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The aspiration of the Media Review Network is to dispel the myths and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims and to foster bridges of understanding among the diverse people of our country. The Media Review Network believes that Muslim perspectives on issues impacting on South Africans are a prerequisite to a better appreciation of Islam.

When the oppressed become the oppressor

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(source: Sunday Times Review – Jul 18, 2010 12:00 AM – Pg10)

Another View: Israel and the perpetrators of xenophobic violence are guilty of culpable amnesia regarding South Africa, writes Eusebius McKaiser

Human beings have complicated moral psychologies. Sometimes we respond empathetically to the plight of those worse off than ourselves; think of the global response to the earthquake that hit Haiti, for example. At other times, we are oblivious to or even implicated in the suffering of others. Hence the jarring reality of many victims of anti-black racism often ignoring their own experiences of discrimination when engaging in xenophobic attacks or violence against black lesbians. These are violent expressions of culpable amnesia.

States are no different to human beings. They, too, are susceptible to shameful variations in moral judgment. A case in point is the devastating revelations that have surfaced about military ties between Israel and apartheid South Africa in the ’70s. Israel was also guilty of culpable amnesia.

In his brilliant new book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s relationship with apartheid South Africa, Sasha Polakow-Suransky tells of massive military co-operation between the two countries. A 1976 visit to Israel by Prime Minister John Vorster, for example, helped seal a military deal worth more than $700-million, according to Admiral Binyamin Telem, who was the commander of Israel’s navy during the Yom Kippur War. This trip expanded on an earlier munitions contract worth $100-million.

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Open letter of appeal to the jewish people

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By Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate

(source: Gush.Shalom.org)

Dear Friends,

I write to ask for your help in gaining the freedom of a good man, a man of peace, and a man of conscience.

In the Jewish scriptures there is great emphasis on justice and freedom and it is for such, for one man, that I write to seek your help. He will not be aware that I am writing this Appeal, but I do so in the hope that, with your help,  it will produce his freedom, and not (and this I must risk) cause yet more punishment and cruelty to be  inflicted upon him.However, I feel when I tell you the story, it will touch your hearts and there will be those amongst you who will be able to help him gain his freedom.

In May,2010, this man was returned to prison to serve three months for allegedly breaking his prison release restrictions and speaking to Foreign Media.   On Sunday llth July,2010, he had  his first visit in seven weeks.   His brother, Meir, was granted a 30 minute visit.  There was  a glass window between them and they spoke via the phone.  He wore a prison uniform.  He is held in the hardest prison section there is in the prison.  It has the most notorious criminals in the country, well known hard murder cases.  All about a dozen are in severe isolation conditions.  He is in a cell by himself for 24 hours a day, no window but a small wire covered crack at the top part of one wall.

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Chief rabbi owes judge goldstone an abject apology

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By Allistar Sparks

(source: BusinessDay, Published: 2010/07/21 – Pg9)

After carrying out its own investigation into last year’s Gaza War, the Israeli military has finally confirmed several of the most serious incidents committed by its troops in that 22-day assault, which a United Nations commission of inquiry, headed by our own Judge Richard Goldstone, reported on last September.

In a low-key report released two weeks ago that seems to have escaped the attention of the entire South African media, perhaps because of its preoccupation with the Fifa World Cup at the time, the military has confirmed that three of the most serious findings of Goldstone’s egregiously vilified report were true.

It has confirmed the fatal shooting by a marksman of an unarmed man (the Goldstone commission said a man and a woman were killed) walking with a group of Palestinians waving a white “surrender” flag; the shelling of a mosque during a prayer service, causing casualties among the worshippers; and the ordering of a criminal investigation into a fatal air strike on a house where about 100 members of an extended Palestinian family, the Samounis, were sheltering on the advice of the Israeli Defence Force.

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