine”

CAPE TIMES

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Refers:  “Stand with Palestine”.

It is thirty nine years since the inauguration by the UN of an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. After almost four decades should they not finally ask themselves what have they achieved?

In an honest response, they should admit that, other than wasting every opportunity to live in peace with their Jewish neighbours who have surged ahead in almost every sphere, they (the Palestinians)  have steadily gone backwards and still depend on foreign aid and other handouts for their existence.

In fact, were it not for the fact that their adversaries were Jews, the world would not care two hoots and the UN would not be commemorating their plight on a specially designated day.

Had the Palestinians taken proper advantage of the billions of dollars donated to them, one can only imagine where they would be by now. Instead, they have squandered these resources on the construction of attack tunnels to kidnap and kill Israelis while their leaders have siphoned off enormous amounts into foreign bank accounts in order the feather their own nests.

It is estimated that Yasser Arafat expropriated US$1 Billion to support the extravagant Paris-based lifestyles of his wife Suha and their daughter, reminding one of Jacob Zuma who famously said, “Every night before I go to sleep I think of the poor”.

Of course, instead of placing the blame where it should be, Jaamia Galant and Imam D Rashied Omar rush to place it squarely with Israel who is accused of “land grabs, settler expansions, home demolitions, destruction of essential infrastructure, illegal imprisonment and targeted killings of Palestinians.”

Neither is “ethnic cleansing” overlooked, although there is no attempt to explain how, despite “ethnic cleansing”, the Palestinian population has risen from 1,4 million to 5,5 million in two decades (figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of statistics). Obviously, the Israelis are not very good at ethnic cleansing.

Nor is it ever admitted that every accusation listed above is the direct result of 69 years of hostility directed at the Jewish state resulting in seven wars and daily acts of terrorism, all of which has produced absolutely nothing to improve the lives of a single Palestinian.

Instead of bemoaning the so-called “injustices” suffered by the Palestinians should Galant and Omar not encourage those whom they readily support to stop attacking Israelis and give peace a chance?

Don Krausz:RE: STAND WITH PALESTINE. By Jaamia Galant & Imam D. Rashied Omar.

RE: STAND WITH PALESTINE. By Jaamia Galant & Imam D. Rashied Omar.

 I find the names interesting. Galant is hardly the name of a ware Mohamedaan.

My dictionary provides the nearest equivalent as a Galah which is “a small Australian cockatoo and regarded as a pest.” Omar is a common Arab name meaning a speaker or one who talks too much.

 The article begins with a 1977 UN resolution inaugurating an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people in recognition of all the injustices that they are alleged to have suffered. It was around that time that the UN also opined that Zionism was a form of Racism, believe it or not, and was rescinded not long thereafter. The UN    has a very strong voting block of Moslems and those that are in their pockets and regularly regurgitate anti-Semitic and anti-Israel opinions. Despite records in the Torah and the Qu-ran, verified in history and by archaeological research on the Temple Mount, the site of the two ancient Jewish temples, Unesco maintained recently that such structures never existed.

 With all the complaints of injustices inflicted on Palestinians, no where and at no time is any mention made of the totally unprovoked attack by the local Palestinians and five surrounding Arab states on the newly declared State of Israel in 1948. The Jewish inhabitants at that time numbered some 600,000. Of these 6,000 were killed in the fighting and 30,000 wounded according to the British Encyclopaedia, one percent of all the Jewish residents. The 1929 massacre of the Jewish inhabitants of the ancient city of Hebron is also not referred to. Jews have lived there since time immemorial and David made it his capital before moving to Jerusalem according to the Torah, which, no doubt, is also disputed.

The area has been called Palestine, but there was never a Palestinian state, propaganda not withstanding. For 400 years it was part of the Ottoman Empire and as late as the First World War its citizens had Syrian passports. The Ottoman Empire was defeated during that war and its possessions divided amongst the conquerors. That was how in 1920 at the San Remo conference the victorious nations Britain, France, Italy  and Japan placed that territory under the mandate of Britain with the explicit directive to implement the Balfour Declaration of a National Home for the Jewish People in Palestine.

As recently as April 2010 the signatories recognised that the San Remo Resolution remains irrevocable and legally binding to this day. So much for Israel’s “illegal occupation.”

Next we are informed of the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel.” In 1917 the Arab population in Palestine was estimated to number 700,000. The Israeli information centre’s handbook of 2008 lists the Moslem inhabitants of the land as 1,870,000, an increase of 1,170,000. There is no faulting of Galant and Omar’s fertile imagination.

Then we are told about Gaza, its terrible suffering, the widespread damage, the deprivation of food and the blockades, etc, etc, etc. Nowhere in that whole article do you read of the 14,000 ROCKETS AND MORTAR BOMBS that were manufactured, imported and launched from Gaza over a period of about nine years at cities and civilian residential areas in Israel!! When the numbers of that ordinance reached 80 a day, the Israeli army counter attacked.  Still the message did not penetrate and Israel was forced to repeat the lesson twice.

This article refers to it as “the daily brutalisation of occupation under the Zionist State of Israel.” PROBLEM: Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005. There is no Israeli occupation of the territory.

 

Sorry, Messrs. Galant and Omar, but you really ought not to tell such lies.

Don Krausz: RE: LISTEN CAREFULLY, RESIST, SHOW LOVE.

RE: LISTEN CAREFULLY, RESIST, SHOW LOVE.

By Nina Butler, 28/11/2016.

 Rather a contradictory title, but appropriate to her reasoning.

 Israel is being firebombed, no doubt as an expression of love.

Butler’s whole article is a collection of contradictions and carefully written to present a completely one sided point of view. Throughout she refers to “50 years of Israeli Occupation” and the attendant atrocities and injustices. Palestinians have not been responsible for such things.

 Let’s take a closer look. Such occupation implies that there was a time when the Palestinians lived there and were driven out by the murderous, thieving, raping and illegally occupying Israelis. According to the Palestinians and Unesco the Jews were never in Jerusalem which Israel claims as its capital since the times of David. Kings Solomon and Herod never built temples there, despite the evidence of the Torah, the New Testament, the Qu’ran and much archaeology.

 Much of her article concerns the effect on children “whose life is irrevocably marred by violence.” The established fact that Palestinian children are indoctrinated from childhood in their schools and madressas to hate Jews and taught how to murder them is never mentioned. They are instructed that the Jews robbed them of their land. The fact that in 1947 the ruling British Mandate’s Peel Commission offered both Jews and Arabs their own share of the land is also a No-No, as is the Palestinian rejection of that offer. Had they accepted as the Jews did, then they could now have had a state equal in prosperity and technological achievement as Israel.

 She makes it sound as though the country from time immemorial was Palestinian, and only “settled” by Jewish interlopers around 1880. If so then why does the Bible contradict this, or the other ancient writings such as the Qumran Scrolls? Why is the territory adjacent to the Jordan referred to as the Hills of Judea or was the West Bank before its conquest by Jordan in 1948 known as Samaria and Judea? Yes, Judea, from whence Jews derive their name?

 She describes the effect on Palestinian children as “poignant snapshots of everyday life under occupation.” Nicely put. But when the State of Israel was declared in 1948 and promptly attacked by the local Palestinians and five neighbouring Arab countries without provocation, its +/- 600,000 Jewish inhabitants suffered 6,000 deaths and 30,000 wounded according to the British Encyclopaedia, one percent of its total Jewish population. I wonder what the effect on the Jewish children was who waited in vain for their parents to come home?

 The lady ridiculously advocates resistance and love. Under which of these headings would she place the 24,841 Jews and Israelis that have died and the 35,356 wounded as a result of terror attacks since 1920 according to Wikipedia? Or isn’t she interested in the traumatic effects on Jewish children?

Allan Wolman to The Star

Calling for action to “Halt Middle East Crisis – UN” reads the headline in The Star (25 Nov). This call coming from two U.N. officials.  The one official expresses his concern that “Inaction has a cost. A cost measured in human lives and suffering.”  This is in reference to Israeli settlement expansion. Is settlement expansion killing or maiming people?

The official concerned is a Nickolay Mladenvo, who reports on his visit to West Bank ‘camps’ – why there are still camps in that area under the control of the Palestinian Authority is the question that Mladenov should be asking. In the same report he tells of his visit to Lebanon but fails to mention the ‘camps ‘ in that country, one must wonder why. No report by the U.N. on the Middle East is complete without mentioning Gaza and here we have another official writing about the restrictions of goods entering that territory but fails to tell the reader that it is Egypt restricting relief to Gaza where Israel announced an increase in supply convoys earlier this month.

The report in question mentions the Middle East but is focused on the Israeli Palestinian question only, no mention of other areas of the Middle East such as Iraq, embroiled with the so called Islamic State war and the unmentionable atrocities perpetrated there. What about the Saudi onslaught on The Yemen and the thousands killed in that ongoing war seems of no concern for our U.N. senior officials? Then of course Mr Mladenov, a Russian sounding name seems to steer far away for the Syrian disaster where sophisticated Russian jets are dropping barrel and chlorine bombs pinpointing children’s hospitals in Allepo where this week alone the death toll is in excess of 3000, mainly children. Almost 500,000 yes that’s half a million people killed in Syria as reported by the U.N. the very body the Mladenov works for but this genocide perpetrated by Russia and the Syrian government has no place in reports to the UN Security Council.

Don Krausz: RE: PULLING KIDS OUT OF POST-CRIME FEAR PIT.

The Letters Editor,

Saturday Star.

DearSir/Madam,

 RE: PULLING KIDS OUT OF POST-CRIME FEAR PIT.

By Benita Levin.

This article is most useful and ought to have appeared long ago, considering the daily crime reports.

I experienced World War 2, frontline fighting, the total destruction of the medieval centre of Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe and am a survivor of two and a half years of concentration camps during which 40 members of my close family were murdered.

I also visited the Israeli township of Sderot after the recent war on Gaza which Israel launched after 14,000 rockets and mortar bombs had been fired at her civilian settlements and cities by the Palestinians in Gaza and after that number had culminated to 80 missiles a day.

Sderot is situated four km. from Gaza. At that range the time from launch to impact is 15 seconds. Fifteen seconds in which to gather your spouse, children and pets and find shelter.

We arrived at noon on a working day. There were hardly any people in the streets. We saw air raid shelters in front of every housing block and double roofs on the schools to minimise impact. Our information was that the bombardments were timed to take place when the children were either on their way to school or going home, i.e. not in shelters.

We also visited the only bombproof building in the settlement, the crèche.

Having lived for years in Israel I was able to converse with the infants, even joke with them, but that did not hide the emotional signs of trauma on their little faces. In light of the aforementioned and my experience of places where the death toll was measured in the tens and hundreds of thousands, such manifestations are not new to me.

Benita Levin writes of “the pure beauty of innocence, unwavering trust in humanity, shattered in a matter of minutes. Of the heartbreaking nightmares that have dogged her two children and left her wondering how many thousands of other children are tossing and turning at night, reliving their horrors.”

I am 86, don’t have nightmares or lie tossing and turning in my sleep, but am still under treatment for PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Don Krausz: RE: DON’T RELENT UNTIL ISRAEL LEAVES PALESTINE.

The Letters Editor,

PRETORIA NEWS.

 RE: DON’T RELENT UNTIL ISRAEL LEAVES PALESTINE.

By Suraya Dadoo of the Media Review Network.

 What an amazing letter! She might as well have demanded that the Americans leave the USA, the Europeans South Africa or the whites Australia. Her article reveals the mindset of those at the Media Review Network and indicates why there has been no peace between Jew and Arab for at least a century.

 It also shows their abysmal ignorance of the history of the Middle East over the last 4,000 years. Demanding that Israel leave Palestine indicates that those advancing this ridiculous suggestion have not the slightest concept of the role that Jews and their religion have played in the region since the time of Abraham. It suggests that Jews are foreign to the territory; it begs the question of why Judea was given its name, why the Holy Temples of Judaism were erected in Jerusalem. After the Roman conquest there were strong contingents of Jews throughout the Middle East and along the Mediterranean littoral. If they all originated in Eastern Europe and mostly “settled” in Israel around 1880 then why does the Qu’ran consistently refer to the People of the Book and avers that Abraham, and most of the Jewish figures of note were Moslems? May I refresh Dadoo’s memory by pointing out that Ishmael, Abraham’s first son, was the ancestor of the Muslims and his brother, Isaac, one of Judaism’s patriarchs?

But I shouldn’t point fingers at Dadoo, she and her ilk are merely regurgitating the prevailing canards emanating from the United Nations. Zionism is racism, Jews and Israelis are responsible for all the evils in the world, the Holocaust is a myth, nearly all the condemnations issued by its bodies have been directed at the Jewish State, there  were never any Jewish Temples in Jerusalem, Israel is an apartheid state comparable to South Africa despite any proof whatsoever, and now the latest concoction, don’t relent until Israel leaves Palestine.

Much of her verbiage is indicative of the twisted and hate filled mindset of the Media Review Network. They speak of “illegal, colonial settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Bear in mind that Jews have lived in the Jewish State since Joshua conquered it from the Canaanites. And who did the Canaanites conquer it from? And after 3,300 years of Jewish conquest and occupation can one still refer to “illegal, colonial settlements”?

The so-called West Bank was conquered and occupied by Jordan for 19 years until Israel reconquered it. Did anyone during that period complain about the Jordanian conquest? That West Bank was formerly known by the biblical names Judea and Samaria. I wonder why? Jews lived in Jerusalem for thousands of years and actually formed a majority of the inhabitants. When the Jordanian Legion under its British officers conquered the Old City with its multitude of ancient synagogues and drove out the Jewish inhabitants, did anyone complain of illegality, or the fact that those ancient synagogues and biblical cemeteries were destroyed? Or that for 19 years the Jews were denied access to their holiest place, the remnant of Herod’s temple, something that was also totally illegal?

Is it also not significant that Suraya Dadoo quotes Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas speaking of “achieving permanent peace based on the two-state solution” by working with “any president elected by the American people.”

I don’t know about you but would have thought that the way to this achievement would be to work with an Israeli president.

Monessa Shapiro to The Sowetan

Anne Cachlin, in her letter ‘Oppression in Gaza is unceasing” asks whether people have not learned from history not to repeat the atrocities from which their own people suffered.

I cannot speak for others in the world but I can tell her that as a Jew, we did not need the unspeakable atrocities committed against us to teach us about morality and loving ones neighbour.  Such messages abound in our Torah and such values are inculcated into us from birth.

It is probably for this reason that Israel is such a beacon of light in the Middle East.  It is for this reason that Israel’s Declaration of Independence states that the state  “…..will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”   And to this day all Israeli citizens, Jew or Arab, black or white have the vote and are equal before the law.   There is absolute freedom of religion and all have equal access to medical services and equal access to education.

Cachlin speaks of the refugee camps in Gaza.   What an indictment against Hamas, the government of Gaza since 2006, that citizens are living in refugee camps!   Is she unaware that Israel removed every Jew from Gaza in 2005 making Gaza Judenfrei (free of Jews ) for the Arabs living there?   Is she not aware that the Jews left behind an infrastructure worth billions so that the Arabs living there could begin building their own state?   Instead they began firing rockets into Israel aimed at murdering as many Israeli men, women and children as possible.  

Cachlin’s ends her letter with a call to support the BDS movement as a form of non-violent protest.  Ironic, because we in South Africa have witnessed the increasing violence of BDS campaigns.  But this is of course apparent in Cachlin’s letter, so replete with ignorant, unsubstantiated lies, and emotive language meant only to incite hatred and violence.   

Don Krausz: RE: ARE SANCTIONS ON ISRAEL NOT IN ORDER?

The Letters Editor,

The Mercury.

 Dear Sir/Madam,

 RE: ARE SANCTIONS ON ISRAEL NOT IN ORDER?

By Nilofar Dawood.

 Talk of one’s opinions being far out or not seeing the wood for the trees!

 Logical argument proceeds step by step. You don’t take a flying leap at a subject, land in the middle of it and then pontificate. So let’s start at the beginning.

 He/she is referring to Gaza. It was occupied by Egypt, then by Israel who established a lucrative export trade there using Palestinian labour. In 2005 Israel withdrew every single soldier and settler, enabling the Palestinian locals to use the infrastructure that Israel left behind and continue with the export trade for their own benefit.

 The ruling Hamas saw this as an opportunity to destroy the hothouses and synagogues, import explosives and long range rockets, manufacture Katyusha rockets and mortar bombs and for some nine years bombard Israeli civilian settlements across the border reaching as far as major cities.

 By some strange coincidence the ordinance was launched when children were either on the way to school or returning, i.e. not in shelters.

 When this unprovoked atrocity reached 80 missiles a day, Israel retaliated, sent in her army, destroyed the rocket infrastructure and generally caused havoc. The lesson was not absorbed and had to be repeated twice.

 Egypt blockaded her Gaza border. Israel stopped the sea traffic in instruments of death and destruction by blockading hers. And that brings us to Nilofar Dawood’s query.

 As is typical of writers from the non-Israeli side, the whole argument is subjective and based on ME, ME, ME. Look what you have done to me, look what you made me do?

 Nowhere in his/her letter does he/she make mention of the effect that 14,000 plus missiles fired at the Israeli civilian population over several years must have had on the victims.

 The Israeli township Sderot is four km. from Gaza. When I visited there it had suffered the bombardment of 4,000 missiles. At that range the time from launch to impact is 15 seconds. 15 seconds to gather your spouse, children and pets and find shelter.

 I arrived there on a working day. No one was in the streets. Every housing block had an air raid shelter in front of it. I noticed that schools had double roofs to withstand impact. The only really bombproof structure was the crèche. When I went there to speak to the infants I noticed signs of trauma on their little faces.

 Now you tell me, is the solution to have more sanctions against Israel or for Hamas to stop its unprovoked aggression with the resulting retaliation and blockades?

Victor Gordon re: “Oppression in Gaza is unceasing”

SOWETAN

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Refers:  “Oppression in Gaza is unceasing”

From the comfort of her home in Morningside Anne Chachlin mourns the state of the Palestinians and accuses Israel of a list of human rights abuses, having learned that if you repeat a lie often enough it will finally be accepted as truth.

Israel, she claims, is guilty of “occupation” without making any effort to examine why “occupation” exists in the first place. Could it be that in 1967  she was attacked by Jordan who subsequently lost the war and, as a result, relinquished its 19 year-old illegal annexation of  the “West Bank”?  If we depend on Chachlin we’ll never know.

Accusing Israel of practising apartheid ignores the indisputable fact that the latter is internationally recognised as fully democratic, thereby nullifying any possibility of it concurrently adopting a policy of apartheid. Surely the two systems cannot co-exist? (Google “Freedom House”)

Indeed, Israel assassinates those who murder her citizens; like the terrorists who carried out the Munich Massacre in 1972 or those cowardly leaders who pull the strings from the safety of their bunkers while never exposing themselves or their own children to “martyrdom”. The lesson is simple; hurt Israel and Israel will hurt you.

If  Chachlin would spend some time reading “The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law”, a seminal work by Howard Grief, or watch even one lecture on Youtube by Professor Eugene Kontorovich, she might learn that the myopic claim that the settlements are illegal is a blatant falsehood.  It’s amazing what you learn when you divorce yourself from the herd.

Chachlin accuses Israel of demolishing the homes of Palestinians guilty of attacks against Israeli civilians while ignoring the fact that this serves as a non-lethal punishment and deterrent  against these acts. Why no mention of the hundreds of homes demolished by Egypt in creating a buffer zone along her border with Gaza?

As  for her objection to the blockade of Gaza, this is perfectly legal under international law and wouldn’t exist at all were Hamas’s hostile intentions towards Israel peaceful instead. The same applies to Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal which was never intended to be anything but a deterrent. Is it Israel threatening to wipe Iran off the map, or the other way round?

The “defiance of international law” (as with the “illegality of the settlements”) requires definition if it is to be taken at all seriously. Again, read Howard Grief’s highly imformative book.

While Chachlin seeks “a viable alternative to violence” perhaps she need look no further than the past 65 years wasted by the Arabs in trying to annihilate Israel instead of seeking a formula for a mutually beneficial peace.

Don Krausz: RE: WHY ISRAEL IS CALLED AN EVIL STATE

The Letters Editor,

The Mercury.

 RE: WHY ISRAEL IS CALLED AN EVIL STATE

By Ibrahim Vawda, Media Review Network.

 Perhaps because Vawda says so, but he does align some other luminaries with similar opinions. Not that this means much. I used to have access to the Nazi newspaper, der Volkischer Beobachter, and they boasted of the support of many prominent German university professors. People are known to assess others according to their own character. If you are important enough and proclaim that murdering men, women and children by the million is meritorious, then it must be so.

 What tends to give their game away is their providing opinions but seldom facts.

Vawda writes of the Israeli “regime.” This is simply untrue, a regime is not elected and Palestinians sit in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and have occupied high positions in the government and the legal establishment.

 His next sojourn into fantasy is his accusation of certain injustices: the Gaza blockade, barriers, demolition of the homes of terrorists, ethnic cleansing and genocide, etc.

 Let’s take a few of them.

 With all his extensive list of Israeli crimes, there are a few Palestinian ones that are closely linked but not mentioned, no doubt for reasons of his own.

 In 1948 the State of Israel was proclaimed. At the time its Jewish population numbered about 600,000. It was immediately attacked by the local Palestinians and armies of five surrounding Arab states. In this totally unprovoked attack 6,000 Israelis died and 30,000 were wounded according to the British Encyclopaedia, one percent of the Jewish population. You probably are unaware thereof because Palestinians never mention it, only the Naqba, their disastrous defeat.

 Since 1948 the West Bank was occupied by Jordan including East Jerusalem. Jews have lived and worshipped in their capital for some 3,300 years. King David’s palace was situated there as were their two holy temples although Palestinians and lately Unesco deny this. The Jews were driven out of that part of their holy city and their ancient cemeteries and synagogues destroyed by the Jordanians under their British officers.

 Did you see this in the press or notice the UN complain? But of course not.

 In 2005 Israeli Prime Minister Arik Sharon evacuated Israelis and troops from the occupied Gaza Strip, abandoning a thriving export trade and it’s infra structure. The workforce had been local Palestinians who could have continued with what they had been taught using existing hot houses.

 Instead the hothouses and synagogues were destroyed, missiles manufactured and imported of which about 14,000 were launched over the years across the border at Israeli residential areas.  When that bombardment reached 80 a day Israel sent in her army to put an end to this unprovoked atrocity. The factories making the ordinance were destroyed while a sea blockade was instituted to prevent large rockets and explosives arriving by sea.

Rockets are still being fired and the sea blockade continues.

 And for those of you who can only see one side of the story, let me remind you of the Blitz by the German Luftwaffe of England in 1940. The British suffered 51,000 casualties and Churchill vowed to “return every bomb tenfold.” He did.

 Barbarous, inhumane, beastly?

 Since 1920 Jews in Palestine and later in the evil State of Israel have suffered 24,861 dead and 35,356 wounded as a result of terrorist attacks. From time to time the Israeli Defense Force has retaliated.

 Now wasn’t that evil?

 Vawda quotes Lord Balfour as being adamant that the Jewish Homeland had to be established. After all, the eventual and greatly truncated State of Israel would amount to only one sixth of one percent of land controlled by Arabs.

 How could anyone expect the Arab world to countenance such deprivation?

 But the cherry on top of his diatribe is his accusation of the evil Israelis of ethnic cleansing and genocide. He mentions a figure of 700,000 as the Arab population at the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Israel’s information centre’s handbook of 2008 lists the Moslem inhabitants of the land as 1,870,000, an increase of 1,100,000.

 As ethnic cleansing and genocide go, those evil Israelis are not doing a very good job.