Don Krausz: Mohamed Saeed’s article “Occupation of Palestine

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.

            The catastrophic failure of the so-called Arab Spring has helped many Europeans understand that Israel is not

            the reason for the chaos in the Middle East. It is a brutal reign dominated by totalitarianism, extremism and

            violence. And as radical Islamic terrorism has reached the shores and capitals of Europe, some Europeans are

            beginning to understand the true cause of Islamic terrorism and therefore that it is not Israel, the ‘occupation’ or

            the settlements.     Gabriel Rosenberg.

            *********************************************************************************************************************************

            Mohamed Saeed’s article “Occupation of Palestine,” of 26/5/2017, refers.

            From his opening remarks this article is rife with misinformation. The so-called ‘Palestinians’ were the Greek Sea-

            people that occupied the Mediterranean coastline and were so named by the Romans 2,000 years ago. They also

            occupied Carthage and Tyre and passed into history after their defeat by the Romans.

            Apart from  Bedouin, Arabs  living  in  the highlands and major cities, the present ‘ Palestinians’ date back

            to  the  19th Century and came from Arab lands. Under the Ottoman Empire they held Syrian passports.

            The statement: ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’ was made in 1884 by British Lord

            Shaftesbury who was not Jewish and so was not part of a “Zionist Plot.”

            Saeed opines that what he terms ‘RESISTANCE’ arises out of an ‘oppressive, brutal and abusive situation and has

            been misnamed TERRORISM by the Western media.’ No doubt the unprovoked 1948 attack on nascent Israel by

            Palestinians and Arab armies that resulted in 6,000 Israeli dead, (one percent of the total Jewish population) and

            30,000 wounded according to the British Encyclopaedia, the 24,861 Jews killed and 35,356 maimed as a result of

            terrorist attacks since 1920, the 1,000 Jewish men, women and children murdered by suicide bombers as well as

            the disgusting murders perpetrated on infants, children and civilians even up to the present day in the name of

            Intifadas all fall under the heading of RESISTANCE…

            Saeed claims that Israel is founded on the ‘ total destruction of the indigenous Palestinians’. Then how does he

            explain Azzam Pasha’s statement in 1948 on the attack on Israel by the local Palestinians and surrounding Arab

            states: “THIS WILL BE A WAR OF EXTERMINATION AND A MOMENTOUS MASSACRE WHICH WILL BE

            SPOKEN OF LIKE THE MONGOLIAN MASSACRES AND THE CRUSADES!? “

            Azzam Pasha was the Secretary of the Arab League.

            Or Gamal Abdel Nasser’s declaration upon his preparations to wage war on Israel in 1967: “When we cross into

            the Sinai, the sand will be soaked with blood!” He did not say whose blood. That war lasted six days.

            Nasser was President of Egypt.

            Saeed then concludes by stating that “the best means of fulfilling the rights of Jews, Christians and Muslims is to

            have a single democratic country in all of Palestine, with equal rights, opportunities and dignity for all.” Wonderful!

            But with the notable exception of Israel, where in the whole Middle East does one find such a democracy? It has

            been suggested before, quoting Article Six of the Hamas Charter: “Only under the shadow of Islam could the

            members of regions coexist in safety and security for their lives, properties and rights. In the absence of Islam,

            conflict arises, oppressions reign, corruption is rampant and struggles and wars prevail.” Ask the Qureish!

            Just abandon the faith and beliefs of your ancestors and all will be well. For peace and prosperity to reign

            upon earth look no further than the present Moslem states.    .

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

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.

 What kind of creatures justify perpetrating such atrocities?

Rodney Mazinter re Prisoner Strike

The Editor

The Cape Argus

Dear Sir

Shannon Ebrahim once again demonstrates her one-eyed reporting on the Middle East (Sunday Argus May 14,  Ministers join fast to support Palestinians). Apart from jounalistic ineptitude more in keeping with a propaganda appratchick, she buys into the hypocritical singling out of of Israel’s prison system by several ministers, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.

 This demonstrates a lack of research, and therefore balance, that gives rise to the latest media curse: the publishing of fake news as fact. 

 Apart from the revelation that convicted murderer, Marwan Barghouti, has been caught on camera secretly eating in his cell, it turns out that the conditions in Israeli prisons are better than those in the Palestinian Authority, Gaza, South Africa, and even in much of the West, not to mention non-democratic countries. Apparently, the Palestinian prisoners are currently on strike for: “Access to satellite channels tailored to the needs of prisoners.”

 Here is the truth about the conditions of Palestinian prisoners serving time in Israeli prisons:

 Of the approximately 1,100 Security prisoners, fully one third are serving sentences that include direct responsibility for murder. Marwan Barghouti, was convicted for directing and planning the murder of 5 civilians. 

 Prisoners receive a monthly salary based on the severity of their crime. For example, a murderer responsible for the deaths of multiple civilians can receive up to 12,000 NIS a month (about R45,000).

 NGOs have been claiming that Israel has arrested between 750,000 and 800,000 for almost 10 years, yet their own weekly arrest statistics show that this number is false.

 Security prisoners in Israel are entitled to a number of basic rights, and additional benefits, including: 

 Regular visits from the International Red Cross; family visitations; medical treatment; religious rights; access to education; meeting with an attorney; newspapers; opportunity to read and have books in their possession; permitted to buy goods from the prison’s canteen (run by inmates); television watching hours; electrical appliances.

 

What about a call for people to join a fast in sympathy with South African prisoners who don’t have these privileges?

Harry Joffe to The Witness

Dear Sir

 Reading the one-eyed tirade by Dr. Baroud, one cannot but be greatly disappointed. This hatchet job is, firstly, replete with factual errors:

 Israel does not occupy Gaza, as it withdrew from the territory in 2005

• 800 000 Palestinians were not exiled. The Palestinian population before the 48 war was just over 750 000, and just over 150 000 after it, so if every Palestinian who left was exiled, [which was not the case,] that could only have been a maximum of 600 000 people. Perhaps Dr. Baroud got confused with the 800 000 Jewish refugees, who were forced out of their homes from almost every Arab country in the middle-east, and who were exiled.
• Israel does not occupy the “entirety of historic Palestine.” What about the bulk of mandate Palestine, which was hived off by the UK to form Jordan, in breach of the terms of its mandate?

 More importantly, the fascinating irony in this article, is that, when it comes to Jewish history, it suffers from the very charge that it accuses Israel of-trying to erase a people from the annals of history. Nowhere from reading this article, would the reader realize that Jews have a three thousand year connection with the land, dating back to biblical times, or that Jews have always lived there. The fact that Jews were already the majority in Jerusalem from the 1860’s is willfully ignored, as is the fact that the two Jewish temples were built there and it is Judaism’s holiest city.  Indeed, reading Dr. Baroud’s article, one would get the utterly false impression that Jews were simply parachuted into Palestine in 1948 to create an artificial state, without ever having any historical connection to the land. The fact that 600 000 Jews were living in Palestine by 1948 is not deemed to be relevant.

 It is also, for the record, false to claim that Israel has tried “to erase the Palestinians from the annals of history.” Israel has offered the Palestinians their own state three times in recent years, in 2000, 2001 and 2008, each offer being rejected by the Palestinians, because, they, like Dr. Baroud, refuse to accept any Jewish connection to the land, or to compromise at all.

If peace is to ever come to the middle-east, both sides will have to compromise, and recognize each other’s history. Such biased and parochial articles from Dr. Baroud do not assist this cause at all.

 

Don Krausz to The Star

The Letters Editor,

 Re: Call for citizens to join Palestinians’ hunger strike – by Shannon Ebrahim, 2/5/17.

 I admire Shannon Ebrahim for her fight on behalf of victims, but when it comes to Israelis her silence is conspicuous. If she is a person of conscience then her condemnation ought to be even-handed.

 Jews have lived in that territory for 3,300 years, since the days of the Pharaohs. They had their temples and kingdoms there as recorded over the ages and verified through archaeological and historical evidence, despite UN and Palestinian denials.

 They have fought for their existence against the Pharaohs, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and now against Moslem enemies.

 They are neither invaders, settlers nor colonists. But neither are they Christians or Moslems, a fact that has been viciously resented by those of other religions. Apart from the massacres and persecutions down the ages, Jews have suffered 24,861 deaths and

35,356 wounded in terrorist attacks since 1920; 6,000 killed and 30,000 wounded during the totally unprovoked Palestinian and Arab attack in 1948, (one percent of the total Jewish population!) and 24,600 dead and wounded in Arab onslaughts and major wars since then. Over the past decade more than 14,000 missiles have been launched at her civilian areas from Gaza alone. Poor Palestinians.

 Israel does not have the death penalty for captured terrorists. The Palestinians in captivity are not confined because they stole a loaf of bread. The leader of this hunger strike, Marwan Barghouti, was incarcerated after having been found guilty of five murders. In Arab lands he would have been executed. The murder of Israeli civilians is advocated by the Palestinian establishment, demanded by its clergy and enthusiastically supported by most of the Palestinian population according to polls taken over the years.

Despite such acts of heroism as cutting the throat of a three-month old baby in the Ittamar settlement or stabbing a 13 year old girl to death while she lay asleep. The erection of a security fence and wall was decried world wide as an act of apartheid, despite the fact that it reduced suicide murders by 90%.

 The Arab hatred is not because of the crimes of Israel but rather because they are seen as interlopers in Moslem territory. To this day Moslem authorities insist on occupying Israel “from the river to the sea!” So what room is there for Israelis?

 Yet after each successful war Israel offered peace talks to the Palestinians supervised by American presidents. These were all rejected under theKhartoum slogan:

No negotiations, no peace and no recognition of Israel.

 It is obvious that Ebrahim is not impressed with Israeli justice. She should try Sharia.

I have before me a report written by a Moslem woman headed “Normal treatment of Middle Eastern Women, dated 28-1-2017, and I quote:

 Most full coverings for women are black, which absorbs heat in the scorching temperatures.

 In a province of Indonesia, Aceh, a woman accused of being intimate with her boyfriend is caned, in front of a jeering crowd. Later, a photograph of the screaming woman is published as a token of pride for the men who had just exacted this “justice” – on HER; no consequence for the boyfriend. It was a lesson to remind women of their place in society.

 All forms of exploiting women are presented as divine law, sharia, in which women have no say, which they are unable to use in their own defence and which they are forced to accept as their fate.

 These are countries where men are not only permitted, but INVITED, to consider a woman as a pet – to be killed, burned with acid or benzene or a weapon of choice to preserve a family’s HONOUR!

 These laws, put in place by the government and clergy, provide a safe escape for criminals, such as those who kill their women and claim it is in the name of HONOUR.

 The deeper horror is that all these abuses – child marriage, confinement, Female Genital Mutilation, rape, torture, and legal discrimination – have accomplices. These enablers are often well-meaning people from the West, “multiculturalists” who are reluctant to pass judgement on other people’s customs no matter how brutal they might be.

 The practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), not required by Islam, is a pre-Islamic tribal norm across the African belt of the Muslim region, as well as in parts of India, Indonesia and the Middle East.

 A bitter truth, often glossed over in the name of “tradition” is the religious teaching and the responsibilities of a Moslem woman. Most ignored is the violence that men are still allowed to inflict on their women in the name of their religion and culture in such a massive part of the planet.

 In the 21^st Century, an unchaperoned woman outside the house is regarded as subhuman, fair game to be raped, assaulted, burned alive or decapitated – based on patriarchal norms.

 Ebrahim, take your choice.