It's Almost Supernatural

Zaptrash - A Fraudulent Recall of Berlin

I’ve been away for a while but there is no scarcity of content to start again with some updates. First in line is the stinky pencil belonging to Jonathan Shapiro (aka Zapiro).

Close your eyes, and imagine if you will, an alternate universe where the Berlin wall was built by Communists to prevent the flood of Westerners from illegally entering their territory in order to enjoy the prosperity that Western governments were failing to deliver. Try to imagine the Soviets building the wall in order to defend their citizens from Westerners who were trying to cross into their territory in order to kill and maim. Now look at the cartoon.

Does it work for you? No? Not very clever is it?

The Berlin wall was built by East Germany to prevent East Germans from escaping East Germany. Israel has not built any walls to try and prevent Israelis from escaping Israel. Israelis don’t want to escape Israel the way Palestinians want to escape Hamas.

Ultimately, any powerful imagery, no matter how fraudulent can and will be used against Israel in the court of public opinion.

By the way, Goldstone's report concerns the war which took place in Gaza and there is no Israeli wall around Gaza.

Mail & Guardian Interviews Finkelstein

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with the tone of the introduction to this interview? MG: People exploit tragedy for personal gain.

“Those South Africans with an interest in the conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories would have had a field day recently. First, there were speaking engagements by Alan Dershowitz, the pro-Zionist author of A Case for Israel, followed by discussions and talks by David Benjamin, legal adviser to the Israeli Defence Force.”

It doesn’t say Jews or Zionists have had a field day, but it still sounds to me like a taunt. If there is some kind of comparison between what the Israel supporting and Israel hating crowds have been up to however, then to say the Zionists have had a “field day” is crazy talk. First of all, there were no “speaking engagements by Alan Dershowitz” - he was not even in the country. His film was screened recently, but that hardly amounts to a speaking engagement! The Israel haters on the other hand have been entertained by a type of Harlem Globetrotters Finkelstein tour where he spoke at every opportunity, on virtually every campus and every radio station. He was typically left unchallenged on his every point, and this interview is a fine example.

The interview questions say it all, here’s a sample, but go see for yourself.

Although you are generalising, you talk about a superior ethnic identity complex amongst Jews in the US. Have you found the same thing here in South Africa? How is it that Alan Dershowitz has managed to garner so much support in the US?

Oh dear. 

MRN Propaganda 101: Lie!

Last month the Media Review Network (MRN) used their seemingly bottomless vault of cash to pay for a full page Palestinian propaganda advert. It may have appeared in numerous dailies, but I saw it in the Citizen. The advert, entitled “How Palestine became Israel” displays 3 maps which the MRN display as a story of thieving and betrayal. To maximise the propaganda effect, it is bordered by a series of scissors encouraging the reader to cut it out and display. They egregiously write “Please cut out and display map”.

Whilst there is nothing stopping anyone from paying for adverts to push their view, we should demand that the content is truthful. The MRN fell short of this mark. And it shouldn’t surprise you. You should remember that earlier this year, we caught them out in a lie denying that they had showcased articles on their website about a Jewish Broederbond (see full post here). This seems to be the behaviour we should continue to expect from them.

A friend of mine, Victor Gordon (don’t miss his latest play, Harry and Ed), penned this letter to the Citizen, exposing the paid for lie.

Sir The ability to re-write history is a specialty of the Media Review Network and is ably demonstrated in their advert, "How Palestine became Israel." The fact that they had to pay to publicise their propaganda is in itself telling. To cite just one example; "The UN passed Resolution 242 ... ordering Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories". The deceitful inclusion of the word "the" deliberately changes the intent from the actual wording of the resolution, "...to withdraw from occupied territories." At the time, the word "the" was purposely omitted to place the onus on all the warring parties to negotiate new and secure borders which the Arabs have consistently refused to do (the famous "3 No's"). Yet Israel alone is always blamed for its so-called refusal to abide by this resolution. The MRN would not have committed this error unintentionally. Res. 242 is simply too well known. The distortion can only be deliberate, reflecting the tone and purpose of much of the "information" offered by this organization - distorted propaganda. If the MRN cannot be trusted with so crucial a fact how can it be trusted with any other of its claims, like the reference to "Palestinians owning 99.6% of the land in 1897", considering that the entire region fell under Ottoman rule from 1841 to 1917. The "Palestinians" who were largely nomadic Arabs, owned not one inch. But one need look no further than the 3 maps chosen to illustrate "How Palestine became Israel ...", except that a fourth map deserves inclusion - the one showing the land mass stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the borders of Iraq that fell under the British mandate. With 80% designated to the establishment of Transjordan, the remaining 20% was finally partitioned by the UN giving roughly equal portions to the Arabs and the Jews, of who's portion 65% included the arid Negev Desert. Ironically, instead of these maps revealing to what degree Arab land has shrunk since 1948, they highlight the futility of the wars they launched against Israel in trying to regain what they had previously lost. Perhaps the MRN should reconsider its headline, "How Palestine became Israel...", the answer being, "by opting to fight two disastrous wars (1948 & 1967) and losing both." Bad choice - but hardly Israel’s fault. It was the Arabs who chose the option of war and have gone backwards ever since.

My response to the SA Medical Journal

I’m sending this letter to the SA Medical Journal in response to the recent editorial slamming Israel.

---

Dear Sir,

My father has recently been diagnosed with cancer and is currently receiving treatment at one of the top medical centres in South Africa.

As you can probably imagine, this has been an almost unbearable ordeal for not only my father, but my family as well. When someone is diagnosed with cancer, the entire family is in need of care, not just the person suffering with the killer disease.

I read with interest your recent editorial entitled “A jaw for a tooth – the human rights costs of the Gaza invasion.” Suffering beside my father in one of the country’s leading medical institutions, which I thank God that we are lucky enough to have access to, has instilled in me the belief that few professions are less worthy of mouthing off about human rights in other lands, than is yours.

The medical profession in South Africa is guilty of a complete lack of compassion and worse, a level of service delivery that reminds me of our taxi industry.

The overwhelming majority of taxi drivers perform their core function. They transport passengers from A to B. They do this, in most cases, quite successfully. But the service they render is appalling. One may not question a taxi driver, and those in need of his services, have little choice of an alternative.

The same applies to the specialist doctors that roam the halls of our leading hospitals. The doctors, on the whole, do their job. But like the taxi drivers, I have found them to be overwhelmingly arrogant, distant and abusive. I have found it difficult to ask doctors any questions and when I do, the response I receive is condescending, abrupt and often downright mean. I work in the IT industry on systems that are nowhere near mission-critical. Even so, if I had to treat my customers the way the doctors treat theirs, I would have been fired long ago. At this point it’s worth reminding the doctors that their customer includes the immediate family. This doesn’t mean they need to treat the family, but they need to provide them with updates and information, the same way I need to update all project stakeholders with project status changes. We have now interacted with various different doctors and it is constantly near impossible to get any kind of discussions, return-calls or progress reports from them. The doctors would do well to remember that they are in fact paid for their services. Perhaps they think the money from the medical aids comes from some mysterious black-hole? It doesn’t. It comes from the families whom they neglect to communicate with.

Unfortunately, we are left with no recourse but to tolerate this abuse. Complaints may invoke even poorer levels of treatment. We are nothing but helpless passengers inside the taxi of an arrogant, abusive and, in this case, very wealthy driver, with no alternative modes of transport in sight.

My jeremiad against the doctors comes with a small solution. A small idea that can make the world of difference to the family that suffers at the bedside. It is simple, and shouldn’t take very long to complete. Provide the family with daily updates! You are already keeping notes of your patient’s condition, why not translate those notes into legible English so that the family can access them every day to understand the progress. This would take an extra minute per patient when doing your daily rounds. It’s no good informing only the patients of the progress when they are likely to forget everything you have just told them!

This is just a start. How about following the examples of hospitals in the United States that employ internet technologies to improve communication? The Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) makes use of a social technology called CarePages - an online system to help patients manage communication with their loved ones. Perhaps you could study other online healthcare communities in the United States, particulalry the way doctors make use of them to interact with patients and their families. One example is the American Cancer Survivors Network. Social technologies are having a massive impact on the way we get what we need from each another, and they are starting to make an impact inside large enterprises. What is keeping them away from our hospitals?

I don’t have much hope that the situation will change. The doctors, like the taxi drivers, are in the position of power and the customers need to focus on footing the bill, lowering their heads and thanking the doctors for whatever sloppy attention they may be lucky enough to receive.

Either way, there is a problem, and I suggest you sir, focus on your professions own shortcomings before doing the all-to-easy job of pretending to care about human rights in other parts of the world. The medical profession is in need of some serious soul searching. As long as this situation persists, you are in no position to cast judgement on the rest of the world.

Holocaust Survivor Don Krausz Responds to SA Medical Journal

As I continue to feature some of the work done by private individuals fighting against the bias against Israel in our media, I now turn to another tireless opponent of this hatred, Don Krausz. As we slowly move into Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance day), here's a letter from Don, himself a Holocaust survivor, in response to the March editorial of the SA Medical Journal. The letter was only recently sent in, we will watch next month to see if gets published. I doubt that it will.

Here's Don...

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Dear Sir,

Your article of March 2009 headed “A jaw for a tooth – the human rights costs of the Gaza invasion” refers.

I am a Holocaust survivor. During the years of the German occupation of Europe we Jews were bombarded by every form of hatred, vituperation, slander and insult imaginable. We knew perfectly well that the accusations and calumnies printed and broadcast against us were lies and learned to ignore them. Our attitude was that the fools that believed the incredible statements made against us had to be amazingly stupid and gullible to believe them.

That is how I feel about your article.

I worked in Israel from 1954 to 58 and was a witness to and victim of frequent attacks by so-called Fedayeen, Moslem terrorists. Not far from where I worked a busload of civilians was murdered.

Those Fedayeen also had their motivations – they were fighting against the Occupation of their land. The fact that there was not a single Israeli soldier or settlement in the West Bank or Gaza was beside the point. That occupation only came about during 1967.

Since then we have had to bear with the atrocities of Deir Jassin which were disproved during a BBC interview, the massacres of Jenin which were subsequently denied by the UN and a member of the Palestinian authority and the ghastly killing by the Israeli army of the little Al Dura boy which a French court eventually found to be a fabrication. We now have the inhumanities of Gaza which people like you believe and which I have seen denied by inhabitants of Gaza themselves.

You write how Israel and Egypt sealed-of the exits from Gaza. Why? Something to do with not wanting Hamas terrorists to enter their land? You refer to the seismic aerial bombardment. I have lived through many bombardments. Have you the slightest notion of the horror and terror felt by people that have endured the bombardment of 7,000 rockets and 3,000 mortar bombs in Israeli civilian towns such as Sderot and its neighbours during the past eight years?

Sure the casualty rate on the Israeli side was miniscule. Israel built shelters for its citizens. Didn’t the Hamas realise that after firing 10,000 missiles at Israeli civilian settlements there would be retaliation? Why did they not provide shelters? Or do they believe that the best weapons in their armoury are Palestinians killed by Israeli fire?

Your article seems to prove that.

You mention the 1,380 Palestinians killed. First of all I have seen denials of that figure by Palestinian hospital personnel. Secondly I have seen videos of armed and uninjured Palestinians jumping into UN ambulances. Those fighters wore no uniforms. Should they become casualties and one removed their weaponry, then how could one distinguish them from civilians?

You speak of the torrent of indignation at the viciousness and vindictiveness of the military action. Professor Ncayiyana, if my nearest and dearest were living in towns within range of Gaza and were being subjected to 80 rockets a day I would wipe Gaza off the face of the earth. Germany killed 51,000 civilians in the bombing of Britain. Churchill promised to return every bomb tenfold and he did. If you had had to report on that then I can imagine the torrent of indignation that you would have displayed at such viciousness and vindictiveness.

In 2005 Israel withdrew its army and settlers from Gaza. Will you give me one good reason why the Hamas kept shooting at those civilians? Or why the S. A. Medical Journal never took up their case until Palestinians became victims?

I could continue in similar vein. Let me just say that I don’t think your article does you credit as an unbiased human being or as an editor who is supposed to have an obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Don Krausz

Previously at IAS

• SA Medical Journal Slams Israel

South African Medical Journal Slams Israel

The March edition of the South African Medical Journal has a leading editorial on Israel’s recent military action in Gaza entitled “a jaw for a tooth – the human rights cost of the Gaza invasion (PDF)”.

Obviously the editor of the SAMJ can write about whatever he likes, but it still behoves me to ask the question, when did the SAMJ stop being a medical journal and become a political rag?

Although the editor, Dr Ncayiyana, attempts to paint a veneer of even-handedness over the article with a short criticism of Hamas, the inevitable thicket of bias against Israel prickles through. Dr Ncayiyana bases his article on an opinion that does not stand up to the science – in this case international law – and he also relies on hearsay, relaying some dubious Palestinian claims about Israel’s conduct during the war, as fact.

The article adds nothing to the debate. It adds no insight into the unique problems facing Israelis and Palestinians that the editor might be qualified to provide – say perhaps on something from the perspective of healthcare or caregivers in the region. Instead it’s just a simple rehash of an opinion that medical experts have zero specialist knowledge in – the popular pseudo-military view that the Israeli response was disproportionate.

Ncayiyana argues that Israel went “beyond the Biblical injunction on proportionality: ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’”. It’s an unwelcome opinion from a journal in which the standards of opinion and thought in the articles need to stand up to the highest degree of scrutiny. SHould the Journal’s editorials not require standards just as high?

Proportionality in international law requires the military to weigh the damage inflicted against the expected military gain. In this case, the expected military gain was stopping rockets from being fired indiscriminately at Israeli civilians. A medical expert such as Dr Ncayiyana should do better than to simply count numbers of dead – all nations would expect their governments to do everything in their power to provide protection from rocket attacks that deliberately target civilians.

Dr Ncayiyana mentioned Palestinian claims that the IDF “herded” 110 Palestinians, most of them coming from a single family, into a house, and then proceeded to shell the house. Whilst this may or may not be true, it is certainly one of the most contested claims of the Gaza war and deserves some level of circumspect. I don’t expect Dr Ncayiyana to sing from my hymn sheet, but I think it would be fair to at least mention that Israel has denied these claims.

Although the UN has called for an investigation into the incident, a senior UN official specifically stated that they are not accusing Israel of any “deliberate action” by the Israelis (source).

The Israeli response to the accusations was that "from initial examinations in the IDF there is no knowledge of any incident in which IDF forces moved people from one building to another.

"Furthermore, the claim that the building was attacked on January 4, in 24-hours after the IDF entered the Gaza Strip is unreasonable since the IDF forces had not yet reached the areas in question on this date.

"An Israeli television network examination of the matter with hospitals in the area showed the hospitals had no knowledge of such an incident."(source)

In the interests of assessing whether the SAMJ are indeed guilty of a disproportionate focus on Israel, I performed a simple examination of search results for conflict areas around the world. I think it makes for interesting reading. As a caveat, I must add that the search is only performed against online editions of the SAMJ, which dates back only to 2003.

Search term	Results
Israel or Palestine	5
Zimbabwe	7
Sri Lanka	0
Burma	0
Tibet	0
Darfur or Sudan	0
Bosnia	0
Iraq	2

Of the conflict zones I tested, the only conflict zone carrying more focus than Israel was Zimbabwe, with 7 results. But the articles on Zimbabwe have at least something to do with healthcare, focusing on doctors and nurses, HIV, cholera, MDRTB and access to healthcare. The same cannot be said of the recent editorial on Israel and Gaza. 

I know of a couple of people who submitted letters in response to the editorial, none of which were published. And perhaps rightly so, why should a medical journal became a playground for heated debates on Israel? The decision not to publish letters actually confirms my opinion that the editorial didn’t belong in the first place. How about this for a rule of thumb – don’t write editorials on matters that you are not prepared to publish letters on!

If you think your doctor would disagree with the nature of this editorial, get him a copy and ask him to write a complaint to the editor.

Related

• Honest Reporting responds to British Medical Journal

Update

• Response to SA Medical Journal by Chairman of the South African Holocaust Survivors Association

A People Magazine Hat-Trick

Last week I highlighted two excellent articles from Gill Katz and Rolene Marks that were published in People magazine. Well the good run, didn’t end there. Rolene contacted me to tell me that there was in fact a third article, this time on Gilad Shalit, published in People.

It’s another great article and People magazine once again deserve credit for their willingness to go against the grain and publish articles that wouldn’t have passed the vast vetting machine that is the Palestinian lobby in South Africa.

Well done to Gill and Rolene for their tireless efforts to this end. Apparently the response to these articles has actually been pretty good. Gill told me that it’s precisely the kind of journalism she tries to practice – forcing people to open their eyes by educating truthfully, even if it’s not always what fellow Jews want to hear. If she achieves this, she says, then it’s all worth the effort.

You can download the full article in People magazine on Gilad Shalit here:

Download People_Shalit.PDF - 1.07MB

Previously at IAS

• People Magazine feature on Israel

No matter what, blame Israel

South African Zionists have long complained about the knee jerk criticism of Israel in the local media. So often it feels that no matter what Israel does, she is always guilty of something. But this time the Independent Newspaper Group has taken it too far. The headline of an article on their online site reads ‘Israel charges alleged Hezbollah ‘spies’’ (gotta love those inverted comma around spies). The only problem is on closer inspection the article has nothing to do with Israel. It was Egypt not Israel that was responsible for the arresting. The article even begins ‘Cairo-Egypt’s … ‘. Israel is not mentioned at all.

Of course they will claim this was a minor oversight. Nothing intentional for sure. But it gives us an insight into the mentality of putting together the headlines on one of the country’s leading news website. When there is trouble in the Middle East it must be Israel who is to blame. How can we ever hope to get a fair hearing in the South African media with this type of mentality?

Israel charges alleged Hezbollah 'spies' Cairo - Egypt's attorney general has added espionage to the charges against 49 alleged Hezbollah agents, in addition plotting to destabilize the country. Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud told Egypt's state run news agency MENA late on Sunday that the alleged agents, including Lebanese, Palestinian, Egyptian and Sudanese nationals, have been spying for a foreign group intending to carry out terrorist attacks in Egypt. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has rejected the accusations but confirmed over the weekend that it had sent a member to Egypt - a rare acknowledgment that the Lebanese militant group was operating in another Arab country. - Sapa-AP

I wonder if, when they realise their mistake and substitute Egypt for Israel, the inverted commas around “spies” will also disappear. It’s an interesting thing to watch out for.

Hat tip: Immanuel Suttner.

People Magazine Feature on Israel

Gill Katz and Rolene Marks are two veterans of the battle to provide Israel with a fair hearing in the court of public opinion. Their articles have often featured the complex but soft “people” side of the suffering of the conflict.

About a month ago People magazine featured 2 articles, one from Gill and a joint article from Gill and Rolene about living life in Israel under a barrage of rockets designed to inflict as much civilian damage as is possible.

Respect to People magazine for being brave enough to publish two Israel friendly articles. I’m sure the barrage of complaints from the Muslim lobby has been pretty ferocious.

Download People magazine articles - 3.3MB

Israel as the new third Reich

The City Press is the Sunday newspaper with the third largest readership in South Africa. Last week’s edition contained an outstandingly repulsive article from Professor Ali Mazrui entitled “Is Israel bent on becoming the new Third Reich”.

I can’t find the article at the City Press, but here’s a link to the same article at another website.

Mazrui claims that the gap between the Nazis and Israelis is fast diminishing and this narrowing distance is the fundamental cause of a phenomenon he readily admits exists today, that is, the new anti-Semitism.

Mazrui neglects to explain just how Israel has become like the Nazis. He doesn’t point to any death camps or forced labour camps. He doesn’t provide examples of any increasing totalitarianism within Israel – no restrictions on the freedom of the press, freedom to associate, freedom to form political movements. No. All he has in his arsenal is the military action taken against Palestinians who unabatedly fired rockets indiscriminately into Israeli population areas. The irony of course, is that it was the Palestinians, led by Haj Amin al Husseini, who corroborated with and openly supported the Nazis during World War 2. Palestinian leader Husseini spent the war years with Hitler in Berlin and wanted to export the final solution to Palestine to once and for all resolve their Jewish problem.

Mazrui doesn’t compare Israel to any other states who have been forced to take military action . He doesn’t even compare Israel to states who take pre-emptive military action. No. By Mazrui’s foul smelling logic, if you defend yourself against the Palestinians, you are a bunch of filthy Nazis. And the Palestinians? They are “intrinsically good” – victims par excellence. Mazrui doesn’t talk about a disproportionate response. There is no “response”. It’s just an unprovoked Israel firing on absolutely innocent Palestinians.

His use of the term “new anti-Semitism” is quite peculiar. He admits it exists, but justifies it by saying it is caused by Israel. In fact, we can easily end this phenomenon, by openly renouncing our support of the only Jewish state in the world. In short, Mazrui believes the new anti-Semitism is justified. But what kind of racial prejudice can ever actually be justified? From this we learn the mocking levels of respect that Mazrui has for the very idea of anti-Semitism. It can be a good or a bad thing depending on whether Israel is involved!

According to historian Bernard Lewis, anti-Semitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of cosmic evils.

By Lewis’ standards, Mazrui is guilty. In fact, according to the European Union standards, comparing Israel to the Nazis is an example of what constitutes anti-Semitism. It’s one thing to criticise Israel and its policies but to compare it to the worst evils of the 20th century stems from nothing but a deep-seated inveterate hatred.

Mazrui describes a “painful paradox” that emerges when comparing the anti-Semitism of the first half of the 20th century and the new anti-Semitism of the new millennium.

Mazrui claims that whereas Jews where once amongst the world’s most gifted and created peoples, they have descended into a people only famous for their will to destroy. In an effort to invent a premise for this argument (that Jews have turned from creators to destroyers), Mazrui redefines the classical anti-Semitism of the early 1900s as being a hatred of Jews because of their creative ideas. It’s a weak and convenient description allowing Mazrui to concoct the fake paradox that he bases his article on – that although Jews were once unjustly hated for their creative ideas they are now (justly) hated for their destructive and murderous inclinations.

Finally, Mazrui suggests that there is something sinister and unfair about the way the Jewish pro-Israeli lobby operates, forcing normally “honest” Congressmen and Senators from voting against their conscience in what ultimately amounts to a threat to American democracy.

Unfortunately, articles such as this are becoming the staple diet for South African readers. It’s a tide that cannot be stemmed. And of course, it’s not just plaguing South Africa, as these articles can be found anywhere around the world. The difference with South Africa is that there is no pro-Israel/America alternative. It’s the same old drek wherever you look.