For many years people in this country and elsewhere pretended not to know anything about the daily atrocities perpetuated by successive apartheid governments on our country’s black people. They preferred only to concentrate on the reaction (often justifiably violent) of the oppressed people on various organs of the apartheid state and its support civil structures, without paying attention to the root cause of their struggle. With a media that largely supported the racist establishment and portrayed black freedom fighters as “communists or terrorists” as well as the dynamics of the Cold War, the apartheid regime was assured of tacit support from some of the most powerful Western countries. Today the same is happening in Palestine. Poor Palestinians see their rights violated on a daily basis by a United States-supported Israel and have now been turned into the bad guys in a war we all know is one of fighting for human rights and dignity. Their land is taken, their infrastructure destroyed, their leaders maimed or humiliated and their plight distorted on a daily basis by an often biased powerful Western media. Israel has been able to ignore the implementation of all-important United Nations resolutions aimed at resolving the Middle East crisis (notably resolutions 242 and 338) because of its powerful friends and the unrepresentative permanent UN Security Council. Minister Ronnie Kasrils, Max Ozinsky and the other members of the South African Jewish community deserve a standing ovation for their courage in saying “Not in [our] name!”. This should further show the rest of humanity that not all Jews are bad people, and that we in South Africa are happy to share the lessons that we learned from our sad past with our fellow human beings in the Middle East, where another apartheid state is allowed to flourish.
When are we humans going to finally learn that our peaceful existence will always be dependent on and interlinked with that of our neighbours, whoever they may be? Solly Moeng, Cape Town
As someone who lost a grandmother and an aunt in the Holocaust, I don’t believe being Jewish gives one the right to dispossess other people. I don’t understand what the Israelis want of the Palestinians, who have made concession after concession. If the Israeli aim is to chase every Palestinian out of what they see as “greater Israel”, or to let them fester in bantustans, then I’m with Ronnie Kasrils when he says “Not in my name”. Eve Steinhardt Hall