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Dear Sir,
I have tried unsuccessfully to contact you in order to have an open and respectful conversation with you. But it would seem that dialogue is not your preferred mode of communication. And given your soon to be guest, Leila Khalid’s statement that she does not believe in negotiations but rather violence, I guess this should be no surprise.
As an alternative, I would like to put some of my concerns with regard Leila Khalid’s visit forward for your perusal and contemplation. I know that she visited South Africa in 2006 so let’s for assume that her slate was clean and for a moment focus on her activities since then. To do this we will have to ignore her two hijackings of civilian planes, one where she pulled the pin out of a grenade and was only stopped blowing the plane out of the sky by an on board sky marshal.
Let us then assume then that her slate was clean and for a moment focus on her activities since then.
Today, Leila Kahlid sits as a Politburo member of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) a terrorist organization so declared by the European Union, the USA and Canada. The organization took responsibility for the slaughter of 4 Jewish worshipers as well as a Druze policeman in West Jerusalem in November 2014 (an area not included in the conflict). This was the slaughter of Jews because they were Jewish. No different to the killing of the four Jews in a supermarket in Paris. No different indeed from the murder of the Fogel family in Itamar where 5 members of the same family were murdered in their beds. The dead included the parents and 3 of their children as well as a 3 months old infant who was decapitated. Both the murderers were tied to the PFLP, the terrorist organization as led by Leila Khalid. Very simply this is an organization that espouses bloodshed, even if it is of infants and unarmed worshippers.
Leila Kahlid, born to Lebanese parents, renounces negotiations with Israel and believes in the armed struggle. She does not limit or qualify that this should not include the innocent. In a recent interview with the magazine “972.com” Kahlid rejected negotiations as approach and extols the virtues of the violence (hence the killing of people in prayer). She does not apologize for her view.
The Leila Khalid way is not the South African way. The ANC has strongly condemned the Har Nof massacre and the murder of the innocent in France. These acts contradict what has been achieved through peaceful transition in South Africa. It follows that the “Leila Khalid “ philosophy and attraction to murder cannot be something that they are comfortable with. It flies in the face of all that has been achieved in South Africa.
The BDS has chosen to bring Khalid to South Africa. Undeterred by all she stands for, or in all probability attracted to it, the BDS poster features Khalid holding a Kalashnikov – a clear reference to her violent philosophy and action. Her visit will undoubtedly drive a wedge through South African society and cause discomfort to Government as they very recently denied the Dahlia Lama a visit to this country.
The fact that your invited guest will segregate and divide South Africans and send a message that violence and murder is an acceptable means, must be something that you have not have contemplated fully. It has to be, because you have to know that by association, you become Leila Khalid. You become the very thing that all decent minded Christians and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Atheists recoil from. It must be a mistake and it must be corrected.
The fact that you choose to ignore the plight of Africans throughout the continent as they are being butchered and raped and kidnapped must also be an oversight and I urge you to leave the fresh produce alone and focus on what is desperate and urgent and real.
By inviting Leila Khalid you are reinforcing the violent nature of the BDS. It goes hand in hand with your members singing “Kill the Jew” at Wits University and your “Understanding” of the placing of a pigs head in a supermarket as well as your belief that Anti Semitism is being blown out proportion.
You have made a mistake by inviting Leila Khalid to South Africa. But mistakes do happen and South Africans forgive. Maybe this time let’s try and stop it before the visit happens. It’s not too late. Tell us she had other plans so that you can save face and cancel this ill-advised trip. As a South African and as a Jew, I implore you.
Howard Feldman.
