It’s Ngombane’s job to know what’s going on in Israel

THE ARTICLE “Is this another form of state capture?” (The Star, November 1) by Iqbal Jassat refers.

Jassat, an executive member of the Media Review Network, opens his article with the words: “Israel’s war of terror on Palestine is an unrelenting act of aggression.” He is entitled to his opinion. But nowhere in the following 800 words does he provide any evidence.

He and his fellow concoctors have never mentioned the totally unprovoked Palestinian/Arab attack on Israel in 1948. Israel then contained about 650 000 Jews.

Six thousand died in that attack and 30 000 were wounded according to the British Encyclopaedia – 1 percent of its total Jewish population.

Have he or his fellow detractors mentioned the five subsequent wars Israel was forced to fight in order to survive? Or the established fact that those terrorist Israelis have lost 24 841 dead and 35 356 wounded in terrorist attacks since 1920? Gaza has been prominent in the news. Tours are organised, legal blockades violated to demonstrate the devastation that resulted from the last three Gaza wars. And how many of you were informed that over a period of nine years at least 14 000 missiles were launched from Gaza into Israeli civilian residential areas?

Now you may not know about this, but there is one man whose job it is to be aware and that is Sisa Ngombane, South Africa’s ambassador to Israel.

He has to represent South Africa when members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement or Media Review Network arrive to proclaim judgement on Israel. He has to pick up the pieces when those people go home full of righteous indignation.

And when it turns out that he is honest enough to tell the truth as he has seen it, Jassat is there to accuse him of state capture and demand he be recalled before “the rot spreads”. Killarney, Joburg