Jessie Duarte, Rene Smit, Tony Ehrenreich, and now Gwede Mantashe. And we the Jews of South Africa know where we stand. Gwede Mantashe, Secretary General of the ANC, issued a statement, as part of the Alliance Secretariat, stating that the establishment of the State of Israel was a crime against humanity - not the West Bank, not Gaza, not the so-called occupation but the very establishment of the State of Israel.
And I, as a proud third generation South African, with a deep love for my country, but an equally deep love for Israel, the home of the Jewish people, am at a total loss as to how to respond. I have spent the last 14 years, since Durban 1 (the so-called conference against racism that became a veritable hate -fest against Israel and Jews) fighting for justice for the State of Israel. But never have I felt so desperate and so angry.
The Jews have had a presence in the land of Israel for close on 4000 years, when G-d gave the entire land of Canaan to the Jewish people. Even through the periods of Roman Exile there remained a Jewish presence in Israel. Throughout the times cities such as Hebron, Jerusalem, Sfat and Tiberius always had Jews living in them. By the 1860's there was once again a Jewish majority in Jerusalem. Three times a day, when we pray, we face East towards Jerusalem. We break a glass under the marriage canopy to remember the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans and we recite the words: "If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand be cut off."
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire the entire Middle East was divided into mandates, to be administered by Western powers in preparation for new countries to be formed for the local populations. At a resolution passed at the San Remo Conference in April 1920, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was accepted in its entirety, entrenching it in International Law.
The Balfour Declaration recognized the historical link of the Jews to the land of Palestine and promised to reconstitute their ancient homeland in the entire area of British Mandatory Palestine, both sides of the Jordan River.
The resolution passed at the San Remo Conference obligated Britain to enforce the Balfour Declaration, as did the 51 member countries of the League of Nations (the precursor to the Security Council) on July 24 1922, when the conference's decisions were reconfirmed in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Neither the resolution passed at the San Remo Conference nor that of the League of Nations has ever been abrogated. Thus the legality of the establishment of the State of Israel is unquestionable - question it and you question the establishment of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon - all founded as a result of the same mandate system.