Under the heading of OPINION in the publication Politicsweb, Iqbal Jassat of the Media Review Network opines that “the media must not be held hostage by the pro-Israel lobby”.
Sounds reasonable enough. But what must this “pro-Israel” lobby do when it finds itself confronted by a collection of distortions, lies and sheer ignorance of history as has been the practice of the Media Review Network particularly at the hands of Iqbal Jassat while exploiting media prejudice?
And isn’t the mention of our president a complete Red Herring?
You see, the crux of this whole article is not Zuma, or the Ombudsman, or Iqbal Surve, or David Saks, but whether Jassat should be using derogatory descriptions of Israel such as being an apartheid state which it most certainly is not. Nor his slanderous use of terms like colonisation or the ludicrous use of the phrase “Israel’s version of apartheid to destroy our freedoms.” Does any South African reader hereof feel that Israel is destroying his or her freedom? If not, then what is Jassat talking about?
To put it plainly, where is the truth in all this?
Apartheid by definition means separation by race.
I would appreciate Jassat’s comments on the following FACTS:
The S.A.Constitution under apartheid denied the black majority the most basic of human rights because of the colour of their skin. Israel’s Declaration of Independence established a Jewish state with equality of social and political rights for all citizens, irrespective of religion, race or gender.
South Africa’s apartheid laws were enforced by Parliamentary legislation.
There are no such laws on Israel’s statute books.
Black South Africans were oppressed only on the grounds of their skin colour. Palestinians in Israel are not discriminated against on racial grounds as Arabs.
Black South Africans were not allowed to vote and were excluded from Parliament.
Israeli Arabs are free to vote for any party standing in elections. There are a number of Israeli Arabs in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.
In apartheid South Africa there were distinctly separate and unequal education systems.
This is not the case in Israel.
During apartheid the judiciary was all white.
Israeli Arabs serve in the judiciary as well as in Israel’s Supreme Court.
Black South Africans were not permitted to seek treatment in white hospitals.
Every Israeli citizen, irrespective of race or creed, is entitled to equal medical treatment in all the hospitals.
Jassat writes of Israel’s COLONISATION of Palestine. The definition of colonisation is to send settlers to a country and establish political control over it. He should read the Torah, the Jewish bible. It relates how Jews have been resident in that land for 3,300 years. Even when foreign conquerors removed the middle and upper classes, the Jewish farmers were left behind in order to provide food for the occupying armies. Over the millennia the Jewish inhabitants of the capital, Jerusalem, outnumbered its non-Jewish residents.
It is the uninvestigated and unquestioned publication of the aforementioned lies by some of our media that the “pro-Jewish lobby” has been complaining about.
Don Krausz
