Smoking Socks Award

It's the Israelis Stooopid

The Smoking Socks award is presented to a letter writer in a South African paper whose funky smelling socks have induced him/her into a bout of prejudiced stupidity.

We haven’t done a smoking socks award for some time now, but that doesn’t mean that letter writers to the South African media haven’t been embarrassing themselves with their naked prejudice and hatreds.

This noxious letter comes from a letter writer to The Witness newspaper

Abduction Does Not Make Sense THE abduction of BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston needs to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. I hope Johnston is alive and well, as he highlighted the suffering and inhuman conditions of the Palestinian people. It does not make sense to me that the Palestinians would want to abduct or kill him as he was the only Western journalist actively reporting from Gaza. It is quite possible that he had come across some information the Israelis did not want him to report. Unfortunately, there is no doubt that there are people that do not want accurate and honest journalism to prevail. As in Afghanistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Zimbabwe, the critical and outspoken media are deliberately targeted so that the oppressors and occupiers can carry out their atrocities and crimes without obstacle. ABDULLAH SAEED Pietermaritzburg

These delusions aren’t just the possession of our letter writer. Honest Reporting note that British Journalist Alan Hart, also believes that Israel kidnapped the journalist and framed the Palestinians. (No surprise that the British Union of Journalists have voted to boycott Israel…bias…what bias?)

There is a case for saying (repeat a case) that the party with most to gain from Alan Johnston's permanent disappearance was Israel. It would not be the first time that Israeli agents had dressed as Arabs to make a hit. If Alan Johnston is dead, it's my hope that the BBC at executive management level will rise above its fear of offending Zionism too much and allow its reporters (Frank Gardner and Jeremy Bowen are second to none) to make a full, thorough and honest investigation.

To cling to these fever induced psychodrama’s one has to completely ignore reports like this

Gaza - Hamas militiamen guarding the Palestinian Parliament building in Gaza yesterday allegedly pushed, hit and threatened at gunpoint four local Palestinian journalists who were protesting the kidnapping of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, witnesses said. (SAPA-DPA)

So the Palestinians themselves aren’t even clamouring around this wild conspiracy theory.

View previous Smoking Socks Award winners:

• Kalvari Inverts Reality
• The Red Ronnie Rage
• SA should help the Palestinians
• Bashing Israel over Immigration
• Apartheid Israel
• Kasrils: Zionist myths rooted in racism
• ANC laughs at Jewish Board
• Is Kasrils honest?
• Courageous Iran
• Radical Right Wing Jew: I disengage and I engage
• Two state solution is no answer to the conflict
• Palestinians need a Robert Mugabe