Editor’s Note: The following is a response by the excellent and ever-vigilant author, Justin Amler, to a vulgar piece appearing in the South African press:
One can almost sense the desperation in Iqbal Jassat’s article on Israel as he feverishly throws in every antisemitic buzz word he can think of – from ‘racist Zionism’ to ‘apartheid’ to ‘ethnic cleansing’ to ‘genocide’ to ‘colonial entity.’
Each accusation is an obvious lie, but then again not a surprise, considering he is an executive member of the Media Review Network organisation – a hate group that describes Israel as “the Zio-Nazi entity” and South African Jewish organisations such as the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF), the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), and the SA Jewish Report newspaper as “Zio-Nazis”.
By its very nature, this group will deal in lies and false accusations to stoke the fires of animosity towards the Jewish people.
For any serious scholar of history knows that Jews have been in Israel since biblical times, as evidenced by an abundance of hard physical evidence such as biblical scrolls, historical texts, ancient artefacts, and continuous discoveries made daily in its soil.
To call Israel a ‘colonial entity’ when its inhabitants still speak the same language, still follow the same customs, and still uphold the same laws as they did thousands of years ago is ridiculous, yet that’s exactly what the author does, desperately hoping that if he rants loud enough, no one will dare question his complete and utter ignorance and lack of knowledge or authority about the subjects he talks about.
And yet at the same time he says Israel is blinded by hate against the “indigenous” Palestinian population of Muslims and Christians. What exactly is “indigenous” about the Palestinians? There is no historical evidence. There are no historical artefacts. There are no historical texts. And their much-vaunted Palestinian National Museum has no exhibits showcasing their so-called history.
Meanwhile, their fake president Mahmoud Abbas, who last ‘allowed’ elections in 2005 and is currently in the 17th year of his 5-year term, states in speeches to the United Nations (UN) that the Palestinians are the descendants of the Canaanites and have been there for 5000 years.
Of course, there is not a single shard of evidence for any of this, but then again the entire Palestinian narrative is not based on evidence anyway. Rather, it’s based on fantasy and falsities, which is why statements like this from Abbas and those who support the Palestinian cause are commonplace.
Rashida Tlaib, the US Congresswoman, says her Palestinian ancestors sheltered the Jews from the Nazis. That’s an obnoxious and malicious lie, because the de facto Arab leadership at the time, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was an ardent Nazi supporter and confidante of Hitler. There are even photographs of them together.
So, what about Mahmoud Abbas’s claims that Israeli rabbis called for the poisoning of Palestinian water?
Or the blood libel that Israel committed a massacre of innocents in Jenin in 2002 during a military operation against the terrorists?
Or the accusation by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, who sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General, accusing Israel of harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed in clashes?
As for the accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, Iqbal delves once again into the realm of his delirious imagination and make-believe, for how can an Arab population that numbered 150000 in 1948 increase to about 2 million today?
If we include the Arabs in Judea and Samaria, they’ve increased from under a million in the 1960s to 5.2 million today.
So, either Israel’s so-called ‘genocide’ policies are failing, or the author has been caught in a massive lie – just one more in an article that is so riddled with lies that the only bit of truth we can muster might just be his name.
All these continuous false accusations, which can easily be dispelled with a bit of research, are motivated by a single factor: hatred.
Unfortunately, it is a very powerful motivating factor, for it causes rational human beings to lose that rationality and swallow the kind of slanderous and false accusations that are being peddled against Israel and the Jews.
And perhaps many want to believe these lies, despite how ludicrous they are, because if Jews are portrayed as bad, then is any action against them really that unjust?
Iqbal Jassat seems to believe they wouldn’t be unjust, for he takes great joy in predicting that Israel’s ‘inglorious reign’ is coming to an end. I can almost imagine the spittle flying from his mouth as he wrote those words, but it is a forlorn hope and an old one too.
About 3200 years ago, an inscription by the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah stated that, ‘Israel is laid waste and his seed is no more.’
Yet 3200 years later, we are still here and our death, to quote Mark Twain, has been grossly exaggerated.
