Sandton shouldn’t honour Leila Khaled

THE motion tabled to rename Sandton Drive to Leila Khaled Drive by the ANC and EFF, who argued the importance for Johannesburg to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine, raised questions of what an oppressive state is.

Palestinians living in Israel enjoy freedom of speech, movement, of political activity, and association. Those Palestinians living in the disputed area called the West Bank (Palestine) don’t enjoy the same rights – rights imposed by their own Palestinian Authority.

However, Palestinians living in Gaza live in one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, where any dissent from the Hamas doctrine brings about the most severe of punishment, including the death penalty.

Goats enjoy more rights than do woman living in Gaza. The last shop selling Christmas decorations was closed by Hamas some five years ago.

It may surprise your readers to learn that apartheid does indeed exist against Palestinians, but against those Palestinians living in Lebanon and even worse in Syria. Wouldn’t it surprise the readers to discover that not a single Palestinian from Israel, Gaza or the West Bank has been documented among those million or more refugees flooding into southern Europe fleeing the horrors of genocide?

Someone recently said that the death of one person is awful, the death of 30 or 40 a tragedy, and the death of 500 000 a “statistic”. And it is with this “statistic” in mind that the ANC and the EFF are proposing the renaming of Sandton Drive after Leila Khaled.

Khaled’s claim to infamy is that she was a terrorist who hijacked an aircraft full of civilians. This act of terror gained notoriety.

Her poster figure displays her holding an AK-47 – the same weapon we see Boko Haram, al-shabaab and Isis brandishing.

This woman sides with the regime in Syria, a regime that has to date murdered more than 500 000 people and a regime that our country maintains diplomatic relations with.

Addressing a forum in Turkey in 2013, Khaled is reported as saying: “I am screaming with the top of my voice: we stand by the Syrian Army.”

Well over 300 000 people have been murdered by the Syrian army with chemical weapons.