Poor BDS SA. Once again they are running for cover now that their intention to host convicted terrorist Leila Khaled has exposed their true motives. Finding themselves in a corner, they are grasping at every possible straw to get out of it.
South African citizens across the board are outraged over BDS's tacit endorsement of global terror by inviting to South Africa someone whose main claim to fame is having been involved in two plane hijackings (in 1969 and 1970). BDS SA would have everyone believe that Khaled is truly misunderstood and (as claimed by one of its spokespeople on POWA FM this week) wished no harm to the many hostages taken; she was really quite lovely to them and wished them no harm.
Indeed, Leila Khaled is being positioned by BDS SA as `The Mother Theresa of hijackers'. What they fail to share is that when she was arrested she was carrying two grenades, one of which she had already pulled the pin out of. They also fail to comprehend that the act of forcing a plane to land and then taking innocent civilians against their will as hostages is an act of violence. It is thanks to the Leila Khaleds of the world that we experience the stringent security check at airports and that we all travel with a pit at the bottom of our stomachs.
In their desperation to retain some form of credibility BDS SA tries to misappropriate the image of Nelson Mandela by comparing him to Khaled, as well as drawing comparisons with Umkhonto we Sizwe. This ignores the fact that neither MK nor Mandela set out to target innocent civilians as a matter of strategy. Towards the end of the apartheid era, there were a limited number of terrorist attacks, but overwhelmingly the story of the struggle against apartheid was one of peaceful resistance.
Khaled's organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is a very different kettle of fish. Over many decades, it has systematically aimed at harming civilians as a matter of strategy, in order to instill fear and foment chaos. In 2011, for example, its operatives entered the home of the Fogel family in Israel, knifing to death the mother, father and 3 children, including decapitating a 3 month old baby. I think it unlikely that Nelson Mandela would have approved of such a horrific act, and implying so is a gross insult to his memory.
Just two months ago, a PFLP member went into a synagogue in the Har Nof suburb of west Jerusalem and hacked to death four Rabbis as they were reciting their morning prayers. The mutilated bodies of the victims lay amongst the bloodied prayer books and alongside a Druse policeman who was also murdered in this assault. In the thirty years of the "Armed Struggle", the ANC never once targeted people in their place of worship.
BDS SA has brazenly trotted out a photograph of Mandela and Khaled as a rubber stamp for their mendacious campaign. When Nelson Mandela had his photograph with Betsie Verwoerd, however, I hardly think he was endorsing the Verwoerd policies. Mandela, as we all know, met with everyone.
Unable to coherently defend their position, BDS SA predictably resorts to playing the race card. Thus, the SAJBD are said to have been "proud supporters" of Apartheid, the regime that killed ‘our' people. For a start, note the choice of the word ‘our', an exclusive term all too obviously aimed at implying that the SAJBD and the Jewish community it represents not only should not be regarded as part of the South African people, but are in fact its enemies. It is rabble-rousing race rhetoric of the crudest and most obvious kind.
So then, ho hum, they return to their vicious attacks on the SAJBD, who dare to challenge whether convicted terrorists should be entering our country, particularly at a time when terror is threatening world democracy, as we mourn the 20 Parisian victims and the 2000 Nigerians in the past 2 weeks. From the BDS statements one would assume that it was SA Jewry that was solely responsible for Apartheid. Not surprising their coordinator Desai justifies the singing of `shoot the Jew' at BDS SA protests. Understandable that their Woolworths protests end in a pigs head in a shelf thought to contain kosher meat.
Let's be clear: Leila Khaled still believes in terror and violence. She stated as much in April 2014, when she said, "My party has not changed; it has stuck to its original program. We are calling to escalate the resistance, so we can take our destiny into our hands by waging an armed struggle, negotiating will get us nowhere." It is very clear that her party intends to continue the targeting of innocent civilians.
There will be more bloodshed, more Munich massacres, more plane hijackings, more family murders, more decapitated babies and more dead people of faith. Her statement is unequivocal that she does not believe in negotiation. It's a pity because that is how South Africa eventually attained its democracy. It is a pity, too, that South Africa's ethos of tolerance and respect is being so cynically undermined by the BDS. Feting terrorists will not bring about peace to the Middle East, but it will have a negative spin-off on our own rainbow nation.
Spin it however they wish, the bald facts of the matter are that BDS SA has chosen a terrorist to be their keynote speaker at their fundraising dinners and have even made her terrorist affiliations a selling point in its publicity campaign. Why else would they advertise her visit with an image of her lovingly cradling an AK47? BDS's glorification of terrorism speaks volumes about their true motives.
Wendy Kahn is National Director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
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