By
Jonathan Hoffman
http://cifwatch.com/2010/09/30/cif-gives-voice-to-south-africas-most-fam...
Secular Moscow-educated Theobald Jew Ronnie Kasrils is the most high-profile and prolific slanderer of Israel in South Africa so of course he is a darling of the PSC -- especially since their former darling Norman Finkelstein - who repaid their hospitality by calling BDS advocates a "cult" - is well and truly off their Christmas card list.
Tonight Kasrils was the PSC's star turn at a Catholic church hall in Tottenham (St John Vianney).
First we heard from Gary McFarlane of the Socialist Workers' Party who spoke about Plan Dalet in the context of Yitshak Shamir's death. He attacked Plan Dalet, quoting from Ilan Pappe. But of course Plan Dalet (March 10th, 1948 - it is open and available for all to read in the IDF Archive and in various publications) was the master plan of the Haganah - the Jewish military force that became the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) - to counter the expected pan-Arab assault on the emergent Jewish state. It was not - as McFarlane made out - some kind of plan to get rid of Arabs.
We also had the lie that US pension fund giant TIAA-CREF has divested its shares of Caterpillar Inc. because Israel allegedly misused Caterpillar equipment.
Truth: Caterpillar has been dropped from only one of TIAA-CREF's funds, and that is because of a labour dispute in Canada, not because of anything to do with Israel.
Now to Kasrils' lies. He said that "Israel was established unilaterally in 1948" not mentioning the UN vote (in November 1947 the UN voted 33-13 for partition). When I corrected him he changed his story to say that "Ben Gurion proclaimed the State unilaterally" not mentioning that the Declaration of Independence came on the point of invasion by the Arabs who refused to accept partition. And why should Ben Gurion NOT have declared a State after the UN vote?
Then of course the antisemitic "Chosen People" trope. Kasrils suggested that Jews took land from Arabs because they regarded themselves as somehow "chosen" - that is, privileged. Only antisemites use the phrase in this way. In the Bible the phrase means "chosen for obligations" - not "for privileges".
Then we got the old trope that the Zionists saw Israel as a "land without a people for a people without a land".
No Zionist leader ever said this. The phrase comes from 19th century Christians:
http://www.meforum.org/1877/a-land-without-a-people-for-a-people-without
Again, only an antisemite would attribute this phrase to Jews.
How appalling that a Catholic Church sees fit to host such anti-Jewish racism!