It is also not the direction South Africa should be going stripping the cricket captaincy of a Jew while falsely accusing Israel at The Hague of “Genocide”
By Kenneth Moeng Mokgatlhe
For heaven’s sake, let’s depoliticise sports.
It was the late statesman, Nelson Mandela, who reminded us that “sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.”
Wrong Turn. No longer following the path of Mandela, South Africa has taken a dangerious slipery road by its changing attitudes towards Jews.
The recent nonsensical decision by Cricket SA (CSA) to strip David Teeger of the captaincy of the SA Under 19 team cannot be justifiable in our reputed democracy. The young man was cleared of any wrongdoing by an independent adjudicator. Is Cricket SA not happy with the outcome of the investigations – into sentiments expressed by Teeger – that were instituted by CSA itself? Those who accused Teeger of any wrongdoing should surely be apologising to him instead of causing him yet more distress.
The timing of demoting Teeger is of interest as it intriguingly occurred during the International Court of Justice’s case where South Africa is accusing Israel of possible acts of genocide against the people of Gaza. CSA’s excuse was that there were “security concerns”. It is highly plausible, however, that there was direct political interference aimed at pressuring CSA to unceremoniously dethrone Teeger on the eve of the tournament.
‘Howzat!’ South Africa. Cricket South Africa, the country’s governing body for the sport, stripped David Teeger, an observant Jew, of his captaincy just weeks ahead of the Under-19 Cricket World Cup.
Are we going to be coerced into making foolish, unjustified and unfair decisions because a group of people threaten to terrorise us? There is nothing that Teeger has done that justifies CSA’s baseless action, therefore he should be reinstated to his captaincy position. Those who still believe that he has done anything wrong have to exploit possible legal avenues to challenge what is already on the table rather than thrive on the spirit of terror and aggression.
South Africa under the ANC is being turned into a useful tool for the East-West ideological battle. A few months ago, we were accused of helping Russia with armaments, which has not helped our struggling relationship with the Western powers. Our foreign affairs minister Naledi Pandor further had a “cozy” phone call with her friends, the bloodthirsty Hamas organisation. The ANC could not wait to meet these friends, when barely three weeks after the brutal attacks it carried out against Israel, South Africa hosted a senior Hamas delegation that – incredibly – visited the country for a “solidarity gathering”.
True Colours. Showing support for terrorism against the Jewish state, South Africa’s foreign minister Naledi Pandor wasted little time following the massacre of Jews on October 7 by calling the organisation’s leader Ismail Haniyeh to offer her country’s support.
The treatment of Teeger does not only undermine him personally, but undermines all the citizens of this country. Our leaders appear to just wake up in the morning and decide what should happen without justification or reasoning. We should be taken seriously as people, and those in authority should be held accountable for their actions or inaction.
Is it wrong for Teeger to hold political views? The issue that began this disgraceful reaction of South Africa’s cricket authorities was when the 18-year-old David Teeger accepted an award as the inaugural Rising Star of the Absa Jewish Achiever Awards, he dedicated it to the young soldiers fighting for Israel following a horrendous massacre of his Jewish people.
Aristotle reminds us that a man is by nature a “political animal” because he is a social creature with the power of speech and moral reasoning. This means that we all are influenced by politics, like it or not. It also denotes that each person has political views. Are sportsmen or journalists not allowed to vote and align themselves with the party of their choice? They are indeed, which affirms that they are political animals.
We should encourage more young people to engage in politics and current affairs in general. Young people must have a say about what is happening around them, and should be allowed to hold and express their views on the issues of the day, be it climate change, conflict, sports, technology and science, politics, food security, gender-based violence and other topical issues.
While we are always going to hold conflicting views on political questions, it is sport that will enable us to have common grounds and positively engage with each other. Cricket SA does not have a right to punish players for their political views. Had David Teeger expressed his support for the other side of the conflict, Palestine, would he have suffered the same fate?
If he had wrapped his neck with a Palestinian flag, would he have been demoted? I doubt it very much.
About the Writer:
Kenneth Mokgatlhe is a political writer and columnist studying Master’s at Ben Gurion University in Israel.
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).
With the friends it keeps, South Africa does not care about genocide or human rights.
By Grant Gochin
The ANC government of South Africa (SA) did not condemn the terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. Instead, on October 8, they seemingly blamed Israel for their own victimization, by appearing to claim that national invasion, rape, murder and child beheadings were a response to Israel’s “occupation” and that Israel somehow deserved what was perpetrated upon them. The entire National Executive Council of the ANC rallied the week after the October 7 Hamas massacre, universally draped in Palestinian keffiyeh’s and waving Palestinian flags. They therefore openly supported genocide, invasion, terrorism, rape and murder.
SA under Review? While South Africa hosted the 2023 AGOA Forum in Johannesburg, with its increasing antagonism to the USA and its closer associations with dictatorships like Russia and terrorist organizations like Hamas, should its membership of AGOA not be suspended or terminated?
About a week later, the South African Minister of International Relations, Naledi Pandor, telephoned Ismael Haniyah, one of the leaders of Hamas, and while their discussion has not been made public, we know that she expressed solidarity with Hamas. Since converting to Islam, Pandor has become an Islamist, and South Africa’s foreign policy has become an Islamist agenda.
Shortly thereafter, Pandor visited Iran, where she met with the Iranian Foreign Minister and the Ayatollah Khamenei. The ANC then hosted a Hamas delegation in South Africa. South Africa is one of the few countries in the world to host an official representative of Hamas on its own territory.
It therefore becomes apparent that the case at the ICJ is a component of an Iranian propaganda proxy war against the west.
The ANC Government of South Africa is continuously aligning itself with pariah states like Russia, Iran and China. South Africa is acting as the legal arm of Hamas that has aligned with Iran, Russia and Hamas while shielding war criminals like Putin and Omar Bashir.
Birds of a Feather. South Africa’s close relationship and support of Hamas follows a trend of fraternizing with killers as seen here with former SA president, Jacob Zuma (l) being welcomed by Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir wanted for war crimes at the Palace in Khartoum. (Reuters)
President Rhamaphosa also hosted General Dagalo of the Janjaweed, who is committing a genocide in Sudan.
Fikile Mbalula, who is Secretary General of the ANC, was later at a massive pro Hamas rally in Cape Town alongside Mandla Mandela, a member of ANC. Like Pandor, he also converted to radical Islam. Together, they said that Herzliya – the Jewish High School in Cape Town, is a breeding ground for IDF soldiers. Nobody from the ANC has refuted these official positions.
One of the heads of The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a South African Marxist–Leninist and black nationalist political party – Nazier Paulsen also openly called Herziliya a breeding ground for the IDF, with threats of violence against Jewish schoolchildren. This also did not receive any condemnation from the Government of South Africa.
The EFF regularly and openly call for the slaughter of white Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, so as to genocide an identifiable racial group of South Africans. The government of South Africa claims they are just “singing songs” and calling for genocide is not ‘hate speech’.
The South African government does not care about genocide or human rights. This was clearly illustrated by their blatant promotion of their Russian ally and negation of Ukrainian victimization, when SA held joint military drills with Russia, on the anniversary of Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine. SA abstained from UN resolutions standing up for Ukrainian human rights.
South Africa’s case at the ICJ is a perversion of the memory of actual genocides. This is additionally illustrated by South Africa’s own callous and despicable positions on the world’s worst human rights abusers.
The South African Government cannot and has not provided for the needs of its own citizens. The South African infrastructure has collapsed from neglect, corruption and incompetence. SA has the world’s highest unemployment rate. ANC government corruption is clearly endemic. The ANC is known for its protection of genocidal tyrants and fugitives from justice such as Sudan’s notorious former head of state Omar al-Bashir.
SA is also enabling the decades-long upholding of dictatorship in neighboring Zimbabwe by continuously threatening the diaspora Zimbabwe community with deportation and persecution.
South Africa is on the cusp of failed state status.
Their ICJ stunt is a transparent attempt to distract attention from its own massive failings and a clumsy attempt to claim a moral compass which it abandoned many years ago. ANC corruption and nepotism squandered South Africa’s advantages and reduced it to a moral and economic basket case.
In a climate where people are looking for someone to blame, SA’s Jewish minority is the apparent scapegoat. To deflect attention from their own failures and to generate accolades from Iran, Russia and other dictatorial and human rights abuser countries; attacking Israel in the international arena has worked according to plan for South Africa.
Act of Antisemitism. US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt (seen here in 2022 at a conference in Brussels) branded the decision by South Africa’s Under-19 team to strip Jewish star player David Teeger of his captaincy as “antisemitic”. (Photo: US State Department)
The ANC’s lack of concern for the wellbeing of the South African Jewish Community is indicative of their overall moral failings. The Jewish Community now faces unparalleled hostility and antisemitism from the Islamist oriented government. SA’s continual victim blaming of Israel has destroyed the last vestige of perceived integrity.
Antisemitism has become rampant in South Africa. Threats of violence are constant. In a clear statement that Apartheid in South Africa has been reinstated, Jews have been removed from sports positions. South African Jews are openly asking if they will have safety, security, or, if they should evacuate.
To compound the ANC’s moral bankruptcy, the Government has also announced they will litigate against USA and England at the ICJ, accusing both of “enabling genocide”. Really?
Now we can see that South Africa is not an ally of the United States and therefore should not receive favorable treatment by the United States. The Central African Republic, Gabon, Niger, The Islamic Republic of Mauritania, and Uganda have all previously been suspended, or terminated from AGOA – the US Congress approved ‘African Growth and Opportunity Act’ aimed to assist the economies of sub-Saharan Africa and to improve economic relations between the USA and the region.
South Africa is a terror proxy of Iran. The United States cannot be allied to or enable Iranian terror and their proxies. The AGOA agreement with South Africa must be terminated.
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 Israel was set on “genocide”, why has it engaged in peace negotiations offering a state on multiple occasions? Genocide would mean wiping Palestinians out – not negotiating toward peaceful coexistence.
By Jonathan Feldstein
11 January 2024, South Africa brings charges in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for genocide.
Despite the reality of the Hamas charter and its own genocidal acts, Hamas is not on trial at the ICJ. Nobody has thought that would be appropriate, or to hold them accountable in any way. Not doing so embodies two of the biggest evils in today’s Middle East: that calling for the slaughter of Jews (and doing it) is passable, acceptable, and within the range of the norm, and that holding Palestinian Arabs (or Arabs in general) to a sane human standard where calls for genocide, and acting on these calls to slaughter Jews, is also acceptable. After all, the watered-down hypocritical standards go, they are just Arabs. Nobody should expect better. Oh, and God forbid we challenge their theology, we might be accused of Islamophobia.
Day one inside the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague where South Africa is asking the court to order Israel to stop its military actions in Gaza and to desist from what South Africa says are genocidal acts committed against Palestinians. (Photo Reuters/Thilo Schmuelgen)
Since Hamas defines by its very existence what calls for genocide are actually about, the deliberate and attempted slaughter of a specific people, a term coined after the Holocaust (a genocide against the Jewish people), it’s important to look at why the allegations of genocide by Israel are baseless. According to the Geneva Convention, genocide is “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.”
First, the Palestinian Arab population has grown by hundreds of percentile. In Gaza alone there are more than 2 million residents, more than the total number of “Palestinians” who existed in the Land of Israel in 1948 when Israel was born. Not including some two-million Israeli Arabs, the estimated Palestinian Arab population is between 5-6 million. One would think that for a country which made the desert bloom, has innovated and contributed countless medical, technological, civil and cultural innovations to the world with such an unparalleled rate of success, if Israel had set out to conduct a genocide, it would be much more “successful”. The numbers alone prove how allegations of Israeli committing genocide would be considered the worst genocide ever, an abysmal failure.
British jurist Malcolm Shaw (right) and legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry Tal Becker(left), look on during the opening of the hearings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Patrick Post)
While Hamas is not on trial, let’s look at the original Hamas charter to see the actual contemporary definition of what genocide means. The Hamas charter interweaves quotes from the Koran and examples of their prophet Mohammed, overlayed with the vile antisemites of Hamas. The Hamas charter is not just rhetoric but an actual playbook.
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
“Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land.”
What’s their goal then? Liberty and justice for all? No. Rather, “to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” and “to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project”.
Hamas is clearly not only against Zionism, but the Jews. All the Jews. “With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.”
“There is no war going on anywhere…without (Jews) having their finger in it…to enable them to rule the world.”
“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”
The revised (kinder and gentler) 2017 Hamas charter, calls to establish “Palestine.. a land that was seized by a racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project that was founded on a false promise” using the genocidal mantra “from the river to the sea,” free of Jews. “..the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity” mandating that Zionism “must disappear from Palestine.”
As a playbook, its means are violence, not coexistence, instructing that “armed resistance” is not only a way to achieve their goals, but THE way. “Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws…At the heart of these lies armed resistance, which is regarded as the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.”
By comparison, it’s worth looking at Israel’s founding document to see where any hints of genocide might be hidden. South Africa’s allegation is not that Israel is specifically committing genocide now, but throughout its 75-year history. Israel’s Declaration of Independence, calls for peaceful coexistence, Arabs and Jews together, in prosperity. In fairness, it doesn’t mean that Israel cannot have pivoted from these enlightened ideas 76 years ago. It doesn’t make Israel perfect. But in a fair analysis, and as will be seen at the ICJ, there is no resemblance of genocide taking place by Israel against Palestinian Arabs.
South Africa Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola (left) and Ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusimuzi Madonsela at the Hague court today. (Photo: Remko De Waal / AFP – Getty Images)
Read the genocidal threats of Israel’s founders:
“It will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.”
“We appeal – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”
“We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”
If Israel was committed to genocide, why would it have ever entered peace negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs, offering them a state multiple times and celebrated by world leaders including the United Nations itself? Genocide would mean wiping them out, not negotiating toward peaceful coexistence.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands December 11, 2019. (Photo: Reuters /Yves Herman)
If they listen to the facts and adjudicate fairly, the ICJ will understand that neither in rhetoric nor in deed has Israel ever committed genocide. Conversely the Hamas’ charter, its words and actions, embody genocidal antisemitism blending the Koran, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Mein Kampf. Perversely, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are not on trial.
South Africa’s allegations are that Israel “intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial, and ethnic group.” If they listen to the facts and adjudicate fairly, the ICJ will see that no distinct genocidal intention can be proved, and South Africa’s allegations have no basis or standing.
Supporters of Israel brave freezing temperatures to gather outside the International Court of Justice, in the Dutch city of The Hague, where South Africa’s genocide case against Israel has begun.
Officially, Israel is on trial at the ICJ. But the reality is that the world is on trial, for even entertaining South Africa’s specious claims. The ICJ can either redeem itself and reject South Africa’s claims, or call into question its own credibility and that of the nations of the world which it represents.
About the writer:
Jonathan Feldstein - President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites 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).
Could have been a model of reconciliation but instead the Rainbow Nation embraces terrorists that murder Jews
By Gary Kaplan
I know my paraphrased slogan is less catchy than the heinous one chanted across the globe, including in the city of my birth, Cape Town, South Africa. However, I believe my variation is more reflective of the truth.
South Africa has been robbed. Not at gunpoint for this is about a different type of crime, a different robbery, one that is still in progress and if not stopped, will leave South Africa with its open-ended financial crisis and debt, as well as a moral debt that will never be forgotten nor forgiven.
Sign of the Times. The chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” heard at pro-Palestine marches across the world is an antisemitic slogan calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Does this sentiment not share similarity with the apartheid of the old South Africa?
The ANC has not only allowed the anti-Israel movement to accuse Israel of Apartheid but has taken it upon itself to spread the new blood libel of our time and be its megaphone. The Apartheid analogy has served less as a realm of analytical inquiry and more as a rhetorical tool. Since the Durban conference of 2001, this analogy has been used by activists of the BDS movement, along with their stalwart allies, which in South Africa are the ANC and the South African government. Their intent is to utilise this analogy as a framework that justifies isolating and ultimately dismantling the State of Israel, drawing parallels to how international pressure significantly contributed to the downfall of the Apartheid state. This modus operandi of exporting false narratives is an insult to black South Africans who suffered under the system of absolute racial segregation. Furthermore, it is a tragic theft of the actual black South African Apartheid narrative because the term has been misappropriated to falsely label Israel when referring to its conflict with Palestine. The truth has been robbed.
Morally Repugnant. In a display of zero partiality, South African President Cyril Ramaposa, on a state visit to Qatar, requested that the International Criminal Court investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in its war with Hamas saying Israel has “turned Gaza into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place.” Ignoring the barbarity and butchery Hamas inflicted upon Jewish civilians, the South African president also posted a video of a speech he delivered at a rally in support of Gaza, whose killer squads had perpetrated a massacre on the 7 October.
Continuing on this misguided path, South Africa’s ANC’s leadership persistently espouses ignorantly on Israel’s war against the terrorist-run state of Gaza. Joining with the outrageous statements by different members of his government, on November 17, President Cyril Ramaphosa told reporters during a state visit to Qatar that Gaza:
“Has now turned into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place.”
It took the South African government nine days to condemn the 7th of October massacre by Hamas, and with that, it quickly blamed Israel for the:
“genocide of the people of Gaza.”
This type of rhetoric backing Islamic terrorists is yet another slap in the face to the real freedom fighters who opposed Apartheid and exposes South Africa’s Jewish community to the danger of mob violence. We saw last month what transpired on Sea Point beach front when one of the organisers of the violence against Jews, Hannie Orrie, said:
“We share one objective: to rid this country of Zionism.” The threat of the EFF, South Africa’s third largest political party to close down the Jewish day school, Herzlia, while ominous, is a symptom of the ANC government’s close associations with those terrorists seeking Israel’s destruction.
Jews not Wanted. A violent counter-protest at a rally that was meant to be in support of Israel in Sea Point where Jews were warned to stay away. It begs the question of how safe are Jews in South Africa today?
The Rainbow Nation and the ANC had a choice; they could have made a significant impact by trying to be a role model of reconciliation and broker a peace but instead, they chose to support Hamas that murderously and mercilessly pursues the destruction of the state of Israel. Instead of governing and rebuilding South Africa, they have spent their energy on siding with terrorists and allowing antisemitism and violence to breed and spread across South Africa.
Close or Else What? Although the Jewish community’s leadership is unbowed and defiant, it is a sign of the times in South Africa when the third largest political party can threaten the Westen Cape Premier, Alan Winde that he has “until the end of the year to close down [Herzlia] school, or the EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters] South Africa will have to!”
How can a nation reborn after Apartheid be so intertwined with a brutal terrorist organisation like Hamas? Where did it go so wrong?
In my mind, there is a clear link between the Government’s anti-Israel sentiment and the country’s apparent infrastructure collapse, high crime and economic malaise. I am sure there are many realpolitik reasons for the ANC to be so vocal against Israel, which include anti-western politicians in the ANC, seeking Muslim voters, BRICS, etc. However, they all start from a real ideological point. The ANC admire Hamas, they see them as themselves, and in that obscure way, they have a twisted take on history and reality. The only fundamental similarity between the ANC and the Palestinians is that both are ignoring the chance to govern their people to provide security and prosperity.
I can ensure the South African government that their people would prefer electricity 24 hours a day, clean water and an end to poverty and crime than its shallow forays into ‘foreign policy’.
After Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, it took them 40 years to reach the promised land. Why? Not because they were literally lost but because a generation of slave- mentality needed to die for a new generation to understand the concept of freedom and live freely. It seems the ANC suffer from the same mentality; they too haven’t come to terms with the idea of freedom and its obligations and responsibilities. I find it hard to believe that the rainbow nation was created to align itself with terror and the destruction of the only Jewish state in the world. It seems South Africa today is going through the same evils it once had: racism, antisemitism, bigotry and supremacy. Once again, the Jews of South Africa need to explain to their government their place in society and explain why, even though their skin colour may be white, they are not “colonialists” but Jews. Have the ANC become the people they have fought against decades ago? Their blatant antisemitism would suggest so.
This ANC government supports an organisation responsible for the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust – an organisation whose official policy is to murder Jews and which poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
Blind Support. Supporting Hamas, South Africa’s ANC leadership ignores how the current hostilities began with photos like these of a blood-soaked child’s bed in Kibbutz Kfar Aza where children were butchered on October 7.
It seems to me that the South African government today is no better than when white Afrikaner nationalism of the 1930s sided with Nazism, aligning with evil.
Is this what my Jewish parents so strongly opposed in South Africa? Is this the new South Africa?
The South African government’s comments on “genocide” and “concentration camps” regarding the war in Gaza, place it alongside history’s greatest holocaust deniers. I am sure this is not the legacy Mandela would have wanted to be associated with!
The ANC’s more-recent posturing that the narrative of the Palestinian people’s struggle resembles their own history of racial segregation and oppression undermines the true narrative of the struggle against Apartheid. It is diluting their history and dissipating its value. What started off as a just cause of striving for freedom has bizarrely morphed to supporting destruction, rape and brutal massacre. Who after all in their right mind, takes babies and toddlers as hostages and can claim to be “freedom fighters”?
South Africa – From Economic To Moral Decline. In response to the will of the street, the South African parliament has called on the ANC government to close down the Israeli embassy, while having no problem hosting a Hamas delegation to South Africa that is responsible for the massacre of Jews on October 7, the worst since the Holocaust.
However, in the last week, South Africa’s ANC government has taken its endangerment to Jews to an all-new level by welcoming in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre, a senior Hamas delegation to South Africa to participate in the Fifth Global Convention of Solidarity with Palestine. The delegation included politburo member Bassem Naim, Hamas representative in Iran, Khaled Qaddoumi and Hamas representative in East, Central and Southern Africa Emad Saber.
According to a press release, the Fifth Global Convention of Solidarity with Palestine was jointly organised by the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine and the Royal House of Mandela and would commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Global Campaign’s launch and the death of Nelson Mandela. What would Mandela who so loved children, and as president donated half of his salary to poor children and when he received the Nobel Peace Prize, gave part of the prize money to help street children say about the users and abusers of his legacy cozying up to the likes of Hamas who in the process of perpetrating a massacre of Jews, take babies and toddlers as hostages?
South Africa-born, Gary Kaplan works in the international relations division at Israel’s national trade union, the Histadrut where inter alia, he manages its youth exchange programme with the German trade union Confederation addressing issues from labour relations to Holocaust remembrance.
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).
South Africa’s diplomatic posturing is reminiscent of an amateur actor auditioning for a lead role – with ‘real life’ deadly consequences.
By Tim Flack
In the grand theatre of international relations, South Africa performs with the drama and unpredictability of a Shakespearean character lost in a modern Netflix series. The government, resembling a team of scriptwriters, crafts each episode of its diplomatic saga with more twists and turns than a soap opera, keeping the global audience both amused and bemused. Let’s glide into the narrative of South Africa’s tango with the International Criminal Court (ICC) – a dance that’s less ballroom elegance and more a freestyle of indecisive chaos. Imagine a teenager on social media, constantly updating their relationship status – that’s South Africa with the ICC. One minute they’re in a committed relationship, and the next, it’s “it’s complicated”, with Parliament frenetically jigging in the background, trying to keep up with the rhythm. Enter on stage, President Cyril Ramaphosa, the man of mixed signals. One moment, he’s announcing a split from the ICC, and the next, he’s retracting with a casual “just kidding” message, reminiscent of a rom-com [romantic comedy] where the protagonist can’t decide between two suitors – except here, the choice is between global justice and domestic convenience. Remember the Omar al-Bashir saga when South Africa erred in its decision not to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir – wanted for crimes against humanity – during his controversial visit to the country in 2015 to attend an African Union summit in Johannesburg? When a Rome Statute member like South Africa fails to comply, it prevents the ICC from carrying out its functions.
Shielding a Sudanese Criminal to Supporting Hamas Terrorists. Indicted by the ICC for allegedly directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir (2nd from right), stands with other African leaders during a photo op in Johannesburg, June 14, 2015.
The farce played out akin to hosting a party where the guest of honour was adorned with arrest warrants rather than the inflated attire of office. Fast forward to the present and the plot thickens – as well as sickens – with Hamas, the bad boys of global politics, who Ramaphosa is fine to have South Africa support. While okay in the past for South Africa to split from the ICC, Ramaposa is now happy to refer Israel to the same ICC for alleged war crimes. This erratic conduct in South African foreign policy is the diplomatic equivalent of pointing a finger hysterically at someone jaywalking while you yourself are committing a heinous crime! Al said, Ramaphosa’s silence on Hamas’ perpetration of a massacre against unsuspecting Israeli civilians resonated loudly. While the president plays lead character in this ‘thriller’ where the script is seemingly improvised, the audience, notably the South African Jewish community, watches with apprehension. Each diplomatic move, each controversial call or charge at the ICC, sends ripples of concern through the community, turning political theater into a personal reality show.
Child Killers. South Africa’s leadership totally unmoved by photos like these of a children’s bedroom following a visit from Hamas killer squads from Gaza. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
For the Jewish community, this story is more than political satire; it’s a narrative that resonates profoundly, sending chilling signals. The rise of BDS activities and an increase in antisemitism add layers of unease. I may characterise this as akin to watching a thriller; however, the plot twists could result in dire real-world consequences. Amidst this diplomatic dance, the South African Jewish community is not merely an audience but an integral part of the narrative; their concerns and fears magnified by each new development. It’s a stark reminder that behind the scenes of international relations, real lives are affected, and the repercussions of these decisions are far from fictional. Yet, there’s another layer to this drama. Picture the South African government as the self-proclaimed ‘cool kid’ on the global playground, strutting around with misplaced confidence while its peers subtly roll their eyes. This image captures South Africa’s sense of self-importance on the world stage, a stark contrast to its actual international reputation. This irony is not lost on observers. Here’s a government portraying itself as a skilled player in the high-stakes game of global diplomacy and human rights, yet back home, the reality tells a different story. It’s a country battling basic governance issues – from schools lacking essential facilities to rampant crime and a faltering power grid. This disconnect between self-perception and reality is striking. The South African government steps onto the international stage with bold proclamations about human rights and global diplomacy, but these words ring hollow against the backdrop of unmet basic human rights at home. To the international community, South Africa’s diplomatic posturing often appears as an overreach, reminiscent of an amateur actor auditioning for a lead role. The ambition is laudable, but the execution falls short. The country’s attempts to assert itself in global matters, especially human rights, seem out of touch with its domestic struggles. This dichotomy is not just a matter of image but of substance. For a nation to be respected on the global stage, it must first address its internal challenges. Preaching about human rights and justice abroad loses its gravitas when its own citizens suffer at home due to governmental criminality and incompetence.
Confusing who are the Criminals. Ignoring that Palestinians from Gaza perpetrated a massacre in Israel even killing and kidnaping babies, President Ramaposa said South Africa believes Israel is committing “war crimes” and “genocide” and referred Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
South Africa’s international aspirations, while noble in intent, risk being perceived as a facade, overshadowing the more pressing issues within its borders. Until the government can effectively tackle the myriad issues plaguing its own backyard, its attempts to position itself as a global leader in human rights will likely continue to be met with scepticism and muted mockery from the rest of the world. If you’re going to point fingers Mr. President, Hamas threw the first rocket. It also perpetrated a massacre which was the bloodiest in Israel’s history. This Mr. President you saw fit to ignore. Which begs the question – Are you morally fit to remain in office?
About the writer:
Tim Flack is the CEO and Head of Comms and Public Relations and founder of Flack Partners PR, a boutique public relations firm in Cape Town, South Africa. Tim specialises in providing tailored communication strategies for businesses in the political, safety and security, and small business fields.
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)
Simon Wiesenthal Center accuses South Africa’s leadership of fueling antisemitism by its outrageous lies against the Jewish state
By David E. Kaplan
In South Africa, the best are its people, the worst its politicians.
This recognition was visually most evident at the 2023World Rugby Cup final on the 28 October in France where on the one hand you had the inspiring victorious South African Springbok team and its multitude of devoted South African fans and on the other, in the VIP section on the stands – the failing President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa who with few achievements to show for himself as president, wanted to bake in the glory of his nation’s Springboks heroes. There could not be two contrasting images of absolute success and abject failure.
While the image on the TV screens of the players brought screams and applause from fans in their living rooms, the sight of Ramaphosa brought mostly grunts. For the Jews of South Africa, it was justifiably more than just “grunts”!
No longer just the anxiety about a failing economy, collapsing infrastructure, diminishing employment opportunities, rampant crime and systemic corruption, now add government-fueled antisemitism!
Targeting Jews. Despite having no permit, Hamas-supporting protesters violently attack and disrupt a pro-Israel prayer rally in Cape Town, South Africa on November 12, 2023. (photo credit: INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN EMBASSY JERUSALEM)
Some three weeks before the hoisting by the Springboks of the Webb Ellis cup in Paris, death squads from Gaza, reminiscent of Nazi “Einsatzgruppen” entered Israel’s south to murder, rape, decapitate, burn and kidnap Jews. While much of the world in the immediate aftermath were horrified and voiced their support for Israel with leaders like US president Joe Biden, UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak and French president Emmanual Macron paying condolence visits during a time of war, South Africa’s government was not only silent, but its foreign minister, Naledi Pandor called not the leadership of the victims but the perpetrators – Hamas – and offered South Africa’s support. No concern shown or any mention of the Jews massacred or kidnapped by Hamas, the ANC government then added salt to its wounding Jewish community by withdrawing its remaining diplomatic staff from its embassy in Ramat Gan citing reasons of Israel committing a “holocaust” and carrying out “Genocidal airstrikes”. One would think that with three Holocaust Museums in South Africa – Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban – the South African government would be better educated to know what a “Holocaust” and “Genocide” is and not falsely accuse Israel of either. Instead of displaying some sympathy and understanding of Israel experiencing the worst massacre of Jews since the real Holocaust – “the Shoah” – all it has done is stoke the fire of antisemitism as exhibited by anti-Israel protests on the streets of South Africa.
Violent and Vicious. Taking their cue from the Hamas terrorists, Israel supporters – one of whom was in a wheelchair – were frighteningly harassed by pro-Hamas supporters.
Interviewed by the South African Jewish Report (SAJR), a Jewish attendee to a Christian prayer gathering for Israel on Sunday 12 October on the Sea Point promenade, said:
“I’ve never experienced such vile violence and antisemitism in my life.”
He withheld his name for security concerns.
Attacked by the Hamas-supporting mob shouting “Allahu Akbar”, he “was strangled, kicked, hit, scratched, dragged, maligned, and almost pushed into the ocean.”
The coordinator of the Christian-organised prayer gathering, Vivienne Myburgh, told the SAJR that “they broke a 75-year-old man’s finger, threatened to shoot a woman,” and “stabbed a man in the arm. There were knives and guns. They burned a prayer shawl [tallis] and Israeli flags with glee. I tried to grab destroyed posters and flags, but the police told me, ‘Your life is worth more than this’, so I had to leave them.”
The message cannot be clearer than the words of PAGAD National Coordinator, Haroon Orrie, who wearing a Hamas headband, said outside the Sea Point police station:
“The time for action is here. We share one objective: to rid this country of Zionism.”
While South African Jews may pray for a variety of things, it will no longer include for the welfare of the South African government. South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein responded to the government’s evil support of Hamas by advising that the prayer for the Republic of South Africa composed by the late Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris in 1994 honouring the country’s transition to democracy, will no longer include for the government. The Chief Rabbi explained in a letter to the SAJR that:
“The [current] change is clearly due to the South African government’s ongoing support for Hamas. How can we pray for a government that supports an organisation responsible for the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust – an organisation whose official policy is to murder Jews and which poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the Jewish people and the State of Israel?”
“It’s not a decision that was taken lightly,” Goldstein added, but “…when the government crosses the line and adopts a stance this immoral, we can’t in good conscience pray for them.”
Put his Foot into it. Quickly resorting to violence, this Hamas supporting protestor took his frustrations out on the Sea Point police.
It is thus understandable that the Israel office of the Jewish global human rights organization researching the Holocaust – the Simon Wiesenthal Center – has weighed in releasing this press release dated 9 November 2023. It admonishes the South African government that “should be ashamed of itself” for “its outrageous accusation that Israel is committing a Holocaust against the Palestinians.”
Following the above press release, the director of the SWC and a frequent contributor to Lay of the Land, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, told the SAJR:
“You must also question the impact on Jews living in South Africa. The government doesn’t feel protective towards Jewish people in South Africa even though Jews are important citizens. If there’s no protection for Jews, Jews should reassess and analyse their situation.”
South Africans have reason to be worried both in the short term about their security and in the long term about the sustainable of its community that has dropped dramatically from a high of 120,000 to hovering precariously above 40,000.
Silent on the Massacre of Jews, Vocal on Blaming Israel. Adorning a Palestinian keffiyeh, South Africa’s foreign minister, Naledi Pandor has withdrawn all South African diplomats from Israel in support of Hamas, whom she called following their massacre of Jews in southern Israel on the 7 October, 2023.
With a long-standing romance between the South African government and Hamas, coupled with its warm embrace of Iran – both committed to the destruction of the Jewish state – is it any surprise that South African Jews are wondering if their own government is not by the message it sends, inciting future pogroms?
For many of South Africa’s Jews having planted one foot out the country in Israel, the other foot is now more than ever likely to follow.
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).
By Raymond Wacks Emeritus Professor of Law and Legal Theory
I am driving along a well-remembered highway in Randburg. It is 2005 – the last time I visited South Africa (where I was born and, as they say, bred). Randburg is an anonymous conurbation on the outskirts of Johannesburg. As a student, I had a holiday job here as a cashier in a supermarket.
But is this really Randburg? Formerly a whites-only area, I see only black faces. My supermarket has disappeared. The shopping mall is unrecognisable. I must have taken a wrong turn. Peering at the road sign, I am reassured. This is indeed Hendrik Verwoerd Drive.
Former Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd? In post-apartheid South Africa? Surely this architect of evil cannot still be celebrated 15 years after the demise of what he called ‘separate development’? While many towns and public places have been accorded new (or pre-existing) African names, several roads have been reborn to conform to the new ideology. Nelson Mandela features prominently, of course, but there are also streets dedicated to the memory of Che Guevara, Joe Slovo, and other revolutionary heroes.
Perhaps, I thought, policy had simply failed to catch up with principle. Nevertheless, it struck me as astonishing that Verwoerd should continue to be venerated. It was he who famously declared that his government’s role was ‘the preservation of the white man and his state’. Under his premiership, from 1958 until his assassination in 1966, apartheid was not only consolidated, but clothed in philosophical, cultural, and theological validation that drew on the seductive power of Afrikaner nationalism. He had, in fact, presided over the country’s break with Britain and the establishment of a republic. And, under his steely, cerebral leadership, the African National Congress was banned, and Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment.
South Africa Out of Step. Under apartheid, blacks were separated by law from whites – including separate stairways.
WHAT IS ‘APARTHEID’?
Apartheid, it is frequently forgotten – or conveniently overlooked – was not merely racial segregation. It was an elaborate, intricate project, sustained by a doctrinaire philosophy applied by an authoritarian regime buttressed by draconian legislation. It relied on an unaccountable security force with sweeping powers, a largely enthusiastic legislature and a mostly pliant judiciary. The legal system was the creation of a white minority; the political system disenfranchised every ‘non-white’ person, and the law discriminated against them in almost every facet of social and economic life: employment, land, housing, education, sex and freedom of movement.
Deaths in detention and torture were systemic. ‘He slipped in the shower’ or ‘he jumped from the interrogation room window’ were the stock explanations offered by the security branch. Surveillance, intimidation, and police brutality were routine. Apartheid South Africa was the archetypal modern police state. The Broederbond, a secret, Calvinist, all-male society fostered Afrikaner interests. Jan Smuts described it as a ‘dangerous, cunning, political fascist organisation’.
The neo-Nazi nature of this totalitarian order was one of its fundamental components. I remember the day that Verwoerd’s successor, John Vorster, was elected. We university students greeted each other with mock Nazi salutes. He was detained in 1942 as a result of his membership of the pro-Nazi Ossewabrandwag, which supported Germany during the Second World War.
RESISTING INJUSTICE
There was, of course, a small minority of whites, including Afrikaners, who opposed the injustice of apartheid. A conspicuous example was the lawyer, Bram Fischer. Despite his impeccable Afrikaner antecedents (his father was judge president of the Orange Free State; his grandfather, a member of the cabinet) he championed the rights of the oppressed, defending Mandela in the notorious Rivonia trial of 1963-4. Enduring considerable personal suffering and sacrifice, he went underground to wage war against the iniquity of apartheid.
In 1966, he was convicted of furthering the aims of communism – a catch-all charge, since communism was defined to include ‘bringing about any political, industrial, social, or economic change… by the promotion of disturbance or disorder’ or ‘encouraging feelings of hostility between the European and the non-European races… the consequences of which are calculated to further… disorder’. The statute empowered the minister of justice to brand as a communist any person he decided fitted the description.
The writer (left) seen here with Nelson Mandela in 1991.
Fischer was sentenced to life imprisonment, during which he developed cancer. As a result of a fall, he fractured his neck and femur. He was partially paralysed and lost the ability to talk. Three months elapsed before the authorities permitted his transfer to hospital. He died soon thereafter. Ruthless inhumanity and petty vindictiveness were among the hallmarks of apartheid.
Nelson Mandela described Fischer as ‘one of the bravest and staunchest friends of the freedom struggle that I have ever known … displaying a level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself’.
Issue was black and white. This area of the sea and beach was strictly reserved for South Africa’s white population.
KILLING OPPONENTS
The generosity of definition of the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 was equalled by the Terrorism Act of 1967 which defined ‘terrorism’ as including anything that might ‘endanger the maintenance of law and order’. Life sentences in South Africa were exactly that. And the gallows were kept busy: between 1910 and 1989 more than 4,200 executions were carried out. About half of those met their end between 1978 and 1989 when the struggle against apartheid was at its peak.
The overwhelming majority of those put to death were black; many were political prisoners. At the end of July 1989, for example, a total of 283 prisoners were being held on death row at Pretoria Central Prison. Of these, 272 were black; 11 were white. In March 1988, 53 individuals were hanged for politically related crimes.
Sign of the Times. ‘Swart gevaar’ (Afrikaans for “black danger”) was an apartheid term skillfully used to sensitize the whites to fear the majority black African population as a dangerous threat.
APARTHEID STANDS ALONE
It hardly requires stating that injustice in our world is ubiquitous. But the abomination of apartheid was unique. The United Nations sought in 1973 to crystallise its essence by establishing it as a crime. According to the Apartheid Convention, the offence consists of inhuman acts committed for the purpose of maintaining domination by one racial group over any other, and systematically oppressing them.
The authors of the Convention, in pursuit of greater precision, provided a catalogue of the acts embraced by the crime, including murder, torture, inhuman treatment and arbitrary arrest of members of a racial group, legislation that discriminates in the political, social, economic and cultural fields, separate residential areas for racial groups, the prohibition of interracial marriages, and the persecution of opponents of apartheid.
The text captures the quintessential elements of apartheid as applied in South Africa – even though it drains it of much of the system’s malevolence and authoritarianism touched on above. And, despite the demise of apartheid in 1994, the offence lives on. Thus, in 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court included apartheid, along with a catalogue of other wrongs such as murder, extermination, enslavement, and torture, as a crime against humanity.
Lawyers – and other pedants – may therefore claim that, notwithstanding the terms of the Apartheid Convention, and its explicit description of the South African situation, apartheid may exist anywhere. This folly has, of course, given rise to the preposterous contention that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’. The Jewish state is far from a paragon of virtue, but stigmatising it in this cavalier manner is itself a grotesque injustice – and an affront to those who endured the long years of torment and persecution in South Africa.
The subjectivity of suffering renders any attempt to calibrate injustice, difficult. It is specious and misconceived, however, to describe Israel as implementing apartheid – even by the standards of international law.
Where are the ‘inhumane acts… of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination’ by one race over another, as specified in the Rome Statute? Unlike blacks under apartheid, Israeli Arabs may vote, stand for election to parliament, be appointed to the judiciary. They have the freedom to attend any hospital, school, or university. They are not denied access to beaches, cinemas, theatres, libraries, sporting facilities. They may choose who to love. And it is reportedly easier for an Arab citizen of Israel to buy an apartment in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem than in Beirut, Bahrain, Kuwait, or Doha.
Signposted Society. Separate areas allocated for the different races. In this natural setting, Malays left and Europeans, meaning whites, to the right.
FINDING APARTHEID
Even Richard Goldstone, the former South African judge who headed the censorious inquiry into Israel’s ‘Cast Lead’ operation in Gaza, conceded that in Israel, ‘there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute…’ In an article in the New York Times in October 2011, he declared:
‘I know all too well the cruelty of South Africa’s abhorrent apartheid system, under which human beings characterised as black had no rights to vote, hold political office, use “white” toilets or beaches, marry whites, live in whites-only areas or even be there without a “pass.” Blacks critically injured in car accidents were left to bleed to death if there was no “black” ambulance to rush them to a “black” hospital. “White” hospitals were prohibited from saving their lives.’
Truth be Told. Richard Goldstone, the former South African judge who headed the censorious inquiry into Israel’s ‘Cast Lead’ operation in Gaza, conceded that in Israel, ‘there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute…’
The plight of those who live in Gaza and the West Bank is plainly different. Combating terrorism and maintaining security inevitably exact a high price. It cannot be denied that many Palestinians encounter hardship, privation, and indignity. But one might ask: Where is the sympathy and compassion for those who live in squalid camps in various Arab countries?
In Lebanon, for example, up to 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in dreadful social and economic conditions, many in overcrowded camps without essential utilities. They are effectively stateless. In 2001, the Lebanese parliament enacted legislation prohibiting Palestinians from owning property. The law also restricts their ability to work in several areas. While a ban on Palestinians holding most clerical and technical positions was terminated – provided they obtained temporary work permits – more than 20 high-level professions are denied to Palestinians. Moreover, Palestinians are not eligible for social security benefits. They are subject also to discrimination in respect of housing, property ownership, inheritance rights, and freedom of movement and residence.
SELECTIVE OUTRAGE
Where is the expression of outrage at these measures? Is Lebanon not an ‘apartheid state’? What about Syrian discrimination against Sunnis and Christians? Or its gulag of extermination camps in which thousands of political opponents are executed and tortured? Why is Israel singled out for censure and boycotts? Even in the case of Gaza and the West Bank it is mendacious and mischievous to describe Israeli policy as apartheid. Is the Israeli government really an ‘institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group?’
Despite the political challenges, Palestinian West Bankers are carving out a future characterized by enterprise and ingenuity embodied in such projects as Rawabi (Arabic روابي meaning “The Hills”). The first planned city built by Palestinians in the West Bank, Rawabi is hailed as a “Flagship Palestinian enterprise”.
Whatever traction its advocates seek to gain from the South African archetype, the argument actually undermines the Palestinian cause. If there is injustice, let us call it by its name. Simplistic sloganeering is unhelpful. It is no less so than in the increasingly fashionable designation of ‘Holocaust’ to instances of barbarity that, while plainly heinous, fall far short of the depravity of the Third Reich. There are, of course, all too many examples of egregious attempts at genocide around the world but they are usually confined to a single nation and spring from internecine tribal or religious divisions. The ‘final solution’ – the wholesale extermination of the Jews (not merely in one country, but across all of Europe) – stands alone as a paradigm of inhumanity and iniquity. Let it be.
It is no answer to assert that these usages are merely metaphorical. Metaphor often enriches language. But it may also debase. The capricious abuse of ‘apartheid’, along with ‘massacre’, ‘genocide’, and ‘occupation’, has lamentably become commonplace.
Factual and linguistic precision is more likely to generate solutions to intractable political problems. Reckless rhetoric may appeal to the demagogue; it has no place in the quest for peace and justice.
I have just discovered – thanks to Google maps – that Hendrik Verwoerd Drive has been renamed. It is now Bram Fischer Drive.
About the writer:
Raymond Wacks, Emeritus Professor of Law and Legal Theory, graduated from Wits law school in 1969 having served on the Executive of the SRC and as President of the Law Students’ Council. He left South Africa in 1970 to pursue research at Oxford where he spent the next decade. In 1982 he returned to SA to take up the chair in public law at the University of Natal, Durban. Wacks is the author of fifteen books, several of which have been translated into more than a dozen languages on legal philosophy, privacy, and justice. He is also the co-author of five books, and editor of ten. His monograph, The Rule of Law Under Firewas published by Hart in 2021. Oxford University Press published the sixth edition of his Understanding Jurisprudence: An Introduction to Legal Theory in 2021, as well as the third edition of Law: A Very Short Introduction which appeared earlier this year.
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).
What’s happening under the Netanyahu coalition has former South- Africans in Israel worried.
By Larry Butchins
We are under dire threat. Whether many people are ready to accept and believe or not, we are on the brink of becoming what all our detractors and enemies have claimed for decades – an apartheid state. With laws that call for discrimination against Arab Israelis – yes, when funds are held back from Arab communities, that is discrimination; when law makers on the right talk about “giving job preference” to Jews over Arabs, that is racism; when women are told to “cover up” and sit at the back of the bus, that is prejudice – whether we like it or not, and it doesn’t matter if that is “official policy” or not , it is this government which is enabling that type of thuggish, racist, discriminatory behavior. Empowering those who do believe it, to act it out.
I believe that as a former South African, who grew up and then lived under the apartheid regime all my life until making Aliyah, it is my moral duty to raise a red flag and wave it vigorously, to warn what could happen here. It is my moral duty to caution that while I have fervently defended Israel against those who condemn it as an apartheid state, we are rapidly heading in that direction, to hell in a handbasket, and I am horrified by that possibility.
Shades of Shame. Visual imagery of South Africa past that the writer never wanted to revisit elsewhere.
Allow me to hark back to the days of apartheid in South Africa, as a reminder of what life under doctrinaire and dogmatic rule, was really like back then.
One of my earliest memories of apartheid was when I was probably around 10-years-old. Late one night, my parents insisted I accompany my father to take our black maid Mavis to the central train station in Durban. I had to sit in front of the car and Mavis had to sit in the back seat. When on the drive home, I asked my father why I had to go with him, he replied that he had to have proof (me, his white little boy) that he and Mavis were not contravening the Immorality Act. Had he been stopped by the police, driving alone with a black woman, they both would have been arrested on charges under that “immoral” act. He would have copped a large fine (because he was white), and she would have been thrown in jail (because she was black), processed in the system, and not seen the light of day for weeks, possibly even months. I couldn’t quite internalize the message at that age, but it followed me the rest of my life in SA, always looking over my shoulder to check that the dreaded security service, BOSS (Bureau of State Security) wasn’t following me or checking everything I had written, said or done.
Disturbing Developments. At a change of command ceremony on Wednesday night, outgoing Binyamin Regional Brigade commander Eliav Elbaz, said in reference to increasing settler violence that “It should be said in a loud clear voice, that actions of this type are not ethical, not Jewish, and do not contribute to security.” (photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)
I will quote from a chapter of my book, “Train in the Distance” in which the protagonist, Adam Marks, a reporter on a weekly newspaper in the 1970s – the height of apartheid – laments about his so-called “privileged freedom”.
“Do you think I’m free?
“When I write and publish the word ‘Amandla (Freedom in Zulu)’ under my name in the columns of a widely circulated newspaper, do you believe that I will not be condemned for that? Do you not understand that I am putting my freedom – and the welfare of my family – at risk? I cannot express my opinions freely, I cannot associate with whom I please: if I wish to invite Black friends to my home for dinner, I will be watched and under suspicion. If I meet Black friends for a day at the beach…well, that’s not going to happen, because we can’t even go to the same beach! I cannot even meet them for a picnic in a public park – unless my Black friends are seen to be my servants – haulers of wood and drawers of water for my benefit.
“Do you not understand that I cannot read, or view or listen to what I want? If I wish to read ‘The Communist Manifesto’, or ‘Lolita’, or ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, or hundreds of other banned books, magazines; or see certain films; listen to music by certain musicians – can you believe Maria Callas singing Lucia di Lammermoor fell under the censors obliterating red pencil? Fats Domino, The Beatles, Rodriguez…how many more?
“Radical new ideas, by writers, artists, musicians and committed, passionate people, are influencing and shaping dynamic new thinking throughout the world…and here we sit, under the yolk of an evil system with evil intent, all because of our ‘privilege’.
“I am not free; my ideas are not free; my life is not free – despite all my privileges, I am still a white victim of apartheid. YOU are white victims of apartheid; and I don’t know when or if it is ever going to end…”
Separate entrances in post offices and banks, stairwells in train stations, trains reserved for different races; busses – those which allowed blacks on board in the first place, insisting they sat at the back – the last three rows reserved for blacks; Christian National Education – indoctrination of school children about the “right” of the white man to conquer the land and confine others to “homelands” or “locations”; the imposition of the morals and religious authority over what we could read, or view, or listen to, or even discuss…
Back of the Bus. Some of the hundreds of Israelis demonstrating against the segregation of men and women on buses in certain neighborhoods of Jerusalem, where the women must sit in the back. (Miriam Alster/Flash 90)
I could write volumes on the apartheid regime, its beginnings, middle and end… and how White South Africans enjoyed a multitude of benefits, lifestyle choices and preferential treatment. About how the Afrikaner-led government set itself up as the highest authority in the land – except for the Supreme Court and a group of courageous justices. Despite virulent government opposition, criticism and the possibility of arrest, banning orders, 90- or 180-days imprisonment, they were a light of sanity in a very dark nation.
Under the General Law Amendment Act, the Special Branch was allowed to arrest anyone they suspected of being engaged or involved in any act against the State and to hold them incommunicado for 90 days (and later 180 days) at a time. The Special Branch could interrogate and extract information, and the public was not entitled to any information including even the identity or whereabouts of people being detained. Detainees could literally and effectively “disappear”. If no charges were to be laid, the Special Branch had to release the individual or individuals after 90 (or 180) days. At the time, Prime Minister John Vorster boasted that this was repeatable “until this side of eternity.” A perfect example of the absolute need for an authority higher than the government.[1]
Am I suggesting that bleak Kafkaesque scenario could happen here in Israel? Not exactly, but there are certain resonant and frightening parallels. I do believe that former South Africans, those who came to this beautiful land of ours to flee discrimination and mind control, who came here to a democratic homeland; who came to work for and build a beacon of freedom and enlightenment – albeit somewhat flawed – should now stand up and cry out:
“We are NOT an apartheid country – and NEVER WILL BE: IT CANNOT HAPPEN.”
Larry Butchins – I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and started my journalistic career as a cub reporter on Durban’s morning newspaper, The Natal Mercury, covering fires, accidents, shipping and beach news. I then moved to the Sunday Tribune’s Johannesburg branch office, covering everything from visiting celebrities to political scandals and student anti-apartheid riots. At a protest at Wits University, I was arrested along with student protesters and spent the weekend in a cell in Johannesburg’s notorious John Vorster Square.
Eventually lured into Public Relations, I opened my own PR firm in Durban. On moving to Israel with my family in 1987, I branched from classical PR into Marketing Communication, running a small English-language agency promoting Israeli products abroad, working with Israeli hi-tech enterprises. Five years ago, I self-published my novel Train in the Distance based on my actual experiences as a journalist working under (and often against) apartheid’s rules and regulations.
In addition to professional writing, I write articles and stories, travel blogs – The Offbeat Traveller – and children’s books, two of which have been published in the US and South Africa. I am now entering my third career as a screenwriter and producer for an international TV series based on my novel.
My wife, Marlyn, and I live in Tzur Yitzhak , north of Kfar Saba; have three grown children and four grandchildren who all live in Mitzpe Ramon.
Contact Details:
Email: larrybtrain@gmail.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).
Top Jewish Day school in South Africa’s “Mother City” targeted by politicians
By David E. Kaplan
The picturesque backdrop to the Cape Town Jewish community’s ‘Jewel in the Crown’ – Herzlia School – is the iconic exquisite Table Mountain. The latest media backdrop to this ‘gem’ is anything but “exquisite”.
High and Low. A member of the EFF in the Western Cape Legislature has called for the deregistration of Herzlia School (entrance seen here) charging that it is a “feeder for South African Zionists joining the IDF”. (Herzlia High/Facebook).
How can it be otherwise when antisemitism casts its dark show on the country’s Mother City, resting on a school, a Jewish school!
Shame on the Western Cape Legislature that a member should feel so emboldened to call for the de-registration of a school – for being Jewish!
Whatever such practical implications this would suggest, it sends a familiar message to Jews.
Cape Town to Cairo via Israel. A former member of Knesset, advisor to the late President Shimon Peres and Deputy Ambassador at the Israeli embassy in Cairo, this alumnus of Herzlia School, Cape Town, Ruth Wasserman Lande is currently chairperson of the Women’s Impact Forum at the World Jewish Congress.
Disregarding and disrespecting the School’s excellence and its proud history in being a feeder to the University of Cape Town (UCT), it ignores a long line of illustrious alumni enriching humanity both in South Africa and across the world. Such notables from judges, poets, artists and leaders in industry and the sciences include Ephraim Mirvis who is presently the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Michael Hayden, Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia and Canada Research Chair in Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine and best known for his research in Huntington disease and Israeli diplomat, Ruth Wasserman Lande who was a member of the 23 Knesset had served previously at the Israeli Embassy in Egypt as well as serving as an advisor to President Shimon Peres.
Rabbi and the Prince. An alumnus of Herzlia School, Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth Ephraim Mirvis (left) with then Britain’s Prince Charles, now King Charles III at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Jan. 23, 2020 (Menahem Kahana/Pool Photo via AP, file)
Dismissing the phenomenal achievement of the school enjoying a 100% pass rate, the motivation behind the call of the member of the third largest political party in South Africa – the EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) – to de-register the school is its Jewishness embodied in its love for Israel – the national homeland of the Jewish people.
It’s a love that goes back in time to well over a century.
The hate that drives those supporting the deregistration of Herzlia School goes back a lot longer – 2000 years!
The love of Jews in South Africa for a Jewish state preceded its establishment in 1948 by half a century. It even preceded the establishment of the oldest liberation movement in Africa, the ANC – established in 1912 – when in 1896, the first members of Hibbat ZionHovevei Zion Society was formed in South Africa and a resolution establishing the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) was passed in 1898. That was one year after the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. An enriching offspring of this movement is Cape Town’s Herzlia School established in 1940, that has above its entrance gate, the prophetic words of Theodore Herzl, after whom the school is named:
“If you will it, it is no dream”.
It is a dream that took 2000 since the exile under the Romans to come to fruition and it’s a monumental achievement that some South African politicians in the ruling ANC and the those in the EFF would like to see destroyed. Unable to build themselves, they chose instead to destroy the work of others.
In support for her calling for Herzlia School to be de-registered, EFF MPL Aisha Cassiemsaid during a debate in the Western Cape Legislature:
“It is insulting for the DA [Democratic Alliance] provincial government to condemn the war in Ukraine but do nothing with regard to this school [Herzliya School ] which is aligned to the apartheid state of Israel and encouraging learners to partake in apartheid.”
Gunning for Jews. Undaunted by the danger to Jews her rhetoric could cause, MPL Aisha Cassiem called upon Education MEC David Maynier to deregister Herzlia School as he had, according to her, the power to do so.
There may well be not another school in South Africa that its students while at school and thereafter, stood out as vocal opponents of Apartheid.
It may well be true that there is “no need for concern” as expressed by the South African Board of Deputies (SAJBOD) in its press release:
“By now you are aware of an article which has appeared in the Cape Argus calling for the deregistration of Herzlia High School. This article has also been shared on a variety of social media
Rest assured, the school is in no danger of being deregistered. It was tabled for discussion last week Thursday during a Western Cape Legislature meeting where this outrageous proposal was unequivocally rejected.
Obviously these reprehensible claims against the school have no substance and there is no need for concern. The Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies is in constant communication with Herzlia leadership and will continue to monitor the situation. ”
Adrienne Jacobson Chairperson, Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies”
Herzlia School’s proud badge
However “outrageous” the proposal so described so as not to cause concern, the public rhetoric of political leaders in South Africa today like Aisha Cassiem is false, dangerous and highly inflammatory that could so easy lead to physical violence on Jews.
Seduced by the parlance of the likes of EFF’s Cassiem, potential perpetrators of violence could so easily believe they would enjoy official approval. This is a familiar plot and script for Jews well versed in their history.
There is more than the electrical outages or loadshedding darkening South Africa today. Contributing to South Africa’s ‘Dark Ages” are its politicians and when they resort to antisemitism, the writing is on the wall or in this case, on the slopes of Table Mountain!
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 she were a Biblical character, she would be the Queen of Sheba: an influencer, and a strong and inspiring leader looking to build alliances, to learn, to grow, and to bring better to the world. Coming from the tip of southern Africa, she is a tip of the growing movement across Africa to repair and restore relations with Israel and the Jewish people. She is also a popular media personality and author for whom her Christian faith is interwoven in everything she does.
Major Personality. Media personality and author Major Daughter from South Africa. (courtesy)
A decade ago, Major Daughter was given a vision for the imperative to restore ties with Israel as a pillar of Africa to correct the curse resulting from most of the continent breaking ties with Israel decades earlier. While she is not a formal educator, she knows that education is the key. Africans need to be educated to the reality that Israel is, Israel’s long-standing history in Africa, and to break the stereotypes of perpetual misinformation that, at best, is ill-informed. But in recent decades ‘ill-informed’ has become disinformation, even with malice and lies.
Much of the lies and disinformation emanates from the country of her birth – South Africa. It is something about which she is passionate about fixing, one by one. And that’s the nature of the unique trip she is leading to Israel, and her appeal to Israelis to join the movement.
On June 26, dozens of business, civic, academic, and religious leaders along with noted media personalities will be participating in a special event that gives voice to her vision. While coming from around the world, the Leadership Summit and Tour will start in Egypt, the northeastern corner of Africa, symbolically building a bridge between Israel and Africa. It will trace the route of the Exodus of the Jewish people from slavery to freedom, and as a reminder of God’s providence thousands of years ago, demonstrating His might at the time in contrast to that of the then, world superpower. It will culminate in bringing the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.
Now, as part of the 75th anniversary celebration of the restoration of Jewish sovereignty to the Land of Israel with the birth of the State of Israel, she leads a group of Africans and others to learn, grow, be inspired, and to build alliances. Just like the Queen of Sheba.
Many initiatives exist to build relationships between Africa and Israel. While there are several notable holdouts – including Major Daughter’s native South Africa leading a charge against Israel in the expansive continent. In recent decades, many African nations have gone out of their way to forge their own mutually beneficial relations with Israel. One thing that differentiates this effort is that it is faith based, but not only based on faith leaders. For that reason, Major is looking for Israelis to join the Summit on June 29 for a day of intense conversations, and networking. She says:
“Israelis should come out (to participate) because Africans are coming to learn, more than just networking, but to form partnerships. Israeli Jews should come out to be part of it, to support this global conversation, and how we can turn the tide. We want to see what can be done to make progress. Let’s not talk about the darkness of the past, we want to shine a light on the future.”
In a recent conversation on the Inspiration from Zion podcast, Major Daughter affirms that much of Africa is suffering the cumulative consequence of cursing Israel and is eager to change the course. Part of the “correcting the curse” is exposing Africans to the reality of Israel. Many think that Israel is an endless war zone, impossible to live within safely, much less thrive and prosper. The notion that there are people who don’t understand this, how Israel is truly a shining example for all, is astounding. She expects that the Leadership Summit and Tour will open their eyes, and then the eyes of many more back at home thereafter. Many also don’t realize that Israel is also a thriving democracy, for all its citizens. She decries the “Apartheid” label that was disingenuously branded on Israel in her own country, along with the scourge of BDS. Africans know the truth. They will see it first-hand.
The Summit will take place at Jerusalem’s Ramada hotel. Israelis are invited to register to attend the full day of programs, meals, coffee breaks, and forge their own relationships among the Summit’s diverse participants for only $50.
BUILDING BRIDGES
Striking another Biblical analogy, Major is clear that supporting Israel and building bridges is neither a one-way street nor exclusive to having positive relations with the Arab and Moslem world. Some think that supporting Israel is mutually exclusive to supporting Arabs, that Arabs and Jews are destined to be enemies, and that you can only support one.
“The opposite is true,” says Major and avers that because Jews and Arabs are related, “people can and must support both.”
Hers is a refreshing voice of intelligence, faith, and inspiration, and all participating are in store for something unique and remarkable, and will go a long way in advancing the cause of why she believes visiting Israel is something that everyone has to do.
When King Solomon in ancient times was visited by the Queen of Sheba, she brought gifts of gold, frankincense and spices; this ‘Daughter’ of Africa will bring energy, inspiration and understanding to build bridges and alliances of the future.
Jonathan Feldstein - President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites 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).
