Victor Gordon to The Star

THE STAR

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Refers:  “NATIONHOOD V NATIONALITY IN THE TIME OF TRUMP”

I quite enjoyed Jennifer Stern’s story about her visit, together with her 90 year-old aunt to Ellis Island where thousands upon thousands of new immigrants set foot on American soil for the very first time.

Stern’s observations, meant to question America benevolence as a heterogeneous society of immigrants, were thought-provoking, especially where she delved into the callousness of American bureaucracy which, in 1939, sent 900 visa-holding desperate Jewish refugees back to Europe on the ill-fated ship St Louis, many to certain death in Hitler’s extermination camps.

In seeking an example of modern-day suppression by one group over another, it is surprising that Stern could find no other example other than what she describes as “… a number of Zionists who seem incapable of seeing the irony in their occupation of Palestine”. This she couples with the “irony” of America, a society of immigrants, building a wall to separate it from Mexico.

I would have thought that the steel barrier between Egypt and her brothers in Gaza would be a far bigger irony.

We must assume that the irony of the “Palestinian” Arabs spurning the offer in 1947 of a land of their own, to be settled side by side with their Jewish neighbours (only to lose it after instigating and losing 5 major wars against Israel), would also be a far greater cause for irony.

Or perhaps the irony of Israel, a country with virtually no resources, developing into one of the most successful nations in modern times as opposed to the failures of both Gaza and the so-called West Bank (Judea and Samaria), both of which have received billions of dollars in foreign aid.

Ironically, the forced occupation of parts of the West Bank following the disastrous Six Day War, and the sea embargo of Gaza to curb the smuggling of weapons, are the direct result of Palestinian intransigence which has never abated after 70 years. Again, ironically, it would all instantly  end were the Palestinians to only cease their futile aggression against Israel and seek peace through accommodation.  That Ms. Stern, is the most tragic irony of all.

Victor Gordon:Refers: “Jews need to bury Zionism”

Dr. Firoz Osman should do himself a favour and re-examine the definition of Zionism. He would be surprised to find that it is not, as he claims, “an ideology based on racist laws that discriminates against Palestinians” but the aspiration of the Jewish people, originating in 1897, to have a homeland of their own.

This was sanctioned by the Balfour Declaration of 1915, the San Remo Conference in 1920, the League of Nations in 1922 where Palestine was placed under British Mandate (with the instruction that said homeland was to be established), the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 and, finally, the United Nations which partitioned what was left of the land originally designated for “close living” by Jews and offered to the regions Jews and Arabs for the establishment of two independent homelands existing side by side in peace.

As we are aware, the Jews accepted the offer while the Arabs rejected it and embarked on a failed war of extermination.

Familiar as we are with Dr. Osman’s non-contextual and nonsensical claims, one might fail to  notice his obfuscation when claiming that “The Zionist entity was created on stolen Palestinian land by killing and exiling millions of indigenous Muslims and Christians.” In fact the “Zionist entity” was created on land purchased from the 19^th century at inflated prices from Arab owners and absent landlords.

During the 1948 War of Independence an estimate of 684,000 Arabs left their homes for a variety of reasons (See: Benny Morris, “1948”). Against that, 800,000 Jews were chased out of the surrounding Arab/Muslim countries and arrived in Israel with no more than the clothes on their backs.

One would wish to know how Dr. Osman substantiates his claim that “millions” of indigenous Muslims and Christians were “killed and exiled.”

According to UNWRA (The UN RELIEF  and WORKS AGENCY) especially established in December 1949 to care for Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank, what were initially 684,000 refugees has swollen, by natural family expansion, to 4.6 million. None of the listed Arab countries have made any effort to absorb or incorporate these refugees into their societies.

No other group of refugees enjoy this unique UN attention.

If as claimed by Firoz Osman,  Israel “killed and exiled ‘millions’ of indigenous Muslims and Christians – an obvious act of Genocide – their current inflated numbers indicate that the Israelis must have done a pretty lousy and ineffectual job. Neither is there an iota of historic evidence to back up Osman’s hysterical claim – a clear example of Fake News.

Dr Osman should face the fact that it is not Zionism that has caused so much suffering in the region but the years the Arabs/Muslims have wasted in trying to conquer the Jewish State and make the region Judenfrei. That is the true example of Middle Eastern apartheid.

Allan Wolman re:Institutionalized racism in Israel

Institutionalized racism in Israel reads the heading of a letter from Nilofar Dawood in The Mercury (7 Feb). He tells his readers that 60000 African migrants having fled violence and famine in their home countries and entered Israel (illegally).

I’m hoping that Dawood could explain why these migrants chose Israel above Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya or Saudi Arabia all of which are very much closer than Israel? If he has knowledge of the conditions he describes surely those making their way to Israel would be as well informed and diverted their journeys?

Immigrant detention centres are found in a number of European countries where many hundreds of thousands of migrants are experiencing the same fate as what Dawood describes – but he singles out only Israel. Is he expressing his “milk of human kindness” for the plight of all migrants?

There are literally millions of refugees fleeing the killing fields of Syria whose oil rich Arab brothers have turned their backs and shut their doors on those hapless souls, but Dawood seems to have no knowledge of this human tragedy or the racism that exists in the Arab world

Don Krausz re:INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IN ISRAEL.

RE: INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IN ISRAEL.

By Nilofar Dawood. 7-2-2017.

 Dawood makes seven negative assertions about Israel without substantiating a single one. He assumes that we will just have to take his word for it. Why should we? Is every item that appears in the press the unvarnished truth?

 He accuses Israel of “institutionalised racism” and avers that since 2006 sixty thousand African migrants entered the country only to “face intense persecution.” If that were really the case then why would these 60,000 not prefer to stay put or go elsewhere?

 According to Dawood these black migrants are “treated like criminals, face discriminatory laws and their fundamental rights are denied. He states that “Israel pays grants of $ 3,500 to migrants who agree to leave. Now that times 60,000 is a lot of money. Why would Israel have accepted them in the first  place?

 In case that you have missed his point, Dawood then reminds us that “Israeli racism is institutionalised.” 

 I lived in Israel for years and there were Jews there of every colour. Black Jews from India and Abyssinia, Brown Jews from Yemen and the Arab countries. We white immigrants from Western countries, worked with them, dated them and even married them. My Egyptian fiancé would not have been permitted to return with me to South Africa. In Israel she faced no discrimination.

 Is it not puzzling that at a time when Moslem Sunni and Shia have been murdering each other by the hundreds of thousands and when the Taliban have been slaughtering Hazaris and Yazaris by the tens of thousands, explaining that there is nothing wrong in doing so “because these people are not Muslims,” Nilofar Dawood singles out Israel for what he calls institutionalised racism?

 Methinks that he needs an institution himself.

Monessa Shapiro responds to Ismail Moola

I read and reread Ismail Moola’s letter as I am not quite sure which history books he has been privy to or where he has found some of his most preposterous facts.  But let’s forget history – let’s look at the last 20 years, years within our memory.

In 2000 Ehud Barak offered Yasir Arrafat  96% of the West Bank and 1% of Israel proper, the entire Gaza strip with an additional 3% to make up for the shortfall of the West Bank and a land link between the two.  He offered East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state.  Palestinians were to be granted a right of return to the new Palestinian state with reparations from an international fund worth 30 billion dollars.  In turn Arrafat had to allow Israeli sovereignty over the parts of the Western Wall holy to Jews (this did not include the Temple Mount), and 3 early warning stations in the Jordan Valley which Israel would withdraw from after 6 years.   Did Arrafat accept any part of this?   No, because as Dennis Ross, chief negotiator of the USA, said in an interview for Foreign Policy, in 2002: “ For him (ie Yasir Arrafat) to end the conflict is to end himself.”   Instead Arrafat launched the 2^nd Intifada against Israel.   This led to thousands of Israelis being murdered and maimed – innocent men women and children became the targets of brutal suicide murderers.  

In 2005 Israel withdrew totally from the Gaza strip, painfully removing every last Jewish citizen in order to make the strip Judenfrei for a future Palestinian State.   The Jews living there left behind an infrastructure worth billions in order to help the Palestinians build their future state.  Ariel Sharon’s plan was to eventually withdraw from the West Bank should Gaza have worked.  But the Palestinian citizens living in Gaza immediately began firing rockets at Israeli civilians and used the very buildings that the Israelis had left as their launching pads.  In January 2006 they voted in Hamas as their government.   Hamas has as part of its charter the annihilation of Israel and the murder of all Jews everywhere.  It was with the advent of Hamas as the government and the countless rockets being fired into Israel that Israel was forced to close the border with Gaza.

In 2008 Ehud Olmert offered Mahmoud Abbas 93% of the West Bank with land swops from Israel, safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem divided so that East Jerusalem could become the Palestinian capital.   In an interview on Channel 10, reported in The Tower on 17 November 2015 Abbas admitted that he rejected this proposal totally.  ‘Channel 10 reporter Raviv Drucker asked Abbas: “In the map that Olmert presented you, Israel would annex 6.3 percent [of the West Bank] and compensate the Palestinians with 5.8 percent [taken from pre-1967 Israel]. What did you propose in return?”“I did not agree,” Abbas replied. “I rejected it out of hand.”’  No attempt to discuss or compromise.

Mr Moola, the above is within my memory and probably yours.  If more people would seek the truth rather than the fiction of Palestinian victimhood, the Palestinian people could, I believe, be persuaded to choose leaders who seek peace rather than the destruction of and annihilation of Israel.

Don Karausz: RE: DA should condemn Israeli government’s apartheid

The Letters Editor,

The Mercury.

 RE: DA should condemn Israeli government’s apartheid

By Anne Chachlin – 17/1/17.

South African apartheid was defined as legal separation against people of colour. According to Anne Chachlin (AC) this occurs in Israel too.

 I am a white South African and lived here under apartheid. I am also a Jew and lived in Israel for years. At no stage did I see any legal apartheid inIsrael. I lived, socialised and worked with people of colour and was even engaged to one who would not have been allowed into SA. At work, in the streets or places of entertainment there was no discrimination. Palestinians had the vote, access to schools, universities and hospitals and reached the highest positions in the Israeli parliament and judiciary.

 But there is such a thing as emotion overriding intellect. An anti-Semite will find support for his prejudices everywhere which may well explain a person such as Tutu finding apartheid in Israel, despite having been awarded a Nobel Prize. Yasser Arafat was similarly honoured despite being identified as one of the first and most notorious terrorists.

 Intellect would have seen the wood for the trees. A little research instead of indoctrination and hatred would have revealed the extent of political and religion- induced terrorism. Since 1920, 24,861 Jews have been murdered and 35,356 injured in Arab terrorist attacks.

 AC complains of the humiliation of Palestinians at checkpoints and compares it to the actions of SA police before 1994. This may be true. But consider the fact that those 18-year old boy and girl soldiers are trying to prevent terrorists smuggling arms and explosives into the country which is taking place on an ongoing basis. She refers to what she calls a Separation Wall. Inconvenient?

Definitely. But she does not mention that this so-called Apartheid Wall also served to prevent 1,000 suicide bomber murders which took place during Arafat’s Second Intifada. Yes, the same Arafat who was also awarded a Nobel prize.

 

AC, if you had a say in the matter then what would you advise, inconvenience or 1,000 men, women and children blown to pieces?

 

Can you not see that it is Palestinian terrorism that lies at the root of all these horrors? Yes, there are separate roads for Jews and Palestinians and they have drastically reduced the instances of drive-by shootings that used to take place.

You write of separate and unequal school systems to which children are subjected. Would you send your child to a school where he or she is taught how to kill a Jew with a knife? And if that child succeeds, you and it are lauded and venerated from the pulpit and by your group’s leaders? Exaggeration, propaganda? Just read the Jewish press. No, you won’t find it in the Mercury.

 

Illegal settlements in the West Bank? That was conquered from Israel in 1948 during a totally unprovoked Palestinian attack and Arab invasion that killed one percent of Israel’s Jewish population and wounded 30,000 according to the British Encyclopaedia? And how could those settlements have been designated “illegal” when the area had been known since biblical days as Judea and Samaria, giving rise to part of the occupants being known as Judeans, Jews?

 

In 1947, the British Peel commission suggested partition for Palestine. The Jews accepted the hugely truncated portion, the Palestinians refused. They stated that they wanted it all, “from the river to the sea!” Since then until very recently, Israeli leaders have offered to sit down with Palestinians and negotiate. The Arabs have always refused.

Victor Gordon to The Pretoria News:Re: “Wise up to the era of post-truth”

 

Recently the Pretoria News expressed the opinion that we had entered an era of ‘post-truth’ … “where political and social commentary is aimed at emotions and is, at best indifferent to the truth and hostile to the facts”. What prompted this opinion piece was the revelation that the ANC had established a “War Room” in order to discredit rival parties leading up to the municipal elections.

The opinion piece observed that many South Africans choose to believe or associate with a point of view on the basis of who expresses it rather than its content.

While I could not agree more, I wish to point out that this phenomena is nothing new, depending only on the origin of these non-truths (read ‘lies’) and against whom they are directed.

It has taken Donald Trump, who, in accusing CNN of resorting to ‘fake news’, brought to light the fact that truth is no longer a requisite when it comes to reporting so-called facts surrounding any story.

The sad truth is that in this age of instant communication, social networking and political agendas, “facts” very often get in the way of a good story which depends more on its sensational value than its accuracy or  even a vague reflection of truth. It’s distribution depends only on how co-operative the media is in disseminating it as quickly and widely as possible often with no attempt at verification.

Undoubtedly, the most abused victim of the use of ‘post-truth’ is the Jewish State of Israel, about which it has become possible to say anything, no matter how false and outrageous, without recourse. Books have been written (e.g “The Other War” and “Eye on the Media”) about this practise while a website called ‘Honest Reporting’ puts out daily summaries of false and biased reporting throughout the Western World.

Equally wrong is the media ignoring a major event – like the New York Times’ failing to effectively report on the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust for political considerations.

Undoubtedly, the false accusation that the fully democratic State of Israel practises apartheid and that the so-called  ‘occupation’ is illegal under international law are just some of the main accusations peddled by journalists, commentators and advocates of the Palestinian cause, the majority of whom would have extreme difficulty in substantiating their claims if pushed to do so. The obvious lesson is, don’t accept anything you read on face value.

If Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu can say that what he saw in Israel was worse than anything he had experienced under apartheid (and do so without a blush) who must we doubt?

As the Editor commented, “… this post-truth age requires that we be more vigilant with regards to the mass media we consume – including this very publication … only those who benefit from lies and confusion will celebrate a time and era when nobody knows what is truth and what is not, or even cares.”

One can only hope that this newspaper practises what it preaches.