Rodney Mazinter to The Cape Argus

Dear Sir

Ziyaad Ebrahim Patel writes (Argus 11 December) that the responsibilty for the conflict in Gaza is on Israel.

Col Richard Kemp CBE testified before the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, denying allegations that Israel engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kemp based his assessment on publicly available information from both sides, press reports and his 30-year experience of counter-terrorism operations and planning. He said: “In this current operation, Hamas is repeating old tactics of placing civilians in the line of fire and is responsible for their lives. At the same time, it deliberately fires missiles at the Israeli civilian population, without provocation and with no just cause.”

He stated: “I consider myself as having an objective view of what’s happening over there. I commanded British troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans and Northern Ireland, and served with NATO and the UN. I have come straight from the Gaza front line to share my assessment. Based on what I observed I can say that everything we have just heard is a complete distortion of the truth. The truth is that Hamas, a terrorist organisation that seeks the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews everywhere deliberately caused over 60 of its own people to get killed. They sent thousands of indoctrinated civilians to the front line as human shields for terrorists trying to break through the border and invade Israel. Hamas’s goal, in its own words, is ‘blood in the path of Jihad’.”

Self-satisfied commentators say Israel should have behaved differently. To them I say, how would we respond if a Jihadist terror group sent thousands to flood our borders, and gunmen to massacre our communities? The failure to admit that Hamas is responsible for every drop of blood spilt on the Gaza border encourages their violence and use of human shields. It makes the world complicit in further bloodshed.

Rodney Mazinter on Saeb Erekat

It was like a breath of fresh air to see Tim Sebastian hold Saeb Erekat’s feet to the fire and to see the Palestinian’s official negotiator squirm when confronted by facts. I think Sebastian lost an opportunity to tackle Erekat on the Palestinian’s unwillingness to negotiatiate a peace deal with Israel.

There exist clauses in international law that clearly support Israel’s continued control over areas seized in defensive wars; it is officialy documented that Judea and Samaria were meant to be part of Israel according to the U.N.’s original partition plan; this plan can be changed only by direct negotiation with Israel. Despite their attempts to paint themselves as victims, the Palestinians have constantly rejected opportunities to negotiate with Israel and, truth be told, the Palestinians have turned down numerous offers to have their own country. Seventy years of telling the truth hasn’t changed the minds of the anti-Israel lobbyists, and there is little chance of a sudden mind-change.

It’s not simple ignorance that leads to the acusation that the Israeli presence or activities in Judea and Samaria are “war crimes.”  The only war crimes taking place in that part of the world are the indiscriminate firing of rockets and other incendiary devices into Israeli territory, the cold-blooded murder of civilians at work or crossing the street, building tunnels through which terrorists attempt to access Israeli villages, glorifying the killers and financially rewarding their families, hiding armaments and munitions in hospitals and schools, exposing women and children to potential harm for propaganda purposes, and finally, fabricating and distorting history to justify land claims.

If people truly wanted to help the Palestinians, they would be lobbying for a change in Palestinian leadership and they would withhold any financial transfers until the Palestinians confront and overcome their nihilistic and Jew-hating psychosis.  Instead, they reinforce the fictitious Palestinian narrative and ensure that peace will be even more distant.

Monessa Shapiro on Anti-Semitism

Volumes have been written about and the greatest minds have debated, analysed, studied and sought to understand the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.  According to Patel there is a simple answer: the state of Israel and her policies. 

But the state of Israel was established in 1948.   And yet 4 – 8 years prior to this Hitler was marching Jews to the gas chambers.  In fact, he marched some 6,000,000 of them.  And this without the state of Israel.   And the state of Israel did not exist during the Spanish Inquisition or during the Chmelnitzky massacres in Eastern Europe in 1648-49.  There was no Israel when Jews were expelled from France, Spain or Portugal, or during the Kiev pogroms of 1919 when approximately 70,000 Jews were massacred. And in the Middle East, long before the establishment of the state of Israel, Jews were the victims of innumerable massacres:  the Tiberius massacre of 1938, the Hebron massacre of 1929, the massacre in 1830 of the Jews of Tabriz and Baghdad.  I could go on and on.  From antiquity to the present, Jews have been expelled from their countries of birth, beaten, tortured or murdered simply because they were Jewish.  Jews have been hated because they were different, and hated when they tried to fit in.   They were hated as communists but hated too as capitalists.  In fact Patel would do well to study the following link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism which details anti – Semitic acts from antiquity through to the present.

Today advocates for human rights detest racism of any kind, and will avow that they could never be anti-Semites.   To hate the Jew is today politically incorrect, yet this hatred has not abated.   As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks says, it has instead mutated into a hatred for the nation state of the Jewish people.   People like Patel can hate the Jewish state, blame it for all evils, and wish for its non-existence while still maintaining an aura of human rights.  But to deny the Jewish people their nation state; that, that is granted to every other people, or to hold that one nation state to a higher standard than all the other countries of the world, is once again to single out the Jewish people for different treatment.  And that, Mr Patel, constitutes pure and unadulterated anti-Semitism.

Rodney Mazinter to The Cape Times

Dear Sir

The unprincipled feting of Hamas by South Africa and renaming streets after a terrorist are appalling events. Can such behaviour be justified?  There exist many cases where the ANC is happily supporting trade with countries that have forcibly confiscated territories of their neighbours.

There exist clauses in international law that clearly support Israel’s continued control over areas seized in defensive wars; it is officialy documented that Judea and Samaria were meant to be part of Israel according to the U.N.’s original partition plan; despite their attempts to paint them as victims, the Palestinians have constantly rejected opportunities to negotiate with Israel and, truth be told, the Palestinians have turned down numerous offers to have their own country. Seventy years of telling the truth hasn’t changed the minds of the anti-Israel lobbyists, and there is little chance of a sudden mind-change.

It’s not simple ignorance that leads to the acusation that the Israeli presence or activities in Judea and Samaria are “war crimes.”  The only war crimes taking place in that part of the world are the indiscriminate firing of rockets and other incendiary devices into Israeli territory, the cold-blooded murder of civilians at work or crossing the street, building tunnels through which terrorists attempt to access Israeli villages, glorifying the killers and financially rewarding their families, hiding armaments and munitions in hospitals and schools, exposing women and children to potential harm for propaganda purposes, and finally, fabricating and distorting history to justify land claims.

If people truly wanted to help the Palestinians, they would be lobbying for a change in Palestinian leadership and they would withhold any financial transfers until the Palestinians confront and overcome their nihilistic and Jew-hating psychosis.  Instead, they reinforce the fictitious Palestinian narrative and ensure that peace will be even more distant.

Rodney Mazinter to The Mercury

Dear Sir

Surely on even a cursory reflection it must be clear that to side with Israel’s enemies is completely inconsistent with the professed values of those who proudly espouse democracy and freedom. (The Mercury, 7 December: Honour Madiba by supporting Palestine.) Just about every value Saif Soofie claims to uphold in the spirit of Mandela, Israel upholds, and its enemies do not.

Madiba spoke about his passion for democracy (“power to the people”). Yet it is Israel that is a fully functioning democracy, as opposed to all of its Arab enemies. First Yasser Arafat, and now Mahamoud Abbas, are precisely the self-aggrandising, corrupt dictator-types that democrats hold in contempt.

Flip through the pages of any Western newspaper, and you will find evidence of particular concern for women’s rights. Yet it is Israel that has as highly developed a feminist movement as that of any Western country. At the same time, the state of women’s rights among Israel’s enemies is perhaps the lowest in the world.

The Western media’s current pre-occupation is with gay rights. Yet it is Israel that has annual gay pride days, while Egypt and other Arab countries arrest homosexuals.

It is Israel that has an independent and highly liberal judiciary. It is Israel that has in its commitment to freedom of information a vigorous press that tolerates and encourages debate. Israel’s enemies have none of this.

In Israel there is no state discrimination of minorities. Everyone is entitled to live, play and work wherever they choose. It is Israel’s enemies that practice rigid apartheid.

I strongly suspect that the pseudo progressivists do not care about women, independent judiciaries, minorities, democracy, gays, discrimination, or almost anything else for which it marches. I have never read of one single march against the insulting, sometimes barbaric, treatment of Afghanistan’s, northern Nigeria’s or Saudi Arabia’s women.

I am not competent to know the reason for this strange phenomenon but I can speculate: I believe that there is a conspiracy, perhaps unstated but real nevertheless, that seeks to overthrow Western, especially Judeo-Christian and capitalist, values.

Saif Soofie seems to be in the vanguard of this conspiracy.

Allan Wolman to The Citizen

A conference entitled “Recognition, Repatriation, Reconciliation: The Light and Shadow of Historical Trauma” to be held at Stellenbosch in early December have a number of Pro-Palestinian delegates calling for Israeli academics attending to be barred from the conference on the grounds of the usual trumped up Israeli abuse of Palestinian human rights.

For these so called “academics” to make such calls must rate as hypocrisy of the highest order. Surely these scholars are more than aware of the dismal state of our education in this country where a mere trickle of learners ever finish their basic primary education, thus condemning them to a life of mediocrity with no hope of a decent future. But they focus on the plight of the Palestinians where almost every child receives an education albeit nurtured on a diet of hatred for the Jewish people and taught that Jews are but a sub-specie of the human race. But more hypocritical is that they single Israel out for human rights abuses where more than 85,000 children in the Yemen have been mercilessly slaughter in that troubled country. Neither have they mentioned the plight of the children of Syria and other Arab countries.

CNN are currently running an expose of anti-Semitism in Europe and other parts of the world where the oldest of all hatreds have reared its ugly head again – and by this one-sided targeting of Israel where every child be, they Jew or Arab enjoy amongst the highest standard of education in the world. And that applies to both boys and GIRLS where in most Arab countries girl’s education must leave gaping questions for these “academics”.

It is blatantly clear that the likes of Roshan Dadoo, Zackie Achmat and company all well known for their hatred of the Jewish State, and as CNN demonstrates, amounts to hatred of the Jews will use any forum, even an academic conference to manifest their anti-Semitic sentiments. Surely the same calls that they make for Israeli academics to be barred should be extended to other real human rights abusers of which there are many attending this farcical conference.

Allan Wolman to The Star

A feature about two young Palestinian’s currently visiting our country was published in this newspaper (30 Nov.) and being hosted by “the Embassy of the State of Palestine” – to the best of my knowledge there is no such State. There is a disputed area called the West Bank which falls under the Palestinian Authority. Our Department of International Relations and Co-operation are also hosting these young people to commemorate the international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Their story is indeed a tragic one if they can be believed as its only their narrative that gets told. But it seems that there is only one side to the story of victims of this conflict. Are there no victims on the other side? Were there no young Israeli’s maimed, injured and yes killed in the hundreds of terror attacks perpetrated against innocent Israeli civilians having been mercilessly bombed in buses, in coffee shops, at wedding receptions and restaurants? Why are such atrocities simply ignored by our Department of International Relations and Co-operation, and the other organizers of this event?

Calls by various ANC politicians, and lobby groups for the downgrading of diplomatic relations with Israel resonate load and clear yet not a word of protest against the carnage in Syria where we maintain full diplomatic relations, not a word of protest against Saudi Arabia who have been bombing little children in school buses where according to the U.N. over 85,000 children have been killed by such merciless bombing by the Saudi’s but never a word of protest at the Saudi’s. What about the Rohinga massacre by Myanmar troops – why are these “humanitarian” groups and our politicians so silent about these human rights violations where the death toll runs into well over half a million people and which eclipse anything that they accuse Israel of?

Whilst this event commemorates the international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people why no such day of solidarity for the Yemeni, Syrian or Rohinga peoples? Simple answer – these humanitarian groups care less about the carnage of upwards of half a million people (including the Palestinians in Syria, Lebanon and other Arab countries) than missing the bus. No, they hide behind the Palestinian question as a façade for their anti-Semitism which as highlighted on CNN has raised its ugly head again