While taps run dry, public money flows freely, wasted on politically motivated legal battles against Israel.

By Kenneth Mokgatlhe wa Kgwadi

The South African Parliament recently approved a Special Appropriation Bill that allocates R95 million to fund the country’s legal battle against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This case, which seeks to hold Israel accountable for its actions towards Palestinians, is not only an ideological pursuit for some members of South Africa’s ruling party; but also an expensive and controversial distraction from the country’s pressing domestic crises. The ANC’s pursuit of this legal warfare under the banner of solidarity with Palestine is both an unwise diplomatic move and a misuse of resources that could be better directed towards solving South Africa’s own socio-economic problems.

This move comes at a time when South Africa is grappling with severe domestic challenges. The government’s mismanagement of resources, coupled with political opportunism, is threatening the country’s long-term stability. South Africa, once heralded as the “Rainbow Nation” after the end of apartheid, now faces staggering inequality, widespread poverty, and the erosion of its democratic institutions. Yet, the ANC leadership seems more focused on using its foreign policy to advance ideological agendas rather than addressing the urgent needs of the South African people.

The Special Appropriation Bill was passed largely due to the support of the Government of National Unity (GNU), an uneasy coalition of various political parties, including the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC, which has long harbored animosity towards Israel, sees the case before the ICJ as an opportunity to further its political agenda – one that resonates with its allies in the Islamic Republic of Iran and other countries hostile to Israel. But the irony is inescapable: as the South African government spends millions of rands fighting Israel, the nation is facing an internal crisis that demands urgent attention.

The government’s alignment with Iran and its proxies, such as Hamas, is also problematic. Iran’s leadership has long supported violent extremism and called for the destruction of Israel. It is well-documented that Hamas, which is backed by Iran, has repeatedly rejected any peace initiative that could bring about a lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, Hamas has resorted to violence, perpetuating the cycle of suffering on both sides of the conflict. While Israel has taken significant steps to engage with Arab nations in the pursuit of peace, Hamas remains obstinately opposed to any peace agreement that might end the violence.

This ideological alignment between South Africa’s government and Iran, combined with the recent political rise of Donald Trump in the U.S., has serious implications for South Africa’s foreign relations. The Trump administration, expected to take a more aggressive stance toward the Middle East, is unlikely to tolerate South Africa’s support for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. By continuing down this path, South Africa risks alienating key trade partners and jeopardizing its relations with Western democracies that are vital to its economic future.

While the South African government spends millions on its legal battle against Israel, the country faces a multitude of urgent domestic issues. South Africa is currently one of the most unequal countries in the world, with 10 percent of the population controlling more than 80 percent of the country’s wealth. In contrast, the remaining 90 percent of the population struggles to make ends meet, living in dire poverty. The government’s social welfare programs, while well-intentioned, are inadequate to address the needs of the majority.

Unemployment remains at record levels, and the country’s education and healthcare systems are underfunded and dysfunctional. The education system, once one of the most respected in Africa, is now riddled with challenges, from overcrowded classrooms to outdated curricula. The healthcare system, similarly, is overwhelmed and under-resourced, leaving millions of South Africans without access to adequate care. In some areas, basic services such as running water and electricity are unreliable, and crime rates continue to skyrocket, further eroding the quality of life for South Africans.

Instead of diverting R95 million to a foreign legal battle, the government should focus on implementing policies that address these pressing challenges. South Africa’s foreign policy should prioritize economic and diplomatic engagement with Western countries and other key global players to secure investments and promote sustainable growth. The country cannot afford to alienate its trading partners, especially when it is facing such dire internal challenges.

South Africa’s economic growth has stagnated in recent years, with millions of people unemployed and living in poverty. The country’s energy crisis, caused by ongoing power shortages and mismanagement of the state-owned energy company Eskom, is only exacerbating the situation. Load shedding, or scheduled power cuts, is a regular occurrence, crippling businesses and further damaging the economy.

The country’s infrastructure is crumbling, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for ordinary South Africans to access basic services. For example, Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, has faced severe water shortages in recent years, with taps running dry in many areas. Rural communities, too, suffer from a lack of access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation. Meanwhile, the government continues to waste resources on foreign disputes that do nothing to address these critical domestic issues.

Rather than engaging in legal battles over the Middle East conflict, South Africa should focus on building stronger trade relations with Western countries and other emerging economies. The country needs to invest in its own infrastructure, improve access to healthcare and education, and create jobs for its growing population. It is also critical that South Africa seeks to address its crime problem, which has reached levels that capture international attention. The government must focus on strengthening its law enforcement agencies and ensuring that justice is served for the victims of violent crime.

While South Africa’s government continues to pursue legal action against Israel, it is important to recognize the futility of such efforts. The Middle East conflict is a deeply political issue, and no amount of legal wrangling at the ICJ will resolve the complex historical, cultural, and political factors that fuel the conflict. The legal process will not stop Hamas or other terrorist organizations from continuing their attacks on Israel, nor will it bring peace to the region.

The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies in political negotiations, not legal proceedings. The United Nations and other international bodies have repeatedly called for dialogue between Israel and Palestine, but Hamas and other radical groups have rejected these efforts. Peace will only come when both parties – Israel and Palestine – are willing to negotiate in good faith and work towards a lasting resolution. In the meantime, South Africa’s role should be one of promoting dialogue, offering humanitarian assistance, and encouraging peaceful solutions, rather than pursuing a legal case that does little to advance the cause of peace.

The South African government’s decision to allocate R95 million for a wasteful and misguided legal battle against Israel could be better spent addressing local unemployment, poverty, crime, and the country’s crumbling infrastructure. The government’s obsession with Israel and its alignment with Iran’s hostile stance against the Jewish state only serve to alienate key trade partners and undermine South Africa’s long-term interests.

South Africa must shift its focus from ideological foreign policy battles to pragmatic diplomacy that benefits its own citizens. The country needs friends, not foes, and it is essential that the government prioritize economic development, social welfare, and national security over foreign disputes. By doing so, South Africa can begin to build a more prosperous future for its people—one that is based on sustainable growth, peace, and cooperation.

About the writer:

Kenneth Mokgatlhe wa Kgwadi is an independent writer, political analyst and researcher. He is doing his MA in African Studies at the Israeli-based Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

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).

Goebbels would be proud of the ICC

By Neville Berman

Under what is known as the Oslo Accords, Israel left Gaza in 2005 and handed the entire territory over to the newly created Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat. Two years later Hamas overthrew the Palestinian Authority and forcefully took control of Gaza.  Since then, Hamas has fired over 27,000 rockets at southern Israel. On October 7, 2023 Hamas attacked Israel and killed 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages. They proudly filmed themselves committing rapes, murdering families, beheading and burning babies and other atrocities. Every one of these actions are without any doubt crimes against humanity. To this day the United Nations has refused to pass a single resolution condemning Hamas for the crimes it has committed. 

Instead of commending the State of Israel for defending itself after the atrocities committed by Hamas, the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided to issue international arrest warrants for Bibi Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the Prime Minister and former Defense Minister of Israel. Amongst many accusations, they are being charged with committing crimes against humanity, including the crime of starvation against the Palestinians in Gaza. The warrants are a grotesque inversion of what international law and justice should be.

Immediately after the arrest warrants were issued, Josep Borrell, the High Representative of Foreign Affairs of the European Union, announced that all 120 countries that are members of the ICC are obligated to arrest those charged, if they enter any member county. As there are 193 countries that are members of the United Nations, the remaining 73 countries that are not members of the ICC have no such obligation. The United States of America is one of those 73 countries. Emmanuel Macron, the French President, has already announced that France will not arrest the Israeli leaders if they visit France. France is a member of the ICC, and this really shows that the antisemitic pronouncements by the ICC and Josep Borrell are beyond the pale. To make matters even more ridiculous the ICC has attempted to show its evenhandedness by issuing a farcical arrest warrant for one Hamas leader who is no longer alive.  

According to its own website the ICC has a budget for 2024 of over 187 million Euros. It employs approximately 900 people who are supposed to gather evidence and investigate serious crimes against humanity. Since its inception in 2002, the ICC has issued 59 arrest warrants, 21 people have actually been detained, and 11 convictions have been issued. What this means is that just over a third of those charged actually end up standing trial, and nearly half of those are found not guilty, and that on average the ICC has actually achieved one conviction every two years.  These facts are quite amazing when one considers that in the 22 years of the existence of the ICC, millions of people have been killed in wars, and millions more have become refugees. Clearly the ICC is a political farce.

Israel has been singled out by the ICC for defending itself in a war initiated by sworn enemies that have demonstrated their absolute determination to eradicate the State of Israel. Every government has the obligation to defend its country. The singling out of Israel by the ICC is a decision that will, to borrow a phrase by President Roosevelt, “live in infamy.”  It is most unlikely that Bibi Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant will ever stand in the dock of the ICC in the Hague. The question that now arises is why is the ICC issuing arrest warrants against the leaders of Israel?

The answer is clear. The ICC is deliberately promoting the demonization of Jews and Israel. This demonization is not something new. The church has been demonizing Jews for over 2,000 years. The United Nations and the liberal press have been demonizing Israel ever since its inception in 1948.  Major Arab oil exporting countries are using their wealth to promote Islam all across the world and to undermine Israel and the West. Qatar has financed the establishment of Middle Eastern Study departments at many major American universities.

They have used the American constitutional right to free speech to spread hatred against Jews and Israel. They have turned American campuses into battlegrounds for Jewish students. The TV Channel Al Jazeera, broadcasting from Qatar, has hundreds of millions of viewers that are subjected to a constant demonization of Israel. Social media is aimed largely at gullible young people. They are easily influenced by the constant one-sided view of the war in Gaza. The International Court of Justice recently heard a case in which South Africa accused Israel of committing genocide. The whole purpose of the trial was to get the word “genocide” associated with Israel. They succeeded. The latest actions by the ICC are further steps in trying to demonize Jews and Israel. It has nothing to do with justice.

The result of all of the above is a tsunami of protests across the world calling to stop Israeli genocide and the replacement of Israel by a Palestinian State from the river to the sea.  Goebbels would be proud of the worldwide actions that are now taking place. Many of the people protesting are not evil. They are simply ignorant.  What a shame that they have no idea about what they are protesting about.

President Biden has announced that the decision of the ICC is outrageous. Come January 20^th Trump will become the American President. Karim Ahmad Kahn, the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, will then need to face the consequences of his actions.   

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).

If the executive arm of antisemitism was once in Germany, its judicial arm is today in the Netherlands

By David E. Kaplan

“Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me,” hardly holds true for Jews and the Jewish state.  Never mind the truth, just package in words the most damaging accusations again the Jewish state and hope the tide of animosity  will ultimately rise submerging those infuriating Jews who just stubbornly refuse to disappear. What’s more, Jews have the nerve to actually fight to defend themselves. How infuriating that they are damn good at it. It’s embarrassing that so small in size a people and that so tiny a state will just not vanish into “a footnote of history,” as historian Arnold J. Toynbee so predicted for the Jewish people or hoped.

So, if the proverbial “stick and stones” don’t work, frame false charges, and attack with virulent verbiage. The most lethal verbal ordnance today are words like “genocide”, “Apartheid” and “colonialist”, all misused to stigmatize Israel and by association, Jews everywhere. Such accusatory methodology was successfully executed throughout the Middle Ages right up to Nazi Germany, so it was now time to remodel and charge Jews not personally but their national state – facing attack from 7 fronts, none of which it initiated.

If Germany led this nefarious way in the 20^th century, it passes this 21^st century the baton to the Netherlands, where stands located the UN’s ICJ and ICC, which enthusiastically have their marching orders. What happens to Jews in the streets of Amsterdam receives its cue from what happens in the county’s judicial centre – The Hague.

While Israel faces down the charge of “genocide”, the only major genocide in the Middle East in recent times occurred on October 7, 2023 and it was perpetrated against the Jewish state. In a case of perverted inversion, the victims are characterized as the perpetrators, while the perpetrators are presented as the victims.  

Douglas Murray expressed it spot on when he writes that the accusations against Israel are:

 “…an absolute inversion of the truth. Hamas invaded Israel, so Israel attacked Hamas. Hezbollah has spent the past year sending thousands of rockets into Israel, so Israel has responded by destroying Hezbollah. The Houthis in Yemen – now so beloved of demonstrators in the UK – sent missiles and drones hundreds of miles to attack Israel, so Israel bombed the Houthis’s arms stores in Yemen.”

In summation, Murray writes:

“Israel’s enemies have spent the past year trying to destroy it, as they have so many times before. But it is they who have gone to the dust, with the regime in Tehran the only thing that is, for the time being, still standing… Sometimes you need war to make peace. Sometime there is a price to pay for trying to finish the work of Adolf Hitler.”

Hear that, the protestors in cities across Europe and the Americas whose grandparents may have fought the Nazis are protesting in support to finishing “the work of Adolf Hitler.”

There are occasional welcome surprises. Countering the false accusation of “genocide” came recently from the unexpected source of Poland! The country’s new ambassador to Israel, Maciej Hunia, had it right when during his confirmation hearing in the Polish parliament to the question if he believes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, answered:

 “… military actions causing unintended civilian casualties cannot be characterized as genocide.”

He followed up by emphatically affirming his statement with “We saw this in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Every now and again, the truth is revealed. But when it is supportive of Jews and Israel, it has to be squeezed out like the very last bit of toothpaste in the tube.

Writing in the prestigious British journal The Spectator on October 4, Douglas Murray began his article: “Why Israel was right to ignore international advice” by characterizing the picture of recent events in the Middle East as purveyed to the UK public:

“If you follow most of the British media, you may well think that the past year involves the following events: Israel attacked Hamas, Israel invaded Lebanon, Israel bombed Yemen. Oh, and someone left a bomb in a room in Tehran that killed the peaceful Palestinian leader Ismail Haniyeh.”

Global acceptance of the “absolute inversion of the truth” as it pertains to the Jewish state was so evident on the 25 November when  Iran’s leader, Ali Khamenei declared in response to the ICC’s actions that “…an arrest warrant for Netanyahu is insufficient; an execution order must be issued.” Where is the worlds abhorrence or international media interest when those who commit acts of violence and threaten the extinction of other countries remain secure and avoid scrutiny, while leaders of a democratic state fighting terrorism and leading his country in an existential war on seven fronts, faces trials and an appeal for “execution”? Meanwhile, the world courts and global media glosses over:

• That Iran may be the most dangerous country in the world today
• that it seeks to spread its radical Islamic ideology across the Middle East – and beyond
• that it is also one of the principal sponsors of world terrorism, with its tentacles spreading from the Middle East to Europe, Africa and South America and
• that most worrisome of all is its illegal pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability and its repeated threats to annihilate Israel.

Where are the mobilized wordsmiths from the media and the world courts on the case against Iran or even Russia for that matter? As Syria descends again into civil war, Russia joins in the fray with its jets striking the rebel-held city of Idlib where around four million people live in makeshift tents and dwellings. Residents said one attack on the second day of raids hit a crowded residential area, including hospitals, killing civilians. Where is international concern or media interest? Are there any accusations of genocide or frenzied protestors taking to the streets? No, that is reserved when only Israel can be blamed. That is the nature of antisemitism – always finding a way to blame the Jews and that is what is happening again in Syria as  Russia blames Israel and the US for the war in Syria. Russia bombs civilians and hospital and blames Israel.

Go figure!

Is the ancient disease of antisemitism – today at pandemic level -incurable? Are Jews stuck for eternity with what Salman Rushdie expressed in his 1981 novel Midnight’s Children:

“What can’t be cured must be endured.”

In the meantime, what they fail on the battlefield, they will try, “Killing us Softly” with words!

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).