Fascists and Totalitarian Israel Apologists are NOT Welcome on My PageShare - By Zackie Achmat
by Ilan Solomons on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 10:54pm
Today at 2:36pm
FASCISTS AND TOTALITARIAN ISRAEL APOLOGISTS ARE NOT WELCOME ON MY PAGE
Dear Friends
The oppression of Palestinians by the State of Israel is the cause of great debate and oftentimes enmity between people. On rare occasions, this conflict establishes a bond of indestructible friendship and comradeship between Muslim or Jewish people or those who see ourselves as the political rather than religious descendants of Abraham – agnostics, atheists or sceptics who understand the great moral principles of Judaism, Christianity or Islam.
I want to state my position on Palestine clearly to establish the context for this note.
First, the freedom, dignity and equality of all the people of Palestine are non-negotiable.
Second, the freedom, dignity and security of every Jewish person to live in Israel at peace with its neighbours must also be non-negotiable.
Third, the building of a mass movement led by Palestinians and supported by Israelis based on the principles of non-violence is indispensable to achieve freedom for all.
Fourth, the principles of non-violence do not exclude the right to self-defence. In the same way, as the Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto had a right and duty to defend themselves against Nazi terror, the Palestinian people have the right and duty to defend themselves from Israel’s state terror.
Fifth and equally important as the right of self-defence is the duty of every democrat to condemn terror attacks including suicide bombings from whatever quarters on Israeli people, Jewish people there or anywhere else in the world.
Sixth, the State of Israel has the right within international human rights law to try any perpetrator of violence against civilians both Jewish and Muslim within its borders on the basis of the rule of law and due process. Under the Rome Statute, if it joined the International criminal Court, Israel could also legally apprehend such terror groups or perpetrators of violence.
Seventh, I will work with any person (whether they support a two-state, single-state or federal bi-national state) who supports non-violence.
Last, I want to live with others to build a world on the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The UDHR came out of the just war against Nazism and fascism – the Nazis and fascists murdered socialists, communists and liberals because of their political identities. They committed a holocaust against Jewish people and attempted genocide against the Roma (gypsies) as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people on the basis of their identities.
In the first instance, Hitler silenced all opposition by German people against Nazism before he turned his attention to the world. The Nazis then killed millions of Europeans and more than 15 million Russians on the basis of their programmes of extermination. There is no doubt that just as Mussolini had made war in Libya and Ethiopia, Hitler would have attempted to conquer Africa and undertaken the same programme of extermination against black people. At the beginning of the twentieth century, The German colonial General Lothar von Trotha and others who became Nazis committed one of the first genocides against the Herero people in Namibia. Samuel Maharero.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the codification of all our rights and a fitting tribute to the Herero people, victims of the Holocaust against Jewish people, socialists, communists, liberals, people of different sexual orientations, trade unionists as well as the people of Europe, Russia, Asia particularly China and other continents who paid the price of totalitarianism and Nazism in Italy, Germany and Japan.
For these reasons I do not engage people with racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, sexist, Islamophobic, Nazi or totalitarian views by choice. I will not allow people like that into my home and definitely not onto my page where their hate can happily reach nearly 3000 people.
For the above reasons and those that follow Mr Ilan Solomons a FaceBook stalker is no longer welcome on my page:
1. Mr Solomons’ object and purpose is to defend the actions of the state of Israel without regard facts, history or morality, and without regard to the people who suffer as a result. Despite his professed commitment to liberalism and his recognition of the problem of the occupation, his conduct is to defend the indefensible and thereby to promote suffering, injustice and oppression. His language cannot disguise his object.
2. He is duplicitous and disingenuous and therefore dishonest. His acknowledgement of occupation is insincere when read with his comments elsewhere. His purpose and modus operandi is defend oppression and occupation rather than to debate seriously.
3. He participates in a hateful and dangerous group like “Stop Doron Isaacs & Habonim” which he has still failed to publicly renounce.
4. His contributions on my wall are consistently characterised by personal insults.
In this note I refer interchangeably to Israel apologists and totalitarians – this is my definition of these terms – those who defend the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the Israeli State and their militias. This does not refer to spiritual Zionists or those Jewish people who see Israel as their home but who recognise Palestinians as human beings.
I also use the terms Islamist and totalitarian interchangeably. Many Muslims are sincere and spiritual Islamists and also part of a global Ummah – most of the spiritual Islamists reject the ideas of the extermination of any people or the use of terror.
My reference to Israel apologists and Islamist totalitarians do not refer to Muslim and Jewish people or their religions in this way. As an atheist, I have the deepest respect for people of faith who see themselves as a part of humanity and not in isolation from it. This was my grandfather and grandmother’s Islam.
For these reason, Mr. Ilan Solomons is no longer welcome on my page. I have tolerated him although he has never been a friend either in life or on FaceBook.
I will meet anyone who holds reactionary views where they have power to change their views or practice. Mr. Solomons has neither the will nor the power to change his views or practice.
When individuals are propagandists whether for the Israeli state, Hamas, Ahmedinijad, Mugabe, Al-Bashir or George Bush -- I will not accept their friendship or views on my page. Generally when one criticises the state of Israel their propagandists demand action against these states. They themselves compare Israel to those totalitarian regimes.
Mr. Solomons and his friends take exception to my criticism of the Jewish Community Security Organisation (CSO). Protection of the Jewish community is tragically necessary, but this could be done by private security, not an ideologically committed force, or, a community volunteer force under the direction of SAPS.
This is necessary because of the anti-semitic attacks on the community including the terrorist PAGAD bombings of Jewish venues. PAGAD also attacked other Muslims, gay venues and US linked "targets". A friend of mine lost both legs in the Planet Hollywood bombing. PAGAD's anti-crime and drugs campaign is a smoke-screen for building an Islamist militia. Totalitarian Islamists with militias abuse Islam and the cause of the Palestians.
The Jewish community has a right to self-defence but sadly my experience of the CSO including their reference to me as an "Arab" is that of an armed racist group not simply a community self-defence unit. Their interrogation of my Palestinian friend and comrade Hani Abu Haikal in Johannesburg when he visited South Africa convinced me of their reactionary, racist and Islamophobic nature.
Hani Abu Haikal comes from Hebron a Palestinian town occupied by fascist Israeli citizens. The "settlers" read fascists have the overt protection of the Israeli State and none of the Israeli political parties have consistently worked to reverse this occupation since the 1967 war. Mikhael Manekin one of the most courageous progressive Orthodox Jewish people and someone I regard as family, joined his Palestinian and Muslim comrade Hani Abu Haikal on his visit to educate us about Hebron. They debated openly with right-wingers such as Solomons.
Will the Israeli state apologists call for the immediate withdrawal of military support, subsidised electricity, police support for the settler militia -- in a place where Palestinians are treated no different than fascists in Europe treated Jewish people before the Second World War?
Every one of the Israeli state's actions in Hebron regarded as unlawful under all international law is supported by the Israeli propaganda machine. The failure to criticise is a form of support, particularly on the part of organisations, like the SA Zionist Federation, whose main activity is the defense of Israeli actions. .
I believe that the government has a duty to protect all people in SA from hate crimes and terror. For this reason, I have always supported all the lawful measures the government has taken against PAGAD and the Boeremag.
The CSO must be brought under the guidance of the SAPS. It is necessary to protect the lives of all Jewish people including right-wing Zionists. However, the CSO uses this terrorism and hate-crimes and our support for community defence to also create terror and fear among Jewish dissenters.
See for example the Facebook group -- Stop Doron Isaacs & Habonim-- a classic denial of free speech coupled with violent threats, in which Mr Ilan Solomons has often participated, and of which he remains a member.
The CSO also mimic and valorise Israeli aggression by cultivating a fascist mind-set in Jewish youth who they recruit for military-type training in South Africa and Israel, and by exaggerating the dangers of anti-semitism (which are nevertheless real) in order to justify their own existence to their donors and communal structures like the SA Jewish Board of Deputies. These activities go beyond basic self-defense training, and include indoctrination into a brutal worldview in which all of civilisation is on the verge of imminent collapse from the threat from “Muslim terrorism”. Civilisation is under threat from all totalitarianism and fundamentalist, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Africanist, Hindu or any other form.. The majority of Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and African people are not fundamentalist, many or even most are orthodox but for them religion is not incompatible with decency and “loving thy neighbour as thyself”.
It is tragic that the leadership of the Jewish community devote such resources to an organisation that teaches young Jewish people to see all other people as a threat, and spends so much time policing an organisation like Habonim which tries (not enough) to bridge the gaps of race, privilege, gender, religion, sexual orientation, class and language. Habonim’s approach is a much better guarantor of the long-term security of the Jewish community and all people in South Africa, Israel, Palestine and the world.
Mr Solomons and anyone who refuses to condemn CSO tactics or refuses to state whether they act as agents of the Israeli state whether employed or not is not welcome on my page. This is a refusal to engage with fascist and reactionary Israel apologists. Sincere Zionists who recognise the Palestinian demands for freedom as indispensable to their own spirituality or identity are welcome in my home or on my page.
Presently Israelis visit South Africa without a visa but Palestinians require a visa from Pretoria and clearance from the Israeli government in Jerusalem. The South African government must introduce visa restrictions on Israelis, withdraw settlers from the Occupied territories, stop foreign military service of South African citizens and the travel of any representative of the Israeli state to our country..
Jewish people and their friends with family in Israel must be allowed to visit between South Africa and Israel freely and without restriction. All people have a right to decent family life.
While one might fear the terror of the CSO and PAGAD, they should never silence us. Their defenders are not welcome on my page. Lastly, just as established Muslim clerics will not condemn the homophobia of PAGAD or Iran, I have no doubt that none of the official Jewish organisations in South Africa will condemn the homophobia of their Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein.
Mr. Solomons and any other apologist for Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity -- my page is not a Palestinian village to be occupied with impunity. It is not a place for propaganda but a space where honest, respectful debate can take place.
I do this out of respect for the millions of Palestinians in Israel, Palestine and the diaspora who have no freedom of movement, association, belief or speech. This is a small act of solidarity with those arrested, detained, tortured, imprisoned and restricted (read banned) for resisting Occupation. This includes people like Mohamed Khatib, a Palestinian from Beilin and Ezra Nawi a Jewish gay man and Israeli.
Zackie Achmat
FASCISTS AND TOTALITARIAN ISRAEL APOLOGISTS ARE NOT WELCOME ON MY PAGE
Dear Friends
The oppression of Palestinians by the State of Israel is the cause of great debate and oftentimes enmity between people. On rare occasions, this conflict establishes a bond of indestructible friendship and comradeship between Muslim or Jewish people or those who see ourselves as the political rather than religious descendants of Abraham – agnostics, atheists or sceptics who understand the great moral principles of Judaism, Christianity or Islam.
I want to state my position on Palestine clearly to establish the context for this note.
First, the freedom, dignity and equality of all the people of Palestine are non-negotiable.
Second, the freedom, dignity and security of every Jewish person to live in Israel at peace with its neighbours must also be non-negotiable.
Third, the building of a mass movement led by Palestinians and supported by Israelis based on the principles of non-violence is indispensable to achieve freedom for all.
Fourth, the principles of non-violence do not exclude the right to self-defence. In the same way, as the Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto had a right and duty to defend themselves against Nazi terror, the Palestinian people have the right and duty to defend themselves from Israel’s state terror.
Fifth and equally important as the right of self-defence is the duty of every democrat to condemn terror attacks including suicide bombings from whatever quarters on Israeli people, Jewish people there or anywhere else in the world.
Sixth, the State of Israel has the right within international human rights law to try any perpetrator of violence against civilians both Jewish and Muslim within its borders on the basis of the rule of law and due process. Under the Rome Statute, if it joined the International criminal Court, Israel could also legally apprehend such terror groups or perpetrators of violence.
Seventh, I will work with any person (whether they support a two-state, single-state or federal bi-national state) who supports non-violence.
Last, I want to live with others to build a world on the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The UDHR came out of the just war against Nazism and fascism – the Nazis and fascists murdered socialists, communists and liberals because of their political identities. They committed a holocaust against Jewish people and attempted genocide against the Roma (gypsies) as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people on the basis of their identities.
In the first instance, Hitler silenced all opposition by German people against Nazism before he turned his attention to the world. The Nazis then killed millions of Europeans and more than 15 million Russians on the basis of their programmes of extermination. There is no doubt that just as Mussolini had made war in Libya and Ethiopia, Hitler would have attempted to conquer Africa and undertaken the same programme of extermination against black people. At the beginning of the twentieth century, The German colonial General Lothar von Trotha and others who became Nazis committed one of the first genocides against the Herero people in Namibia. Samuel Maharero.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the codification of all our rights and a fitting tribute to the Herero people, victims of the Holocaust against Jewish people, socialists, communists, liberals, people of different sexual orientations, trade unionists as well as the people of Europe, Russia, Asia particularly China and other continents who paid the price of totalitarianism and Nazism in Italy, Germany and Japan.
For these reasons I do not engage people with racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, sexist, Islamophobic, Nazi or totalitarian views by choice. I will not allow people like that into my home and definitely not onto my page where their hate can happily reach nearly 3000 people.
For the above reasons and those that follow Mr Ilan Solomons a FaceBook stalker is no longer welcome on my page:
1. Mr Solomons’ object and purpose is to defend the actions of the state of Israel without regard facts, history or morality, and without regard to the people who suffer as a result. Despite his professed commitment to liberalism and his recognition of the problem of the occupation, his conduct is to defend the indefensible and thereby to promote suffering, injustice and oppression. His language cannot disguise his object.
2. He is duplicitous and disingenuous and therefore dishonest. His acknowledgement of occupation is insincere when read with his comments elsewhere. His purpose and modus operandi is defend oppression and occupation rather than to debate seriously.
3. He participates in a hateful and dangerous group like “Stop Doron Isaacs & Habonim” which he has still failed to publicly renounce.
4. His contributions on my wall are consistently characterised by personal insults.
In this note I refer interchangeably to Israel apologists and totalitarians – this is my definition of these terms – those who defend the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the Israeli State and their militias. This does not refer to spiritual Zionists or those Jewish people who see Israel as their home but who recognise Palestinians as human beings.
I also use the terms Islamist and totalitarian interchangeably. Many Muslims are sincere and spiritual Islamists and also part of a global Ummah – most of the spiritual Islamists reject the ideas of the extermination of any people or the use of terror.
My reference to Israel apologists and Islamist totalitarians do not refer to Muslim and Jewish people or their religions in this way. As an atheist, I have the deepest respect for people of faith who see themselves as a part of humanity and not in isolation from it. This was my grandfather and grandmother’s Islam.
For these reason, Mr. Ilan Solomons is no longer welcome on my page. I have tolerated him although he has never been a friend either in life or on FaceBook.
I will meet anyone who holds reactionary views where they have power to change their views or practice. Mr. Solomons has neither the will nor the power to change his views or practice.
When individuals are propagandists whether for the Israeli state, Hamas, Ahmedinijad, Mugabe, Al-Bashir or George Bush -- I will not accept their friendship or views on my page. Generally when one criticises the state of Israel their propagandists demand action against these states. They themselves compare Israel to those totalitarian regimes.
Mr. Solomons and his friends take exception to my criticism of the Jewish Community Security Organisation (CSO). Protection of the Jewish community is tragically necessary, but this could be done by private security, not an ideologically committed force, or, a community volunteer force under the direction of SAPS.
This is necessary because of the anti-semitic attacks on the community including the terrorist PAGAD bombings of Jewish venues. PAGAD also attacked other Muslims, gay venues and US linked "targets". A friend of mine lost both legs in the Planet Hollywood bombing. PAGAD's anti-crime and drugs campaign is a smoke-screen for building an Islamist militia. Totalitarian Islamists with militias abuse Islam and the cause of the Palestians.
The Jewish community has a right to self-defence but sadly my experience of the CSO including their reference to me as an "Arab" is that of an armed racist group not simply a community self-defence unit. Their interrogation of my Palestinian friend and comrade Hani Abu Haikal in Johannesburg when he visited South Africa convinced me of their reactionary, racist and Islamophobic nature.
Hani Abu Haikal comes from Hebron a Palestinian town occupied by fascist Israeli citizens. The "settlers" read fascists have the overt protection of the Israeli State and none of the Israeli political parties have consistently worked to reverse this occupation since the 1967 war. Mikhael Manekin one of the most courageous progressive Orthodox Jewish people and someone I regard as family, joined his Palestinian and Muslim comrade Hani Abu Haikal on his visit to educate us about Hebron. They debated openly with right-wingers such as Solomons.
Will the Israeli state apologists call for the immediate withdrawal of military support, subsidised electricity, police support for the settler militia -- in a place where Palestinians are treated no different than fascists in Europe treated Jewish people before the Second World War?
Every one of the Israeli state's actions in Hebron regarded as unlawful under all international law is supported by the Israeli propaganda machine. The failure to criticise is a form of support, particularly on the part of organisations, like the SA Zionist Federation, whose main activity is the defense of Israeli actions. .
I believe that the government has a duty to protect all people in SA from hate crimes and terror. For this reason, I have always supported all the lawful measures the government has taken against PAGAD and the Boeremag.
The CSO must be brought under the guidance of the SAPS. It is necessary to protect the lives of all Jewish people including right-wing Zionists. However, the CSO uses this terrorism and hate-crimes and our support for community defence to also create terror and fear among Jewish dissenters.
See for example the Facebook group -- Stop Doron Isaacs & Habonim-- a classic denial of free speech coupled with violent threats, in which Mr Ilan Solomons has often participated, and of which he remains a member.
The CSO also mimic and valorise Israeli aggression by cultivating a fascist mind-set in Jewish youth who they recruit for military-type training in South Africa and Israel, and by exaggerating the dangers of anti-semitism (which are nevertheless real) in order to justify their own existence to their donors and communal structures like the SA Jewish Board of Deputies. These activities go beyond basic self-defense training, and include indoctrination into a brutal worldview in which all of civilisation is on the verge of imminent collapse from the threat from “Muslim terrorism”. Civilisation is under threat from all totalitarianism and fundamentalist, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Africanist, Hindu or any other form.. The majority of Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and African people are not fundamentalist, many or even most are orthodox but for them religion is not incompatible with decency and “loving thy neighbour as thyself”.
It is tragic that the leadership of the Jewish community devote such resources to an organisation that teaches young Jewish people to see all other people as a threat, and spends so much time policing an organisation like Habonim which tries (not enough) to bridge the gaps of race, privilege, gender, religion, sexual orientation, class and language. Habonim’s approach is a much better guarantor of the long-term security of the Jewish community and all people in South Africa, Israel, Palestine and the world.
Mr Solomons and anyone who refuses to condemn CSO tactics or refuses to state whether they act as agents of the Israeli state whether employed or not is not welcome on my page. This is a refusal to engage with fascist and reactionary Israel apologists. Sincere Zionists who recognise the Palestinian demands for freedom as indispensable to their own spirituality or identity are welcome in my home or on my page.
Presently Israelis visit South Africa without a visa but Palestinians require a visa from Pretoria and clearance from the Israeli government in Jerusalem. The South African government must introduce visa restrictions on Israelis, withdraw settlers from the Occupied territories, stop foreign military service of South African citizens and the travel of any representative of the Israeli state to our country..
Jewish people and their friends with family in Israel must be allowed to visit between South Africa and Israel freely and without restriction. All people have a right to decent family life.
While one might fear the terror of the CSO and PAGAD, they should never silence us. Their defenders are not welcome on my page. Lastly, just as established Muslim clerics will not condemn the homophobia of PAGAD or Iran, I have no doubt that none of the official Jewish organisations in South Africa will condemn the homophobia of their Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein.
Mr. Solomons and any other apologist for Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity -- my page is not a Palestinian village to be occupied with impunity. It is not a place for propaganda but a space where honest, respectful debate can take place.
I do this out of respect for the millions of Palestinians in Israel, Palestine and the diaspora who have no freedom of movement, association, belief or speech. This is a small act of solidarity with those arrested, detained, tortured, imprisoned and restricted (read banned) for resisting Occupation. This includes people like Mohamed Khatib, a Palestinian from Beilin and Ezra Nawi a Jewish gay man and Israeli.
Zackie Achmat
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