Limmud and the radical palestinian lobby in SA!!!
by Ilan Solomons on Saturday, August 15, 2009 at 10:48pm
This year Limmud had more security concerns than ever before, as a result of the controversy surrounding the invitation of the Lt Col David Benjamin - who was part of the legal team during the recent war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
There were calls from various Palestinian lobby groups/ anti-Israeli bodies for the arrest or at least deportation of Benjamin, and included in these were very respected human rights activists and legal minds like John Dugard and Max Du Preez - which is a undoubtedly a serious issue! Now we must differentiate between people that genuinely support the Palestinian plight and those that use their movements or organizations to forward their own ideological biased prejudices against the Jewish State of Israel. The Palestinian Solidarity Committee(PSC), for example falls is one of those organizations which although it claims to be a secular human rights movement - it is well known that it is largely based on radical Islamist beliefs of the destruction of the Jewish State - its membership and leadership is largely made up of radical Muslims, and yes there are a few non-Muslim members that genuinely support Palestinian rights and their cause, and even the odd disgruntled Jewish person who feels the Jewish community has not been outspoken enough about Israel's treatment of Palestinians - which may be true in one way or another! This being a serious issue as it seems that if you are Jewish and anti-Israel you must be enlightened in some way or another, and as in the case of Ronnie Kasrils and other disgruntled Jewish politicians has been used as a major tool to undermine and even attack not only the state of Israel but also our very own Jewish community!
Getting back to the issue of Limmud and the great furore around the attendance of Lt Col Benjamin -0 we saw a side of the Palestinian lobby that has been increasingly worrisome to the Jewish community of this country and especially to our Zionists values, what was meant to be a legitimate peaceful protest against Benjamin turned into a platform for open anti-Semitism, many of my friends and colleagues that were on the way to the campus has to walk through a verbal and in many cases physical intimidation of protesters! I have heard first hand accounts from friends of how some of the protestors were calling them Nazi's and then ironically following those slurs up by shouting profanities such as " I wish Hitler had finished you FUCKING Jews off" and " 6million was nothing - we could have done better". All such comments which I think any reasonable person would have been genuinely disturbed by.
I must mention that I came early so I was inside long before the shenanigans had began and had no such issues as the protestors had not arrived yet! But I will say the following I was questioned and searched like everyone else - EVEN THOUGH I WAS PRESENTING A TALK AT Limmud!!! - which just shows one how tight the security was.
The Wits Vuvuzela wrote an article this week entitled - " Slegs blankes" back on campus - now it writes about alleged racial profiling and separate entrances for blacks and whites, and other racially charged issues - now as anyone can imagine as the time for Benjamin's talk approached the protestors ratcheted up their rhetoric and by this time the likes of COSATU - which has a very strong anti-Zionist and anti-western lobby within it - had arrived on the seen and you had what seemed to be a direct confrontation between whites ( the majority of the delegates of the Jewish community) and on the other side the Black community(largely COSATU and young communist based and some Muslim Indians( PSC and other Islamist based societies. Not to say that there weren’t non-Muslims and whites and the odd disgruntled jewess that came along to show there displeasure with Lt Col Benjamin's presence on the Wits Med campus!
Let me explain something here about the Jewish community, we take security very seriously as there have been terrorist attacks on Jewish community centre's in Argentina, America, Israel..... and in more recent times on the Indian Jewish Community Centre in Mumbai - Meriman House, so call us paranoid but security is a real issue for Jews! We even have our own Jewish community security agency which was set up as a response to the attacks on the Jewish community centre in Argentina in the 1990's - to help make Jewish community centres more secure! SO ITS VERY PLAIN TO SEE THAT JEWS TAKE THIS ISSUE OF PROTECTING THE JEWISH COMMUNITY and more importantly preventing attacks on it!!!
However at the same time I will concede that one can not take the law into your own hands, one has to respect human dignity and rights in the constitution - namely the ones regarding freedom of movement and the right to peacefully protest, which are clearly enshrined within our constitution!
Having spoken to allot of people from both sides it is very clear to me that at some point the situation got very tense and certain measures had to be taken to avoid conflict and massive disruptions and even possible violence from erupting! At some point - I have not been able to clearly discover when the security both the Wits Security and the Private ones took measures to ensure that - suspicious and/ or dangerous looking characters (how ever that was measured I still am not entirely sure) were kept as far away from the venue as possible. Now lets look at some points which we can not ignore, death threats and other calls were made by certain parties and/or individuals against Lt Cal Benjamin long before Limmud even got underway, and one can not take these calls lightly - especially bearing in mind the history of attacks on Jewish events that I have mentioned, the protestors had become increasingly volatile as well!!
The racial element - now let me say this categorically I detest racial, ethnic, religious, gender and all other forms of prejudice and as a practicing Jew I can not embrace or entertain such prejudices! The history of the Jewish people shows how stereotyping and prejudice can cause such pain and suffering - and as a Jew such hits home strongly! At the same time I am very careful not to look for an anti-Semite under every rock, and in every shadow, I detest when people find reasons to use the anti-Semitism card (which many Jews including myself have been guilty of at some point or another of abusing).
Bearing that in mind I am sure that many Black South Africans are equally unhappy when the race card is used out of context to forward a specific agenda, and to abuse or misuse the horrific legacy of Apartheid!!! As I have stated previously and as it is well known that COSATU and its affiliates are black largely and the PSC and its associated elements are largely Indian, and predominantly Muslim!! Bearing this mind and noting that both organizations have uttered slogans along the lines of Death to Israel and a Zionism, and last year when Bongani Masuku o f Cosatu came to Wits to state COSATU's view on the Palestine-Israel issue he made comments along the lines of the need to make zioinsts lives as hard as possible and bring violence upon supporters of Israel - [you can read more about this issue specifically in the Blog www.itsalmostsupernatural.com - it gives the exact quotes and broader context!] There was undoubtedly going to be a greater worry people of these groupings - and inevitably a show down of sorts - which the security had to take measures to avoid!
And yes, they make mistakes and yes there were undoubtedly have been mistakes and often wrong people were questioned and made to feel like stranger on their own campus ion some rare cases! But on the other hand these were the exception and not the rule - there were many black people and even a few interested Indian people that came along to Limmud this year - which was great to see because its about the open sharing of ideas, and I hope they'll be even more next year, but the allegations of separate entrances for whites and blacks is complete propaganda and lies from what I have gathered, and if this happened in a some rare situations as a result of the security regarding specific people as a threat for what ever reason, and in cases where this was done incorrectly or for purely racist reasons, then the security and people involved must make a complete and sincere apology to those targeted unfairly, and lessons must be learnt from this issue!
But I honestly believe that this issue has more to do with the racist and bigotry anti-Zionist lobby which has masqueraded as pro-Palestinian but in-fact only using that cause to under5mine the rights of Zionists and liberal Israel supporters! This race issue has been used as a political tool to depict jews/zionists as racists, and is the after shocks of the radical Palestinian lobby's hopeless attempt to undermine the Jewish community’s right to be Zionist and to openly support and engage on the issues facing Israel!!!
It is not the first time that it has tried to paint the Jewish community as racist, and nor will it be the last time! And at this point I would like to congratulate SAUJS for putting on a very successful and enlightening Hamas Week which unveiled the true terrorist nature of Hamas and gave Witsies to learn about the other side of the Israel-Palestine narrative which is often ignored!!! Yishakoach!!!
Ilan Solomons
Young Zionist Federation Member and Bnei Akiva Madrich
There were calls from various Palestinian lobby groups/ anti-Israeli bodies for the arrest or at least deportation of Benjamin, and included in these were very respected human rights activists and legal minds like John Dugard and Max Du Preez - which is a undoubtedly a serious issue! Now we must differentiate between people that genuinely support the Palestinian plight and those that use their movements or organizations to forward their own ideological biased prejudices against the Jewish State of Israel. The Palestinian Solidarity Committee(PSC), for example falls is one of those organizations which although it claims to be a secular human rights movement - it is well known that it is largely based on radical Islamist beliefs of the destruction of the Jewish State - its membership and leadership is largely made up of radical Muslims, and yes there are a few non-Muslim members that genuinely support Palestinian rights and their cause, and even the odd disgruntled Jewish person who feels the Jewish community has not been outspoken enough about Israel's treatment of Palestinians - which may be true in one way or another! This being a serious issue as it seems that if you are Jewish and anti-Israel you must be enlightened in some way or another, and as in the case of Ronnie Kasrils and other disgruntled Jewish politicians has been used as a major tool to undermine and even attack not only the state of Israel but also our very own Jewish community!
Getting back to the issue of Limmud and the great furore around the attendance of Lt Col Benjamin -0 we saw a side of the Palestinian lobby that has been increasingly worrisome to the Jewish community of this country and especially to our Zionists values, what was meant to be a legitimate peaceful protest against Benjamin turned into a platform for open anti-Semitism, many of my friends and colleagues that were on the way to the campus has to walk through a verbal and in many cases physical intimidation of protesters! I have heard first hand accounts from friends of how some of the protestors were calling them Nazi's and then ironically following those slurs up by shouting profanities such as " I wish Hitler had finished you FUCKING Jews off" and " 6million was nothing - we could have done better". All such comments which I think any reasonable person would have been genuinely disturbed by.
I must mention that I came early so I was inside long before the shenanigans had began and had no such issues as the protestors had not arrived yet! But I will say the following I was questioned and searched like everyone else - EVEN THOUGH I WAS PRESENTING A TALK AT Limmud!!! - which just shows one how tight the security was.
The Wits Vuvuzela wrote an article this week entitled - " Slegs blankes" back on campus - now it writes about alleged racial profiling and separate entrances for blacks and whites, and other racially charged issues - now as anyone can imagine as the time for Benjamin's talk approached the protestors ratcheted up their rhetoric and by this time the likes of COSATU - which has a very strong anti-Zionist and anti-western lobby within it - had arrived on the seen and you had what seemed to be a direct confrontation between whites ( the majority of the delegates of the Jewish community) and on the other side the Black community(largely COSATU and young communist based and some Muslim Indians( PSC and other Islamist based societies. Not to say that there weren’t non-Muslims and whites and the odd disgruntled jewess that came along to show there displeasure with Lt Col Benjamin's presence on the Wits Med campus!
Let me explain something here about the Jewish community, we take security very seriously as there have been terrorist attacks on Jewish community centre's in Argentina, America, Israel..... and in more recent times on the Indian Jewish Community Centre in Mumbai - Meriman House, so call us paranoid but security is a real issue for Jews! We even have our own Jewish community security agency which was set up as a response to the attacks on the Jewish community centre in Argentina in the 1990's - to help make Jewish community centres more secure! SO ITS VERY PLAIN TO SEE THAT JEWS TAKE THIS ISSUE OF PROTECTING THE JEWISH COMMUNITY and more importantly preventing attacks on it!!!
However at the same time I will concede that one can not take the law into your own hands, one has to respect human dignity and rights in the constitution - namely the ones regarding freedom of movement and the right to peacefully protest, which are clearly enshrined within our constitution!
Having spoken to allot of people from both sides it is very clear to me that at some point the situation got very tense and certain measures had to be taken to avoid conflict and massive disruptions and even possible violence from erupting! At some point - I have not been able to clearly discover when the security both the Wits Security and the Private ones took measures to ensure that - suspicious and/ or dangerous looking characters (how ever that was measured I still am not entirely sure) were kept as far away from the venue as possible. Now lets look at some points which we can not ignore, death threats and other calls were made by certain parties and/or individuals against Lt Cal Benjamin long before Limmud even got underway, and one can not take these calls lightly - especially bearing in mind the history of attacks on Jewish events that I have mentioned, the protestors had become increasingly volatile as well!!
The racial element - now let me say this categorically I detest racial, ethnic, religious, gender and all other forms of prejudice and as a practicing Jew I can not embrace or entertain such prejudices! The history of the Jewish people shows how stereotyping and prejudice can cause such pain and suffering - and as a Jew such hits home strongly! At the same time I am very careful not to look for an anti-Semite under every rock, and in every shadow, I detest when people find reasons to use the anti-Semitism card (which many Jews including myself have been guilty of at some point or another of abusing).
Bearing that in mind I am sure that many Black South Africans are equally unhappy when the race card is used out of context to forward a specific agenda, and to abuse or misuse the horrific legacy of Apartheid!!! As I have stated previously and as it is well known that COSATU and its affiliates are black largely and the PSC and its associated elements are largely Indian, and predominantly Muslim!! Bearing this mind and noting that both organizations have uttered slogans along the lines of Death to Israel and a Zionism, and last year when Bongani Masuku o f Cosatu came to Wits to state COSATU's view on the Palestine-Israel issue he made comments along the lines of the need to make zioinsts lives as hard as possible and bring violence upon supporters of Israel - [you can read more about this issue specifically in the Blog www.itsalmostsupernatural.com - it gives the exact quotes and broader context!] There was undoubtedly going to be a greater worry people of these groupings - and inevitably a show down of sorts - which the security had to take measures to avoid!
And yes, they make mistakes and yes there were undoubtedly have been mistakes and often wrong people were questioned and made to feel like stranger on their own campus ion some rare cases! But on the other hand these were the exception and not the rule - there were many black people and even a few interested Indian people that came along to Limmud this year - which was great to see because its about the open sharing of ideas, and I hope they'll be even more next year, but the allegations of separate entrances for whites and blacks is complete propaganda and lies from what I have gathered, and if this happened in a some rare situations as a result of the security regarding specific people as a threat for what ever reason, and in cases where this was done incorrectly or for purely racist reasons, then the security and people involved must make a complete and sincere apology to those targeted unfairly, and lessons must be learnt from this issue!
But I honestly believe that this issue has more to do with the racist and bigotry anti-Zionist lobby which has masqueraded as pro-Palestinian but in-fact only using that cause to under5mine the rights of Zionists and liberal Israel supporters! This race issue has been used as a political tool to depict jews/zionists as racists, and is the after shocks of the radical Palestinian lobby's hopeless attempt to undermine the Jewish community’s right to be Zionist and to openly support and engage on the issues facing Israel!!!
It is not the first time that it has tried to paint the Jewish community as racist, and nor will it be the last time! And at this point I would like to congratulate SAUJS for putting on a very successful and enlightening Hamas Week which unveiled the true terrorist nature of Hamas and gave Witsies to learn about the other side of the Israel-Palestine narrative which is often ignored!!! Yishakoach!!!
Ilan Solomons
Young Zionist Federation Member and Bnei Akiva Madrich
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