Many Jews and ordinary, decent people of various persuasions have been outraged by the vile and dishonest letter regarding Operation Protective Edge in Gaza from Jesse Duarte under the imprimatur of the ANC. They have every reason to be. But I am even more disturbed by the lazy and uninformed media treatment of this operation by our media.
There are two sides to this coin. One is the moral: the deliberate or casual reduction of the conflict to toting up civilian deaths and publishing graphic images (all taken at face value) which, without adequate contextualisation, inevitably casts Israel as militarily the stronger party into the role of villain.
This reportage is equivalent to assessing the moral balance of World War Two in terms of the relative deaths and destruction suffered by the combatants on each side. It is morally reprehensible in every sense of the term and cannot be adequately condemned. Ignorant and sloppy commentary by our pervasive talking heads on both broadcast and print media fall into the same moral category.
Mindless repetition of slogans like "cycles of violence", "retaliation", "settlers", "occupation", "Israeli intransigence" and "disproportionate", substitute for informed and intelligent analysis and reduce two utterly different societies to the same common denominator. Such glib commentary serves to hide ignorance and to ensure moral acceptability in terms of the reigning South African media narrative. It misinforms the public and reinforces South Africa in its role of servile supporter of tyrannical and dysfunctional regimes across the globe.
That raises the second side of the coin. Undoubtedly for our corrupt ruling elite, the promotion of ignorance and moral posturing serves a useful purpose. But for the future of this country public stupidity can only be bad news. So let's get away from emotion for now to deal in reality; firstly, in the global context.
The Economist, traditionally no friend of Israel, has this to say about the Arab-Muslim world on 7 July 2014: