Israel comparison woeful

The implication of Monessa Shapiro’s complaint against Terry Crawford-Browne is that he should judge Israel’s arms exports with the same yardstick as that of China’s questionable arms export standards (China aided apartheid, June 26). This charge is most regrettable. Is it becoming of the descendants of a people who faced expulsions, pogroms and genocide in Europe to defend the Zionist state’s complicity with gross human rights violations perpetrated by the apartheid South African government, a government that was inspired by Nazi policies and that was headed by a pro-Nazi prime minister from 1966 to 1978?

Shapiro’s “proper research” has clearly let her down. It was not Angola and Mozambique that supported the apartheid state, but the colonial power, Portugal. It was not Zimbabwe, but Ian Smith’s Rhodesia with whom apartheid SA had a close mutual relationship. Yes, Iran lent its support to the apartheid state under the brutal and unpopular Shah Reza Pahlavi, but that came to an end in 1979 when the Shah was sent into exile. Iraq had a brief courtship during the Iran-Iraq war when there was an oil-for-weapons barter deal.

South African Zionists should take a leaf from the book of those Jews who refused to compromise with the evil of apartheid and who in no insignificant manner contributed to the achievement of our democracy. With regard to Israel, they have expressed their strong opposition to the expulsion, dispossession, persecution and murder of the indigenous people of Palestine.

Should Judaic values be subordinated to Zionist ones?

Gunvant Govindjee

Ormonde