This is part of the South Africa Media summary for June. The summary starts here.
The Star
The month started off with Hizbollah in Lebanon winning the elections with a landslide victory. (This was reported but is not really the case. The Lebanese opposition, being the forces that brought about the anti Syrian “Cedar Revolution” in February 2005 which brought about the Syrian withdrawal, won the election. The winners were led by Saad al-din Hariri, son of murdered former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri. The new PM is Fouad Siniora and he will oversee a government that will take an anti-Syrian line. Unfortunately, the reality is more complex and I don’t expect much to change in Lebanon. That said it certainly wasn’t a landslide victory for Hezbollah as many reports prematurely claimed. More on this later. - ED)
The firing of Qassam rockets into Sderot received publicity from The Star for the first time in a long time. An Israeli Rabbi of Ethiopian descent received coverage in an article written by Nalisha Kalideen who described the Rabbi's journey to Israel but also claimed that the Rabbi felt that perhaps Ethiopian Jews feel differently to other Jews... "Maybe it is the colour issue."
A badly burnt, would-be suicide bomber was caught on her way to an Israeli hospital for treatment. This was an excellent article showing the callousness and exploitative mentality of this girl's terrorist handlers. Israel's humanitarian gesture was meaningless in the face of their desire to maim and kill even in a hospital that was prepared to treat a severely wounded Palestinian.
An interesting article pertaining to the ignorant interpretation of Islam was published in The Star in an attempt to dispel the myths that Islam is oppressive to women in marriage.
In another article, Israeli PM Sharon said that "the pullout was the best way to safeguard Israel's future security" even though the "rightists vow to torpedo it saying that it would appease Arab terrorism."
City Press
Ali A. Mazrui wrote an article on how Muslims are detained and harassed the world over at international airports with questions such as "whether he believed in Jihad, and what did he understand about Jihad and what denomination of Islam did he belong to?" Immigration, customs and homeland security and the joint terrorism task force interrogated him.
Mail & Guardian
The article entitled, "The anti-Semitism canard" (Comment & Analysis) by Drew Forrest punts fallacious theories about the mentality of a large portion of the South African Jewish community and then backs them up with more inaccuracies, misrepresentations and outright lies pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to vindicate their dastardly "mistake."
Joel Pollack's article, appearing 10 June, discussed the futility of the already debunked AUT boycott and the ridiculous decision to block some of the most liberal voices in Israeli societies. Rabbi David Hoffman answered Drew Forrest with the fact that Zionism is not a "settler-colonial" undertaking but a national programme of affirmative action.
Fikile Ntsikelelo Moya describes the symbolism attached to the 250 South African Jews who participated in a pilgrimage to Poland to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Moyo compares this to South Africa and laments the fact that black people want someone else to become part of their collective memory, and that the majority of people who visit for example the Hector Peterson park are foreign tourists.
Chris McGreal highlighted the mercy killings of women for the slightest perceived indiscretion to save "family honour". Although honour killings have a long history in Palestinian society, women's rights groups say the rise in these murders cannot be separated from the resurgent violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the Jooz are always to blame).
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