LETTER: Simple facts about Israel

It is becoming clear that anti-Israel activists are living in a reality far removed from our own and nowhere is this more apparent than in the letter by Gunvant Govindjee (“Ignorant of the facts”, May 27).

It’s a short letter, but it packs more lies per square inch than even a Hamas press release.

First, the idea that Mizrahi Jews (who would never consider themselves “Arab”) lived as perfect equals to Muslims in these countries is a fallacy: both Christians and Jews lived as second- class citizens (or Dhimmis) in these lands and though Jews fared better there than in Christian Europe, they were still subject to the whims of sometimes very oppressive Muslim rulers.

As for saying that Ashkenazi Jews, after being nearly wiped out by the Nazis, orchestrated “false flag operations” to expel nearly 1-million of their Jewish brothers and sisters from the Muslim countries in which they lived for centuries, this is a blood libel every bit as depraved and baseless as blaming those same Jews for the Holocaust.

Rather than ludicrous conspiracy theories, how about some simple facts: in 1948, rather than accepting the existence of a Jewish state, several Arab countries attacked the nascent Israel, attempting to wipe it off the face of the earth. They lost. They tried to do the same in half a dozen subsequent wars. They lost. Repeatedly.

Now, even as some of Israel’s most vociferous former enemies have normalised relations with Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran and its puppets in Hezbollah and Hamas use the Palestinian people — as they have for decades — to try to achieve their stated aims: the delegitimisation and destruction of the tiny state of Israel. All they have accomplished is the continued suffering of Palestinians.

They care not a whit for the Palestinian people and by spreading their fatuous anti-Semitic propaganda, Govindjee shows that despite his protestations to the contrary, neither does he.

Ilan Preskovsky
Via email

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.