Since its inception, the Islamic Republic has been deceiving and lying to the West as its centrifuges churned away enriching uranium to a level only required for a weapons program.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
Just a few months after I was born in Iran, the Islamic (Demonic) Revolution took place, hijacking the country of my birth and, today 90 million Iranians, giving birth to the Islamic Republic. Make no mistake, the Islamic Republic was conceived by evil, born in sin, and against the United States to the core of its DNA. Anyone who thinks that a war against the Islamic Republic and the ayatollahs is wrong, does not know the history and does not understand the dangerous threats that it poses to all Americans.
At its inception, the Islamic Republic never provoked people to chant “All for Allah” or “Sharia Now”. The chants that three generations of Iranians have been brainwashed by are “Death to America”. It’s not just a catchy slogan but the game plan of the Islamists. They mean it. They have demonstrated it in many ways for nearly five decades.
Americans must never forget the hijacking US embassy on November 4, 1979, when 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, 52 of whom were held for more than 400 days until January 20, 1981.
The Islamic Republic is the head of the octopus of a global axis of terror that has been responsible for indoctrinating, funding, and arming countless Islamic terrorists who have the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands.
Extremist Islam is not compatible with American and western Judeo-Christian values and Democracy. They seek not just to live by Sharia law, which is non-Western and anti-democratic, they seek to impose it on others. Islam subjugates women and minorities through intolerant and even evil misogyny that affords women rights with half those of men. As a woman and a Christian, I experienced this in countless ways before and during my arrest and imprisonment because of my faith. Anyone who cherishes democratic values and gives Islamic regimes like Iran a pass, is undermining the very spirit of democratic values.
From the beginning, the Islamic regime has strived for nuclear weapons, deceiving and lying to the West as its centrifuges churned away to enrich uranium at a level that can only be used in a weapons program. A nuclear Iran under the ayatollahs is an existential threat to the US and the world because they will use it.
Neutralizing Nuclear. The war waged against Iran today is preventing the far more dangerous war with a nuclear Iran of tomorrow.
A nuclear Iran will also trigger a nuclear arms race in the Arab/Islamic world, none of which can be trusted to have this most dangerous weapon, and each of which would feel the need to have them to defend themselves from Iran. The global nuclear threat to human life, and the world’s environment, would be radical and irreversible.
Indeed, America’s first, second, and third priority should be protecting American lives and interests. Americans need to understand a decisive war on the ayatollahs and IRGC is not optional but essential. Yes, Iranians would be free which is also a good enough reason. But Americans would also be free of this threat that, if they achieve, they will use.
The Islamic regime has not only openly declared its hostility toward the United States and spent years attempting to expand its influence, funding networks and seeking to infiltrate systems that safeguard our democracy. Its reach has extended beyond its borders, even exploiting criminal channels through agents in the US and around the world who have infiltrated themselves into positions of influence in politics, civic roles, media, and more. Eliminating the Islamic regime influence will force its agents out of business. That cannot happen soon enough.
Buying Time. Ready to once again lie and deceive, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi smiles while on his way to the first round of talks with the USA in Geneva. Within days, the US called his bluff as war broke out. (Photo:Bild: -/Iranian Foreign Ministry/dpa/sda)
This is not just a geopolitical challenge — it is an ideological one. The danger lies not only in weapons, but in ideas designed to erode values from within. History shows that destructive ideologies, when ignored, spread quietly until they become far more dangerous than any conventional threat, more than missiles or bombs.
If we care about the world our children will inherit, we must take this threat seriously. America is facing an adversary that openly calls for its destruction, and works to influence minds against the very principles that define our nation. To have ignored such a threat would not have made it disappear; it would have allowed it – like a cancer – to grow stronger.
Americans and the West must understand that removing the Islamic regime is not only about saving the Iranian people, but also about protecting the world and the future of their children from a serious threat that is spreading rapidly globally.
The Islamic Republic constantly worked to undermine US National Security interests. They have the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands. They have penetrated the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. They have never stopped trying to achieve nuclear weapons, destabilizing the Middle East and the West. They sell cheap oil to China and drones and weapons to Russia, strengthening American adversaries.
Death on Display. May the nightmare soon come to an end like public executions in a bid to intimidate the Iranian people.
This is a historic opportunity to destroy them, and history and our children will not forgive us if we close our eyes to the threats that if not eliminated, future generations will inherit, or become victim to.
We cannot make a deal with an Islamic enemy that seek our destruction. They will lie, employing the Islamic principle of taqiyya, and hide their intentions at every turn, and wait to pounce until a leader of less fortitude is on the other side of the table. Defeating the Islamic Republic today is essential to defend humanity, preserve democracy and freedom for the future.
Brutal Crackdown. Iranian authorities responded to anti-government protests with an unprecedented deadly crackdown resulting in mass killings and serious injuries.
About the writer:
Marziyeh Amirizadeh is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, A Love Journey with God), public speaker, and columnist. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran, www.MarzisJourney.com.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
If you think the dust has settled over the “Roedean affair” – as the cancelled tennis match between two top Johannesburg private schools (one of them Jewish), is being grandly called – then think again.
The “affair” became public knowledge within days of Roedean Girls High School refusing to play the scheduled match against King David Linksfield girls on February 3, 2026.
From that moment on, the anti-Israel lobby has been hard at working trying to turn a tennis match into an international propaganda tool.
It has not let go. The lobby appears determined to keep the “affair” moving in its desired direction, supported by extremist, Islamist, jihadist lobbies.
That’s despite both schools moving in the opposite direction. Both have gone past claims of antisemitism and back to their core business of educating children.
Roedean has resisted the lobby’s undisguised fury at its public (though prompted) written apology to King David on February 12. The apology does not admit antisemitism but acknowledges the “deep hurt” to the Jewish community.
Roedean showed good faith by promising to reschedule the match, which further infuriated the anti-Israel lobby. If Roedean honours its promise, the lobby will likely use it to maximise political capital for its own agendas.
The drivers of those agendas are not difficult to spot.
These include barely disguised calls for ongoing sports boycotts of King David schoolchildren; revival of claims of “genocide” and “baby killers” against Israel and Jews who support it, with “apartheid” slurs thrown in for good measure; and support for South Africa’s ill-fated, ongoing ICJ (International Criminal Court) lawsuit against Israel on a charge of genocide in Gaza.
Ironically, South Africa lodged the case against Israel just weeks after a genuine genocide attempt by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Underpinning these drivers is the anti-Israel lobby’s pathological anti-Zionism.
Legal and historical scholars say that anti-Zionism is a modern mutation of the ancient virus of Jew hatred known euphemistically in modern English as antisemitism.
It is also the lifeblood of the supposedly “pro-Palestinian” movement.
I say, “supposedly” because of the Orwellian manipulation of language lobbyists indulge in to justify support for groups that clearly don’t give a fig for Palestinians.
Hamas is a prime example. Video evidence shows it diverting humanitarian aid in Gaza into its own coffers, thereby worsening poverty and starvation, and shooting civilians who try to access the aid.
It also routinely uses public executions to stifle dissent and oppress marginalised groups, including LGBTQ+ people.
Hamas does not typically employ the theatrical “rooftop execution” method associated with extremist groups, such as ISIS. Instead, it maintains a systemic environment of criminalisation, torture and extrajudicial killing of LGBTQ+ individuals in Gaza.
It boasts of using its own people as “human shields” in conflict zones. On October 26, 2023, Hamas’s Political Bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh declared in a Lebanese TV broadcast:
“The blood of the women, children and elderly …we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit …(and) resolve.”
Call me picky but I can think of adjectives other than “revolutionary” and “resolve” to describe spirits requiring such infusion to keep going.
Diabolical springs to mind.
I can also think of choice descriptions for Jews who voluntarily support groups that openly desire their destruction.
Unsurprisingly, among the first local anti-Zionist voices supporting Roedean and vilifying King David, was Jo Bluen, the public face of the bizarrely named South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP).
Bluen Morally Bankrupt. A Hamas admirer, Jo Bluen celebrates the death of Israelis soldiers killed in Gaza by inserting inverted red triangle in her social media posts. (Source Instagram. jo bluen (@jozi_blue) • Instagram photos and videos)
I say, “bizarrely named”, because there’s something unhinged about Jews voluntarily supporting groups whose goal is the same as Nazis intended for them in Germany.
The Nazis wanted to make their country “Judenrein” or “Judenfrei” – “cleansed” or “free” of Jews, according to the National Socialist term applied in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”. Hamas and cohorts work towards the same goal extended to the entire world.
The best Bluen says about Zionism is that it is “a fascist project” and “settler colonialisation”. The worst? She accuses King David of being “prepared to sacrifice its own children at the altar of a wild and violent zionism (sic) that is deeply racist and misogynistic.”
No matter: to anti-Israel lobbyists, facts are less important than rhetoric and theatrics.
In a September 2025 article in an online magazine ironically titled Critical Thinking, Bluen accuses “Israel and its accomplices” of having “murdered nearly 700,000 Palestinians in the course of the genocide in under two years since 2023, half a million of whom are children.”
Even Hamas’s own thumb-sucked figures on the civilian and child casualty rates since October 7 never reached such stratospheric heights.
At most, the terror group claimed around 70,000 civilian deaths in Gaza. Its Ministry of Social Development proved that false with its plans in early February 2026 to pay stipends to “50,000 widowed families.” In other words, to the widows of 50,000 combatants!
Bluen, like Hamas, continues a practice that the Nazis introduced of distinguishing Jews and other groups in concentration camps with inverted red triangles. Hamas uses the symbol to identify Jewish and Israeli targets. Bluen adopted it on a social media post celebrating the deaths of IDF soldiers in Gaza.
Anti-Israel lobbyists often resort to pulling the race card when all rational argument fails them. Bluen is no exception.
She calls Zionism a “patriarchal white supremacy” and claims that King David deliberately “targeted” Roedean’s (first black) principal Phuti Mogale. That was probably news to Roedean’s leadership and Mogale, who reportedly resigned rather than waited to be pushed.
Bluen and others also criticise King David schools as bastions of Jewish exclusivity, yet not all its pupils are Jewish. King David Linksfield’s high school’s head girl in 2024 was a Chinese girl and not from a Jewish background. King David schools routinely accepted black children who were not allowed to attend state schools during the apartheid era.
On the global stage, “pro-Palestinian” Islamist activists continue to amplify voices supporting Roedean’s tennis boycott of King David.
New York-based journalist Azad Essa writes for Middle East Eye, an independent UK-based digital channel focusing on the Middle East, North Africa and the broader Muslim world.
Mad Hatter. Throwing his proverbial hat onto the court, former Al Jazeera, now New York-based journalist Azad Essa writing for Middle East Eye, praised the Roedean girls for refusing to play their King David counterparts accusing the Jewish Day School of “supporting apartheid and cheerleading a genocide.”
In an article on February 21, he frames the cancelled tennis match as a heroic, moral stand by the Roedean girls. He claims that they rightly refused to play King David schoolgirls because the school was “supporting apartheid and cheerleading a genocide.”
That’s a textbook study in the collective-guilt argument the anti-Israel lobby uses to demonise and delegitimise Israel.
Essa describes the King David school network as a tool of “settler-colonial ideology.” He quotes a parent comparing playing tennis at King David to “playing against a school still flying the apartheid flag.”
By this logic, Jewish schoolchildren are inherently complicit in the actions of a foreign state thousands of kilometres away simply by attending a particular school.
That’s not political activism. It’s the targeted exclusion of a specific community on the basis of their religion and cultural affiliation. It clearly violates South Africa’s Constitution.
In the South African Daily Maverick on February 25, Kalim Rajab, a Johannesburg-based, Oxford-educated corporate executive, plays the “Framing Game”. Rajab calls King David Linksfield’s “victory” over Roedean “pyrrhic”, with a “chilling” effect rather one that achieves due accountability.
He omits from his potted biography that he is Chair of the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF). The HSF honours one of South Africa’s most prominent and beloved Jewish anti-apartheid activists, who was also a committed supporter of Israel throughout her life.
Rajab writes, as one critic puts it, with the “measured cadence” of someone who has learned the most effective way to delegitimise a community’s experience of discrimination – by calling it a “strategy.”
He describes King David supporters as “successful in their strategy of framing the narrative as one where the school and its pupils were victimised because of their religion as opposed to any overt political ideology espoused.”
He uses the word “strategy” strategically – to transform victim into perpetrator and a factual description of the “affair” into an allegation of manipulation. Facts that emerged from leaked phone recordings between Roedean’s Mogale and King David head Lorraine Srage tell a different story.
Rajab then does something disturbing: he offers a tactical manual for future boycotts of King David schools and not just on sports fields. These could involve “silent peaceful protests by visiting schoolchildren, including wearing armbands, pins or bodywear to show Palestinian solidarity,” he helpfully writes.
Pupils could “conscientiously object to taking part in interactions with King David.”
Really? A columnist in a prominent South African publication advising on more effective boycotts of a Jewish school? What if columnists in mainstream South African publications published blueprints for boycotting Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Chinese or other schools?
Other fringe, local and usual-suspects ranged against King David include the Media Review Network’sIqbal Jassat and the ironically titled Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI).
All show predictable, monomaniacal obsession with one issue, one state and one tribe.
What escapes them all is that Zionists are not cheerleaders for war or participants in any “evil”, as British writer, theologian and “English gentile” Mark Pickles puts it.
Pickles similarly tears through the “genocide” narrative with consummate ease. It is, after all, a modern iteration of the medieval “blood libel” – that Jews murder non-Jewish children (traditionally Christians) to use their blood for baking matzah during Passover.
Pickles argues that the genocide claim is “as irrational as it is evil…highly damaging and dangerous.” It aims to justify “the murder of Jews, and all attempts – economic, diplomatic, and kinetic – to destroy the sole Jewish nation.”
Groups and organisations with a notoriously long history of antisemitism continue to push the claim with impunity. Yet the “true perpetrators of genocidal intent,” he says, are Islamist factions whose founding documents explicitly call for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.
The premise on which the anti-Israel, “pro-Palestinian” lobby hope to sustain the Roedean “affair” is that Zionist Jews are “complicit in genocide“.
That’s a shaky, dangerous premise.
As Canadian anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein warns, it is a way to mark Jews as “fundamentally stained and evil.” Anti-Zionists aim to “escalate all accusations toward the genocide libel… until it hardens into a global consensus,” Louis-Klein writes.
In this “new doctrine”, the Holocaust is no longer remembered but is “overwritten” to serve contemporary agendas.
This linguistic capture is likely what anti-Israel lobbyists hope will sustain the Roedean “affair” in their direction. The “quiet, student-led”, principled stance they claim to want will be the implementation of a hateful dogma against Jews.
It means that the time has come, as New York Times Jewish columnist Bret Stephens argues, for Jewish communities to end their “perpetual apology machine” in pro-Israel advocacy.
Change Gears. New York Times Jewish columnist Bret Stephens urges Jewish communities to shift from “perpetual” apology mode to “unapologetic Jewish confidence”.
He calls for a shift toward “unapologetic Jewish confidence” and “moral clarity” over Israel’s existence and right to defend itself.
The shift is now more necessary than ever because, as British-Jewish columnist and Man Booker Prize-winning author, Howard Jacobson said:
“Jews will never be forgiven for the Holocaust.”
Feature picture: Empty Court. In early February, when a group of girls from Jewish King David High School in Johannesburg travelled to nearby Roedean Girls High School girls’ school for a tennis match, they found no one at the courts.
About the writer:
Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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As we ‘celebrate’ Purim during war this week, the Biblical story of the defeat of Haman, who plotted to annihilate the Jewish people, feels more like a news headline than ancienthistory.
Megillah in the Miklat. Israel’s news channel 12 interview kids in Purim costumes in a miklat (bomb shelter).
ARTICLES
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ANC AMNESIA
A Beit Berl Project – As South Africa’s leadership engages in state-sponsored antisemitism, it should remember Israel’s unique contribution in its transition to post-Apartheid By David E. Kaplan
Pulsating Partnership. Seen here at Beit Berl in Israel in the 1990s are participants from South Africa on a Leadership and Community Development Program together with local South Africans, including former member of uMkhonto weSizwe Arthur Goldreich (bottom left).
The heroism of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds By Andrew Fox
Defying Distancing. While people today across the world ‘distance’ themselves from Jews, the writer recalls a time when a brave NCO in a POW camp with a Nazi gun pointed at his head, refused to identify the Jews under his command, answering: “We are all Jews here.”
Indigenous and Sovereignty are in most cases mutually exclusive. By Neville Berman
Concluding a Contract. The Old Testament is embedded in European culture and art as reflected here in this 18th century graphic by William Hogarth depicting Abraham purchasing a field from a Hittite in Hebron to be used as a family tomb.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
23 February 2026 – Multiple countries want UN Rapporteur, Albanese gone and more on The Israel Brief.
24 February 2026 – Military build up continues, which UK party has been called “racist” and more on The Israel Brief.
25 February 2026 – Israel welcomes a major friend and Ally and more on The Israel Brief.
26 February 2026 – Israel and India significantly upgrade ties and which celebrity couple is on the moron list? This and more on The Israel Brief.
24 February 2026 – Rolene Marks talks to Rob Schilling on WINA The Schilling Show about a possible Iranian attack, the situation in Iran and more.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Indigenous and Sovereignty are in most cases mutually exclusive.
By Neville Berman
On February 18, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar addressed the UN Security Council on Israel’s right to the biblical land of Israel. He stated that the Jewish people are the indigenous people of the land of Israel. He then asked a question of how is it possible that Jewish presence on its ancestral land is seen as a violation of international law? The delegates were left in stunned silence as the logic of Jewish claims to the land of Israel were clearly articulated. This article is about whether Jews are in fact indigenous to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and whether they have the right to sovereignty over the land. It is based on the narrative as described in the Torah.
The Torah is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus. Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. It is the basis of monotheism and western civilization.
According to the Torah, Abram who later became Abraham was born in Mesopotamia in 1,813 BCE. He is described as an Ivri. He married Sarah, who remained childless during a woman’s normal child bearing years. With his wife’s approval Abraham fathered a child with his wife’s maidservant, named Hagar. She was not Jewish and the child was named Ishmael. When Abraham was 70 years old, he received the Covenant from G-d. Five years after this epic event, Abraham moved to Canaan, where in accordance with an important part of the Covenant, he circumcised himself as well as his firstborn son Ishmael, who was then 13 years old. At the age of 90, Sarah miraculously gave birth to her only son called Isaac. G-d promised Abraham that both his sons, Ishmael and Isaac, would be the progenitors of great nations.
Contact Concluded. A 18 century graphic by William Hogarth depicting Abraham buying a field from Ephron the Hittite which included the cave of Machpelah in Hebron to be used as a family tomb.
Using the dates above, we can conclude that monotheism began when Abraham received the Covenant 3,769 years ago. This is the number of years between when Abraham received the Covenant and the current year of 2026. After his marriage to Sarah, they became the first monotheistic Hebrew couple. Sarah had a son with Abraham named Isaac. Isaac married Rebecca, and they had a son named Jacob. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are considered the three Patriarchs of what would become Judaism. Sarah is considered the first of the four Jewish Matriarchs. After Sarah’s death, Abraham purchased a tomb in Hebron known as the cave of Machpelah, for her burial. The cave was purchased from Ephron the Hittite at an exorbitant price. In the book of Genesis, Abraham confessed that he is:
a stranger and a resident among you.
Heavenly Hebron. The Cave of Machpelah in Hebron is the world’s most ancient Jewish site and the second holiest place for the Jewish people, after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The cave and the adjoining field were purchased by Abraham some 3700 years ago and it is where he, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are all buried in the same Cave of Machpelah. These are considered the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people.
The purchase of the site is highly significant. The cave became the burial site of all three Patriarchs and three of the four Matriarchs of the people that became known as Hebrews, then Israelites and finally Jews. The fact that Abraham had to purchase the burial site, indicates that people previously lived there, and were the owners of the property. They were Hittites, who were pagans. Indigenous people do not need to buy land from someone who lived there before they arrived.
Stamp of Sovereignty. “I hold up a jug handle from the Kingdom of Judea, 2700 years ago. It has a stamp of the Jewish king on it,” says Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in an explosive address on the 19th February 2026 before the UN Security Council session on the Middle East. He strongly argued that “No other nation, in any other place in the world, has a stronger right than our historical and documented right to the land of the Bible”.
Part of the narrative of Judaism is their exodus from Egypt. For hundreds of years Jews lived in bondage in Egypt. After suffering 10 plagues including the last plague of the deaths of all first-born Egyptian males, Pharaoh finally relented, and allowed Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. After the Red Sea miraculously parted to allow the Israelites to escape the advancing Egyptian army, the Israelites journeyed to Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments from G-d. Moses then led the Israelites towards the land that G-d had promised to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Before entering the land Moses sent out 12 spies, one from each tribe of Israel, to spy out the land. After 40 days they returned.
All twelve spies reported that the area was harsh and occupied. Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, reported that with the help of G-d, they would be able to conquer the land. After all the miracles that Moses and the Israelites had personally witnessed, it seems surprising that they were hesitant to enter the land that G-d had promised to the seeds of the Patriarchs. Probably, due to this hesitancy, Moses and the Israelites were then required to wander in the desert for 40 years. Only when the next generation was considered worthy of entering Canaan, were the Israelites allowed to enter Canaan. Moses never entered Canaan and he died in 1,273 BCE.
Tumbling to Trumpets. Well-fortified Jericho is the first city that Joshua’s Israelite forces encounter and according to the Bible, falls in a miraculous manner following the march around the walls with the Ark of the Covenant once a day for six days, and on the seventh day and seventh lap they blow ram’s horn trumpets and shout really loud causing the walls to crumble.
Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River into Canaan, and was instructed by G-d to wipe out the Canaanites. The first city Joshua attacked was Jericho. Remnants of pottery found in Jericho have been carbon dated to be over 5,000 years old. From this, it can be concluded that people were living in Jericho for over a thousand years before Joshua conquered the land. The vast majority of the Canaanites were wiped out by Joshua. The Israelites would eventually become known as Jews and Canaan was renamed Judea. It is important to note that indigenous people do not need to conquer land that others inhabit.
To cut a long story short, the Romans conquered Judea, and renamed the area Palaestina. Over the course of time, it became known as Palestine, and finally in 1948, the Jews renamed it the Land of Israel. This name is based on the fact that Jacob was also referred to by the name Israel.
If Indigenous people are defined as the original inhabitants of a region, then from the events mentioned above, it appears that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel. The question now arises whether Jews have the right to sovereignty over the land.
The Right of Jews to sovereignty over the land of Israel, is primarily based on G-d’s promise of the land to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This promise is repeated several times in the Torah. This right was never promised to the seed of Ishmael, or anyone else. The claim of sovereignty is supported by over 3,000 years of Jews living in the land, as well as the building of the First Temple that was destroyed by the Babylonians and the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans. Both Temples were built by Jews on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem that is the present site of the Mosque in Jerusalem. The United Nations approval of Resolution 181 in 1947, known as the Partition Plan of Palestine, merely confirmed the right of Jews to sovereignty over a sliver of the biblical land of Israel. The victories in the War of Independence in 1948, and the Six Day War in June 1967, further extended the right of Jewish sovereignty over the land. This is the same right claimed by America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries that gained sovereignty by subjugating the land by conquest.
History Unearthed. Excavation of King David’s palace in Jerusalem. According to the Hebrew Bible, the name “City of David” was applied to Jerusalem after its conquest by King David in 1000 BCE.
Sovereignty involves granting citizenship to the people living in the area. Israel cannot remain a Jewish and democratic state with a majority of Palestinian citizens. To avoid this scenario, Israel should not extend sovereignty to areas with large Palestinian populations in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza. What it can do, is to place the large Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank under Israeli sovereignty. These large settlements are all situated in the biblical land of Israel.
The saga of the return of diaspora Jews to their ancestral homeland is a testament to the fulfilment of G-d’s promise of the land to the seeds of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Jews have survived exile after exile, and thousands of years of blood libels, persecution and demonization. They have never abandoned their belief in one G-d and their devotion to Jerusalem. They have miraculously returned to their ancestral land, and have resuscitated Hebrew as a spoken language. They have made the desert bloom. They have established what has been metaphorically described as the villa in the jungle. It is not utopia, and has many serious problems and faults that still need to be resolved in the fullness of time.
Archeological digs in Jerusalem, and many other sites, have confirmed that Jews have lived in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea for thousands of years. From the above, it appears that there is a compelling case for Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel based on three claims. The first is the promise by G-d of the land to the seed of the Jewish Patriarchs, the second is over 3.000 years of Jews living in the land, and the third is conquest, both ancient and modern. No other sovereign country can claim all three of the above. I will end with the following message from G-d from the book of Genesis:
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse.
Unearthing Jewish Life in Ancient Times. The Excavation of King David’s Palace
About the writer:
Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award. In 1978 he immigrated to the USA to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel. He is married with two children and one granddaughter.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
As South African leadership indulges in state-sponsored antisemitism, it should remember the Jewish state’s unique contribution in the transition to post-Apartheid.
By David E. Kaplan
Attending from Israel the South African Limmud Conference in Johannesburg in 2016, I recall a presentation by the then Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Authur Lenk. He fended off questions from a deeply troubled audience about a rumor of El Al reducing its weekly flights between Israel and South Africa. There were animated exchanges reflecting how concerned people were. It would not only complicate travel arrangements for a community that has many family members living in Israel but it would also send a “depressing and distressing message” to a strong Zionist community of increasing isolation. The fear was as much psychological as geographic.
The anxiety in 2016 over flight reduction would end up in March 2024 of El Al suspending all flights to South Africa.
This termination of Israel’s national carrier flights that began in October 29, 1950, proved a metaphor for the flight path of diplomatic relations between South Africa and Israel, culminating with South Africa recent expulsion of Israel’s top diplomat in the country under the pretext of “violating diplomatic norms“. South Africa, who welcomes terrorists and their sponsors – Hamas and Iran – with red carpet fawning, declared Israel’s chargé d’affaires Ariel Seidman, persona non grata and gave him 72 hours to leave the country.
“Zionism” has become anathema to this South African government and its President, Cyril Ramaphosa, who probably is unaware that the South African Zionist Federation was established in 1898, the second country after the UK to do so, and one year after the first Zionist Conference in Basel in 1897. It predates the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, and the establishment of South Africa’s ruling party, the ANC, in 1912.
AGE OF TRANSITION
All this I was pondering from my home in Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv and thought while South Africa offends, insults, demonizes, accuses and kicks out Israel’s diplomats, I thought back in time and to a place only a few kilometers north of where I live, to a complex called Beit Berl and the enriching contribution it made to the emerging new South Africa of the 1980 and 1990s.
Back then, if you by chance were to stroll along the stone paths of the wooded Beit Berl Campus outside of Kfar Saba in central Israel, you would have been surprised to overhear conversations in Xhosa, Tswana, Zulu or Afrikaans. Participants of every shade of colour from South Africa’s “Rainbow Nation” were attending a unique ‘Community Development & Leadership Training’ programme. Why unique?
Well, there was no other country in the world – besides Israel – providing this essential training for South Africa’s future!
Learning to Lead. Aspiring leaders in the new South Africa with local South African resident, Janine Gelly at Beit Berl in the 1990s. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)
SECRET STUFF
That it has been doing so without any fuss or fanfare may explain why so few Israelis or South Africans knew about it then or would even know about it today. Then it was a closely kept secret – a programme running since the dark days of Apartheid.
On the day in 1997 that a delegation of the Kfar Saba branch of the South African Zionist Federation in Israel (Telfed) visited the campus, the atmosphere was vibrant. Met with traditional South African dance and music, the 28th group of participants from South Africa was celebrating the near completion of their leadership course with a farewell cocktail party. Among the graduates of the Beit Berl programme at that time were over two dozen mayors of South African towns and cities including the present mayors of the country’s two largest cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as those from smaller towns like Randburg, George, and Grahamstown. Adding to that list was Port Alfred’s mayor, Eric Khuluwe who addressed us:
“Port Alfred is growing at an enormous pace as people are streaming in from the rural areas, seeking employment. The job situation is bleak and we are finding it an uphill battle to provide basic civic services. We have sixty-one local councils in my district and we need to involve as many people on the local level as possible in decision-making. This is the policy of the ANC government and is indicative of the nature of our democracy that empowers people to determine their own destiny. The Beit Berl three-week intensive course was excellent; it widened my horizons and provided practical guidance on team-management. I feel far better equipped to return to my city now and impact on its future.”
Campus Contribution. Beit Berl’s graduates that comprise almost one-fifth of all Israeli secular public-school teachers – Jewish and Arab – and hold prominent positions in Israeli national and local government, also include amongst its alumni 24 mayors of South African towns and citiesincluding the past mayors of the country’s two largest cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as those from smaller towns like Randburg, George, and Grahamstown.
From 1986 until that evening in 1997, over twenty South African Members of Parliament, as well as hundreds of local government officials and ministers of provincial councils had passed through Beit Berl. Patrick Adams, in charge of Emergency & Disaster Management for the Cape Metropolitan Council in Cape Town, had this to say:
“The course was very professional. I am in charge of Reconstruction & Development programmes in the Western Cape region, and my team is currently immersed in running numerous housing and community projects. Not only have I learned a new dimension of problem solving, but I have also been exposed to the problems in Israel and enjoy a greater understanding of the issues here.”
UNDERCOVER OPERATION
What would seem inconceivable today in 2026 seemed routine back then 1997. Fascinated, I began to research on the genesis of this wonderful programme of South Africa/Israel cooperation and enriching partnership and learned that it all began in the undercover world of the early 1980s when clandestine contacts took place between progressive Israelis and the anti-Apartheid forces in South Africa. The Israeli powerhouse behind the project was Prof.Shimshon Zelniker, who masterfully manoeuvered between South Africans, Americans and Israelis, a fascinating amalgam of colourful characters that included Hollywood stars, Jewish politicos, civil rights activists, freedom fighters and donors. A professor of political science at Beit Berl and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), Zelnicker, was a member of Shimon Peres’ advisory team in 1982.
“I was given responsibility for third-world policies, and my first mission was making positive contact with leaders of the struggle in South Africa,” said Zeiniker.
COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
The players in this unfolding theatre of clandestine operations spread across three continents. In South Africa, Clive Menell of Anglovaal paved the way by bringing on board Archbishop Benjamin Tutu. Soon other internationally renowned personalities like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden joined the circle, as did Ethel Kennedy, who twisted the arm of a reluctant Tutu into meeting with the Israelis. This was the turning point, for what followed was a secret meeting in South Africa between a delegation of Israelis representing anti-Apartheid sentiment and prominent Blacks, such as Albertina Sisulu and Ntatho and Sally Motlana.
Charismatic Characters. In the inner circle that inspired the Beit Berl project were Jane Fonda and husband Tom Hayden (above), Ethal Kennedy, the American human rights advocate and widow of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy as well as in South Africa, Clive Menell of Anglovaal and Archbishop Benjamin Tutu.
“We came out of the meeting with a clear mandate for action. Armed with an understanding that there would be no political manifestos and no pictures of politicians kissing each other, but a programme geared solely to assisting in the struggle, we approached Jews in the United States for support. In Israel, Yossi Beilin, Alon Liel, Ruth Baron and myself, among others, spearheaded the programme to be called the Israeli and South African Centres for International Cooperation” (ICIC) and would be based at Beit Berl.”
CLANDESTINE RECRUITMENT
“The early days saw us,” explained Zelniker, “pounding the pavements in South Africa for some twenty months recruiting support and participants. The success of the operation was predicated on our ability to keep it under wraps.”
Asked how that was possible, Zelniker replied:
“You know how porcupines make love? Very carefully.”
The first group of twenty arrived in 1986 representing three constituencies:
– Soweto,
– the Cape Coloured community and
– Women’s groups.
“We brought in the Histadrut (General Federation of Labour) to help in the initial training,” said Zelniker. “After the success of that first group, it was easier to obtain more funding. We approached very prominent, radically anti-Israel, Black leaders in the U.S. and received their blessing. Individual Jews donated large sums of money in the full knowledge that they would receive no recognition, and the American Government very quietly also assisted us in funding.”
Zelniker’s shuttling to-and-fro between Israel and South Africa was not without risk.
“My associate Ruth Baron was also detained. There were many ways the South African Authorities could have derailed the programme and they made it crystal clear that physical intimidation could be escalated. We were worried about the graduates being whisked away on their return from Israel for interrogation and intimidation, which on occasion did happen.”
Despite all the harassment, including infiltration by the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), the programme flourished. At one point in the late 1980s, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times bumped into a group of Black trainees in Tel Aviv. He thought he had uncovered the scoop of the century:
‘ANC and AZAPO forge secret ties with Apartheid’s ally!’
“He telephoned me and said, ‘this is sensational. What’s it all about?” When I explained to him the need for secrecy, I thankfully managed to persuade him that the programme and South Africa’s future were far more important than his ego. He dropped the story.”
THE NEW AGE
It was only a year or so after Mandela’s release in 1990 that the programme’s profile entered the public domain.
“In 1993, we introduced a rural community development programme in the former homelands, and it was then that we came out into the open,” revealed Zelniker.
The participants had such interesting stories revealing the enormity of the challenges they faced in South Africa. Thabisile Msezane from Boksburg, who ran a daycare centre related that:
“…in the Boksburg area there were no schools and children loitered aimlessly in the streets wasting away their lives. Each day I noticed a little boy roaming around the shopping centre where I bought milk. He would ask me for money to buy food. I thought:
“What kind of future does this child have? As I was starting a day care centre, I wanted to enroll this kid and so went in search of his parents. I was directed to a shabby compound behind a farmhouse, where I found them. While speaking to the boy’s father, the child spread the word amongst his friends telling them he was going to school. By the end of my conversation, I had enrolled another twelve children. Today I have 150 pupils, some of whom walk a distance of twelve kilometres to get to the school.”
Trevor Ngwame, a councilor from Johannesburg, was all praise for Israel’s ‘Beit Berl Programme’.
“We are dealing with the legacy of apartheid – no jobs, lack of housing and poor education. My approach is to offer people hope, and motivate them to organize themselves. We have seen how successful Israelis have been in overcoming insurmountable odds. Like South Africa, Israel has never been short of problems and yet it manages to advance amazingly. This is what we want to do. Of course, Israel’s problems are very different, and in the South African context we must ensure that people see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am not naïve to believe that matters are going to fall into place overnight. While the government must deliver the goods, the people also must rise up to the challenge and they need the tools to it. This programme has been a tremendous help in this regard.”
Reflecting on his role, Zelniker’s expressed to me:
“As a Jew, I have learnt that liberation is not simply about taking the people out of the ghetto. It means taking the ghetto out of the people. To say that I am proud of this programme would be an understatement.”
In the years that followed, this writer, together with fellow South Africans living in Israel became actively involved in the project offering home hospitality and engaging with the participants. One of the South Africans living in Israel taking a keen interest in the project was architect and artist Prof.Arthur Goldreich, who years earlier had been recruited by Nelson Mandela to join uMkhonto weSizwe, the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress. Arrested during a raid at Lilliesleaf Farm, he would later escape from the Old Fort prison in Johannesburg, flee to Israel where he became a prominent figure at the famed Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. Such were the personalities that were involved in the Beit Berl project that had as its primary goal – to help the new South Africa emerge from the darkness of Apartheid.
Pulsating Partnership. Seen here with a gathering of South African participants on the Leadership and Community Development programme are Arthur Goldreich former member of uMkhonto weSizwe, the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress (bottom left) and local South Africans Hilary Kaplan (holding flag) and Vivianne Abelsohn (right bottom). (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)
Today, in 2026, I reflect back to those encouraging days of partnership as I observe what is tragically playing out presently in South Africa. Rather than focus on uplifting its people after three decades after Apartheid, the South African government is focused on:
– falsely accusing Israel of genocide
– expelling Israel’s diplomats
– sabotaging Israel’s offers of its expertise in agriculture and water management.
Toasting Enriching Tomorrows. South African Ambassador to Israel, Frank Land and wife Maatchen (top left) at a cocktail party with Prof. Arthur Goldreich, initiator and head of the unique Israel leadership programme for South Africans Prof. Shimshon Zelniker, and local South African Janine Gelley with participants from across South Africa at Beit Berl in the 1990s.
Worst of all it is fueling antisemitism like what transpired earlier this month when Johannesburg’s prestigious private girls’ school, Roedean, cancelled a scheduled tennis match against players from King David – a Jewish day school. It was revealed that some parents at Roedean argued “that the school should align with the government’s anti-Israel stance.” Little wonder what is unfolding has been characterized as “State-sponsored antisemitism.”
We have seen how and where unchecked vitriol leads to – the murderous attack at a synagogue in Manchester in October 2025 and the massacre on Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach on the 14 December. Can anybody say they would be surprised if a terrorist against Jews was to occur in South Africa?
All this I reflected on and wondered where are all those graduates of Kfar Saba’s Beit Berl Programme today? What contribution did they make and what impact did they have on the lives of fellow South Africans?
And what would they think of how their country has so turned against the Jewish state that had voluntarily helped them to help South Africa and remains ready to help?
Full Steam Ahead. Young and ambitious to lead their people, where are these South African Beit Berl graduates of the 1990s today and what impact did their experience in Israel have on their future?
Feature picture: Participants from South Africa on the Community Development & Leadership Training programme at Beit Berl, Israel with members of the South African community and South African embassy staff in 1997. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
This month, the United States is set to posthumously award America’s highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor to US Army Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a man who displayed one of the most difficult kinds of heroism: not with a rifle but with moral clarity. According to his family and reports confirmed by a White House official, President Trump told Edmonds’ son that the Medal of Honor has been approved and will be presented on a date still to be announced.
If you only remember one line from Master Sergeant Edmonds’ story, remember this: “We are all Jews here.”
Medal of Honor recipient, Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds
In late 1944, Edmonds was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and taken to Stalag IX-A, a German prisoner-of-war camp. There, he became the senior American non-commissioned officer responsible for approximately 1,200–1,300 American POWs.
On 27 January 1945, the camp commandant ordered Edmonds to identify the Jewish-American prisoners for separate assembly. Edmonds understood what “separate” meant in Nazi Europe. Instead of handing Jews over one by one, he ordered all the American POWs to stand on parade together, Jews and non-Jews, then told the German officer: “We are all Jews here.”
The German officer raised a pistol and threatened to kill Edmonds on the spot. Edmonds refused to comply, invoking their rights as POWs under the Geneva Conventions and warning the officer about war crimes accountability. The officer backed down. The camp did not attempt segregation again. Edmonds’ refusal is credited with saving around 200–300 Jewish-American soldiers.
That is what “above and beyond” looks like when courage is guided by conscience. Like many others of his generation, Edmonds returned home and did not turn his story into a personal brand. He scarcely spoke of it at all. Only decades later did his son, Christopher, piece together what had happened, helped by testimonies from men who survived because Edmonds stood firm.
In 2015, Yad Vashem recognised Edmonds as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’, a rare honour awarded to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, making him the first US soldier (and one of only a few Americans) to receive it.
At a 2016 ceremony in Washington, President Obama warned that antisemitism was rising and urged people not to ignore it. Now, more than 80 years after the act itself, America will finally award its highest military honour to his name.
Edmonds’ story goes beyond inspiration to expose how evil manifests in the real world. It is more relevant today than at any time since his courageous act. The Auschwitz gas chambers were simply the culmination of the antisemitic journey. The Holocaust started with segregation and the demand that Jews be singled out, and that everyone else stand aside and let it happen. That is why Edmonds’ act remains so powerful: he refused to take the first step.
Today, that first step is making a comeback. Across the United States, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024, the highest total in the ADL’s tracking history, marking a fourth consecutive year of increases. In 2025, more than half of Jewish Americans (55%) report experiencing some form of antisemitism in the past year. Nearly one in five reported assault, threat, or verbal abuse based on their identity.
In the UK, the Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 instances of anti-Jewish hate crimes across the country in 2025. This is the second-highest annual total ever reported to CST. It represents a 4% increase from the 3,556 antisemitic incidents in 2024 and is second only to the 4,298 incidents logged in 2023.
In France, government data counted 1,320 antisemitic acts in 2025, accounting for 53% of all anti-religious incidents, remaining at historically high levels for a third straight year.
Jewish people are being threatened, targeted, excluded, blamed, harassed, assaulted, and made to feel that their public existence is a provocation. We should be precise and unwavering about where eliminationist antisemitism is being promoted and put into practice today.
Hamas’s original 1988 charter explicitly contains antisemitic incitement and conspiracy theories about Jewish control; language that reflects the same worldview that fuelled Europe’s exterminationist movements. Hamas later released a 2017 document attempting to alter some of its framing (stating its struggle is against the “Zionist project” rather than Jews), yet it continued to reject Israel’s legitimacy and endorsed “liberation” claims “from the river to the sea”. Hamas’s words are now repeated on our streets, legislatures and university campuses, daily and weekly.
Meanwhile, Iran’s regime has aided Hamas for decades, including materially and financially. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has documented a long history of Holocaust denial and distortion from the Iranian government and official media sources, one of the classic ways through which antisemitism is disguised as “politics” and “respectable debate”.
We are witnessing a revival of Nazi-style antisemitism in modern guise: sometimes religious, sometimes revolutionary, sometimes “anti-Zionist” in label, all while still peddling the oldest anti-Jewish myths.
We need action today. Master Sergeant Edmonds did one thing: he made it impossible to single Jews out. That is the heart of this call to action. When someone Jewish is targeted for their identity, it does not matter whether it occurs online, on campus, in a workplace, on a street, or in a synagogue. Our response must not be silence, ambiguity, or “both sides” of the issue.
It must be: we stand together.
Speak out loud. If you hear “Hitler was right,” “the Jews control…,” “Zionists are Nazis,” or any other recycled poison, do not let it go unanswered. The social cost of antisemitism decreases when decent people remain silent.
Report what you see, document what you can. Use credible reporting channels (community security groups, campus reporting tools, the police when appropriate). Patterns become undeniable when they are recorded.
Show up for Jewish spaces. Attend a public Holocaust remembrance event. Visit a Jewish museum. Accept an invitation to Shabbat dinner. If a synagogue or Jewish event is threatened, ask how to support them, not as saviours, but as neighbours.
Push institutions to enforce their own rules. Schools and workplaces often have policies against harassment and hate. Demand they apply those rules consistently when the target is Jewish: no euphemisms, no excuses, and no special carve-outs for the “right kind” of hate.
Respect moral courage and demand it from leaders. In the US, there was a bipartisan legislative effort to recognise Edmonds’ heroism, including a bill introduced in 2025 to award him a Congressional Gold Medal. Wherever you live, let your elected officials know you expect this kind of moral clarity, not just symbolic statements when convenient.
The Nazis demanded a list. Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds refused. Our era and our societies today face a similar choice, only with different uniforms and slogans. Make your decision. It matters. Will we continue to allow Jews to be singled out? Or will we stand united and declare, in practice and not just in sentiment:
We are all Jews here.
About the writer:
A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, Msc in Psychology and is currently studying for a PhD in History.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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CRYING FOR THE BELOVED COUNTRY. AGAIN
Diplomatic ties hit all-time low between Jerusalem and Pretoria By Rolene Marks
Sacking Seidman. It defies belief that in a country beset with so many challenges, its government would rather place skewered ideological allegiances above the well-being of its citizens.
‘COURTING’ ANTISEMITISM – THE ROEDEAN HIGH SCHOOL AND KINGDAVID SAGA
A tennis match that did not take place between two girls’ schools in Johannesburg exposes attitudes and antipathy towards Jews. By Marika Sboros
Tennis Troubles. Once considered a “finishing school” for the country’s future leaders, Roedean’s reputation may well be “finished” having become mired in accusations of antisemitism for failing to honour a scheduled tennis match against a Jewish girl’s school.
BONDI SHOWED WHAT HAPPENS WHEN UNTRUTHS GO UNCHALLENGED
A mass murder of Jews on a public beach did not “just happen” – When lies reign, death ultimately follows. By Allan Joffe
Bondi Beach Massacre. Left behind was more than people’s personal belongings but the end of a nation’s innocence. The dangers that lurk in the sea has been superseded by the danger that lurks on the sand.
Roedean no-show at scheduled tennis match against Jewish Day School exposes deafening silence in mainstream South African society to antisemitism. By Craig Snoyman
Sounds of Silence. The writer notes that while the Gauteng Department of Education is customarily quick to respond to racist WhatsApp messaging from white pupils, it was silent with no statement or condemnation of Roedean’s antisemitic conduct towards King David School.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
16 February 2026 – At last! Doctors without Borders backs up what IDF have been saying for over two years and more on The Israel Brief.
17 February 2026 – Warning: Sensitive content. Former hostage shares her account of captivity, will Hamas disarm and more on The Israel Brief.
18 February 2026 – Is war with Iran just days away and why are feminists silent about the violence hostages and victims of 7/10 endured? This and more on The Israel Brief.
19 February 2026 – Israel on high alert, Tucker in Israel and more on The Israel Brief.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Roedean no-show at scheduled tennis match against Jewish Day School exposes deafening silence in mainstream South African society to antisemitism.
By Craig Snoyman
Johannesburg’s elite Roedean School cancelled an inter-school tennis match against King David School Linksfield
Something that seemed superficially normal, but by scratching the surface the puss of festering religious bigotry oozed out. The match wasn’t cancelled because of rain or injury or a genuine scheduling conflict. It was cancelled because a clique of parents demanded their daughters not play against Jews. This was not whispered bigotry; it was explicit and Roedean was too scared to deal with its internal demon. Roedean’s head of senior school, Phuti Mogale, in a telephone call to King David’s principal Lorraine Srage was candid – some parents were applying “significant pressure” not to play “a Jewish school.” This was religious and ethnic discrimination in its purest form — Jewish children excluded from a children’s sporting event solely because of who they are and what they believe.
Under any honest reading of the Constitution this is unlawful. Mogale did not know how to deal with the issue. Whether she should have been left alone to solve the problem reflects very poorly on the Roedean school board that had not grappled with this intolerance and showed no desire to rebuke the parents urging this boycott. The real culprits, the bigots, would remain completely untouched:
no identification
no sanction
no public shaming
no mandatory re-education, nothing!
They, as part of Roedean’s fee-paying ecosystem, would remain protected while the school pretended the problem is administrative. Money talks, but bi money talks louder!
Roedean conducted itself shamefully. In two separate, statements, crafted days apart, and published by Flow Communications — a supposedly sophisticated PR firm that should know better — the school peddled outright fabrications: “prior school commitments,” “compulsory academic workshops,” “scheduling clashes,” “miscommunication.”
Go with the Flow. Sophisticated South African PR firm, Flow Communications facilitates antisemitism by pedalling outright fabrications by Roedene of “prior school commitments,” “compulsory academic workshops,” “scheduling clashes,” and “miscommunication.”
The second release on 10 February even wrapped itself in virtue-signalling piety: “We will place the best interests of young people first.” It promised an “independent review” and “facilitator” for vague “student concerns,” all while studiously avoiding the non-kosher elephant in the room. These were not clumsy errors. The audio clip of the telephone conversation between the two school heads has gone viral. These statements deliberately gaslighted the Jewish community, buying time, shielding the real perpetrators and deceived the South African public, casting aspersions on King David and indirectly the entire Jewish community. Flow allowed itself to participate in laundering antisemitism using nice polished corporate language. This was not benign PR, this was Bell Pottinger style propaganda. It tapped South Africa’s religious sensitivities, in suggesting that King David, the Jewish school, was lying. It disseminated falsehoods, it resulted in public social media attacks on the Jews and Zionists, and it ignored the humiliation of the young Jewish tennis players, and amplified the school’s denial.
The truth was on the audio clip between the two school heads. The statements were indisputably false. And at this stage Roedean’s house of cards collapsed. A reluctant school board was finally forced to take the first steps in confronting religious intolerance. A grudging written apology admitted that its actions were “deeply hurtful to the Jewish community” but studiously avoided any suggestion that its actions had been antisemitic. Phuti Mogale was under the bus – probably pushed but officially resigning. But in reality, she was the only person who tried to address this discrimination. She didn’t invent the excuses. She was not part of the deception. Somebody had to take the fall and she was the convenient scapegoat. An unwitting high profile non-Jewish African victim of an antisemitic incident, not of her making.
Thrown under the Bus. School principal Phuti Mogale (above) was the only person – says the writer – who tried to address the discrimination. “ She didn’t invent the excuses… was not part of the deception,” but was the “convenient scapegoat,” who resigned – whether voluntarily or pushed.
Let us not forget the deafening silence of the guardians of equality enforcement. The Gauteng Department of Education and the national Department of Basic Education — lightning-fast when a racist WhatsApp message from white pupils surfaces — didn’t utter a single word.
-No statement.
-No investigation
-No precautionary suspensions
-No public statements
-No condemnations
-No equality court referrals ISASA, the independent schools’ body that was just as culpable. It too, remained mute.
Sounds of Silence. The writer notes that while the Gauteng Department of Education is customarily quick to respond to racist WhatsApp messaging from white pupils, it was silent with no statement or condemnation of Roedean’s antisemitic conduct towards King David School.
All the parties one expects to know better were on show, and displaying selective tolerance of antisemitism. The pattern is both unmistakable and shameful. South African institutions normalised the exclusion of its Jewish citizens at the expense of “Palestine solidarity”. The South African Rugby Union banned Tel Aviv Heat from participating in a tournament in 2023. Cricket South Africa stripped David Teeger of his Under 19 captaincy because of Jewish identity and views. Universities like UCT have blacklisted Israeli academics. The climate of passive discrimination has created environments were Jews conceal their identities and opinions to avoid harassment. Forced declarations of anti-Zionism to join groups are now en vogue. What is framed as “principled politics” is really rank discrimination. But the principled politics of boycotting has been seen to work, and the Roedean parents simply followed the national playbook.
King David Linksfield and Lorraine Srage have shown what actual moral courage looks like: they recorded the call with consent, refused to accept lies, demanded truth, and ultimately accepted an apology so the girls could play tennis without politics poisoning the court. On the other hand, Roedean, its school board, Flow Communications, the bigoted parents, the mute authorities all displayed a spineless cowardice and a disregard for what is right. This cannot be accepted as ‘politics as normal’. This is discrimination by another name. Religiously intolerant action was nipped at school-level, but the rot will spread.
Antisemitism Exposed. The recorded conversation between the heads of the two schools revealed the truth from the lies leading to in the writer’s words, the collapse of “Roedean’s house of cards.”
The Roedean incident is not an outlier, it is not an aberration. It is the logical outcome of a society that has decided some bigotries are more equal than others. Until parents face consequences, until PR firms are held to account for lies, until school boards stop tolerating intolerant organisations that claim to teach about religious tolerance, until educational institutions take strong constitutional stands for what is right rather than acquiesce to the ethnic and religious prejudices of fee-paying parents and until authorities enforce equality without fear or favour, until people and organisations stand up and oppose this, the guarantee of South African human dignity is worthless. Dignity should not be negotiable – and that applies to Jews as well.
About the writer:
Craig Snoymanis a practising advocate in South Africa.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
