Allan Wolman to the Sunday Independent

Those of us who subscribe to one or another of the Independent newspapers have come to know Shanon Ebrahim for her anti-Israel writing and one could be forgiven to believe that she harbors anti-Semitic sentiments given her continuous castigation of the Jewish State.

But writing in The Sunday Independent (24 June) about the plight of Gazans suffering from cancer and of course bullet wounds inflicted on “unarmed protesters who are exercising their right to resist unlawful occupation”, she is really stretching her imagination a bit far. Firstly, those protesters were not peaceful, but trying to invade Israel and for what purpose she wouldn’t admit. Secondly, Gaza is not occupied and hasn’t been since 2005, again something she wouldn’t reduce to print.

However, its Ebrahim’s discussion with a doctor based in Beirut (some fair distance from Gaza) who describes the plight of cancer sufferers seeking medical attention – not in hospitals in Gaza but in Israel. Just one year ago I was diagnosed with cancer and decided to travel to Israel for surgery. In both my ICU and recovery ward in a hospital near Tel Aviv there were as many Arab patients as Jews – some of those Arabs were from the West Bank as well as Gaza. The majority of nurses tending us patients were mostly Arabs who I may add provided a world class caring service to all the patients equally. In other words, Ms. Ebrahim equal care to all regardless of religion or origin.

Whilst some hospitals in Gaza may experience shortage of medications, surely Shannon has read the reports in the newspapers she writes for that very recently a convoy of aid including vital medical supplies shipped from Israel was turned away and prohibited from entering Gaza to discharge their precious cargo – So who is to blame for the shortage of vital medical supplies to hospitals in Gaza. During the 2014 Gaza war I was hosted by the medical director of Barzalai Hospital in Ashkelon where both Israelis and Arab patients are treated sharing the same wards and same facilities. The doctors at this hospital were in daily contact with doctors in Gaza exchanging critical data that saved many lives – Ms. Ebrahim don’t tell us you are not aware of the medical collaboration between practitioners in Gaza and Israel

Perhaps Ebrahim would also comment on why given the animosity of Gazans together with the Hamas charter which urges the killing of Jews and destruction of Israel, should these sworn enemies of Israel seek medical care in the country they want to destroy?  At the same time perhaps, she would also comment on the fact that shortly after the 2014 war a donor conference raised $5bn for the reconstruction and redevelopment of Gaza in the aftermath of that war. Where has all this money gone? My Guess – construction of those terror tunnels she writes about. 

Monessa Shapiro responds to Shannon Ebrahim

How right Shannon Ebrahim is.   We must weep for the people of Gaza.  They are a people under daily siege with no reprieve.  And yes, those responsible for these crimes should be tried in the International Criminal Court.

And yet she is so very wrong.   In 2005, with great pain, Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, removed every Jew from Gaza making the territory Judenfrei for the Gazans living there.  The Jews left behind an infrastructure, worth billions, for the citizens of Gaza, in order that they should begin building their own state.   There was no blockade.   Only when Hamas was voted in and rockets, in their thousands, began falling on Israel was a blockade implemented.

What Sharon could not have known and what the world still does not understand is that Hamas has no intention of building a state for its people.   Gaza is for it, but a path to the attainment of its ultimate goal – the destruction of Israel.  When rockets aimed at murdering as many Israeli men, women and children as possible, failed in their purpose due to Israeli drones, it resorted to building underground tunnels into Israel in order to carry out its genocidal pursuits.   This too failed because Israel has discovered a means of detecting and destroying tunnels.   Enter the “Great March of Return.”  Thousands of people marched on the border, with the intent of breaking it down in order to kidnap and murder Israelis, or as the Hamas Facebook page puts it “tear out their hearts” and “eat Israeli livers,” (alarby.co.uk on March 30^th).  Hamas Political Bureau spokesman, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Y.netnews.com: “On Friday we stopped at the border, next time we don’t know where the border will be.” On May,14^ththe Hamas Facebook page exhorted Palestinians “ …please (to) act in accordance with the demand to bring a knife or a gun, to hide them under their clothes and not use them except where there is need to capture residents of Israel.”  Armed with maps of nearby Israeli villagers, petrol bombs, burning kites and IEDs, protestors in their thousands advanced on the fence.  They burnt tyres in order to create smoke screens thus hindering visibility so as to enable them to cut the fence.

But Ebrahim chooses to disregard who and what Hamas is.  In so doing, she is guilty of penning wicked untruths, devoid of any context.  But more importantly, by aligning herself with Hamas, she becomes complicit in its total indifference to the plight of the Gazan civilians.  And certainly, she and those of her ilk bear major responsibility for the ongoing violence and perpetuation of the conflict.

Allan Wolman to The Mercury

Reading what Suhail Ebrahim wrote on this newspaper (21 June) when using words like “repression, institutionalized discrimination, systematic violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law – unlawful killing, forced displacement, abusive detention” etc., one could be excused for thinking he is writing about Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and others. The death toll in Syria is running at over 500,000 people including thousands of children from barrel bombing schools and hospitals in Aleppo, Homs and other centers. Almost as many killed in Yemen where the U.N. has described that situation there as the worst humanitarian crisis in 50 years. Then there is Libya, Iraq and the migrant tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea and Myanmar where the numbers also run into the hundreds of thousands.

But no, this one-eyed writer is writing about the irresponsible and illegal storming by hordes of Palestinians rioters trying to break down an international barrier and invade Israeli territory with the aim of killing and maiming as many Jews as possible

Ebrahim tells us that 13000 “protesters” have been hospitalized in Gaza (a statistic not corroborated by any independent agency, but only by the Palestinian Health Authority – and can one really believe that source?) He then touches on the issue to Shashi Naidoo who was forced to “apologize” under threats of death. One can only assume that these threats emanated from the likes of the BDS or their supporters, given the BDS’s record of violence and intimidation.

Its time that Ebrahim and his ilk get real and ask themselves why the situation in Gaza and the West bank is what it is, and face the truth about the intransigent and corrupt Palestinian leadership who are denying their people a just and vibrant state of their own. Stop blaming Israel for the failure of the Palestinians to realize their dream of a state – they have only themselves to blame for where they find themselves today, and anyone versed in the history of the region would arrive at the same conclusion.

Monessa Shapiro re Shashi Naidoo

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” So said Evelyn Beatrice Hall in 1906 in The Friends of Voltaire.  But in the topsy-turvy world in which we live this sentiment has become out-dated, out-moded.   And certainly as of 20th June in South Africa it is no more.

For on that day Shashi Naidoo, a prominent young South African sat at a press conference apologizing for a recent social media post, and expressing her ardent desire to change and learn.   Yes, this did concern the Israel/Palestine conflict and yes, Shashi’s posting was pro-Israel and anti-Hamas.  And that in South Africa is an unpopular stance to adopt.

But quite honestly the content of her post is irrelevant.   What is relevant and what no-one gets, what no-one understands, from the man-in-the-street, to journalists and talk-show hosts is that the issue at stake here was not Shashi’s opinion but rather that hallowed value that we as South Africans so cherish – freedom of expression.   Chapter 2 of our constitution, paragraph 16(1) reads: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression.  It follows on paragraph 15(1) where it is stated that “Everyone has the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion.”

And within minutes of Shashi’s post appearing she was denied her right to think freely, to have an opinion of her own and to express that opinion.   Death threats ensued as did horrific comments and the withdrawal of many of her business sponsors.  Yesterday, we watched, as caught up in the tentacles of those who abhor any form of freedom of expression, unless that expression tows the party line, she gave all the right answers.

But for me, the questions asked her at the press conference were as disturbing as the fact that she was being curtailed from having an opinion.   Not one journalist thought (or were they too afraid) to suggest that her freedom of thought and expression was being infringed upon.   Not one journalist found it strange that within 24 hours such an about-turn could occur, and not one journalist saw this as an ominous foreboding of our future as free-thinking South Africans.

On Radio 702, the talk-show host, Azania Mosaka, commented, when it was suggested to her by a listener that this was an infringement of free speech, that free speech must also be responsible.   And so we understand  that  ‘responsible’ for her implies that which is acceptable, that which is popular?  But this negates the concept, enshrined in our constitution, of freedom to an opinion.

George Orwell once said: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”  Four days ago South Africans heard something they did not want to hear.   They answered loudly and clearly and with their answer, we all lost our liberty.

 

An Open Letter to Shashi Naidoo by Victor Gordon

An Open Letter to Shashi Naidoo

Poor, poor Shashi, what a mess you’ve landed yourself in by doing the unthinkable – standing up for Israel in a country and climate that is obsessed with defaming her at every opportunity.

(At the last session of the UN Human Rights Council, 5 resolutions were adopted against Israel, against 3 for the rest of the world COMBINED!  Does that tell you something?)

And, to make things even worse, Sash, you have allowed yourself to be gathered beneath the loving wing of BDS, led by Prof. Farid Essak and Muhammed Desai  who regard someone like you as manna from heaven.

Following the emotive, self-flagellating apology that you offered on national television, who would question your tearful explanation that you were simply the victim of your own folly by impulsively cutting and pasting a pro-Israel screed  on your phone, prior to despatching it into the unforgiving ether.

Public pronouncements can be dangerous, as so many have learned. Gareth Cliff took a similar stance some weeks ago when he deigned to question some of the ridiculous claims made against Israel, but  Shashi, he at least had the courage of his convictions, understood the dynamics  and stood by his beliefs. That takes guts.

But then how can you, a new arrival to the fray, be expected to realise the power and influence of an organization like BDS which has managed to earn acceptance by the ANC, the EFF, The World Council of Churches  and a host of other disingenuous non-thinkers who blindly follow their antipathy of Israel under the guise of anti-Zionism, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism and, best of all, “Apartheid Israel”.

In fact, the only “anti-“ that does unquestioningly apply  is “anti-Semitism”.  When BDS deny this charge Shashi,  remind them of their chant, “Kill the Jew” some years ago at a concert by a visiting Israeli jazz group at Wits University.

As you’re travelling to “Palestine” under the guidance of BDS (who will undoubtedly ensure that you go exactly where they wish you to go, see exactly what they wish you to see and hear exactly what they wish you to hear), I urge you to insist that you spend some time in Israel itself to determine how, when and where the Jewish state practises apartheid.

I assure you that if you expect to experience it in any form at all, you will be deeply disappointed.  All you need do is visit the Knesset (Parliament ) to witness 12 Arab MP’s representing 5 Arab parties.

Please ask them, Shashi,  why Israel has been in a state of war and under attack (in one form or another) every single day since its birth in May 1948; why all three offers of peace and of an independent Palestinian state has been turned down over the years, and why, despite sometimes seeming to agree to the formation of a two-state solution, school children are taught to hate Israel, hate Jews and adopt the mantra that a future Palestinian state will stretch “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea (i.e. “no Israel).

To reach the truth, Shashi, will take some courage but you are quite obviously a lot more than a pretty face.  I urge you to seek it.

Allan Wolman to Business Day

Terry Crawford-Browne (C-B) writes in this newspaper that Israeli arms industry is a threat to world peace. The real threat to world peace are people of C-B’s ilk who fan the flames of hatred – hatred against only one people!

 Placing the blame of all the worlds problems on Israel (read Jews) is a blood libel as old as history itself and it’s the likes of C-B who perpetuates this and sees only evil when looking at a Jew as the only villain in this complex world.

 Israel is not the only country selling arms to Myanmar and other countries. Perhaps C-B need look at Russia, China amongst others whose arms sales dwarf that of Israel – and someone who boasts to be an expert on the arms industry would know this better than most but would never reduce this to print as it would negate his theories about the Jews.

 But it’s the miracle called Israel that really gets up C-B’s nose. In a mere 70 years Israel has developed into not only the regional economic, industrial and military power but created a free society for all its inhabitants who enjoy every right and privilege of the democracy that it is. In a mere 70 years which is a blink of an eye in the life of a nation, Israel has surpassed its Arab neighbors in every field of endeavor who remain in a quagmire of despotic and corrupt leadership instead of advancing with the times.

Monessa Shapiro to The Star

In your editorial of Friday, June 8^th ,’Finding our Moral Voice’, you wrote of the good work South Africa could and should do on the Security Council.  And then, on the international front, you wrote of but one task for the government:  that of protecting Gazans who ‘are being massacred’ by Israelis.

 A ‘massacre’ in the lexicon of most people is the indiscriminate slaughter of fellow human beings.   Certainly, in terms of the “Great March of Return” this has not been the case.  Dr Salah Al-Bardawil, a senior Hamas official, announced on May 16th in a television interview  that of the 62 people killed on the 14^th , 50 belonged to Hamas.   Islamic Jihad claimed that a further 3 belonged to them.  So, 53 out of 62 people killed were known combatants – or 83%.  There were 40,000 people storming the border fence that day, armed with knives and guns, Molotov cocktails and IEDs, all with the intention of breaking down the fence and kidnapping and murdering as many Israelis as possible.   They all had maps of nearby Israeli villages to assist them once across the fence.  So you must agree that honest, objective journalism would not term the killing of 62 people out of 40,000, 53 of whom are combatants a “massacre”?

The Citizen carried an article on 12 June, ‘Nearly 1 million newly displaced in war’ in which it describes the atrocities in Syria.   More than 920,000 people have been displaced in Syria in the first 4 months of 2018 alone.  More than 350,000 people have been killed since the war erupted in 2011.   According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights 3,404 civilians have been killed since the beginning of 2018 and 1,241 in the month of March alone.   According to Wikipedia, with data taken from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in 2018 alone, the following massacres took place: Syrian government forces killed 213 civilians in Eastern Ghouta between the 4^th and 8^th February.  This included 54 children and 41 women.   417 civilians, including 96 children, were killed in Eastern Ghouta, in 4 days from the 18^th February.  On 7 April, at least 70 people were killed in a chemical attack in Dhouma.

Objective journalists, journalists of integrity implore a government to look at all massacres.  They do not choose one conflict, a very real conflict, and turn it into a massacre for the sake of political expediency and readership popularity.

Monessa Shapiro to the media

That Aayesha J. Soni, as representative of the Media Review Network, touts the lies that she does I understand.   It is her mission to present Hamas and the Gazan Palestinians as innocent victims and the Israelis as aggressive oppressors.   But for your newspaper to give such wide coverage to this deceit is both incomprehensible and inconceivable.  For the words of Hamas, of which even the most ignorant among us are now aware, belie all that she has said.

 Hamas is a known terrorist organization, listed as such by the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the EU, Egypt and Israel.  Its use of human shields as a weapon of war has long been recognized.  If it cannot defeat Israel on the battlefield then it needs to defeat it in the eyes of the world, and no better way than a body-pile of dead women and children.  In as far back as 2008 Fathi Hammad, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said: “For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land.  The elderly excel at this and so do the miyahideen and the children.  This is why they have formed human shields of the women and the children, the elderly and the miyahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine.  It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: we desire death like you desire life.” (Al-Aqsa TV Feb 29,2008)

 Hamas has as its goal the destruction of the State of Israel. In its attempt to destroy Israel it has fired thousands of rockets into the country, built underground tunnels from Gaza into Israel, sent suicide bombers into Israel and committed endless acts of terror against Israelis, all with the aim of murdering as many Jews as possible.  In this ‘Great March of Return’   Hamas  vowed to break down the border fence between Gaza and Israel.  Its objective was to kidnap and murder  Israeli citizens, or as its Facebook page put it: “tear out their hearts.”   As reported in Alaryby.co.uk on March 30^th, Gazan citizens were told: “if you are hungry, eat Israeli livers.”  Hamas Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, is reported onYNetnews.com to have said: “On Friday we stopped at the border, next time we don’t know where the border will be.”  And Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, said in Ramallah News that the riots will continue “until the border is erased.”  In terms of the march on May,14^th Hamas Facebook page gave the following instructions: “The demonstrators are requested to please act in accordance with the demand to bring a knife or a gun, to hide them under their clothes and not use them except where there is need to capture residents of Israel.”  Armed with maps of nearby Israeli villagers, petrol bombs, burning kites and IEDs protestors in their thousands advanced on the fence. They burnt tyres in order to create smoke screens thus hindering visibility so as to enable them to cut the fence.

 By May 16, Dr Salah Al-Bardawil, a senior Hamas official admitted in a television interview that of the 62 people killed on the 14^th 50 belonged to Hamas.   Islamic Jihad claimed that a further 3 belonged to them.  So 53 out of 62 people killed were known terrorists.   I challenge Soni and your newspaper to find another army in the world that, when faced with 40,000 people trying to tear down its border fence, shoots so accurately that 83% of those killed are in actual fact fighters.

 The death of a 21 year old, any 21 year old is tragic.   So too the death of a paramedic.   And while there are conventions that guarantee the movement and freedom of medical personal on the battle field all that do this kind of work know that they are at risk.  For as Bassam Tawil wrote in the Gatestone Institute on April 2,2018 : The March of Return is “part of Palestinian Jihad (holy war) to eliminate Israel.  (It is) yet another phase in the Palestinian attempt to wipe out the presence of Israel in the Middle East, not about any blockade.”  No army can be accused of ‘being on a slippery slope of amorality’ if its intention is to protect its citizens and country from annihilation.

Rodney Mazinter to The Mercury

Dear Sir

Nasrine Akoob (Mercury 6 June 2018) in totally unsubstantiated statements makes accusations against Israel that don’t bear scrutiny and amount to fake news and propaganda.

This latest foray into fiction revolves around water. Without giving facts nor producing an iota of evidence Akoob raises accusations about Israel’s water policies. Here are the facts:

The Mountain Aquifer is a shared water source for Israelis and Palestinians according to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The allocation of water to the two sides from the Mountain Aquifer is conducted according to Article 40 of the Civil Annex to the Interim Agreement. Although no follow-up agreement was reached in 2000 and therefore the ‘interim period’ still applies, Israel follows the guidelines pertaining to ‘future needs’, making more water available for the Palestinian side.

According to the agreement Palestinians are entitled to 196 million cubic metres (MCM) of self-extracted water per year, plus an additional 31 MCM that Israel needs to actively supply from its own water and with its own infrastructure. Combined, the Agreement states that the Palestinians in the West Bank are entitled to an availability of 227 MCM of water.

West Bank Palestinians have access to over 248 MCM of fresh natural water. This is because Israel supplies an extra 21 MCM beyond its obligation. Adding to this, approximately 17MCM of water is extracted through unapproved wells from the Northern and Western Basins, against the Interim Agreement and at Israel’s expense.

Fortune 100 hails the “water engineering alchemy” that has allowed Israel to rise to no. 2 in the Change The World list. Fortune was especially impressed by Israel’s global scale (plants in over 40 countries), and innovations that include a wide range of energy- and cost-efficient desalination processes in which the West Bank and Gaza share..

Allan Wolman to The Herald

Suthentira Govender tell us that Israel is an apartheid state. Israel is no more an apartheid state than almost every free nation in the western world. For substantiation of this fact all the reader need do is a quick Google check on Freedom House – an NGO that monitors democracy, political freedom and human rights and they will discover that Israel ranks with the most democratic and free countries of the world. Any intelligent person reading what Govender has to say will immediately see through the lie that she tries so hard to peddle.

But here we have reverse apartheid / racism. The Arab world some 70 years ago was full of Jews. Algeria had 140,000 Jews, Egypt 75,000 Jews, Iraq had over 150,000 Jews, Syria, Lebanon Jordan, Morocco had tens of thousands of Jews. Where are all the Jews of the Middle East? Simple answer – expelled only because they were Jews and today hardly a Jew living in any of these Arab states – now who is practicing apartheid?

The apartheid canard is bandied about in Israel’s face where in practice that is the only country in the entire region where Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bahai’s and Jews all enjoy the very same rights and occupy important and highly placed positions in all aspects of civil society. Perhaps the writer can name one other country in the region that can boast the same? Perhaps the writer can name one other country in the region with a free and independent press.

If apartheid Israel must be held accountable for what Govender calls “genocide” surely to be consistent shouldn’t Syria, Yemen, Myanmar also be held accountable and surely Mandla and the others quoted should call for these ambassadors’ removal from our country as well. After all Syria has bombed schools and hospitals with barrel bombs and chemical weapons killing over half a million people including thousands of children – why only Israel?