Category Archives: Israel

Exodus from SA to Israel

Crime, Israel, South-Africa

In June last year we advised South African Jews to go to Israel. Almost a year hence, and who knows how many bodies later, mainstream media have finally caught up:
“Sheldon Cohen was sitting in his car outside a Johannesburg sports stadium last week waiting for his son Noah to finish soccer practice.
Sheldon, 47, was talking to his father, Jack, on his cellphone when three young men ran past and shot him in the neck. Jack, realizing something terrible had happened, sped to the stadium.
The killers, who had moments before tried unsuccessfully to snatch a cellular phone from a woman parked nearby who was also waiting for her son, had seen Sheldon on the phone and thought he was calling the police. So they killed him. Jack arrived shortly after to see his son’s body slumped in his car, with grandson Noah standing watch.
A week earlier, a Jewish man walking to synagogue in Johannesburg was stopped by several men in a passing car. One man got out of the car and demanded that the Jewish man hand over his tallit bag, thinking it contained valuables. The Jew refused, and was shot to death. Searching through his victim’s bag, the attacker found nothing of value to himself and left it on the sidewalk.
According to South African press reports, police recorded 126,000 armed robberies in the 2006-2007 fiscal year. Exactly a decade ago, that figure stood at 70,000.
….of the Jews who leave Johannesburg, about a third go to Australia, and two-thirds to Israel and other places.
Ofer Dahan, the Jewish Agency’s emissary in South Africa, says there has been a dramatic increase in applications for aliya over the past two months.
Dahan says there is a 100-percent increase in interest in aliya from last year, and a 300% increase in those opening aliya files over the past two months. In 2007, 240 South African Jews and former Israelis made aliya, an increase from 143 in 2006 and 98 in 2005. Dahan says his staff are working round the clock, and have even had to hire outside staff to help cope with the demand.”
** 
What the Jerusalem Post reporter failed to tell his readers (we didn’t) was why exactly a move to Israel—ostensibly a spot where homicidal Palestinian suiciders often attack—is so much better than SA, and even parts of the US.
We gave the numbers:
“Israel’s overall death rate from crime is very low; lower than that of the US, which is, overall, about 6 in 100,000. … Remarkably, in 2004, Israel’s death by murder was 3.7 per 100,000 for civilians only; 4.3 when soldiers were included. (“Homicide rates in 2004 in a number of major U.S. cities, including the nation’s capital, exceeded rates of Palestinian fatalities at the hands of Israel’s army in the past year.”)
It shows you, this one-woman band is able to offer better statistics-backed advice to desperate South Africans, who need level-headed advisors, than the mainstream newspapers with all their resources and biases. It’s about knowing what information matters.
Afrikaner non-Jews might want to consider converting. Israel may just be their last resort. The country is hungry for western immigrants, affords a nice life-style, as well as the hot weather Afrikaners so enjoy. Military service will also thrill the typical hardy Afrikaner.
And don’t forget: Israel was perhpas the only good friend the Old, orderly South Africa (warts and all) had:
“One of the most hidden but critical of South Africa’s strategic relationships during the apartheid era was that with Israel, including both the Labor and the Likud governments. Israel officially opposed the apartheid system, but it also opposed broad international sanctions against Pretoria. For strategic reasons, much of the debate in Israeli government circles stressed coordinating ties to Pretoria within the framework of the tripartite relationship among Jerusalem, the United States (Israel’s primary benefactor), and South Africa. Israel was also opposed to international embargoes in general, largely as a consequence of its own vulnerability to UN and other international sanctions.
South Africa and Israel had collaborated on military training, weapons development, and weapons production for years before broad sanctions were imposed in the late 1980s. Military cooperation continued despite the arms embargo and other trade restrictions imposed by the United States and much of Western Europe…”

Update: Those who are new to our ongoing discussion of the New South Africa, and in particular to the treatment emigration from that accursed country has received on BAB, please read “Advice to South Africans Contemplating Emigration,” and “Please Can My Sister Become and Illegal Immigrant.” We also direct welcomed newcomers, and or weary old timers with who’ve forgotten, to our Africa Archive.

CCD applauds Harper government for withdrawal of support for UN ‘anti-racism’ conference

Anti-Semitism, Canada, Israel, Race, South-Africa, UN

Our good friends at the Canadian Coalition for Democracies have posted my father’s “positively prescient, brilliant and stirring piece”—their words—on their website. Dad’s 2001 op-ed warned against Jewish participation in the first, UN “anti-racism” convention of cannibal’s in Durban. But, as the CCD warns, here they go again. Has the US emulated Harper? I hope so. (Unrelated: A few years ago, in Canada, Stephen Harper and I exchanged e-mails about classical liberalism. He’s an amiable intelligent man. Unrelated: Here’s another link to a CCD post out of which I still get a kick.)

For Immediate Release
Wednesday, 23 January, 2008
Ottawa, Canada – The Stephen Harper government has withdrawn its support for a UN anti-racism conference scheduled to take place next year in South Africa, according to a media release today from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, said today that the conference, like its predecessor in 2001, “has gone completely off the rails… Canada is interested in combating racism, not promoting it. We’ll attend any conference that is opposed to racism and intolerance, not those that actually promote racism and intolerance”.
“Canadians are shocked when they hear the clear and simple expression of reality by their leaders,” said Alastair Gordon, president of the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD). “We are used to hearing double-speak from our politicians — fantasies that are at odds with the reality that most Canadians see and the values that they hold.”
The last UN anti-racism conference held in Durban in 2001 degenerated into a hate-fest of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel vitriol, while the most egregious human rights violators escaped criticism. The Toronto Star today reported that “all of the non-governmental organizations invited to the first conference have been invited back to the second, including those that were at the ‘forefront of the hatred’, some of which posted pro-Hitler posters at the 2001 gathering.”
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is in charge of planning for the conference, an entity that has directed 93% of its resolutions on human rights violations at just one nation – Israel. Iran is a member of the organizing committee, despite its government’s open call to wipe the Jewish homeland off the face of the earth.
“The Stephen Harper government has again demonstrated that Canada can project power as a moral leader in international affairs,” added Gordon. “A nation does not need a massive military to provide the moral leadership and clarity that denies legitimacy to Orwellian UN agencies that hijack the language of human rights to promote Jew-hatred.
“Stephen Harper has signaled that Canada will act on principle, regardless of UN consensus. This is the stuff of global leadership.”

Updated: Ilana In the Shower Sean Built

Aesthetics, Ancient History, Ilana Mercer, Israel

Here I am in the guest shower Sean built from scratch. (The link can be followed from the “Mercer Images” page.)
My choice of tiles was inspired by the ancient city of Caesarea in Israel, adjacent to the small village in which I grew up. Caesarea is a Roman city. It was built by Herod. Dusty blues, faded golds, luminescent whites—these are all colors one can find in the mosaics and marbles of this magnificent place.
You can read more about my inspiration here, and here. Or search the Internet for better visuals. The modern development is sheer luxury.
Click on the right-hand of the jpeg to enlarge.
This is Sean’s first tiling job (he thinks it’s his last, but I have news for him). It’s immaculate. (Is there anything this guy can’t achieve?!)
Have a Happy New Year.

Update #I: Due to the interest generated, here’s a wider angle on Sean’s handiwork.

Huckabee’s Hardcore On Israel

Elections 2008, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

I’ve been extremely critical of Huckabee. See “Ron Paul’s Electability” and “Huck’s For Huck—Paul’s For America.”

But I think I’ve just come across the only policy position Huckabee has professed that I rather like. Dr. Daniel Pipes disagrees:

“[T]rue connoisseurs of the Republican candidate for president are still wrapping their arms around this foreign policy insight delivered in a September interview:

‘If there is going to be a Palestinian state, it needs to be on land that doesn’t threaten the existence or security of Israel. There is a lot of available real estate around the world that would not be a direct threat to Israel’s security.’

James D. Besser, who conducted this interview, added that ‘Huckabee declined to offer suggestions about where that [real estate] might be.’ Uganda or Birobidjan, perhaps? (December 24, 2007)

Here Huckabee sounds just like the Likud Party once sounded. That may not be very pragmatic, considering that the Right in Israel perished a shot time ago, but why is it a bad thing?

Huckabee is certainly in line here with evangelical thinking—and my own. Come to think of it, I think I’ve just stumbled on the first Huckabee-held policy position that I like: quit pushing for statehood for these radical people.