Allan Wolman to The Star

In today’s edition of The Star (26 Oct.) the headline story on your international page was that of building 176 homes in Jerusalem. Now a little further down on the same page, a small article detailing 30,000 Kurds being displaced.

What is amazing is that whilst literally thousands of people are being killed daily in many Arab countries a report of building 176 houses will take precedence over the real tragedies of the Arab and Muslim world. Only this week the U.N. announced that almost 1 million Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar but building 176 houses received more attention than this unfolding tragedy. Also reports of more killings by the Syrian and Russian forces in Syria where the death toll to date runs to almost 500,000 people and millions displaced seen only to be a statistic now and not a tragedy. Daily reports from The Yemen of killings of hundreds of children. But building 176 houses is a far more important story to tell.

Clearly there is a thought process around this kind of journalism, why would Israel feature so prominently in the face of the real tragedies of the region. It seems pretty obvious that this sensationalist vilification of Israel is a smoke screen for what is actually happening in the Middle East. Deflecting negative reports from Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Pakistan is simply a cover up for averting attention away from these real human tragedies of the Arab World and sensationalize building of houses in disputed territory must speak volumes for the intention of this kind of journalism.

Neither China’s occupation of Tibet, Turkey’s occupation of half of Cyprus, or the Russian occupation of Crimea and Ukraine receives even a one liner but Israel is constantly featured in the headlines for its occupation – and occupation we would all like to see an end of and what has been on offer to the Palestinians on three different occasions but refused – why? Because the Palestinians want to remain the eternal victim – it’s a ruse to try to destroy the only Jewish State – but as all other Arab initiatives to try to destroy Israel this will also fall flat and Israel will continue to flourish and thrive

The Stars report states that Israel is illegally occupying territory that it annexed after the Six Day war – but the report doesn’t tell us that this land was illegally annexed by Jordan which it captured from Israel in 1948. Putting history in context would be the more honest way of reporting about this troubled region.

Monessa Shapiro to The Pretoria News

A number of points from Dr Hassim’s lengthy denunciation of Victor Gordon’s letter need to be clarified.

The State of Israel came into being, not through war, but through a legal United Nations Resolution – Resolution 181.   There would not have been war nor a single Arab or Jewish death had the Arabs accepted this resolution which partitioned the remaining part of Palestine (Transjordan had already been formed from the land East of the Jordan) into a land for the Jews and a land for the Arabs.  The Jews accepted this partition.  The Arabs did not.  Over 6000 Israelis died in this war, 1% of the population at the time – equivalent to 560,000 South Africans.

Irrefutable evidence came to the fore in 1998 to prove that Deir Yassin was indeed not a massacre.   Hazem Nusseibeh, editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1947/8, admitted in an interview in 1998 on the BBC series entitled: “Israel and the Arabs: an 80 year conflict”, that on the direct instructions of Dr Hussein Khalidi, the Secretary of the Palestine  Arab Higher committee, he had fabricated the allegations of a massacre and rape at Deir Yassin.  The idea at the time was to persuade the Arab countries to join in the fight for Palestine.  He admitted that this was an enormous mistake because it caused so many Arabs to flee.

Finally, let’s look at figures.  In 1949 there were 159,00 Arabs living in Israel.  Today there are 1,808,000.   Has Dr Hasssim seen any of these 1,808,000 people flee for their lives?  Has he watched spellbound as any of them cross borders, starved, eyes haunted with their traumas?  Has he seen images of mothers suckling new-born infants born on the road after fleeing Israel?  No, he has not. Such images do not, could not exist.   For Arabs live in Israel as free and equal citizens.  Citizens who practice their own religion without fear and who speak their own language with pride. “In a mid-June poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (based in Beit Sahour, the West Bank), 52% of Palestinians living in Israeli-ruled East Jerusalem said they would prefer to be citizens of Israel with equal rights — compared with just 42% who would opt to be citizens of a Palestinian state.” (The Washington Institute, August 21, 2015). These are facts.  Facts that refute Dr Hassim’s manipulation of the truth.  Facts that belie all he has said.

Debbie Mankowitz to the Cape Times

CAPE TIMES
LETTER TO THE EDITOR

REFERS: “Not anti-Semitic” (29 September, 2017)

 Lubinsky comments that it is the Jewish ethos of tikun olam (repairing the world) that spurs her heartfelt yearning to have Israeli academia ousted from the debating halls of the University of Cape Town, and she emphasises this by using every loaded epithet against the state of Israel, without any substantiation.

Of course, the remark “inherently unjust state” ultimately reveals between the lines what Lubinsky and Jews for A Free Palestine just cannot tolerate, and that is, the very notion of a “Jewish” state; this for them is inherently unjust.

Of course, wishing away the state of Israel or singling out the Jewish democratic state of Israel for opprobrium and censure for ensuring its sovereignty and security against an apocalyptic enemy is not unjust. All the while ignoring, for example, many majority Muslim countries where women are chattels with no voice, often murdered on a whim by family members, and where people are jailed and tortured cruelly just for having a dissenting opinion.

This approach is not discriminatory or anti-Semitic in the least, according to Lubinsky’s definition of “repairing the world”. Not to mention the dozens of other countries like North Korea, Syria, Burma etc… where some of the worst atrocities known to man in the 21^st century occur on a daily basis, however, here tikun olam has no applicability.

In contrary, to the above- mentioned ‘examples’ of   political, human and civil rights, Israel, arguably accepts and protects all types of Jews and others, even ones that are critical and dissenting.

But in order not to digress, Lubinsky’s letter states that “universities are places for exchanging ideas etc. …and where all views are debated equally”.

Though, in this instance, it seems for Lubinsky it is only pro-Israel Jews/ Israeli academics (which include Jews, Muslim Arabs and Christians) that are not entitled to have a point of view, unless it is framed by the pro-Palestinian paradigm set out by the BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) movement, and PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel).

So, actually what these two groups would like to do is shut down free debate, alternative views and employ only a single mindset regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, where only their facts will frame debate in the future. Frankly, this smacks of the worst excesses of totalitarianism and fascism, and generally conducive to the thought control tactics of many dictatorships. The University of Cape Town will serve themselves well by considering the implications of this murky, slippery and downhill slope.