The Star reports that the Syrian National Council has called for a general strike across the tragic country to protest the “brutal killings” in Hama and Homs, and “urged the Arab League to help save Syrian civilians”.

Syrian troops used a barrage of heavy shelling against defenceless protesters in Hama, it was reported from Lebanon.

Surely, it’s time for the Russell tribunal to revise its agenda and engage with the real problems in the Middle East. Thousands have been killed and thousands more wounded in daily massacres in Syria. Someone should inform the tribunal about this internal genocide, which needs resolute action.

The world did something about Libya. The indifference of the world – including the Russell tribunal – to the Syrian people is frightening.

Meanwhile, the ghost of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, who claimed that if you tell a lie, tell a big one because more people will believe you, has been around in Cape Town at the Russell tribunal.

No offence intended, but your headline in the Star of November 7, “Tribunal to rule on international law legality” is nonsense. This gathering has no legal status, but you would expect a gathering that sets out to debate an international issue in a legal concept would have prosecuting and defence “advocates” and “witnesses” representing both sides of the conflict.

This doesn’t happen at the tribunal. It’s rather more like that infamous Durban Israel-knocking fiasco with anti-Israel publicists having a field day bashing the tiny Jewish state (the size of Wales) that some of its neighbours tried, and failed, to destroy.

If someone got up and defended Israel at this get-together, we could almost expect a lynching!

Many Jews, and I suspect many Arabs, have had enough of this senseless conflict, which hasn’t stopped since the Jewish state was re-established in its ancient homeland in 1948.

My own hero was Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, who, unexpectedly, flew into Israel, met Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan and negotiated a full peace in 1976. It remains in place today alongside Jordan’s peace with Israel.

Isn’t this a lesson for conflicting parties to turn their weapons into ploughshares and, in the words of the prophet, turn away from war.

Most rational folk have concluded that the answer is a negotiated peace with two states – Israel and Palestine – working together in harmony to improve the conditions of their peoples.

Claiming that Israel is an “apartheid state” is not only terribly boring, it’s also blatantly untrue. Arabs and Jews are in the same Israeli queues to cast their votes. Believe it or not, there are Arab MPs in the Israeli Knesset. Arabs and Jews sit and reside together in Israeli hotels and restaurants.

However, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas declared that he will not allow Jews to live in his new state. Doesn’t that sound more like apartheid?

I would recommend that the Russell Tribunal investigate what has been happening in the Arab world these past months. I would also suggest that the tribunal set up a delegation to visit the Jewish state to ascertain what’s really happening there.

They would be in for some surprises. Then perhaps we could take the Russell tribunal more seriously.

Ivor Davis

Sandton