Rodney Mazinter to The Cape Times

R J Mazinter

Vice Chairman

P.O Box 4176 Cape Town 8000

Tel: 021 – 4389377

Email: mavrod@iafrica.com

Cape Times Editor

Dear Sir        

Shannon Ebrahim, who targets Israel and places that country in the cross-hairs of her ire, chastises a democracy, which Israel’s opponents are not. Libya, Syria, and Iraq are brutal dictatorships, far more than even those of Egypt or Jordan. “Parliaments” in Iran, Morocco, and on the West Bank are not freely democratic. In all of them, candidates are either screened, preselected, or coerced. Daily television and newspapers are subject to restrictions and censorship; “elected” leaders are not open to public audit and censure. Death, not voters, brings changes of rule in the Middle Eastern world.

True freedom and democracy demands some prior traditions of cultural tolerance, widespread literacy, and free markets.

Only in secular Israel can one detect free speech and liberality of custom and religion,  much more so, than say, in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Palestine. Coexistance exists in Israel, very rarely so in the Arab world.

We see in Israel spirited debate, homegrown criticism and differing advocacy from Left and Right.  Israeli newspapers and television reflect a diversity of views, from rabid Zionism to almost suicidal pacifism. There are Arab-Israeli legislators and plenty of Jewish intellectuals who openly write and broadcast in opposition to the particular government of the day, a freedom not available in Palestine. Could a Palestinian, Egyptian, or Syrian novelist write something favorable about Netenyahu, or hostile to Mr. Assad, or a Palestinian produce a satire about President Mahmoud Abas? Such dissidents might suffer stones and fatwas rather than mere ripostes in the letters to the editor of the local newspapers.

We do not see goose-stepping soldiers in Haifa as we do in Baghdad. Nor are there in Tel-Aviv children with plastic bombs strapped to their sides on parade. Nor do Israeli presidents wear plastic sunglasses, tote pistols or have chests full of cheap and tawdry medals.

Wars in the Middle East are not fought to return the West Bank or Gaza, but to finish off what Hitler could not. Israel, be its GNP, free society, or liberal press, is a wound to the psyche, not a physical threat to the Arab world. Israel did not murder the Kurds or Shiites. It does not butcher Islam’s children in Syria. Yet both the victims and the perpetrators of those crimes against Muslims—or to her shame, Ebrahim—answer “Israel” to every problem.

Palestinians should see in its policy toward Israel their future hope, rather than present despair. Israel is based on true democracy that can evolve, rather than on race, religion, or language that more often cannot. If the Palestinians really wished to become accepted, then regular elections, a free press, an open and honest economy, and religious tolerance alone would do what suicide bombers and a duplicitous terrorist leader cannot.

Pat Fisher to the Cape Times

Editor, Cape Times

Shannon Ebrahim’s blinkered view of the Middle East has surfaced once again (Cape Times September 28, UN failing nations in struggle). She blames Israel for the suffering of the Palestinians where any honest assessment will show that the blame lies elsewhere. As has been demonstrated in many countries to our north, Israel has the ability and has demonstrated a  willingness to alleviate hunger, drought, disease and other social ills for the Palestinians and the people of Africa.

Ebrahim, instead of accepting the visit to Israel by the ambassador for his stated and approved purpose, comes down on the side of those who define themselves as saviours of the Palestinians and yet tell us that they are against racism, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, police states and antisemitism.

If so, then there is a political agenda that is surely tailor-made for them to condemn as an antithesis of all they hold dear.

The goal of the Palestinians is the colonial conquest of another people’s country. That country is the State of Israel, the homeland of the Jews legally, historically and emotionally. They are the only people for whom this was ever their national kingdom. Now the Arabs want again to conquer and colonise the same land.

Mahmoud Abbas has explicitly rejected Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. The Palestinian Authority indoctrinates its children to terrorism. The insignia and maps show that the land they demand for a state includes the whole of Israel.

The record shows that Leading Palestinians have said that Palestinian identity was invented purely to negate the Jews’ unique rights to the Land of Israel.

Therefore the anti-racist, anti-colonialist,  anti enthnic-cleansing, pro-democracy Ebrahim, ANC and Cape Times should condemn this Palestinian agenda and not point fingers at the only constitutional democracy in the entire Middle East.