Confusion Over Hamas Visit

Question: Have we or have we not formally invited Hamas to visit South Africa?

Ronnie Kasrils’s recent letter to the Business Day sows more confusion over whether the invite is or is not formal. Last week it was reported that Kasrils had invited Hamas to visit SA. Kasrils subsequently said that the invite was not formal. Two days later he was then quoted in the Jerusalem Post claiming that the invite had been renewed - - this time with the backing of his government.

But Kasrils seems to have backtracked again (although he says he hasn’t).

I have not backtracked on an invitation to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and whether that is implemented remains to be seen. The invitation is based on President Thabo Mbeki’s welcoming statement after the Mecca agreement between Fatah and Hamas and the establishment of a national unity government, which we wholeheartedly support.

Huh? Based on the President's welcoming statement after Mecca? I thought the government formally endorsed the visit only a few days ago?

Update at 16/05/2007
Hamas meets with Kasrils, Rasool and ANC reports the SABC...

The Palestinian organisation Hamas has held talks with Ronnie Kasrils, the intelligence minister, Ebrahim Rasool, the Western Cape premier, and the ANC, a delegation said at the end of a visit to South Africa today. The intelligence ministry could not be reached for comment on the meeting. Earlier this month, Kasrils invited Ismail Haniyeh (of Hamas), the Palestinian prime minister, to visit South Africa, in what would be his first trip outside the Muslim world. "The invitation to (Prime Minister) Haniyeh was confirmed and is now a matter of the correct protocol and practical co-ordination to ensure its speedy implementation," said Mohammed Nazzal, the Hamas senior politburo member. He also said Hamas had no quarrel with the Jewish people - only with Zionists. "(Hamas) makes a distinction between Zionism and Judaism. Hamas has no quarrel with the Jewish people, but rather with the Zionists."

Sure they have no quarrel with the Jewish people. That's why their covenant contains specific and violent references to Jews. (Not that this distinction should even matter.)

Article 16: The Prophet, Allah's prayer and peace be upon him, says: "The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews." (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim). ... Article 20: The Nazism of the Jews targeted both women and children. The terror they spread is directed at everyone. They fight people by destroying their livelihood, stealing their money and trampling their dignity. Their horrible treatment of people is like that of the worst war criminals. Deportation from one's homeland is a form of murder. In the face of such behavior, we must have social solidarity among the people, and we must face the enemy as one body, which, when one of its limbs is in pain, the rest of it reacts with sleeplessness and fever.

Update at 17/05
Read about the significance of Ebrahim Rasool's involvement at Guide to the Perplexed.

Comments

[THE DEAF MYOPIC DICTATOR WITH NO CONCEPT OF POLITICS]

Ronno Einstein, writes in Business Day, regarding his trip to Tehran : "I have reinforced our government’s attempts to get Iran to comply with United Nations resolutions."
Does anyone on this blog believe him??

[Mike]

Anthony, I must congratulate you for your recent spate of letters. All were witty. But the most biting was your sentencing of poor Judge Davis. I guess you took his slogan 'you be the judge' a little too literally.

[THE BLIND MYOPIC DICTATOR WITH NO CONCEPT OF POLITICS]

Mike,
Thanks for your kind words. I am doing my best but it isn't easy
being...

[THE BLIND MYOPIC DICTATOR WITH NO CONCEPT OF POLITICS]

Iqbal Jassatt ( Chairman; Media Review Network) opens his letter (May 15th) with the following: " The general knee-jerk reaction by some of your Jewish readers to Ronnie Kasril"s invitation to Haniyeh is expected." Having written to your paper about this matter, I assume that I am included within Mr Jassatt's "Jewish reader's" category although I am surprised that it is so relevant. I can confirm, for the record, however that both my parents are Jewish and would certainly have been murdered by The Nazis if they had been captured during The Second World War.

[ANTHONY POSNER]

Minister of Intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils, in his letter "Bigotry on Israel" argues that I am "myopic" and "deaf" "with no concept of politics". On previous occasions he has said that I am " a dictator" and "an embittered correspondent". Do your readers think that these insults are really an indication that The Minister of Intelligence is on very shaky ground?

[THE BLIND MYOPIC DICTATOR WITH NO CONCEPT OF POLITICS]

Steve,

A KLAS"SICK" KASRILSPEAK nightmare! Has South Africa/ Ronno Einstein
"implemented" "the invitation"??

[Joel Pollak]

Rasool has long sympathized with Hamas.

From my thesis, "The Kasrils Affair":

On 21 March 2004, a rally of 1000 mostly Muslim protestors was held at the Watsonia sports ground in Athlone, Cape Town to protest against Israel’s “targeted killing” of [Hamas leader Ahmed] Yassin. One of the featured speakers was Ebrahim Rasool, at that time the finance minister for the Western Cape and the provincial leader of the ANC in the province. Rasool’s speech was surprisingly militant. He described Yassin as “one of the greatest inspirations” to Muslims and quoted with approval Yassin’s teaching that “whoever dies, without having fought in the way of Allah or even having desire to fight in the way of Allah, dies on a twing of hypocrisy”. He also prayed that Palestinians “stand up to these enemies and never succumb, that they fight and they fight under a flag of Islam”, and he called on his audience to “face the enemies—they are all over the world”.
Nothing in Rasool’s speech was explicitly antisemitic. Several of the speakers that followed Rasool, however, made remarks that were clearly and explicitly antisemitic. One Muslim cleric, for example, claimed that Jews had “murdered and killed most of the prophets of God”. Citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he claimed that Jews had established “cinemas, bioscopes around the world to corrupt the gentiles”. Another speaker referred to Israel as “the filthy Jewish nation” and instructed his audience: “Do not go into any agreements with Jews, they are a filthy people”. [Rasool made no comment, correction or apology and refused to do so, when invited publicly to do so, thereafter.]

[Mike]

Joel, I actually Recall a debate in the Jewish Report on Rasool. Isnt he a good friend of the Board?

[Gary]

Pierre, Hamas is a terrorist organization whose stated goal is the anihilation of all Jews in the Holy Land.
Kasrils and Not In My Name stand by Hamas openly.
The meaning of Israel is clear. The Jew has experienced too much death, and a portion of the Jewish people decided that they would die quietly no more (especially after Hitler's Holocaust). So it is: and no argument, no clever political talk, no logic and no parading of right and wrong can change this fact.The Jews returned to Israel because it was their ancient land. From 1810 onwards, Jews in the Land of Israel have been murdered by Arabs. The pious Jews of Safed, who would raise no hand in their defense, were robbed and murdered and burned out again and again by Arabs - as where the Jews in Jerusalem and Tiberias. Bedouin Arabs passed through Land of Israel at will-and robbed and killed Jews for profit. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Arab feudal lords in the Land of Israel organized pogroms precisely as the Tsar had organized pogroms.

In 1920 Jews where massacred by Arabs in Jerusalem, in 1921 in Jaffa and in 1929 in Hebron. Thousands of Jews where murdered in 1936 to 1939 in the Nazi inspired Arab Revolt. Since 1948 Arabs have launched wars against Israel to try to drive Jews into the sea and since Arafat launched the latest war in 2000, after rejecting a peace deal, thousands of Jewish men women and children have died in Israel by bomb, bullet and knife. Jews will never again be put into a position where they can be subjected to another Holocaust (particularly in the ancient Jewish homeland.
If you believe the use of the word terror by the Palestinazis is a fantasy maybe you should take a look at this.
http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2006/08/123-israeli-children-killed-by.html

["THE DEAF BLIND DICTATOR WITH NO CONCEPT OF POLITICS"]

Check out today's article in Business Day re South Africa's conflict
> resolution role in the Middle East. It includes an interesting comment
> that South Africa's moral authority has been damaged by walking out on
> the "holocaust denial" UN resolution.
>
> I wonder whether South Africa's "moral authority" has been increased
> by Ronno Einstein's ( Minister of "Intelligence") constant use of the
> Israeli / Nazi analogy? Perhaps this is something that The South
> African Human Rights Commission could consider?

["THE DEAF BLIND DICTATOR WITH NO CONCEPT OF POLITICS"]

In the light of the Minister of Intelligence's "Invitation" to Haniyeh, could Ronnie Kasrils now extend his ANC post-apartheid conflict resolution skills to the civil war in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah?

[Gary]

The same skills he displayed defusing the standoff between Ciskei police and ANC/SACP marchers in Bisho in 1992?

[Mike]

There is much more to come on this story ... stay tuned!

[Joel Pollak]

Hi Mike

The question is whether Rasool is a good friend of the Board, or the Board is a good friend of Rasool. Actually, I think we now know the answer.

Joel