It's Almost Supernatural

Kasrils Has Serious Humus On His Face

Ronnie Kasrils’ intelligence deficit is frightening. As the minister in charge of South Africa’s equivalent of the Mossad, one would have expected him to have some advanced warning (or at least understanding of the possibility) of a Hamas coup in Gaza. Add to this his obsession with the Palestinian cause and the fact that a little over a month ago he spent a considerable amount of time in the Palestinian territories as head of an official South African delegation.

It is worth recalling Kasrils observations after his Palestinian visit. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, he confidently declared that

I understand that they [Hamas] have accepted previous agreements arrived at between the Palestinian Authority and the government of Israel. Contained within these agreements are the recognition of Israel and renunciation of violence.

It is clear now to everyone that not only did Hamas not accept previous agreements sign by the PLO and Israel, it did not even accept previous agreements that it itself had signed with the PLO. That our Minister of Intelligence so misread the situation, has further eroded South Africa’s international standing. Moreover, it brings into question Kasrils’ judgement and casts serious doubt on his competence as the Minister of Intelligence.

But Kasrils did not only gamble with South Africa’s credibility in order to provide international legitimacy to a bunch of thugs, he went as far as offering them our unconditional support. So taken was Kasrils with now former Palestinian Prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, that he jumped the gun on diplomatic protocol and invited him to head an official delegation to South Africa before receiving the backing of our head of State. And if this wasn’t enough, at their infamous meeting Kasrils publicly declared that 'We stand by you and support you'.

So I have some questions for Minister Kasrils and the South African government. Does our invitation to Haniyeh still apply? With or without the Madiba photo op? And if he does come in what capacity will it be? Palestinian Prime Minister? Hamas strong man? Or the Islamic republic of Gaza’s new caliph? Do we still stand by and support Hamas? If we do, that would place our foreign policy at odds with the positions of the vast majority of countries on the planet including the Arab League.

It’s about time the South African government put its money where his mouth is and as one of regular readers Anthony Posner put it, send Kasrils to lead a new Umkonto division to fight Kalashnikov to Kalashnikov with Hamas.

Soweto 1976; Zimbabwe 2007

Yesterday was Youth Day in South Africa.

Youth Day commemorates the Soweto uprising where black students protested against a decree requiring all schools to use an equal mix of English and Afrikaans as the medium of instruction.

(In Israel by the way, Arabic is an official language and Arab schools in Israel can teach in the language of their choice -- they do not have to use Hebrew. Palestinian schools in the Palestinian territories obviously have full control over their own education systems.)

Zimbabwean blog Sokwanele has an important post remembering Soweto 1976, and thinking of Zimbabwe's youth in 2007.

Sokwanele has created an e-card for this post - send it by clicking here.

Head over to Sokwanele to read the post.

The Zapiro Obsession Continues

The latest M&G Zaptrash from Zapiro.

Despite the internal violence in the Palestinian territories, Zapiro's latest two cartoons have both lampooned only Israel.

Do you think he hopes that he can deflect attention away from the intra-Palestinian violence by increasing the anti-Israel rhetoric, or do you think he really is just like the drunken football supporter I likened him to earlier, who honestly cannot see the problems with his own team?

The irony, as pointed out by a comment posted by Hillel, is that we really do 'gotta be the strongest' or otherwise face annihilation, as depicted by these cartoons preceding the 6 Day War.

Meanwhile, in on-the-ground contradiction to Zapiro's planet, the Telegraph reports that Palestinians have been oppressed by other Palestinians, even though they are not Jews.

They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station. Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets

ADL Anti-Boycott Campaign

ADL launches anti-boycott campaign

See the rest of the ads here.

Kasrils Engages In Judaism-Denial

South African Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils has stooped to an all time low. In the past, he has called Israelis baby killers, likened IDF actions in the Territories to those of the Nazis, declared Israel worse than apartheid and questioned the patriotism and loyalty of South African Jews. As if this was not bad enough, Kasrils has now challenged the validity of Judaism’s (not only Political Zionism) very foundation.

In an article in the Cape Times today Kasrils, citing Israeli archaeologist Prof Ze’ev Herzog, claims

the Israelites were never in Egypt; did not wander in the desert; did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.

If the Israelites were never in Egypt than the Jewish festival of Passover is a fraud. But worse, if the Jews never wandered in the desert, than they could not have received the Torah on Mount Sinai. And by denying the receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, Kasrils is denying the validity of Judaism itself.

Kasrils’ attack on Judaism doesn’t stop there. He claims that the Jewish Monarchies of David and Solomon were at most a small tribal kingdom and certainly not the region superpowers Zionists (but in fact the Torah and therefore all Jews) maintain. This is not the first time Kasrils has publicly questioned the existence of the biblical Kingdom of Israel. He expressed these same views in a pseudo academic treatise on the ‘history’ of Israel published in the official ANC journal Umrabulo.

It is completely unacceptable for a minister in the South African government to be publically delegitimising the Jewish religion. Can you imagine the outcry had he questioned the validity of Mohamed’s epiphany in the cave or Paul's revelation on the Road to Damascus. Kasrils’ jihad is no long aimed at just Israel and Zionism but Judaism itself. The time has now come for the Beth Din and Chief Rabbi to speak out.

Previously at IAS

• Kasrils Bullies SA Jewry
• SA Minister Engages in Israel-Denial
• IAS Search - Kasrils

South African Broadband from Israel

Joel Pollak at Guide to the Perplexed comments on Telkom's selection of Israeli company Alvarion Ltd. to roll out wireless broadband networks as part of an ongoing deployment project for increasing wireless broadband services on a nationwide level in South Africa.

Brilliant. I wonder how many jihadist fans will be using Telkom's Israeli produced wireless access to follow the anti-Israel hatefest!

View the press release here.

Israel: Defeating Hitler but Failing Burg

I was shocked to read Avraham Burg’s now infamous interview with Ari Shavit in Haaretz over the weekend. How is it that a former Speaker of the Knesset and Chairman of the Jewish Agency could become such an outspoken anti-Zionist? Right wingers will surely charge that Burg was always on the Left (he was a member of Peace Now and opposed the 1982 Lebanon War) but that is a far cry from calling for the dismantlement of the Jewish state. It would be easy to dismiss Burg as delusional or hell bent on settling a personal score but this would be a mistake. Behind all his provocative sound bites lies some real concerns which if not addressed do threaten the very existence of the Zionist project.

Avraham Burg was extremely irresponsible in this interview. Someone who still admits to having prime ministerial ambitions should have been concerned about the tremendous firepower his remarks would give Israel’s enemies in their propaganda war to delegitimize the Jewish state. Moreover, while comparing Israel to pre World War 2 Germany, describing its ‘Jewish-democratic' ideological foundation as nitroglycerine and calling on Israelis to obtain foreign passports may grab international headlines, it will do nothing to promote much needed changes in Israel. Such extreme and sensationalistic remarks will only serve to encourage Israelis to ghettoise further.

I also think it is important to examine Burg’s motives. In the interview he came across as angry more than concerned. He is clearly bitter over losing his chauffeured Jewish Agency car, being investigated for corruption and having to sweat his guts out to make an honest living. His personal integrity is also questionable. No matter how he attempts to rationalise it, there is a certain level of hypocrisy in a self-declared pacifist investing in company (Ashot Industries in Ashkelon) which manufactures a significant amount of arms. Not to mention an anti-privatisation warrior who buys up former parastatels on the cheap. It is tragedy that such a flawed messenger in such a flawed manner should deliver such an important message.

The Jewish people as a whole and Israelis in particular have had to pay a great price for the state of Israel. We all know the human and financial costs but we rarely consider the spiritual/moral ones. Political Zionism revolutionised Jewish identity. The Woody Allen type character was replaced by a Moshe Dayanesque figure. The pen to a large extent was traded in for the sword. And Judaism gave way to a secular Israeli nationalism.

A jarring experience of this process of Jewish transformation is brilliantly illustrated in the new museum at Yad Vashem. On entering, you are struck by images of pre-1939 Jewish Europe flickering on the wall in front. Then you are forced to turn your back on that Jewish existence, go through the Holocaust and come out on a balcony with a panoramic view of modern Jerusalem. It’s a horribly paradoxical moment. On the one hand you feel tremendous loss for the people that were murdered but also for the Jewish civilisation that was destroyed; and of course great joy that after 2000 years of exile we have finally come home.

Burg longs for a return to that pre-Holocaust Europe that we have/ were forced to turn our backs on. The new Jewish civilisation that we have built in its place provides him with little comfort. In fact he seems to find the Zionist movement complicit in the destruction of the European Diaspora Jew. And in many ways it was and still is. But it did not metamorphose Jewish identity out of malice. It did so out of necessity so that the Jewish people would survive. And survive we have.

The next 60 years, however, will require us to change again. As Burg points out globalisation (or as he sees it internationalisation) is the future: a future that is ironically more suitable for the European Jew of old than the modern Israeli. If Zionism, Israel, and Jewish peoplehood are to survive, we will have to find a way to blend our old/new Jewish identity.

Palestinians Target Palestinian Ministers...shhhhh

Why do I call our government the Democracy of Hypocrisy?

Militants fire on Palestinian government

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Militants battling on the rooftops of Gaza fired on the Palestinian government headquarters on Monday, forcing the ministers to flee the building. The unusually brazen factional fighting left seven Palestinians dead, including three killed in a hospital gunbattle. Fighting between Fatah and Hamas forces resumed over the weekend, and the attacks have grown bolder. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s home was shot at early Monday, and hours later a Hamas supporter was killed in a firefight near Beit Hanoun Hospital, witnesses said. The fighting shifted into the hospital, where three people with ties to Fatah were killed. On Sunday, two militants from the rival sides were dragged onto high-rise rooftops and thrown to their deaths.

Last week South African deputy minister of foreign affairs Aziz Pahad devoted time in the National Assembly to condemn Israel's detention of Hamas ministers from the Palestinian government.

Today militants in Gaza fired on Palestinian government headquarters. Ministers were forced to flee. Other militants fired at Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s house.

Will South Africa condemn this unlawful targetting of Palestinian ministers? Or is it really a case of fog horns for Israel and silence for everyone else?

Zapiro Inverses Reality

Even if you believe that Israel was the aggressor in the 6 Day War (which it wasn't), could you honestly claim that a tiny Israel, relying almost completely on an army of reservists, was so much more powerful than Egypt, Jordan and Syria - who were backed, funded and armed by the once mighty Soviet Union?

The cartoon is riddled with dishonesty. Zapiro says that a US-funded Israeli power engaged in a planned land grab against their poor defenseless neighbours.

This older post explains that there was an unprecedented amount of Arab aggression leading up to the war. Furthermore, Israel was not funded and supported by the US prior to 1967. The US started backing Israel only after the war. The French supported Israel pre-1967 but changed sides at the start of the war leaving Israel completely isolated.

(Cartoon from the Mail & Guardian)

Zapiro's cartoons on any other topic are brilliant, but when it comes to the Middle East he goes bug-eyed nuts. He is like a drunk football supporter, blindly supporting his team, completely unable to see that there are two sides on the field.

ANC Clarifies Stance on Boycott

This morning I heard that the ANC had removed the link to the end the occupation campaign from their website. I can however confirm that the link and the calls for support are still on the ANC website at this time of writing.

Should the link be removed tomorrow, it would be because the week of mass action against Israel has passed; not because the ANC position has changed.

The ANC has however, clarified their position that whilst they are supporting and promoting a campaign which calls for amongst other things, a boycott of Israeli goods - the ANC itself is not actually supporting a boycott of Israeli goods. (It doesn't make much sense to me either, but what matters most is that the campaign failed to convince the ANC to call for a boycott of Israeli goods.)

Someone who has made alot of sense is Inkatha Freedom Party leader Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Buthelezi has stood up against our hypocritical approach to foreign conflicts and called for consistent and equitable responses to international disputes. Buthelezi believes that the recent pro-Palestinian motion by the ANC failed the tests of consistency and equity.

As I listened to the debate yesterday in Parliament on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, my mind went back to a 1985 meeting with the then Israeli Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mr Shimon Peres. He poignantly told me that we were "brothers in suffering", likening the travails of the Jewish people to those of the oppressed black majority in apartheid South Africa. I am concerned that in, rightly, seeking to draw attention to the plight of ordinary Palestinians, we have not been sufficiently sensitive to the parallel suffering of the Israeli people in the past and in the present. Today's conflict cannot be debated without reference to the events which led to the proclamation of the state of Israel in 1948. Nor can it be separated from the virulent rejection by the Arab League of the partitioning of Palestine and to the existence of the state of Israel. Let us never forget that the state of Israel came into being after the annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazis in World War II. The Holocaust is seared into the Jewish national psyche in a way that is difficult for us, foreigners, to comprehend. Yet an attempt to try and understand this is vital though, if we are to be so bold as to believe that we have a contribution to make in the region. Israel has existed in a state of near siege from the Israeli War of Independence to the Six Day War of 1967 and right through the horrific Yom Kippur War to the first Palestinian Intifada in the 1980s and beyond. As this week's parliamentary motion coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, it is relevant to recall that the war was precipitated by the provocative mobilisation of Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Iraqi and Saudi troops on Israel's borders. President Nasser of Egypt said that "our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel" on the 27th of May 1967. Her small size and proximity to Arab states, which have refused to make their peace with her, has also made Israel particularly vulnerable to air and missile attacks. During the Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi missiles thundered down on Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan and Haifa. The random acts of terror by suicide bombers strike fear into the hearts of ordinary Israelis. I enumerate this to illustrate that neither the Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on tragedy. Both have suffered terribly. It is difficult to imagine the daily indignities of living in the occupied Palestinian territories with its system of required passes and strict segregation, the loathed wall, or the, sometimes, "shock and awe" tactics of the Israeli army.

Read the rest here. Use this link to contact the IFP and thank them for the balance which they are able to bring to the debate on this tragic conflict.