The Jewish Board of Deputies did what they were elected to do by opposing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s decision to act on the ANC’s 54th National Conference resolution “to immediately and unconditionally downgrade the South African Embassy in Israel”. The Boards mandate is to guard and protect the interests of the Jewish community and the downgrade of relations with Israel most certainly impacts on the well-being of the community.
While the ANC feels “deep regret and disappointment” at the stance of the Board, I as a Jew feel betrayed and violated by the language used in the ANC’s statement.
The ANC says it speaks on behalf of the people of South Africa when the last election results clearly show it just scrapped a majority, which certainly doesn’t give it the right to speak on behalf of the country, particularly on the question of Israel and Palestine. Certainly, on this issue, with 80% of the population being Christian, with close spiritual ties to the Holy Land,
It is an arrogant claim.
The ANC makes no apology for viewing the Israel/Palestine issue through the eyes of the BDS movement that has entirely “captured” South Africa’s foreign policy. Why do I say this?
It refers to the “colonial occupation of Palestine”. What can this possibly mean and what occupation is being spoken about? The statement doesn’t refer to the West Bank or Gaza, it refers to “Palestine”. In this context “Palestine” can only mean the whole territory from the Jordan River to the Sea.
This mantra is propounded at every pro-Palestinian event and by the ANC’s warm embracing and welcoming of the Hamas movement inside parliament. South Africa is one of the few democratic states that don’t recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization, despite their anti-Semitic charter, proudly proclaiming its objective not only to destroy Israel, but to kill every Jew in the process. It is very hurtful to see the ANC embracing a movement dedicated to the destruction of my people. Jews from their long history of unremitting persecution know that words permutate into actions.
And what does “Colonial” mean, if not the foreign invader, the Jew. Well the Jew has been in the land which the Romans after they defeated the Jews, re-named “Palestine”. Just for the record Jews have been living in the land continuously since the beginning of history. In fact, no nation has more rights and claim to the land than the Jews. They had 2 nation states co-existing, Judea and Israel 1000 BC with lineages of kings, that is well recorded in the Bible. People who refer to Jews as colonists deny the Jews a right enjoyed and taken for granted by every other people, and this is anti-Semitic and racist and hurtful. It also implies that the Jews that settled in Israel, come from Europe and are different to the Jews of the Bible. Well this too is hurtful, as Jews have suffered every iniquity known to man to hold onto their identity and who has the right to now deny them that identity.
Of course, the ANC’s myopic vision is only able to discern the so called “human rights violations” of Israel and this immediately discredits their policies and the actions which stem from them. The Palestinians even today are refusing to take part in a peace conference in Bahrain. The Palestinians have torpedoed every chance of making peace and have been more frightened at the prospect of peace, because the compromise that would be required, would require them to recognize Israel and that is anathema.
After the Peel Report, in 1937 the Jews accepted a division of the land granting them small area compromising less than 20% of the land. The Palestinians rejected the 80%. In 1947 the United Nations again offered a more or less equal division of the land between the Jews and the Arabs, and again the Palestinians refused. After the 1967 war, in Sudan the Arabs refused to negotiate or recognize Israel. They refused Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s offer in 2005 of more land than the whole of the West Bank. So, what does the ANC want of Israel, when the obstructionist PLO have scorned every offer of peace? Instead of the ANC encouraging their allies the Palestinians to negotiate and compromise, they encourage them to resist the ‘colonists”, as the ANC is frozen in a time warp of liberation struggle, while the world has long since evolved.
When only one country, out of all the sovereign nations, is targeted for nothing that it did or can do about what grieves the ANC, but bears the mark of Cain, because of its very existence and the solution requires it to self-immolate, then that is racism and anti-Semitic. If Israel was treated as any other country, then how it relates to the Palestinians should be matter of internal politics, and South Africa should respect its dictum of “noninterference” in the affairs of sovereign states - unless, as in the case of Israel it doesn’t respect its sovereignty. Moreover, when only that country which just so happens to be the only Jewish country, is demonized, and falsely accused of human rights violations and of being an “Apartheid State”, then the hateful language qualifies as being anti-Semitic.
I wish to remind the ANC that shortly after Sharpeville, Foreign Minister Golda Meir, condemned South Africa’s Apartheid policies at the United Nations, saying that “it would have been contrary to Jewish morality for Israel to have failed to raise its voice against the shameful iniquity of South Africa’s Apartheid policy”. The Israeli parliament overwhelmingly endorsed her statement, with ironically only the Communists opposing it. The ANC should heed the wisdom of Prime Minister Golda Meir’s later words, when she predicted that peace will only occur when the Palestinians learn to love their children more than they hate the Jews.
The yearning in the daily prayers of Jews over the past 2,000 years while they lived in exile from their homeland, to return to Zion (Jerusalem) and rebuild it, will not be undone by any ANC policies or resolutions or by the ANC’s insensitive and bigoted policies which only target the Jewish homeland.
