Kasrils Misrepresents Opponents in Hate Speech Charade

This week we reported on how Ronnie Kasrils has abused his public office in order to promote his agenda against Israel and the South African Jewish community. After organising what looks like a staged-trial with the SAHRC (read more) Kasrils used the front page of his ministerial website to promote the verdict.

(Interestingly, this has been removed from the front page of his website, even though it is more recent than the other items in the ‘what’s new’ section of his site. Was he perhaps ordered to remove the story from the front page?)

Kasrils used his office to issue a press release

Minister for Intelligence Services, Ronnie Kasrils, has expressed his satisfaction at the Human Rights Commission (HRC) findings that his criticism of Israel’s policies and actions in respect of the Palestinians does not amount to the advocacy of hate speech but constitutes legitimate political debate.

Once again, Kasrils has spun circles around the truth. Kasrils likened Israel to the Nazis and called Israelis ‘baby-killers’. In his press release, Kasrils pretends that any criticism of Israeli policies and actions was accused of being hate speech. This is not true. In fact, the SA Jewish Report (SAJR) itself never actually accused Kasrils of hate speech.

The SAJR alleged (correctly) that most of their readership would consider his Nazi-baby killer rhetoric as hate speech. The SAJR did not label it as hate speech, but questioned whether it could be hate speech.

SAJR editor Geoff Sifrin made it clear that the legal question of hate speech is not clear cut. He wrote

Does Kasrils' piece constitute hate speech? Legal minds could argue for and against. Kasrils insists it is not.

Also interesting is the part played by the Mail & Guardian (M&G) in all of this. The M&G were the first to publish the SAHRC findings in an article that failed to give the Jewish Report a chance to comment.

The following week Geoff Sifrin, the editor of the SAJR, sent a letter to the M&G clarifying the way the SAHRC findings had misrepresented his position (in that he had never actually accused Kasrils of hate speech).

Amazingly, the M&G did not print the letter in their next edition. Instead, they printed a letter from Stephen Friedman which praised the SAHRC’s findings!

Why did both the SAHRC and the M&G misrepresent the Jewish Report? Kasrils himself brought the matter to the SAHRC - he was the prosecutor and the defender. And all this with allegations against the Jewish Report which were clearly fabricated!

Below is the letter to the Mail & Guardian that was never published.

Ms Ferial Hafajee Editor Mail and Guardian Karthy Govender’s account (M&G, March 16) of the Human Rights Commission’s stance on Ronnie Kasrils’ statements about Israel contains a serious inaccuracy. The first paragraph says: “His comments were characterised as hate speech by Helen Suzman and by the South African Jewish Report.” This directly contradicts the stance of the SAJR, conveyed in our submission to the HRC. We stated clearly that we were not accusing Mr Kasrils of hate speech. We declined to publish a particular article of his because we believed it would be odious and offensive to our Jewish readership rather than promoting constructive debate. In our submission to the HRC we say: “Neither I, nor the South African Jewish Report have accused Mr Kasrils of hate speech…. In its editorials, the SAJR expressed its estimation of how Mr Kasrils’ Nazi analogy would feel to its Jewish readership, based on its knowledge of that readership, which includes Holocaust survivors and the children of Holocaust survivors, and taking into consideration an alarming trend of rising anti-Semitism worldwide….. Other newspapers are obviously free to publish Mr Kasrils’ article and we would defend their legal right to do so.” The SAJR does not treat lightly the hard-won right to freedom of expression. We gave the reasons for our decisions in our editorials and conducted a vigorous debate in our paper for several weeks about the matter (in which a strongly worded letter from Mr Kasrils was also included). The SAJR is an independent newspaper. While its readership is primarily Jewish, the Jewish community is diverse and obviously the paper’s views do not automatically coincide with the views of all Jews or Jewish organisations. Geoff Sifrin Editor SA Jewish Report

Ronnie Kasrils has successfully weaved a tapestry whose every thread has cast him as the poor victim of Jewish intolerance. And unfortunately both the SAHRC and the Mail & Guardian have provided some of his thread.

Comments

[Gwen Podbrey]

Actually, she did more than not publish the letter from the SAJR editor. She also chose to position the (one-sentence, cryptic, extremely convoluted) correction issued by the HRC directly beneath a letter protesting Israel's actions and signed by Friedman, his son and some others. The importance (and, indeed, the entire context) of the HRC's correction was therefore so obscured and overshadowed that it was all but lost to readers.
Passing strange indeed.

[Gary]

Isn't Friedmann's son, like, twelve years old?

[Walton Pantland]

What a nasty blog you have. Jews like Kasrils who reject Zionism are the true sons of two thousand years of Jewish history, and realise the contradiction in having a Jewish state that oppresses people.

[Steve]

Thanks Walton. You have obviously thought long and hard about the conflict and Jewish history.