Mandela Legacy and Pink Floyd fantasy

By STEVE APFEL

 

A one time rock idol is a man true to a faith newer yet more compelling than monotheism. Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd fame believes that Israel is guilty of the worst crimes men can inflict: genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Faith - that unshakable belief in something without proof, acts like that upon devotees. The inner heart and soul talks to men like Waters. And what they hear they hold fast to and never let go.

Jews today treat Palestinians no differently to how Nazis treated Jews back in the days of Hitler. Jews carry out genocide and ethnic cleansing. Right up to the moment of death the retired rock idol will hold fast to his belief.

“There were many people that pretended that the oppression of the Jews was not going on from 1933 until 1946.                 So this is not a new scenario; except that this time it’s the Palestinian people being murdered.”

Now, before we put the rock idol’s faith to the test, I’d like to pick out two words in his statement: ‘oppression’ and ‘murdered.’ The Jews were oppressed (not too fatal), while Palestinians are murdered. Why is that important? Because Waters, being a faithful Israel boycotter, would die before he acknowledged that Jews can be victims. They can only be a ‘demonic abstraction,’ to coin the phrase of Professor Robert Wistrich. For Hitler or rock star the Israelites are a force of unequalled malice. So how can they ever be murdered?
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In any case Palestinians own the victim brand, and a most valuable one it is. Billions of dollars pour into the brand, so that Palestinian leaders, if they declared their assets, would comfortably make the Forbes Top 100.

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So the rock idol believes in Israel the monster. Like Mrs Micawber, who never will desert her husband, Waters will never desert his faith. In a belief system facts are never apposite, they’re more a threat.

But let’s throw facts at the man of faith anyway. For our own understanding of the rock idol’s watertight belief system, let’s give Waters a table to chew on. “Parallels with what went on in …Germany are so crushingly obvious,” he says. Parallels with South Africa are a good place to start: Palestinians ‘murdered’ under Israel’s watch vs. South Africans murdered under Mandela’s.

 

Table 1     Fantacy and Legacy

                                1988 – 2011                                      1994 – 2012
Palestinians killed                   Israelis killed              The Legacy of Mandela

(Militants + Civil)                       (IDF + Civil)                  South Africans murdered

 

1st Intifada             1 549 *

2nd Intifada            3 196 *
3rd Intifada            1 290 *
Def Shield                  240 **
Cast Lead               1 385 **
Total                       7 660              1 496 *                                  300 000 +

* Wiki

** B’tselem
+ Ilana Mercer: ‘Into the cannibal’s pot''

 

Now if Waters can put rock music aside for a while to allow numbers to enter his head, he will see and calculate the following:

 

• Israel killed 7 660 Palestinians over 23 years (333 per year)

• South African criminals killed some 300 000 victims over 18 years (16 600 per year)
• Victims in the second toll would be 100% innocent, while the Palestinian toll contains not less than two thirds ‘militants’ killed by      their own acts of suicide bombing or shooting or firing rockets or directing any of the above.
• So for the real picture killers don’t belong in the toll. (For the artist in Mr Waters, some poetry: They who live by the sword shall      die by the sword.)
• What remains are some 100 innocent Palestinians killed by Israel yearly, between 1988 and 2011.
• Too many, of course; but also too many innocent Israelis killed by suicidal Palestinians. Yet in another way there are too few            Palestinians in that toll.
• For the comfort of the rock idol there should be tens – hundreds of thousands more, if he wants to be right and the IDF is a            brutal Nazi machine. The toll is way too low for comfort, and the comparison with South Africa (not at war with anyone) is quite        devastating.

 

With a fatality toll fifty times lower than the toll in peaceful South Africa the victims of Gaza and West Bank, warring against a mighty IDF machine, inflict a mortal wound on Mr Waters and his sacred faith.

 

After what Jews inflicted on Palestinians, let’s look at what Hitler inflicted on Jews, followed for good measure by what Arabs inflicted on Jews.

 

Table 2       Who did what to who

                 

              What the Jews          What the Nazis             What Arabs

               did to Palestinians    did to the Jews          did to the Jews

Pop in West Bank & Gaza*   World Jewish pop.         Jewish populations (000)                                                                                                                                                                                                1948           2004

 1968    1.1m                              1939    15m                Aden                    8            0

 2013    4.4 m**                          1945     9 m               Morocco             265           5                                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                       Iraq                   135         0.03
                                                                                     

                                                                                        Algeria               140        0,1

                                                   

                                                                                      Tunisia                105        0,1

                                                                         

                                                                                       Egypt                   75         0,1

   

                                                                                       Yemen                   50        0,8

         

                                                                                         Libya                    38        0, l

                                                                                        Syria                     30       0,02

                                                                                        Lebanon                 5       0,01

Source: Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries.

The American- Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2011

* Source: Palestinian Bureau of Statistics

** PA governed West Bank  2.7m

                                 Gaza    1.7m
                                 Total    4.4m

 

We must again ask the rock idol to put aside music and imbibe numbers.

• The left- hand column conveys population growth of Palestinians in the disputed territories.
• The middle column conveys genocide.
• The right-hand column conveys ethnic cleansing via confiscation and pogroms on Jewish communities in the Middle East. 

 

The rock idol ‘believes.’ And what a belief it turns out to be. A wholesale program of murder – of six million Jews burnt, executed, gassed, buried alive, worked to death, drowned at birth, and processed into usable products; and Roger Waters equates that with a Palestinian population under Israeli watch growing to 4.4 million in 2012 – up from 1.9 million in 1990. How many member countries of the United Nations can claim a growth rate of 132% in two decades!

 

And so we illuminate the rock solid faith of a rock idol.

 

Steve Apfel is Director of the School of Management Accounting, Johannesburg.   He is the author of "Hadrian''s Echo: The whys and wherefores of Israel''s critics" and a contributor to, "War by other means" Israel Affairs 2012.  His articles are published in journals on three continents.