The Word of a Gentleman his wife Nora are the focus of many chapters (and the book opens with a quotation from Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"); these reflect Niesewand's detention by Desmond Lardner-Burke under P. K. van der Byl and Smith, and his subsequent deportation, leaving behind his wife of three years, Nonie Niesewand (née Fogarty). The Word of a Gentleman The Word of a Gentleman (1981) (later retitled "Undercut") was the third of five novels written by Peter Niesewand, the South African journalist who spent 73 days in solitary confinement for his coverage of Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
The Ballad of Yoel Moshe Salomon Ezer protested to the municipality of Petah Tikva regarding its handling of the 130th anniversary celebrations and the scant attention accorded to the role of Eleazer and Yehuda Raab. In his interview with Eshed, he worried that the "Ballad" risked being confused with history. Ben Ezer quoted an unnamed Petah Tikva official who had told him that “the history is what Yoram Taharlev wrote”. Ben Ezer added that “the education system in the schools, which is to say the authors of textbooks and certainly the teachers too take the ballad as the single authorised source for teaching about the history