Voices
Van Heerden plays fast and loose with the facts
In the article in the SA Jewish Report, vol 23, 1 February, which reported on the article in Daily Maverick by Oscar van Heerden titled “We owe Palestinians our support”, Van Heerden shows a level of obtuseness that defines his entire article and conflicts with his academic status. He plays fast and loose with the facts when it comes to Palestinian terror and Israel’s response.
Rodney Mazinter, Cape Town
What kind of twisted logic would allow untruths to be dredged up as facts?
Institutionalised racism is found in Palestinian territories, from where fleeing Christians seek safety in Israel, while Mahmoud Abbas, the true apartheid maven, has always asserted that a future Palestinian state must be “Judenrein”.
Abbas routinely vilifies Israel while systematically violating virtually every article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
A recently published report by the Action Group for Palestinians in Syria documented 5 522 cases of Palestinians among the more than 500 000 Syrian deaths caused by Syrian forces since the onset of the civil war in 2011. These deaths ranged from artillery shelling, to shootings, to poison gas, to torture. About this Van Heerden is silent. In the process, true racists are being sanitised.
When Palestinians are killed by other Arabs, evidently no one except Israel cares – not the Arab world, not Van Heerden, and not even the Palestinians themselves. Everyone is silent. One can’t escape the conclusion that these hypocrites care nothing for the lives and status of Palestinians, they concern themselves only with delegitimising and defaming Israel, and in doing so, will resort to the most egregious falsehoods that the human mind can concoct.
Freedom House, an independent research organisation that evaluates countries throughout the world and apportions a percentage score in accordance with each country’s human-rights performance, reveals that Israel, at 79% in spite of facing unrelenting terrorism, ranks above every country in the Middle East, with Syria scoring a low of minus -1%, and Jordan a high of 37%. Israel’s record is better than South Africa’s (78%), and is just behind the United States (86%).
Israel is one of the smallest nations in the world, yet it has a massive positive impact on global health, food, and water security, disaster relief, and the economies of developing and developed countries. Every day, Israel’s doctors save the lives of scores of Palestinians who flood there for medical care and help.
Oh, and for Van Heerden’s elucidation, hatred, unlike in Abbas’ world, is not taught to Israeli children, only tolerance, love, and respect for all.