Unveiling the contours and contrasts of an ever-changing Middle East landscape Reliable reportage and insightful commentary on the Middle East by seasoned journalists from the region and beyond
Also available on YouTube@The Israel Brief – Simply click on the red subscribe button to receive alerts when a new report is posted.
What’s happening in Israel today? See from every Monday – Thursday LOTL’s The Israel Brief broadcasts and on our Facebook page and YouTube by seasoned TV & radio broadcaster, Rolene Marks familiar to Chai FM listeners in South Africa and millions of American listeners to the News/Talk/Sports radio station WINA, broadcasting out of Virginia, USA.
The Road Ahead. Starting in Florence, Italy, for the next 3 weeks over 3,498 k/m’s, the name ISRAEL will be seen by billions of viewers worldwide emboldened alongside the Magen David (‘Star of David’) logo on the shirts of the riders of the Israel–Premier Tech riders. The Tour end in Nice on 21 July.
Articles
Please note there is a facility to comment beneath each article should you wish to express an opinion on the subject addressed.
(1)
“JEWS NOT WANTED”
Jews are receiving a familiar message and it’s lethal. By David E. Kaplan
Menacing Message. The word out on the street today is eerily reminiscent of the same message in the 1930s: “Jews not wanted”
Lithuania honouring their county’s mass-murderers of Jews presents a land-grabbing Putin with the excuse to “de-Nazify” – a sugar-coated dictator’s depiction to re-conquer. By Grant Gochin
Putin’s Prey. Putin’s insatiable appetite for conquest is not limited to Ukraine. Eying any neighboring territory whose inhabitants venerate Nazis, Lithuanians have now presented him with the evidence he needs to justify a manipulative ‘moral’ take-over!
Voters are treated as powerless pawns to legitimize a terrorist regime. By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
Iran’s Supreme Puppeteer. Going through the visual pretense of an “election”, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei votes in Tehran to elect a successor to the late president Ebrahim Raisi.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Voters are treated as powerless pawns to legitimize a terrorist regime.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
This week’s Iran’s presidential election is really a “selection”, controlled by its all-powerful Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Only candidates who are approved, vetted, and qualified by the 12 member Guardian Council are eligible to participate in this three-ring circus. Six Guardian Council members are appointed directly by the Supreme Leader. The other six are selected by Khamenei’s hand-picked judiciary chief. The judiciary chief is appointed not because of his qualifications as a jurist, but because of his loyalty to the Supreme Leader. The Guardian Council members are the singularly most loyal soldiers and servants of the Supreme Leader. They are his clowns to run the country, jumping through hoops as the ringmaster Khamenei wishes.
Iran’s Supreme Puppeteer. Going through the visual pretense of an “election”, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei votes in Tehran, with the country going to the polls to elect a successor to the late president Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash. (Photo: AFP)
After the mysterious death of President Raisi in a helicopter crash last month, the Islamic regime launched its circus presidential “selection”. The Guardian Council (AKA the Supreme Leader) approved six candidates. Five hardliners, and one reformist, Masoud Pezeshkian.
What qualifies the candidates is not their education, political or diplomatic proficiency, or their experience running a country. Their qualification is based exclusively on their subservience to the Supreme Leader, blood on their hands from killing dissidents, and supporting, organizing, and exporting extremist Islamic ideology and terrorism abroad.
The candidates are indeed clowns, puppets of the Supreme Leader. Their resumes echo their servitude, having served as commanders of the IRGC, members of Basij (secret police), parliamentarians, or in different capacities under the Supreme Leader’s direct supervision. Each candidate excels at serving the Supreme Leader through suppression and killing of countless Iranian civilians, or expanding terrorism in the Middle East to organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and other proxies, killing Israelis and other innocents.
In the circus of Iranian elections, the Supreme Leader always selects one reformist candidate to deceive people to bring them to the ballot box, ostensibly to legitimize the show. As always, the reformist clown, this time Pezeshkian, plays the part of a candidate on the side of people, seeming to care about their issues.
Contrived Contest. The election is presented as a three-way contest between two hardline candidates, Saeed Jalili and Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, but the outcome is all decided before the first vote is cast. (Photo: Reuters)
One issue that reformists always play with is the suppression of women for not wearing a hijab. Publicly, Pezeshkian promises to address this issue and give women their freedom. His campaign motto is “For Iran”. “For” in Farsi is “baraye” which is the name of the song that became the anthem of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement after the brutal 2022 murder of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman who was murdered by the regime for not wearing a hijab. By using this motto “For Iran”, Pezeshkian tries to deceive Iranians that he cares about Iranians and is going to work for them.
In fact, reformists and hardliners are opposite sides of the same coin. Together, they act as oxygen to the regime. In the presidential selection this week, Pezeshkian plays the sympathetic reformist clown of the Supreme Leader to deceive the world that Iranians support the Islamic regime through the electoral circus. Nevertheless, the majority of Iranians know that the president has already been selected, and the circus of an “election” is just a side show for the world to see, to legitimize a terrorist regime in power.
For years, Iranians were deceived by this tactic. In the 2009 presidential selection, millions of Iranians voted for a reformist candidate, but the Supreme Leader selected hardliner Ahmadinejad, teaching Iranians a lesson that in the Islamic regime dictatorship, Iranians have no voice, and their vote counts for nothing. It amplified that reformists only prop up the regime, and are worse than the hardliners.
After the brutal murder of Mahsa Amini, more than 80 million Iranians said “NO” to the Islamic regime. That is the true vote of Iranians that unfortunately the world’s leaders refuse to hear. Iranians chanted in the streets, “Hardliners, reformists, the game is over.”
Killed in Custody. For the writer, this is the true vote of the people of what that they think of their leadership. Iranian demonstrators take to the streets of the capital Tehran during a protest for Mahsa Amini, days after she died in police custody. Protests spread to 15 cities across Iran over her death following her arrest by the country’s morality police. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
However, in this presidential selection in order to deceive people to vote for him, Pezeshkian, is using another tactic of the former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the master of deceiving Iranians. Zarif, during one of his interviews outside Iran, said that despite all the regime’s suppression, Iranians always support their leaders. In addition to Pezeshkian as candidate, regime-exported reformist agents outside Iran work ceaselessly to extort legitimacy for the regime from western leaders. Zarif was one of the masterminds to plant reformists in key leadership roles outside Iran for this critical time.
While millions of Iranians boycott the presidential selection circus, the Islamic regime is working tirelessly to gather their followers to sham campaign rallies, deceiving people through bribery, and giving them false hope. They bus many of their followers, and Afghan migrants as additional clowns, to create a crowd for their presidential puppets. While Iranians are not familiar with iconic circus leader PT Barnum, the regime subscribes to his truism that there’s “a sucker born every minute.”
Shockingly, reformists outside Iran, with the help of the Biden administration, are also organizing more than 30 polling stations in different states for the regime’s agents who are enjoy freedoms in the United States, to be able to cast their votes for the killers at home. Through this, they use illusions through smoke and mirrors to pretend to Americans that Iran has any democracy.
Election Deception. The reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, who the writer characterizes as little more than a “clown” playing the part of a candidate on the side of people, seeming to care about their issues.
While Iranians have no hope for the future of their country as long as this evil regime is in power, President Biden is giving hope to the ayatollahs to stay in power for his own interests, and in support of his presidential candidacy.
No matter how hard the Biden administration and some western politicians are working behind the scenes to keep the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in power, history has proven that dictators will collapse when 90% of people say enough is enough. The outcome of this week’s “selection” is pre-determined, but Iranians will eventually realize victory and take back their freedom despite all the betrayals.
Shame and treason will be the only legacy of those who stand on the wrongside of the history with the Supreme Leader and ayatollahs.
About the writer:
Marziyeh Amirizadeh is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, ‘A Love Journey with God’), public speaker, and activist for religious freedom. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Jews are receiving a familiar message and its lethal.
By David E. Kaplan
Recollecting a conversation I had as a youngster with my late dad in South Africa, he related how his good friend Walter Levy, whom he enjoyed smoking cigars with and playing billiards, arrived in Cape Town 1936 on the last boat to sail from Germany, with Jewish refugees before the start of the Second World War.
Departed Harassed; Arrived Harassed. The arrival on October 27, 1936 of the steamer Stuttgart at Cape Town in which Walter Levy arrived. It was the last ship from Germany with Jewish refugees and according to a report, “Upon arrival at Cape Town, when the refugees left the ship, they were harassed and abused by antisemitic protesters.” (Photo: public domain)
What was remarkable was that Walter was 16-years-old at the time and he arrived in South Africa alone.
Emigrating without any member of his family, I pressed on: “How come?”
My father continued:
“Walter was very popular at school, and was a star in his football team. His best friends were his football mates. Then one day, he came onto the field for usual practice and these same friends spat at him and called him a filthy Jew. These were his BEST friends. He was stunned! He ran home and told his parents, “That’s it; I’m leaving school and leaving Germany; alone if needs be.”
And that’s what he did and within the year, and on October 27,1936, under the shadow of Table Mountain, the SS Stuttgart arrived at Cape Town docks, and young Walter, with some 550 other Jewish refugees, disembarked to start a new life.
Sign of the Times. An SS member instructs others where to post anti-Jewish boycott signs on a commercial street in Germany.
Walter, who would emerge as an outstanding businessman in Cape Town, had read the writing on the wall at the age of sixteen and immediately understood on a football field, an ancient hateful millennial message:
“Jews not wanted”
It is a message today following October 7 that Jews around the world are receiving loud and clear across the globe.
From the individual Jew on campuses across Europe and North America to the collective Jew of the State of Israel, that same message is clear. The recent behaviour of France was a dark reminder of an era in Europe we believed we left behind and now feels ever closer to revisiting! When the French government earlier this month BANNED Israel from participating in the prestigious Eurosatory defense exhibition – where the merchandise of Israeli companies is always in high demand – sent the same message Walter Levy felt in Germany in 1936 of “not wanted”.
Held every two years in the Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre in Paris, the Eurosatory is the largest international exhibition for the land and air-land defence and security industry. In 2022, it gathered over 1,700 exhibitors and approximately 62,000 visitors from 150 countries. This year, the city whose police and gendarmes on 16 -17 July 1942 mass arrested Jewish families at the behest of the Nazis, banned Israelis.
HALT! Verboten to Israelis. The Eurosatory Defense and Security trade show in Villepinte, outside Paris, where this year, not only was Israel banned from exhibiting but Israelis were banned from attending. (Photo: AP)
It went further.
Upon the request of pro-Palestinian groups, not only were Israeli companies prevented from exhibiting their products as they traditionally do, but a district court furthermore barred Israelis from even attending the event. Apparently, the petition filed by the pro-Palestinian groups were not satisfied with cancelling the Israeli pavilion as it:
“Did not guarantee the absence of Israelis at the event.”
The court sided with this disgraceful argument,
So, while the representatives of China and Iran – two of the world’s worst violators of human rights – were free to come and go, of course, Israelis were barred.
And then, reminiscent of 1930s Berlin windows of Jewish-owned stores painted with the word “JUDE” (Jew), the French court ordered that the letter announcing the ban at the exhibition be posted at the entrances to the exhibition. Although long and convoluted, its message was clear:
“No Israelis allowed”
As The Jerusalem Post columnist, Liat Collins wrote, it was only a step away from “No entrance for Jews.”
France’s decision to exclude Israel and its citizens from the fair was in its words driven by “suspicions of war crimes and genocide in Gaza”. Really?
Apart from no evidence of either, Israel will never “geta fair shake from most of the world,” writes Eric R. Mandel, director of the consulting firm, Mandel Strategies. Writing in The Jerusalem Post (March 11 ‘Convincing American’), Mandel notes that:
“Some 69% of protests in the first week after Hamas invaded Israel, on October 7, 2023,were against the Jewish state. This, despite Hamas causing the worst loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, with unimaginable sexual violence. And the Jewish state hadn’t even started its ground operation.”
Ignoring Massacre and Sexual violence of Jews. Thousands of protestors participate in a pro-Palestinian protest in London on October 22, 2023. This followed the massacre of Israelis on October 7 and before Israel began the land incursion into Gaza on October 27.
In other words, the world had turned on the hate BEFORE Israel responded to the massacre of October 7. Hence, it does not matter what Israel says or does; it only matters to antisemites that Israel exists.
While Israel is being unreasonably pressurized to consider “the day after” offering a “political vision for tomorrow,” I cannot help but subscribe to the position that a people that base their right to self-rule, forfeit that right if their cause rests on the destruction of another.
That today is the position of the Palestinians where according to a Palestinian poll published by the Ramallah-based non-profit Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research released on June 12, “more than two-thirds support Hamas’s decision to launch its killing spree in southern Israel on October 7.”
Clearly, we have a clash of “visions for tomorrow”.
Israel is not obliged to commit suicide.
Masada fell once. It will never fall again.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
The Israel Brief – 24 June 2024– Is Iran stockpiling weapons in an airport and a very contentious question.
The Israel Brief – 25 June 2024– Victims of 7/20 sue UNRWA and more on The Israel Brief.
The Israel Brief – 26 June 2024– Hamas fire on UNICEF convoy and more on the Israel Brief.
The Israel Brief – 27 June 2024– MDF doctor exposed as PIJ rocket maker and more on The Israel Brief.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
By Lithuania honouring their county’s mass-murderers of Jews, presents land-grabbing Putin with the excuse to “denazify”.
By Grant Gochin
Putin’s pretext for invading Ukraine was to “save” that country from “Nazis”. He claimed that a significant portion of Ukrainians revere Nazi Germany, which in 1941 drove the Soviets out of Ukraine. This support, Putin argues, poses a strategic threat to Russia.
Putin Puppeteer. Putin falsely claims ‘Denazification’ of Ukraine as pretext for war. (Photo: Russian Presidential Press Service via AP)
Putin’s appetite for conquest is not limited to Ukraine, Georgia, and Transnistria. He would like to annex any territory with inhabitants who appear to venerate the Nazis, and Lithuanians now have given him precisely the evidence he needs to prove his case.
On June 21, 2024, Lithuanians mounted a plaque honoring Kazys Škirpa, who was the architect of the mass-murder of Jews in Lithuania, a model which the Nazis later adopted.
Honoring Evil. On June 21, 2024, Lithuanians mounted a plaque honoring Kazys Škirpa, the architect of the mass-murder of Jews in Lithuania.
In November 1940, Kazys Škirpa, a Lithuanian diplomat in Berlin, began organizing and directing the actions of a network of underground cells known as the Lithuanian Activist Front (“LAF”). The cells were directed to join the Nazis as soon as Germany began its invasion of Soviet-controlled territory. Škirpa, however, also made clear to the cells that the Nazi invasion must be used as an opportunity to eliminate Lithuania’s Jews.
In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Lithuania. The LAF quickly took control of the country and within a few days the Nazis turned administrative control of the country – known to the Nazis as the Litauen General Region – over to the Lithuanians.
Covering Up Complicity. Honoring this year in 2024, Kazys Škirpa (seen here in uniform) is a clear affirmation that Lithuania is covering up its past of complicity in the Holocaust.
The paramilitary LAF members were organized into militarized “police battalions” – in fact, death squads. Within 12 weeks, the squads had brutally – and publicly – slaughtered nearly all of Lithuania’s Jews. At the beginning of December 1941, Nazi officer Karl Jäger sent a report to Berlin that detailed the efficiency and enthusiasm of the Lithuanian death squads.
Significantly, while the Holocaust was unfolding in Lithuania, Nazi Germany itself had no plan for the mass-murder of Jews. There were no mass murders in western Poland, which Germany had occupied since September 1939, through the end of 1941. Ironically, a Jew who escaped Škirpa’s orgies of murder and reached Nazi-controlled towns in Poland were not subjected to mass-murder at that time.
The Nazis knew how well Škirpa’s plan had succeeded in Litauen, and the fact that the public spectacles aroused little public opposition. Still, it took several months for the Nazis themselves to emulate Škirpa’s model. On January 20, 1942, at the infamous Wannsee Conference, Nazi Germany adopted a plan for the mass-murder of Jews.
Sure Signs. (left) The man honored with a plague in 2024 in Lithuania, Kazys Škirpa (middle), is seen here meeting with Hitler in Berlin. (right) Both Vilnius and Kaunas have streets glorifying June 23, 1941. On that date, six centuries of Jewish life flourishing in Lithuania came to an abrupt and horrific end when the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and other nationalist groups dehumanized, pillaged and murdered Jews in dozens of locations across Lithuania within hours of the Nazi invasion of the country.
For these reasons, many historians rightfully think of Lithuania as the true starting point for the mass murders of the Holocaust – and of Škirpa as the architect.
And now, by publicly honoring Škirpa, Lithuanians have given Putin clear proof that many in their country still venerate Nazi collaborators.
About the writer:
Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Unveiling the contours and contrasts of an ever-changing Middle East landscape Reliable reportage and insightful commentary on the Middle East by seasoned journalists from the region and beyond
Also available on YouTube@The Israel Brief – Simply click on the red subscribe button to receive alerts when a new report is posted.
What’s happening in Israel today? See from every Monday – Thursday LOTL’s The Israel Brief broadcasts and on our Facebook page and YouTube by seasoned TV & radio broadcaster, Rolene Marks familiar to Chai FM listeners in South Africa and millions of American listeners to the News/Talk/Sports radio station WINA, broadcasting out of Virginia, USA.
Please note there is a facility to comment beneath each article should you wish to express an opinion on the subject addressed.
(1)
AN OPEN LETTER TO NALEDI PANDOR
South Africa’s outgoing foreign minister showed ZERO concern for Israelis that experienced a massacre and whose women were raped and abused by the very people Pandor embraces. By Rolene Marks
If Africa is inept at solving problems on its doorsteps, how does that make it adept at solving the problems of others a continent away? Go figure! ByKenneth Mokgatlhe
It’s not every day that I read headlines at home in Israel and think of classic American folk-rock songs. In fact, it has never happened before. Until recently. By Jonathan Feldstein
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
South Africa’s outgoing foreign minister showed ZERO concern for Israelis that experienced a massacre and whose women were raped and abused by the very people Pandor embraces.
By Rolene Marks
Minister Pandor,
Please permit me a moment to write to you as a woman who grew up in South Africa during the darkest years of Apartheid through to the rebirth of the country onto a proud democracy. A democracy many of us as Jews and Zionist stood beside you and fought for because Apartheid was a violation of our tenets of respect for human rights. As you prepare to leave your office, with the impression that you have achieved much in your personal war with Israel that you extended to your Ministry, please note the following.
I am a proud Jewish, Zionist woman who has the privilege of living in Israel, a country whose Declaration of Independence is not dissimilar to the ANC’s Freedom Charter that declares the state “the beneficiary of all its inhabitants”. Inhabitants that include women. South Africa’s constitution enshrines the rights and protection of women.
I write this on 19 June, which is the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. On 7 October, crimes of sexual violence were committed against Israeli women and girls. Former hostages have shared how sexual violence is still committed against some of the remaining hostages – including some of the males. Nowhere in recorded history can the deliberate and inhumane barbarism of 7 October be equaled, including the crimes against humanity of mass rape. The United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence concluded that there was “clear and convincing evidence of Hamas crimes of sexual violence”. In her remarks to the media while in Israel, a country you have not visited, the envoy spoke about how she and her team were unable to sleep after reviewing the evidence.
Rampant Rape. This is what Hamas did on October 7; this is what South Africa’s outgoing foreign minister Pandor conveniently ignores.
Minister Pandor, you have not only been silent about the rape of Israeli women but in the hours following the atrocities of 7 October, you intimated in a press release that Israel deserved what happened. “The new conflagration has arisen from the continued illegal occupation of Palestine land, continued settlement expansion, desecration of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Christian holy sites, and ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people,” said the press release from your office. You followed that with a phone call to Ismail Haniyeh the political chief of Hamas expressing your solidarity and then visited Tehran soon after. Iran is the main sponsor of Hamas who committed these atrocities. You were photographed smiling alongside Iranian leaders who have repeatedly called for the annihilation of Israel, effectively a genocide.
South Africa’s foreign policy under your stewardship has taken a radical turn away from its purported human rights position to one of close collaboration with authoritarian regimes.
These are regimes where human rights are selectively practiced according to the whim and fancy of the individual ruling party, where certain groups and bodies are deemed less worthy of being treated humanely because of their beliefs or traditions or culture or any other decision.
Regrettably, South Africa falls directly into this category with regards to the unspeakable atrocities committed by terrorist group Hamas which, unprovoked, attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, committing the most savage and brutal atrocities against Israeli women and girls. This is in violation not only of your party, the African National Congress (ANC) Freedom Charter but South Africa’s noble Constitution.
Minister Pandor, you are not only a political leader, you are a woman. You have daughters. You are part of 50% of humanity and yet you are silent about the rape of Israeli women.
Is it because as Jewish women you do not see them as part of the 50%?
Are Jewish women not part of the sisterhood?
You held a top position in the South African government, yet you are so consumed with hatred for the nation that suffered the Holocaust and vowed “Never again!” that the words and sentiments of Nelson Mandela have had no effect on you.
Mandela was a man of dignity, of forgiveness, of extending human rights to all, yet you have taken upon yourself the mantle of hatred towards Israel and Jewish women.
Minister Pandor, South Africa is a country with among the highest rape statistics in the world. Rape is a scourge and weapon of war acted on across the African continent, and one notable voice has remained silent – yours. You have been silent about the atrocities committed against women in Sudan, Nigeria, Eritrea and other countries.
Rape was used as a weapon of war against Israeli women on 7 October. There has not been one word of concern or comfort for the Israeli – JEWISH – women who were so viciously and obscenely molested, violated, assaulted and debased. Not only was there not one word of comfort or even acknowledgement, you chose to put Israel on trial at the International Court of Justice on a bogus charge of genocide. There was only one party to this conflict guilty of genocide and that was Hamas, as evidenced in their repeated proclamations to do it again and again and again.
Selective Sight. Did Naledi Pandor even look at photos like these as Israeli women attempt to flee for their lives during the massacre of October 7, perpetrated by the mass murderers from Gaza that Pandor supports and embraces.
The Women’s Action Committee of South Africa, (WACSA) an independent and non-political group of concerned women of various ages, ethnicities, religions and backgrounds – has circulated a petition condemning rape as a weapon of war across the world.
Would you be prepared to sign it?
Would you use your position as someone who held position in the government to encourage women across the nation to sign it?
Would you have the courage and the responsibility to stand with women everywhere?
Or will you refrain because you believe Israeli/Jewish women fall into some hideous category?
Minister Pandor, on this day of the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict will you count Israeli women among the family of nations and among the victims of rape as a weapon of war? If you truly believe that you are at the vanguard of global human rights and if you honour both the Freedom Charter of your political part and the Constitution of South Africa, you will do so.
To remain silent, is to be complicit.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
The Israel Brief – 17 June 2024– War cabinet dissolved and more top stories.
The Israel Brief – 18 June 2024– “Tens of hostages still alive” and more.
The Israel Brief – 19 June 2024– Is there famine in Gaza?
The Israel Brief – 20 June 2024– Can Hamas be completely eliminated?
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
If Africa is inept at solving problems on its doorsteps, how does that make it adept at solving the problems of others a continent away? Go figure!
By Kenneth Mokgatlhe
It has become clearer to me over the years that governments from my African continent display little respect for the lives of their fellow black people. In many of these mismanaged failing states, vast populations across the African continent live in extreme poverty, remain unprotected from diseases, have little to no access to adequate health services as well as hygienic water sources and seem cursed in having uncaring leaderships as defenseless citizens are slaughtered like chickens.
While sickening, it has struck me as particularly strange how some of these incompetent governments would go and meddle in the Israel-Palestine conflict while neglecting the welfare of their own people.
South Africa, which dragged the State of Israel, into the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the most unequal country in the world. Around 75 to 85 people are violently murdered daily and most victims are black. South Africa has the highest unemployment rate of 33% in the world, and most of those young people are black. According to the World Bank in 2020, 50.5% of the population lived in poverty while 25 percent (almost 14 million people) was experiencing food poverty.
South Africa has major domestic problems that pose internal national security threats. This is a ticking time-bomb that could explode at any moment. It should be a given that the newly elected incoming government should prioritise the plight of its destitute black people in South Africa before interfering in affairs a continent away that are of no strategic benefit to the larger population of the country.
A country’s foreign policy should be an assertion of its national self-interest to the benefit of its domestic situation. A sober person should ask how many millions the ICJ case cost the South African government, how it served the nation domestically, and what effect the exercise had on bringing an end to the war between Israel and Hamas.
State of Hunger in DCR. Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is Africa’s second largest country, with great mineral and natural resources, yet for decades, the country has suffered constant conflict, epidemics, undernutrition, and food insecurity. One in four people in DRC are experiencing a food crisis.
To make matters worse, we have a continental body, the African Union (AU), headquartered in Ethiopia, which has no regard for Africa and its people. We have a bloody war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which according to the Council on Foreign Relations has claimed the lives of over six million black people since 1996. Daily, black people continue to kill each other in the eastern DRC, but the AU appears unwilling to make a clarion call to end the bloodshed.
No Peace, No Security.31 African heads of state attended the founding conference of the OAU in May 1963. Sixty years later, its successor organization, the African Union (AU), has repeatedly come under fire for failing to achieve that objective. (Photo: picture-alliance/dpa).
The 2020-2023 war between Eritrea and Ethiopia claimed more than 700,000 lives, and has resulted in continued war crimes in the North of Ethiopia. Here again, the AU (and the UN) has not taken action. Maybe this is because this war did not trend in the mainstream media. The AU should be the ‘voice of the powerless’ on the continent but has emerged as a ‘paper tiger’ and seek to speak on their behalf – however it is becoming irrelevant to many Africans because it does not advance their interests.
‘Famous’ for Failure. Human rights Mozambican activist and chairman of his country’s Center for Democracy and Development, Adriano Nuvunga, expresses his disappointed with the AU for failing to fulfill its chief objective of ensuring peace and security on the continent. (Photo: Sitói Lutxeque/DW)
In the words of Mozambican Human rights activist Adriano Nuvunga:
“Today, the African Union is an organization that primarily represents the interests of the powerful. It is toothless and ineffective, and it repeatedly proves itself incapable of ensuring prosperity, security, and peace for all Africans.”
I am dragging the toothless AU into this discussion because the Chairperson of the AU Commission, former Chad prime minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, constantly uses all available platforms to condemn Israel.
My question:
When is he going to prioritise the welfare of black people on his own continent?
Mismanagement and Misdirection. Rather that seriously dealing with conflicts in Africa, AU prefers to focus on the conflict between Israel and Gaza following the massacre in Israel on October 7.
However, if he is so passionate about international human rights, why does Mahamat ignore what his horrifying playing out in Haiti where fellow black people (descendants of Africa sharing our heritage) are slaughtering each other? Why is he so obsessed about Israel when many black people are dying in their thousands in the Caribbean? What is extra special about Israel that diverts his attention from any concern to the lives of the descendants of Africa?
Mr. Moussa Faki Mahamat, are African lives so cheap to you?
According to media reports, about 15,000 Sudanese who are also African have been killed while more than 30,000 have been badly injured since the start of the civil war in 2023, but there is absolutely nothing that the AU has done to quell the volatile situation in Sudan. The World Food Programme (WFP) has recently alerted the world that Sudan is now facing unprecedented levels of starvation. We should be asking if “starvation has been used as a weapon of war?”
Struggling to Survive. Sadio Abdi Rahman Ahmed, 50, stands with three of her six children near their tent at a camp in Baidoa, Somalia. (Lynsey Addario/National Geographic)
Africa needs to defend and protect the lives of Africans in the continent. We have enough problems in the mother continent that should be preoccupying our minds rather than finding ourselves trapped in conflicts elsewhere in the world. African countries need to unite and cooperate in combating wars, violent murders, terrorism, poverty, inequalities, water insecurity, human and drug trafficking, and unemployment among the youth and women.
I am reminded of the spirit of awakening across Africa in the early 1960’s, captured in the words of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah at the Organization of African Unity founding on May 25, 1963:
“We must now unite or perish”
There is little evidence by the policies presently pursued that we are adhering to that spirit.
About the writer:
Kenneth Mokgatlhe is pursuing a Master of Arts in African Studies, African Sustainable Communities program, at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He is a political writer, analyst, and researcher.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
It’s not every day that I read headlines at home in Israel and think of classic American folk-rock songs. In fact, it has never happened before. Until recently.
By Jonathan Feldstein
As I was reading a particularly gruesome news item related to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and savage massacre of 1200 people, and kidnapping of more than 250 others (of whom 120 remain in captivity), the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (CSNY) song, “Teach Your Children” came to mind. The song reached number 16 in 1970. As much as I never connected an American folk-rock song with headlines in Israel, I probably never thought about the song’s lyrics either. It’s a song about passing on values from one generation to the next, emphasizing the importance of teaching children well, to help them grow into their best selves, to create a better future individually, as a legacy from one generation to the next.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Teach Your Children
“Teach your Children” echoed as I read the text of an article, “IDF airs interrogation clips of terrorist father and son confessing to rape on Oct. 7.”
Among the thousands of Palestinian Arab terrorists who committed inhuman acts, slaughtering, maiming, torturing, raping and sexually mutilating thousands of Israelis, Ahmad Radi did anything but teach his child well. Breaching Israel’s border in an orgy of hate and destruction, he shamelessly brought his son Abdallah to participate in the murderous rampage. While more than 1000 Hamas terrorists were killed in Israel on and in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacres, the father and son were captured. In separate interrogations, Ahmad and Abdallah confessed to murder and rape. In fact, they raped the same woman before (father) Ahmad executed her.
‘Capture & Slaughter Women’: Interrogation Video of 2 Hamas Terrorists Who Invaded Israel On Oct 7
If Ahmad only had an ear for classic folk rock and not jihadi hate, he maybe would have set a positive example, rather than transmitting to Abdalah the evil genocidal hatred he embodies, and has clearly imbued in his son.
CSNY sang, “You, …Must have a code that you can live by…Teach your children well…And feed them on your dreams.” Clearly Ahmad, thousands of terrorists who participated in the October 7 massacre, and the tens of thousands of Hamas leaders and their brigades, along with hundreds of thousands who support and enable them, have chosen their “code” to live by. Rather than feeding them on the dreams of building and doing something positive, their vision and goals are exclusively to destroy Israel, to slaughter Jews.
The lyrics continue, “The one they pick’s the one you’ll know by.” Basically, CSNY are saying that a father’s legacy lives on through his children. Unfortunately, generations of Palestinian Arabs have transmitted a legacy of geocidal hate, fueled by extremist Islam founded in the Moslem Brotherhood of which Hamas is an ideological child, and funded and supported by the Islamic republic regime in Iran.
Sadly, for most Gazans, this Father’s Day will be marked by living in accordance with an immoral code which they celebrate, and worship, even according to their own internal polls. They surely do not represent the song’s message that the past is the past, and it’s time to move forward. They raise their children from as young as 3-4 to worship jihad, and practice genocidal antisemitism. The inhuman acts of killing and maiming others supplants any aspiration to build a future for themselves, or to pass on good values.
This makes the rhetorical and often hollow question/accusation to Israel about having a plan for the day after to be more than ridiculous because the hatred and evil are so deeply entrenched.
By comparison, in traditional Judaism, a father’s responsibility is to teach their child a profession, and how to swim – things to enable them to live well, make a living, and protect themselves. Not to kill others.
CSNY’s chorus implores parents to move beyond the struggles of the previous generation (the father’s hell that did slowly go by), and the importance of nurturing children’s dreams so they can live fulfilling lives.
Audio Reveals Hamas Terrorist Bragging To Parents On Call: ‘I Killed 10 Jews
The second verse addresses the children, and challenges them to be empathetic towards their elders, recognizing that they may have lived through tough times. It also tells young people to use their energy and idealism to change the world for the better, before it’s too late. Sometimes, that means pivoting away from a parent’s past, and inability to move beyond that. It means that parents have a responsibility to imbue their children with good values, but also that children have the responsibility to choose the correct path, regardless of what they inherit from their parents.
January 3, 2024 Hamas and Islamic Jihad Use Children for Terrorist Activities and Incitement
“Teach Your Children” is a call to action for passing on life lessons, compassion, and hope to future generations. It’s an important Father’s Day anthem. Hamas and their ideological siblings from Hezbollah, the Houthis, westerners hijacking private campuses and public spaces, and the ayatollahs of Iran, do the opposite. They offer no hope for the future, only hate that also dooms them. This Father’s Day, it’s important to reflect on our personal values as parents, rejecting the evil of extremist genocidal Islam, and making sure that we impart that to the next generation, loud and clear.
This horrific story of the father and son,Ahmed and Abdullah, reminds me of another less hopeful classic American folk-rock song, Harry Chapin’s 1974 hit, “Cats in the Cradle.” After a life of neglecting his son by having “lots to do,” the father realizes his neglect has come back to him, singing woefully, “My boy is just like me.”
This is the model by which Hamas and the Islamic terrorists live. It’s up to them, the fathers and mothers, to teach their children well, to have an active presence, to show them right from wrong, and to correct them when they go astray. It’s never a father’s role to teach a child to massacre, rape, sexually mutilate and murder, not for any reason.
Rather than worshiping an evil ideology and a god who they say celebrates that, maybe they would do better with a little 1960s classic folk-rock to change their future.
About the writer:
Jonathan Feldstein - President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
