Monessa Shapiro responds to Oscar van Heerden

More than two-thirds of Oscar van Heerden’s vitriolic diatribe on Israel is a direct quote from Marc Lamont’s speech at the United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinians.  A speech that resulted in CNN dispensing with the services of Marc Lamont.  CNN, who has never been a friend of Israel, had the integrity to recognize absolute venom presented as fact.  And Oscar van Heerden, like journalists across the world who condemn Israel with absolutely no idea of the truth or reality, hides behind Lamont’s insults and attacks and uses them to mask his own ignorance.

Words are powerful weapons and van Heerden has mastered the art of using them emotively to twist the truth.  Were his opening statement not so wicked it would be ludicrous.   “The Palestinians are being decimated”, he writes.   ‘Decimated’, is defined as one in ten people being killed (Oxford Dictionary), and has today acquired connotations of utter destruction, of a people being totally destroyed.   There were 156,000 Arabs living in Israel in 1948.   Today there are 2,196,000.    In 1967, there were 598,637 Arabs living in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and 356,261 in Gaza when Israel captured these territories from Jordan and Egypt respectively during the defensive Six Day War. According to the CIA World Factbook and the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza amounted to 5,79 million people in 2018.  So much for ‘decimation’ or his suggestion of ‘ethnic cleansing.’

Van Heerden insinuates that Israel uses bombs, rockets and snipers without cause.   He omits to mention the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, that precipitate the use of such weapons, or the underground tunnels dug from Gaza (and now Lebanon) into Israel, all with the aim of murdering as many Israeli men, women and children as possible.   Suicide bombings, car rammings and stabbings of Israelis are to him inconsequential.  To him: ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’   When did the slitting of a 3-month- old sleeping baby’s throat become the legitimate act of a freedom fighter and not the heinous act of a terrorist?   When did the murder of rabbis praying in a synagogue become ‘freedom fighting’?   He describes the protestors in Gaza as peaceful and ignores the fact that Gazan citizens were told to ‘tear out their (Israelis’) hearts’ (Hamas Facebook page) and ‘eat Israeli livers’ (Alaryby.co.uk).

Van Heerden speaks of the Palestinian “Nakba’.  This “Nakba” should never have been.  Had the Arabs accepted their state in 1948 as did the Jews, then they too would today be celebrating 71 years of independence.  Had they agreed to make peace with Israel after the 6 Day War when Israel offered to give up land for peace they would today be celebrating 52 years of independence.  In 2000 and 2008 Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert (Israeli prime-ministers) made offers of peace which could have led to a Palestinian state but both were rejected. In 2005 Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza and removed every Jew, leaving behind an infra-structure worth billions for the Gazans to begin building their state.  By now Gaza should have become the Singapore of the Middle East.

But the Palestinians have never wanted peace or an independent state.  They want as Van Heerden says and the BDS demands: “Palestine from the river to the sea.”   This is not a call for an independent Palestinian state.  It is a call for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.  It is to deny the Jewish people that, that all other peoples of the world enjoy – their own nation state. A tiny state situated on 1/6^th of 1% the land mass of the Arab world.  It is a call, not dissimilar to the call that Jews throughout the ages have heard when they as a people have been targeted for destruction.

Van Heerden believes that a viable Palestinian state is no longer an option.  Sadly, he is perhaps right.   For there cannot be peace and a Palestinian state as long as the Palestinians have as their goal the murder of Jews.   There cannot be peace as long as Palestinian children are indoctrinated to hate Jews.  And there will not be peace until the Palestinian leadership cares more for the welfare of its own people than the destruction of Israel.

Rodney Mazinter to The Star

Sir

Factual: Two Palestinians, taking advantage of Israel’s freedom of association, calmly walked into a crowded Tel Aviv restaurant, ordered food, and then rose from their seats with guns drawn. They injured 20 Israelis – murdered four – before fleeing the scene. (News report).

 While several Israelis fought for their lives, Palestinians celebrated. In Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians lit fireworks, marched in the streets, and handed out sweets. Palestinian leaders praised the murderers as heroes.

 Western media once more reversed the rolls of perpetrator and victim, claiming that Israel is causing frustrations that lead to such acts.

Readers will remember that when Israel, in a gesture for peace, left Gaza, it left behind as a gift to the Palestinians hi-tech greenhouses using cutting-edge water conservation and irrigation techniques earning millions of US dollars in foreign exchange. The first action of the Palestinians was to destroy these facilities and to use the metal to manufacture launchers for rockets.

Israel has helped build over forty desalination plants world-wide, and has given help to over 100 countries including those in the Middle East in upgrading and managing their agricultural and water issues. These are documented and verified. Media outlets seldom include these Israeli initiatives in their coverage.

If the Palestinians were to use the billions they receive to build dams instead of tunnels, educational structures instead of colleges of hatred and indoctrination, water conservation infrastructure instead of rockets and other weaponry, Israel would be the first to respond positively.

Monessa Shapiro to The Argus

How do you respond to a mind as perverse and evil as that of Victor Stevens (When Palestinian equates to criminal)?   In his letter Stevens refers to a remark made that during the Holocaust “it was worse being a Jew than a criminal,” and wonders whether the word Jew could be changed to Palestinian.

Mr. Stevens, never before in the history of mankind, has mass murder on the scale of the Holocaust been committed.   Never before, and not since, has an industry of death been developed with the sole purpose of wiping out an entire people.   The raison d’etre of the Holocaust was to remove every Jew from the face of the earth simply because he was Jewish.

To consider changing the word Jew to Palestinian is to insinuate that Arabs and or Palestinians in Israel are treated as Jews were during the Holocaust.  Where are the gas chambers Mr. Stevens?   Where are the concentration camps?   Where are the mass graves of those shot by firing squads?

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is just that – a conflict between two peoples.  It is not the genocide of one people by a perpetrator, as was the Holocaust.  To ignore the role played by Palestinians in this conflict; to ignore suicide bombings, the car rammings and stabbings of Israeli citizens; to ignore the thousands of rockets fired into Israel and the underground tunnels dug into Israel, all with the aim of murdering as many Israeli men, women and children as possible, is to see Jewish lives and Jewish security as inconsequential.

And because you, Mr. Stevens, quite obviously do see Jewish lives as inconsequential, you are able, with no conscience, to stoop to the level of wondering whether a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor actually learned anything from her experiences.  What exactly would you like her to have learned Mr. Stevens? That Jews cannot rely on anybody for their safety and security.  That the world is permeated with racists who hate for the sake of hating.   And that those who share your ‘ideals’ will do anything to invert the truth, even to the extent of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.

 

Allan Wolman to The Star

In todays’ edition (3 Jan. 2019) of this newspaper Amy Greens comment goes to great lengths to highlight the plight of violence in South Africa. She focuses on a study that found where 99% of every child surveyed in Soweto had been exposed to “extreme forms of violence”, then goes on to compare the violence in our country to that of a war zone.

 Reading further one would think that there is only one other “war zone” in the world – that being Palestine. Your readers are led to believe that the violence experienced by Palestinian children happens in a vacuum and for no reason at all. She makes no mention of terror attacks on Israeli children, neither does she mention that a total of 39 children were killed (in a war zone) in Palestine in 2018 where according to the UN Human Rights organization 85,000 thousand children have been killed in Yemen (also a war zone where Green seems completely oblivious of). Eighty fine THOUSAND children killed reads like a statistic but 39 killed in a war zone reads like a tragedy.

 

The tragedy is that it is the children who are the innocent victims of war on both side of the divide – yes Israeli children have also been traumatized and in many cases killed and maimed for the past 8 years due to the constant barrage of rockets fired from Gaza as well as terror attacks, and that story should also be told.

 

But the suffering of the children of Palestine is more than tragic in that these hapless and helpless victims are the currency that their leadership trades in order to garner world sympathy and of course Amy Green. Interesting how the media delight in focusing their cameras on violence in Palestine but simply ignores the real theaters of extreme violence such as Yemen, Syria, Myanmar and of course some of our African brothers.

 

South Africa experience more than 17,000 murders a year, which equates to more than 400,000 since 1993. In all the wars and terrorist attacks between Israel and her Arabs neighbors since 1920 the death toll on both sides is less 90,000 people – that in almost 100 years of conflict. How disingenuous of Amy Green to aim her focus at only Palestinian victims of violence. Perhaps she harbors another agenda?

Don Krausz to The Star

Dear Sir/Madam,

In today’s Star Azad Essa tells us that Shashi Naidoo was “serenaded” by the

BDS, an organisation hostile to Israel, whose members in South Africa have

been known to attend a concert given by an Israeli  musician and disrupting

it by shouting: “Kill the Jews!” Considering her backing by the BDS I can

see no reason why such a person ought to be allowed to enter the State of

Israel  with the possibility of her giving further offence to its Jewish

population. And Essa in his wisdom sees this as proof that “Israel has

something to hide!” Essa further writes of the “Apartheid or

Annexation wall” that runs through the ‘occupied’ West Bank. Essa writes

about ‘researching things thoroughly.’ If that is his attitude then why did

he not mention the fact that this Security Wall was erected by Israel after

Yasser Arafat’s suicide murderers inflicted 1,200 casualties on Israeli men,

women and children? This reviled wall which is largely a fence reduced that

horrendous figure of mostly civilian casualties BY 90%! Not a word about

this from Essa, the Palestinians or the BDS; do they have something to hide?

Essa further states that Israel “frames” the BDS as bringing harm to Israel.

Quite so. Having your supporters yelling “Kill the Jews!” is harmless

indeed. He goes on to state that the BDS “is only against ZIONIST policies

of racism, occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

So how does he explain the fact that 20% of today’s Israeli population is

not Jewish, mostly Palestinian? Israel is surrounded on three sides by

Moslem countries. If she is as racist and engaged in ethnic cleansing as

Essa suggests then why do these multitudes of Palestinians not flee for

their lives across the border? If she is so racist then why is the

Palestinian population represented proportionately in Israel’s parliament,

the Knesset, and why are there Palestinians members of the Police force, the

Judiciary, and amongst the foremost of Israeli medical staff, a fact that is

fully acknowledged by the Hamas leadership who regularly send their kith and

kin to Israeli hospitals? Why are non-Jews found in the diplomatic corps and

represent Israel in every social sphere at home and abroad? Israel’s deputy

Prime minister, Supreme Court Judges and even heads of army units have been

non Jewish. So much for Essa’s racism!

He and his ilk write of occupation. Jews have lived in the land since the

days of Abraham, at least 3,300 years. Their kingdoms and temples in

Jerusalem lasted for at least 1,000 years. Since the 1880’s Jewish

immigrants arrived, drained the swamps, replanted the vanished forests and

made the desert bloom. They established industries and created opportunities

since then for some 500,000 ARABS TO LEAVE THEIR NEIGHBOURING LANDS and find

employment in Palestine. Now they call themselves Palestinians.

Such so-called Palestinians bewail the occupation of the West Bank. It was

conquered by Jordan in 1948 and reconquered by Israel in 1967. Originally it

was part of the Jewish kingdom and known as Samaria and Judea, hence the

name of Jews. Acccording to international law a territory that has been

conquered remains the possession of the conqueror until a peace treaty is

signed. That is how Egypt regained the Sinai, while Jordan abandoned the

West Bank.

Yes, Essa, Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they

have an exclusive right to self determination, just as every other nation in

this world. At the time that the British Mandate came into being, Arabs

living in the territory had Syrian passports. Do I understand that they are

not happy in the State of Israel?