Anti-Semites, be consistent please.

One Ms Fathima Moosa, of Durban, South Africa, wrote to her local drugstore demanding that they stop selling made-in-Israel cosmetics. They declined to do so. She wrote again, repeating her demand. Here is CEO Ivan Saltzman’s unapologetic response: 
“Dear Fatima Moosa,

I will begin by answering your likening Israel’s supposed human rights violations to Hitler’s Nazism, a scurrilous slur that you have clearly chosen to employ in order to give maximum offense. I think you well know that the crimes of the Nazi regime involved the deliberate mass murder of millions of civilians, largely Jews, as a matter of planned policy. Is this really what Israel is doing? Obviously not – in fact it does completely the opposite. Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to minimize civilian casualties and has been extremely successful in this regard. Palestinian (or for that matter Lebanese) casualties have been a tiny fraction of what they would have been if Israel had truly adopted a Nazi-like extermination policy, given the massive military capability it has at its disposal. 

In fact, it is very easy to identify the true modern-day Nazis in the Middle East. They are found in the ranks of such murderous extremist groupings as Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestine Islamic Jihad (amongst others), all of which regard the mass murder of Israeli Jews as the noblest goal their followers can aspire to. Have you ever thought what the consequences would be if Israel were to adopt the same kind of tactics against the Palestinian population? Mass slaughter would indeed ensue, but fortunately Israel, no matter what the provocation, has not nor will not ever stoop to such depths. 

So far as your stated intention of boycotting Dis-Chem goes, that is obviously your decision. After all, we do live in a free country. However, if it is your intention to boycott Israeli products, you need to be consistent If your gesture is to have any meaning. I hope you don’t use an intel chip in your computer with which you probably wrote your e-mail because it was invented in Israel. I hope that you stay in good health because if you need preventative surgery against a heart attack, you will have to boycott the procedure because guess what? The stent was invented in Israel. Likewise, I hope you are never prescribed any patch for diabetes, to deliver medication and other drugs. If you are an asthmatic you may have to use a new type of inhaler (Spin) invented in Israel. So please check. Israel has given the world the system of drip irrigation which is being widely adopted in South Africa with water shortages like many countries. You should boycott all fruit and vegetables grown by this method. The list that Israel has given the world is very lengthy. Check very carefully what you boycott.

You may not have noticed the crisis in the Arab world, “Arab Spring” which now is in Winter with no end in sight. To the best of my knowledge this concerns human rights. But then I have an HD TV which you are probably boycotting. The cheapness of life in Somalia and Sudan is perpetrated by the very people who you are strongly affiliated to! You obviously don’t know that the racism of Hitler differs very little to that of Israel’s enemies. Both want the destruction of the Jewish people. 

I believe I had to answer your “complaint”. I will continue to sell Dead Sea products from Israel. You might know the Dead Sea has two shores. I wonder why the Jordanians or Palestinians (most come from Jordan) do not want to share this wonderful natural resource of the Dead Sea. 

I will not respond to any further correspondence on this subject.

Yours faithfully 

IVAN SALTZMAN | CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER”

Full disclosure: I have no commercial interest in Dead Sea products or Dis-Chem, and I do not know Ivan Saltzman.

Nothing New Under the Sun.

We often hear:  “If only I Israel would return the ‘occupied territories’, peace would reign.” Or: “If only Israel would be more receptive to world opinion …” or “If only Israel would stop building new settlements …” or “If only Israel would roll over and die …” ad infinitum. Liberals, leftists and assorted other bleeding-heart anti-Semites usually justify their own racism by claiming that Israel alone is at fault for their own, and the world’s, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic ranting. (The three “antis” are usually cloaked in milder wording.)

Israel? In 1945, long before Israel even existed, the Arab League declared an official boycott of “Jewish products and manufactured goods” in an effort to strangle the Jewish population in the then British Mandate Palestine. http://www.enotes.com/topic/Arab_League_boycott_of_Israel  In fact, the first official boycott of Jews and Zionists by the Arabs began way back in 1922, when there were no “green lines”, no occupied territories, no settlements, no Israel. All there was was bubbling Arab racist anti-Semitism.

Nothing new under the sun.

Well, perhaps there is. incipient, latent anti-Semitism has since become popular for leftist radicals who love to explain: “… it’s got nothing to do with Jews or Judaism. We’re just supporting the Arabs. Some of our best friends are Jews. If only Israel blah blah blah …” Yeah, sure.

The west’s thirst for Arab oil blinds these people. They’ll lick ass as long as it ensures uninterrupted oil supplies.

Anti-Semitism is the lowest, most base form of racism. The self-appointed liberal liberators should stop kidding themselves. They are as racist as the apartheid racists of the old South Africa. They are as racist as the white supremacists in 1950s Mississippi. They are as racist as the neo-Nazi skinheads of today.

Racist anti-Semitism has no place in today’s world.

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at 75.

Last night we attended a gala concert in honor of the 75^th anniversary of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO), arguably one of the finest orchestras in the world. Certainly one of the most famous.

The orchestra’s home, the Mann Auditorium, is undergoing major renovations, so the concert was held in Hangar 11 at the old Tel Aviv port. A less than perfect musical locale, but it added to the “Israeliness” of the evening and was done up beautifully for the event. The evening began – how not? – with a ceremonial lighting of the Channukah candles (the audience joining in for a long “aa-aa-mennn” after the brachot), followed by the entire orchestra playing a crashingly beautiful “Ma’oz Zur” (with audience vocal  participation of course).

The concert itself was beautiful, beginning with a world premiere of a piece by an Israeli composer, two pieces by Beethoven and one by Rachmaninov. The Conductor and Musical director for Life was Zubin Mehta. This is the second IPO gala concert I have been fortunate enough to attend. The first was in Mumbai (then stillBombay) about 17 years ago. Mehta is Indian, and soon after India and Israel established diplomatic relations for the first time, Mehta took the Israel Philharmonic on a triumphant tour of India. By a stroke of luck (it’s a long story ….) I was invited to the closing concert of that tour, inBombay.

I hope last night’s gala was not my last.

Israel’s universality at the hospital

On Friday I had to accompany someone to a local hospital for a medical procedure. (Thanks, everything turned out negative. No further need for medical intervention).

 

I was struck by the melange of people working at the hospital. The receptionist was Bulgarian/Israeli. The security officer was Ethiopian/Israeli. The head nurse in the recovery room was Arab/Israeli, as was the male nurse assisting the doctor (a Lithuanian/Israeli) in the theater. Also working in the recovery room were Israelis originally from Russia, America and other countries. (I couldn’t identify all the accents as I wondered about while “my” patient was recovering from the anaesthetic.) Not to mention the obviously Sabra Israelis – those born here of Israeli parentage.

 

Similarly, the patients. (I could only identify some of the Arabs by their accents, or because the women wore traditional head covers, the Christians because they wore crosses.) Religious, secular, Jewish, Christian, Moslem and Druze. Rich and poor, because Israel has universal health coverage.

 

No Tower of Babel here. We all communicated in Hebrew, some less fluent than others, but it works.

 

How I wished those who accuse Israel of “apartheid” could experience what I saw.

Altruism, Egotism or Racism?

Israel has been in a quandary for some years now, concerning the flow of illegal immigrants, mostly from poor African countries. Lately the issue has come to a head as the trickle became a flood. There are those who claim that the illegals are legitimate asylum seekers, seeking rescue from political or other oppression in their home countries. while the other voice being heard is that these are none other than people dissatisfied with their home-ground economic (or social or whatever) situation, seeking to live in a better country with higher standards of education, health care, social security and more. Israel has become a magnet for them.

 Are they asylum seekers or not? If yes, Israel (and all other democratic countries for that matter) have an obligation to provide the protection they seek. Israel does indeed provide asylum for many groups of “illegal immigrants”, including gay people from the Palestinian Territories who would otherwise be murdered by their own families if they were to go back there. I have neither the tools nor the knowledge to decide about other illegals, be they from Africa or wherever, and I’m blissfully happy that I don’t have to decide these life-saving issues.

Not all of us were lucky enough to have been born in Denmark, Bhutan or Costa Rica – three of the top 15 “luckiest” countries in the world, according to a 2006 survey by the University of Leicester. Similarly, most of us were fortunate enough not have been born in Sudan, Ukraine or Zimbabwe – amongst the 10 ”unhappiest” countries of the 178 listed in the same survey.

Think of a lifeboat with a capacity of 100 people, and imagine that the full lifeboat is floundering in high seas while another 200 people are still in the water. Five more people in the lifeboat and it will sink, meaning that all 105 will drown. The bitter philosphic conundrum is not new. And it applies to Israel today. Save and sink, or row away and survive? What if that woman in the water is your mother (or daughter)? What if she is your ex-wife? What if you don’t even know her?

Difficult questions that I will not attempt to answer, and which I hope I am never faced with.

But Israel faces those comparitive questions every day, and the moral dilemma is heavy and loaded. Should and would Israel act differently if the illegals were Jews from the USA? What if they were white Catholics from Spain? And what if they were black Jews from Ethiopia? We know the answer to the last question, so Israel is off the hook on the racism quotient.

I leave you one more thought: If Israel is such a dreadful, racist, undemocratic, “apartheid-like” country, why are thousands of immigrants risking their all to come here? Why don’t they join their brethren seeking economic improvement in Malta, Italy and France – or South Africa? A large number of the illegals trying to enter Israel are Moslems. Why aren’t they flooding into Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Indonesia? Could it be because they know that Israel is a stable, westernised and moral democracy, with rule of law and unbiased courts? Israel’s detractors only criticise the country for refusing to provide sanctuary for everyone who comes in yelling “political asylum”. None seem to see the other, more attractive side of the coin.

I’m proud and happy and “lucky” to be living here. I’m painfully sorry for those without the privilege of  Israeli citizenship or legal residence. Yet I totally reject the battle cry that Israel, a nation of immigrants with a painfull past of closed gates in time of desperate need, must now open its doors to all. The comparison to those WW2 days is odious at best, and otherwise irrelevant and oblique .

I want this lifeboat to weather the storm. Forever.

The facts confirmed – Finally!

I have always maintained that the very root of the world’s inability to solve, or work towards a solution for, the so-called Arab-Israel conflict has been oil. I have always maintained that the flagrant anti-Israel mood of seemingly modern, Western cultures has been based upon the need not to antagonize the Arabs, so that oil supplies for modern fuel-based economies would not be interupted.

 How else could their staggering stupidity in always blaming Israel and always looking the other way at Arab aggression be explained?

Now the situation in Iran has boiled over. The entire world has finally come to understand that also totalitarian Iran is the threat to world peace – perhaps the biggest threat at this time. Wild Iranian hordes recently attacked the British Embassy in Tehran. In response, the Iranian Ambassador to London (and all the staff) have been ordered to leave Britain. Sweden, Germany and France have recalled their own Ambassadors from Tehran for “consultation”.

Yesterday the Foreign Ministers of the European Union met to decide on severe sanctions to bring Iran to its senses and to finally stop the Iranian rush to develop nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran, especially with its present government would be the end of the world as we know it. It seemed that a freeze on purchasing Iranian oil would be put in place, thus drying up the major source of funding for the regime there.

But it was not to be. Today we are told that the EU Ministers could not agree on sanctions “in this climate of world financial crisis”. Read: We do want to stop Iran but our commercial interests are more important – we can’t bear the thought of a rise in fuel prices right now”.

The hypocritical Brits, the spineless Swedes, the lazy Frenchies, the obsessive Germans and the soppy Americans would rather have stable oil supplies at (relatively) stable prices. Appeasement is the name of the game (shades of Neville Chamberlain and Hitler … what short memories the Europeans have). China & Russia chant continuously that sanctions are not the solution, only dialog is. (Neville – are you smiling in your grave?)

During the 1973-74 oil crisis, there was supposedly a bumper sticker that read: “We need oil not Jews”. I doubt if that sticker ever existed, but the theory behind it certainly did: “Abandon Israel – we will lick Arab ass just as long as we can drive our cars. just as long as the planes fly, just as long as the factories work”.

The birds have come home to nest. Appeasing totalitarian regimes will never work.

Unfortunately, until renewable (and non-polluting) energy sources are discovered, the world will continue to lick. My hope is that the west’s desperate thirst for Arab oil will be slaked before Iran acquires the bomb. Heaven help us.

Women Leading Israel to Peace

The late Golda Meir was Israel’s Prime Minister from 1969 to 1974. She was one of the world’s first female (and rare) political leaders.  It was on her watch that Israel’s Arab neighbors attacked us in the debacle that has become known as the October War. Israel ultimately vanquished the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies, but it was a close call. Sadly, Mrs. Meir had to resign, and she died four years later.

Yesterday, (21st September) Israel’s Labor Party held its primaries to select the new party leader. In the run-off, Shelly Yachimovich became the first woman to lead the Labor Party since Golda Meir. She left veteran Labor activist and former head of Israel’s Labor Federation, Amir Peretz, trailing in her dust.

I’ve never voted for Labor in the 40 years I’ve lived in Israel, and it’s unlikely I ever will. (Never say never!). But what is interesting about Israeli party politics now is that two parties have female leaders (Tzipi Livni is the head of Kadima, the main opposition party in Israel’s Knesset or Parliament). And, there is the likelihood that next March, after the primaries for the Meretz Party, it too will be lead by a woman, if Zahava Gal-On has her way.

That will give Israeli voters the choice of at least three women-led parties to choose from.

The elusive peace that Israel craves might just be possible if a pragmatic female Prime Minister came into power. Machoism wouldn’t play a part. Israel’s religious parties are light years away from ever electing a woman as their leader, but the other parties could take a leaf out of Labor’s book.

You never know. Maybe this is what Israel (and the Middle East) needs. Remember, you read it here first.

The Arab Spring? No, Winter

The Arab Spring at last. 

If only that were true.

We had high hopes for a new dawn in the Middle East. Starting with Tunisia, Arabs rose up against the vicious dictators in country after country. In Libya and Syria the crucial balance is still being played out. In Tunisia and Egypt the wicked autocrat leaders have been deposed. In Bahrain and Saudi Arabia (and many other Arab states) people-power didn’t swing it. The Arab spring has not dawned. It is still winter.

Nothing could demonstrate this more forcibly that the events in Egypt on Friday night. The giant Arab “democracy” was unwilling, or unable, or both, to control wild hordes of animal-like mobs from crashing into and partially destroying the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. The giant “democracy” was unable/unwilling to uphold its international obligations and accords, to protect an Embassy of a friendly neighbor.  This, from a long-time Arab republic, a supposed democracy, a supposed member of the international community and the family of civilized nations.

The “liberal west” treats all nations as equals. The west supposes that western values of decency, international law, truth and democracy are applied in all supposedly free countries. But it isn’t so. Now the world, (read: the United Nations) is ready to embrace a new ”Palestine” (there is already a Palestine – it’s just called Jordan), and expects that the newborn country will uphold itself as a democratic, peace-loving member of the international community.

Wake up and smell the coffee. The reality is rather different. Just look over your shoulder at Egypt for a glimpse of the future.

Will the Real Bad Guys stand up? North Korea or Israel?

The single “Letter(s) to the Editor” in the International Herald Tribune on September 9th concerned the North Korean dictatorship’s “terrifying control apparatus”, and asks the question: “What should the international community do?” Read the letter here: http://tinyurl.com/3gzfjhj

I think the question should be: “Why is the international community so focused on democratic Israel (warts and all), instead of on the real purveyors of terror, discrimination, hatred and violence?”

Gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia. Racial apartheid in Pakistan. Sexual apartheid in Iran. Economic apartheid in China. And violence against their own citizens in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Zimbabwe, to name just a few dictatorships around the globe. But only Israel is repeatedly censured at the UN Security Council. Only Israel is regularly (and irrationally) attacked as an “apartheid state”. Only Israel is the accused of all the above imagined crimes, while the real horrors continue, ignored, swept under the carpet.

Racist anti-Semitism in all its flagrant glory. The international community must share the blame for the misery in so many countries around the world. Shame on you! Shame on you!

Where are the liberals when you really need ‘em?

“The Economist”, a British magazine deals not only with economic and financial matters. Here is a link to an article on Karachi, Pakistan’s capital.  http://www.economist.com/node/21526919

The article deals with the racism and resulting ferocious violence and mayhem in the 18-million people capital of the country. The city is divided on racial lines. Gangs kill  for no other reason than ethnic differences.

The puzzling thing that arises from this frightening article is why the world’s “enlightened liberals” are not screaming against the blatant racist Pakistani apartheid. Separate ambulance drivers. Separate hospitals. Separate areas. Separate facilities, all based on race.

Here in Israel Arabs and Jews mix freely. We work together,  vote together, have equal rights and relish the joint progress that Israel has made since its establishment, ad infinitum. Yet the world’s liberals screech, shout and decry Israel as an apartheid state. That in itself is pure racist anti-Semitism.

The contradiction is further proof of the hypocrisy enveloping the so-called democracies of this world, led by the United Nations Security Council (what a joke!). It’s time to call a spade a spade and know who the real enemy is: Islamic radicalism.