Biased view of Palestine

When a university professor writes an article, the least one expects is a semblance of objectivity (Veil off anti-Israel lobby, January 16). Honesty would be sine qua non. Hailing from the University of Cape Town’s historical studies department, one would at least expect historical appreciation of context, space and time.

Milton Shain sadly fails on all counts simply because he operates as a hack for the Israel lobby, particularly its extreme-right, Islamophobic version. Strangely, he begins by categorising the actions of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as “subversive” – in this Shain mimics antisemites, who use such loaded terms to question the loyalty of Jews to their home countries. He flips that to Palestinian human rights activists.

He then accuses this organisation of having “captured the foreign policy of the ANC and state”. Another mimicry of antisemites against Jews. But it is also an insult to the integrity of the ANC, which is characterised as a body unable to make independent decisions in a highly contested environment. In fact, I cannot remember an ANC conference where solidarity with Palestinians has not been a feature. But, as a historian, he should know that the relationship between South African liberation movements and such Palestinian movements goes back decades, having in common colonisation, apartheid and oppression.

Shain then introduces his predictable canard: “only Israel is in the dock”. He ignores the fact that Cuba has been politically and economically isolated for years, resulting in extreme hardship; North Korea, Iran and Syria face crippling sanctions; and western powers have played a significant role in destroying the fabrics of Iraq, Syria and Libya. Yet Shain’s alt-reality consists only of a single state that receives billions of dollars of aid from the US, and one that has faced no UN or other sanctions for its war crimes, daily gross violation of human rights and its apartheid. This could define chutzpah.

Palestine is a struggle for civil, political and human rights of all Palestinians – Muslims, Christian and Jews — which we should refrain from essentialising to religion. Tellingly, Palestinians are absent from Shain’s universe, except as barbarians not worthy of humanity and, consequently, rights. Shuaib Manjra Rondebosch