As a Zionist Israeli and South African-born physician who has done humanitarian work in KaNgwane and in Gaza and Ramalla, I protest against the comparison of Zionism to racism/apartheid.
I bear witness that Palestinians, Israeli citizens or not, receive care side by side with Jews in the finest Israeli hospitals and are treated with respect and compassion.
I worked in the apartheid era in South African hospitals where three patients shared a bed and newborn babies died because there was no intensive care unit.
My father was a family physician and by law he had to have separate consulting rooms for black and white patients. That is apartheid! That is racism!
Indeed the situation medically in Gaza is grim and tragic.
Before the intifada, as medical students we went with our professors every week to Gaza to help and consult.
Our cars were stoned and physicians were hurt. This has not deterred Israeli physicians from aiding Palestinians.
Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Hashomer has donated a video conferencing room to Gaza so that consultation may continue safely.
Busloads of Palestinian kids with cancer are treated in Israeli hospitals every day. Zvi Symon MD, Jerusalem, Israel
I find it amazing that representatives of the Arab League can attend a racism conference and attack others.
First, the two countries accused of practising chattel slavery against black Africans, Mauritania and Sudan, are Arab League members.
And while we are in Africa, let us not forget the discrimination against the Berbers by Arab invaders who took over their lands.
The same is true in Egypt, where the Arab-led dictatorship discriminates and oppresses the original ancient Egyptian population, known as Coptic Christians.
In the Middle East we have seen the brutal treatment of non-Arab minorities in Iraq and Syria, such as the Kurds, Turkmenians and Assyrian Christians.
In fact, Christian groups in general have been persecuted in Arab countries.
Do the Palestinian Arabs have legitmate complaints? Yes, they do. But most of their gripes have more to do with their Arab “brothers” than with Israel. Gregg Sitrin, by e-mail
Chris McGreal’s article blaming the United States for not preventing the 1994 genocidal massacres in Rwanda (August 31) caused me considerable distress. This is because, as a black person, I am painfully aware that ethnic hatred and disregard for human dignity were at the root of the Rwandan slaughter as indeed they have been in various murderous conflicts throughout black Africa.
Ethnicism, by the way, is a sibling of racism and that lack of respect for the human entity and for human dignity is what made it possible for the slave trade to flourish in a willing seller-willing buyer situation, in the first place.
Rather than making a scapegoat out of the US, where incidentally many black Africans are desperately fleeing to in expectation of a better life, black Africa must accept responsibility for its unsavoury past and even present and draw the right lessons to ensure there are no repeats. Michael E Aken’Ova, University of Venda, Thohoyandou
Had he suggested a viable alternative to affirmative action as a means of addressing the racial iniquities entrenched by apartheid, James Myburgh’s sensational hogwash (August 31) would have passed for persuasive argument.
Unfortunately, from his failure to do so and his reference to a period of sanity just after the ushering in of the new dispensation, it is apparent he feels there’s nothing wrong with the status quo, which favours the Democratic Alliance’s constituency.
If he really believes the doomsday scenario he painted in his piece, he could take the government to court.
We have a good Constitution that protects all groups from discrimination, and the judicial system is still lily-white, so his whingeing would resonate well in the courts. Velaphi Msimang, Mowbray
The reason for the failure of the racism conference is simple: it is dominated by a group of people who are righteously calling for every one else to change their attititude and apologise, while refusing to look at themselves and their own past.
Take the issue of slavery. Yes, what the European powers did was brutal, wicked and to be condemned; but Arabs were also heavily involved in the slave trade, as were numerous African chiefs, who enabled the huge scale of the slave trade by selling their own countrypeople to slavers (see for example John Reader’s book Africa: The Biography of a Continent).
So where is the condemnation also of the Arabs and the Africans who took part in the slave trade? It is missing, because of that righteous indignation that looks everywhere else and blames everyone else, and refuses to look at one’s own position and history.
It is crucial that in this country we look for greater tolerance and understanding instead of adopting the attitude of blaming and recrimination that has characterised the conference. George Ellis, Kenilworth
May I share this little gem with you? An elderly white South African lady was preparing to leave a Namaqualand hotel. She lugged her heavy suitcase into the corridor, and, espying a black man passing by, she asked him whether he could take it to reception.
“Ma’am,” replied the gentleman, in a broad American accent, “I sure could. But is there any reason that I should?”
Needless to say, my client was mortified at having mistaken a bona fide American tourist for a hotel porter. But was she racist in doing so? Are not 90% of our hotel guests white, and more than 90% of our hotel porters black?
So it is when people fail to realise that the youngish black chap weeding his Pinelands garden, or driving about in his Merc, is neither a gardener or a chauffeur, but the judge president of the Western Cape.(“Would you weed the border, your Honour?”, August 31).
It’s an honest mistake, and people who make such mistakes are not simply racists.
And, anyway, they did him no harm, physical or financial. They didn’t rob him, rape him or murder him, which has been the fate of many whites in the area just recently.
And no one accuses the perpetrators of racism.
Mr Hlope is a very lucky chap indeed. With all the more senior competition excluded because they have white skins, he has leapfrogged the fellow members of his profession and become judge president at an age beyond the dreams of white men.
That, too, is a form of racism, of which Hlope is the beneficiary, and those bypassed are the victims. So if racism is alive and well in Cape Town, perhaps Hlope should praise it rather than condemn it.
There are far more important instances of real racism that need our attention. Ron McGregor, Mowbray, Cape Town
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