Latest news with #Amalekites
IOL News
20-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
Calls for peace, both abroad and closer to home as well how we should judge society
Let there not be silence The name of Israel's latest offensive in Gaza is codenamed Gideon's Chariots. For some historical context, Gideon was a biblical figure who led the Jews in their battle against the Midianites, who were connected to the Amalekites. To make things clearer, Palestinians are identified as contemporary Amalekites, which means that according to the twisted logic of Israel, the killing of Palestinian women, men and children is somehow justified. Just as Jehovah sanctioned the killing of all Amalekites by the ancient Jews, it appears that Israel feels obliged to do the same. Whether or not the name of the military assault is simply an attempt at dark humour, it doesn't really matter. At the time of writing, Gideon's Chariots has begun, albeit with tanks instead of chariots. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed over the past 48 hours and all functioning hospitals in Northern Gaza are out of service. The details of the latest offensive lack the power to evoke anymore shock or surprise. The military wishes to carve up Gaza into military zones. Over 300 000 Palestinians have been forced to evacuate their homes. For over 75 days, not a single ounce of aid has entered Gaza. Mainstream media is not showing people the bloody and heartbreaking images streaming out of Gaza and thus many people are left in the dark. For many Palestinians, hope has never been fainter. Bisan Owda, the award-winning journalist from Gaza appealed to the people of the world to lobby their governments and the public to put pressure on Israel and its allies to end the war. We need to keep up with the protests, the boycotts and the pressure on our government. The Israeli embassy must be shut down and we must not allow any person entrance into our country if they hold an Israeli passport. For over 18 months the calls have been getting louder and louder. Soon, there will be silence; it will be too late. | Z Khan Durban They should be removed from society The mass shooting of 8 people in Umlazi has jolted the entire country. The latest incidents have left the nation in horror-struck convulsion. These ghastly deeds have shocked the collective conscience of society. This senseless massacre was committed in an extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting and dastardly manner. The gravity of these heinous crimes depicts hair-raising, beastly and unparalleled behaviour. These animals must be removed from society. They depict extreme mental perversion not worthy of human condonation. Our courts and the criminal justice system needs to instill faith in society by adopting a zero-tolerance policy. Inaction will have a grave impact on our social order. We have only to feel the volume of empathy and communal suffering that these heinous crimes have kindled. Civilians are inconsequentially in the way of these atrocities. Fear and paranoia have engulfed our inner being. The community must declare criminals who murder, Hostis humani generis (Latin for 'enemy of mankind'). | FAROUK ARAIE Benoni We need to bridge this great divide As a concerned citizen of South Africa, I'm writing to urge, in fact I pray for, peace and reconciliation between India and Pakistan. The ongoing tensions between the two nations have led to immense human suffering, economic losses, and geopolitical instability. So unnecessary. It's essential to acknowledge the shared cultural heritage, historical ties, and geographic proximity that bind our nations. Dialogue, empathy, and cooperation can pave the way for a peaceful resolution of disputes. I appeal to leaders on both sides to prioritise diplomacy, people-to-people contact, and mutual understanding. By working together, we can address common challenges like poverty, climate change, and terrorism. Let's strive for a brighter future where Indians and Pakistanis can live in peace, prosperity, and harmony. | SABER AHMED JAZBHAY Durban Teach children to care for animals IT IS SO sad to read about animals being cruelly treated. As Gandhi said 'you judge a country and its people on how it treats its animals'. We can't hold our head up in South Africa. We read on a monthly basis about dreadful cruelties to man's best friend and of course other animals such as cart horses etc. A recent newspaper article about Jack, a black cross breed who has known nothing but suffering his whole life, is a case in point. He has lived his life on a chain tethered to misery at a Grassy Park, Cape Town, home. I never understand the point of having a dog chained all day. It can't act as a watch dog as it can't get loose. But the sad thing is over the years this poor dog has been on a tight chain biting into his neck with a festering wound (how painful), had anaemia, was underweight and infested with parasites. Why did no one ever blow the whistle to the authorities? Visitors must have come to the home, neighbours must have seen what was going on? Communities need to be more involved when they see cruelty. They can ring authorities without giving their name if they are worried about retribution. We need to have more classes at schools that teach children how to look after their animals. I've always said in this world we live in today we just need to have one commandment we all abide by: 'Do unto others as you would have done unto you'. Life would be so much better. | Barbie Sandler Constantia DAILY NEWS
The Print
23-04-2025
- Politics
- The Print
Shin Bet chief says Netanyahu wants to make Israel a police state. What it means for country
The affidavit—filed after judges halted Bar's firing by Netanyahu last month—alleges that the Shin Bet chief was told to conduct illegal espionage against democratic protests, obstruct the ongoing criminal trial of the Prime Minister, and disregard the courts as a constitutional crisis unfolds. The decision to fire Bar came even as Shin Bet investigated allegations that two of the Prime Minister's top aides received payoffs from the state of Qatar. Earlier this week, the head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal intelligence service, Ronen Bar, filed an explosive 31-page affidavit in the country's High Court of Justice, in essence accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of seeking to turn the country into a police state. The Lord spoke to Moses,' so the Hebrew Bible records , 'saying, 'Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel.'' The twelve men he despatched returned, saying: 'We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.' The prospect of war against the Amalekites of the Negev, the Canaanites of the sea, and the Amorites of the hill country scared the spies, though. They falsely reported to the people: 'The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants.' Few nations have stories of espionage—and its handmaidens, intrigue and deceit—so entwined with their origin myths. Few nations owe so much to their intelligence services for their survival, either. Even as Israel began its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the eminent Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned that 'a country that controls a hostile population of a million foreigners will necessarily be a Shin Bet state, with everything that this requires, with implications on education, freedom of speech and thought and on democratic governance. The corruption characterising every colonial regime will also infect the State of Israel.' The bleak contents of Bar's affidavit are making many Israelis ask if the scholar might have been right. The invisible shield From a cluster of unimposing buildings in Jaffa, only just abandoned by their Palestinian owners, Lieutenant-Colonel Isser Harel began the task of securing the new Jewish state which had emerged in the Middle East in the summer of 1948. Formed in 1940 with training and resources from the British military intelligence service MI4, as well as the Special Operations Executive, Isser's old service, the Shai, had served as the intelligence arm of the Haganah, the main Zionist paramilitary. Now, Shai was divided into three services, the Shin Bet, Mossad and military intelligence. Things didn't begin well. Isser Be'eri, the commander of the Israeli Defence Forces' intelligence wing, was cashiered in 1949, for the wrongful execution of an innocent man scapegoated as a traitor. The military intelligence chief was sentenced to just a day's symbolic imprisonment, before which he was pardoned—but it was an early warning of the dangers of unchecked power. Like all domestic intelligence services, historians Ian Black and Benny Morris have written, Shin Bet was called on to monitor public disaffection, particularly anger against post-war black-marketeering. In his private diary, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion recorded why he trusted Harel: 'There's hardly a family that doesn't buy on the black market. In Isser's house there's nothing to eat because he doesn't.' From early in its existence, Shin Bet also found itself sucked into political intrigue. In 1949, Shin Bet was found to be conducting surveillance on members of the right-wing Herut Party, led by to-be Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The bulk of Shin Bet's work, though, involved the control and surveillance of Israel's 200,000 Arab citizens, who lived, until 1966, under military administration, complete with curfews, pass laws and residence permits. Efforts by the Arabs to create their own political formations were stamped out by Shin Bet for fear they would begin a Soviet Union-backed war of national liberation. Large numbers of sensational espionage cases peppered the media through the 1950s, an evident acknowledgment of the successes of Shin Bet. The reality of these cases, Black and Morris suggest, was somewhat less impressive than advertised. Nayifa Aqala, a Haifa resident, was arrested for purchasing postcards, from which Jordanian intelligence was purported to seek to extract the locations of military bases. Galilee resident Mahmoud Yasin, who volunteered to gather military intelligence for Syria, was defeated in his attempt to cross the Israeli border by a large porcupine, which attacked his brother. Even though its battles with low-level border espionage provided Shin Bet with public colour and a reputation for derring-do, its real contribution was as a patient and skilful collector of intelligence on the Soviet Union. Immigrants from the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites were patiently interrogated, providing a wealth of information on the Bloc's technological capabilities and economic problems. The Central Intelligence Agency, declassified documents reveal, was an avid consumer of Shin Bet's interrogations from 1951 on, which laid the foundations for a growing relationship between the two countries. Also read: New round of Iran nuclear negotiations begins. Time to talk about Israel's atomic bombs too The war inside From the middle of 1967, emerging from the war that won Israel the West Bank and Gaza, Shin Bet began warning that despair had begun to turn to rage. The arrival of Israeli settlers looking for cheap land had provoked alarm, leading young volunteers to join the ranks of Al-Fatah insurgents. Shin Bet proved adept at manipulating clan rivalries to gather intelligence, and won the support of conservative traditional leaders like the mayor of Hebron, Sheikh Muhammad Ali Ja'abari, who feared the destruction armed insurgency might bring. To the east, in Gaza, Shin Bet found itself facing a more determined insurgency. Ever since 1949, historian Jean-Pierre Filiu has written, the crowded enclave had received regular flows of weapons, compelling Israel to be drawn into repeated military incursions. Fearing being drawn into an expensive counter-insurgency without end, Defence Minister General Moshe Dayan had withdrawn the Israeli army from the Gaza refugee camps in 1970—but that decision abandoned their control of organised crime and terrorist organisations. Even though Shin Bet soon built a close relationship with the army, allowing it to conduct raids into Gaza's camps at short notice, the situation never fully stabilised. To make things worse, new challenges emerged. In 1972, after the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich, Jewish rage surged. Amihai Paglin, the former operations chief of the Irgun militia, was arrested at the end of September after trying to smuggle weapons and explosives abroad for use in revenge attacks against Arabs. From 1977 on, Jewish extremism grew as a challenge. The Israeli intelligence services remained on top of the challenge—but at a price. General Dayan had long lamented Shin Bet's use of administrative detentions instead of bringing regular criminal prosecutions, Black and Morris note, pointing to its corrosive impact on the legitimacy of Israeli rule in the West Bank. Torture grew more commonplace. And then, in 1986, senior officials of the agency were accused of murdering two hijackers of a bus in cold blood. Legal clemency was granted to the killers, leading many Israelis to worry about the nation's commitment to the rule of law. Inside Shin Bet itself, many were questioning the paradigm of Israel's counter-terrorism campaign. 'I think my son, who served for three years in the paratroopers, participated in the conquest of Nablus at least two or three times,' argued Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon. 'Did it bring us victory? I don't think so. Did it create a better political reality? The tragedy of Israel's public security debate is that we don't realise that we face a frustrating situation in which we win every battle, but we lose the war.' Also read: Trump wants a new Yalta to assert American hegemony. History shows this grand plan will likely fail The looming abyss Four decades of constant war—and the barbaric Hamas assault of 2023—made questions of legality and the rule of law appear irrelevant to a large swathe of Israel's public. The corrosion of institutions this enabled, though, became increasingly apparent. In 2022, credible allegations emerged that Israel's police services had illegally used Pegasus spyware to monitor the phones of several heads of government ministries, a leading businessman, and co-defendant in the ongoing corruption trial of the Prime Minister. 'The future is bleak,' said Avraham Shalom, the Shin Bet director implicated in the 1986 bus murders. 'Where does it lead? To a change in the people's character? Because, if you put most of our young people in the Army, they'll see a paradox. They'll see that it strives to be a people's army, like the Nahal unit involved in building up the country. On the other hand, it's a brutal occupation force, similar to the Germans in World War II.' Bar's affidavit shows Israel still has a core institutional resilience, and individuals of integrity, who can help prevent that outcome. The nation's fate depends on their success. Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Theres Sudeep)
