In attacking the “shameful” visit to Israel by academics, where they were clearly more interested in actual facts than her version of them, Naledi Pandor uses many of the dishonest tricks of rhetoric (“Academics’ ‘shameful’ visit to Israel”, December 3). She says the Friends of Israel are “war-supporting”, while presumably her friends in Iran and Hamas are not; and she asserts a false equivalence between actual apartheid and the apartheid label her fellow travellers have managed to stick on Israel, notwithstanding the population of the state of Israel being 20% Arab, who have full rights and are active in every field of endeavour. And naturally she throws in the genocide label, as though it were a fact and not something dreamt up by the South African department of international relations & co-operation.
There is no shortage of Pandors with their obsessive hatred of Jews, but there is also no shortage of grounded people who recognise the most successful start-up state in history, the challenges it has faced during 80 years of unprovoked terrorism and wars, and how the world and particularly underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia are benefiting from its world-leading expertise in,inter alia: agriculture, water management, education, and medical science and devices. What is shameful is being part of the 30 years of failed ANC government and professing an interest in the human rights of an alien people when millions of her co-citizens had to put up with gross incompetence and corruption on her watch while yearning for the basic human rights of food, shelter and safety from violence. JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments toletters@businessday.co.za.
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