I found Sifiso Mahlangu’s report on the renaming of Sandton Drive, a stone’s throw from my home, deliberately misleading and biased (“US may shut down Sandton Consulate”, The Star, March 24).
He refers to Leila Khaled, the Palestinian after whom the ANC-led Johannesburg City Council is hell-bent on renaming Sandton Drive, as someone who is “most famous for her involvement in resistance activity and confrontation with Israeli forces”.
I don’t know which school of journalism Mahlangu attended, but I would have taught my students – from primary to university level – that someone who hijacks a civilian airplane is not “famous” but “notorious”. Khaled first hijacked a Boeing 707 in 1969 and attempted to hijack another plane in 1970 with disastrous consequences for her and her co-hijacker.
In a report purportedly on the Sandton Drive issue, Mahlangu decides to take a bite at the diplomatic fiasco surrounding our “hero” Ebrahim Rasool, who, in my view, was deservedly kicked out of Washington, DC. No American administration should countenance an envoy who expresses pro-Palestinian sentiments, as Rasool has done.
For the benefit of people like Mahlangu who suffer from amnesia, on 11 September 2001, over 3000 civilians, the majority of whom were American citizens, were murdered by Osama bin Laden’s band of terrorists. Graphic television footage of innocent people jumping out of the Twin Towers to their deaths is something that will remain etched in our minds forever.
It was reported at that time that some Palestinians were seen celebrating this tragedy. Whether the television footage was staged or not, the point is that some benighted Palestinians regarded this as a happy occasion. Americans are not likely to forget this.
If the United States decides to remove the Sandton consulate or punish South Africa further, I will be the first to celebrate, as I am opposed to the naming of a street in my neighbourhood after a Palestinian terrorist.
If the Johannesburg City Council is determined to rename Sandton Drive because it has nothing better to do, it should consider naming it after the father of the nation, Nelson Mandela, or fellow Robben Islander, Ahmed Kathrada.
Harry Sewlall I Joburg