by davidrobertlewis -

Thoughts following Reconciliation Day

ON 16 December 1995, the first celebration of ‘Reconciliation Day” took place. It was timed to coincide with the inaugural meeting of the  ‘South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’. Convenor Desmond Tutu described the holiday as ‘serving the need of healing the wounds of Apartheid’. The holiday was meant to replace the ‘Day of the Covenant’, a controversial celebration bound up with apartheid ideology —  in particular Voortrekker pretensions towards a special connection when it came to God and religion. Having disposed of one of the key elements of apartheid theology, the commission quickly embarked upon several special hearings, including investigations into the media, as well as the role of religion.

Releasing the first five volumes of its final report on Oct. 29, 1998, (and the remaining two volumes of the report on March 21, 2003). The commission claimed to have uncovered ‘the truth about human rights violations’ that had occurred during the period of apartheid.  With a special emphasis on gathering evidence and uncovering information — from both victims and perpetrator — and not on prosecuting individuals for past crimes, the commission proclaimed its divergence from the Nürnberg trials that had prosecuted Nazis after World War II.

None of the commission’s findings were ever held up by a court of law, and the body of evidence relating to apartheid was simply cast aside in favour of a form of reconciliation, which boils down to “love thy neighbour”. If Reconciliation Day has become just another holiday on our nation’s calendar, analysts may be correct in stating: “The promises of 1994 have devolved into a strategic defeat”,  this whilst South Africa pursues the exact same Nurenberg stance it rejected when it comes to solving problems in the Middle East before the International Criminal Court (ICJ)?

I am constantly amazed by those who seek to compare the Israel-Palestine conflict to the history of my own country, yet refuse to take any lessons away from our 1994 negotiated peace settlement which came about **because we talked it out, instead of warring it out**.

Is it because the analogy with apartheid was never going to be sustained in an actual conversation between the two sides? Allowing this canard to continue unabated, without criticism, serves one aim alone, which is to cast an obvious religious conflict over the final status of Jerusalem, a Jihad by Jihadists armed with a Charter outlining their Jihadist goals, as the modern-day equivalent of the US civil rights movement.

I am greeted by a litany of militia-backed disasters in the region on my social media feed on a daily basis, all of which merely demonstrate that war is not a solution to a political and social problem involving three major religions. The tragic toll on the Gazan civilian population, and a war which has now extended into Lebanon and Syria, parts of which were once ‘Palestine’ prior to the British Mandate period, is not only a tragedy for all humanity but a massive disappointment for those who continue to advocate peace, and a form of active reconciliation, which boils down to ‘tikkun‘ a Hebrew word that means ‘repair or restoration of the world’ — an objective which seeks to accomplish more than merely ‘atoning for one’s sins’.

At some point both sides need to talk to each other, and this can never happen so long as “River to the Sea” eliminationist rhetoric is taken for normal discourse by people like our own President.

Likewise, at home, if we keep rejecting attempts to enforce the parameters of the TRC, in which those who failed to apply for amnesty were meant to suffer the consequences of civil and criminal prosecution before the courts, (what happened to the funds reserved for such prosecutions?) we end up with two diametrically opposed policies: one preaching reconciliation at all costs (with no tangible economic restoration nor any legal closure), the other, seeking to enculpate all and sundry when it comes to foreign policy before the International Criminal Court.

by davidrobertlewis -

They’re eating the Quds of the people that live there?

THIS week Kevin Bloom, a Daily Maverick associate editor waded into a controversy surrounding ‘Gift of the Givers’ (GOTG). The group faces allegations of channeling funds designated for humanitarian relief to organisations such as Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Hamas), who are listed as terrorist groups by a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, European Union, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States .

To date GOTG has refused to open its books to public scrutiny and vehemently deny any involvement in underhand activities.

Founder Imtiaz Sooliman claims his funding process is ‘fool-proof’ since any transfer of funds to projects overseas is ‘authorised by the Reserve Bank, and local politicians such as Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’

One would really need to be a fool to believe that since the funds are in Dollars, the process is obviously “Jew-friendly” and not related to any money-laundering involving Gulf States, Hezbollah or Iran? It says so in Sooliman’s self-penned autobiography, trust us?

“Strike terror into the hearts of your enemies and Allah’s enemies” are not exactly the words of a humanitarian, reaching out to reconcile either sides to a conflict? Sooliman’s statement appears to have been made at a Congress of Business and Economics (CBE) gala dinner event in Johannesburg on 23 November.

In a licentious piece, best summarised as: “I’m not that kind of a Jew, but of course, Imtiaz Sooliman is not that kind of Jihadist either”, (or “I’m a Great Journalist, believe me’) , Bloom fails to grapple with any of the central allegations raised by critics . Instead he quotes at length from the ‘Book of Sooliman’, in a process of obsessive, literary myth-making, redolent of a contemporary debate amongst scholars of the Koran. The Medina and Mecca periods in which followers of Muhammad went ‘from being a weak, persecuted minority in Mecca to a powerful force with allies in Medina,” displays two very different versions of the prophet.


I hesitate to even bring up the subject here, because, much like a modern review of Moses and the tabernacles, what one ends with, are two very different versions of events — one depicts a man of peace, the other a man of war, and Hollywood has always failed at presenting us with credible biopics when it comes to religious chronicles. It is a touchy subject, I know.

Which may explain why Bloom feels the needs to regale all and sundry on his conversion to latter-day agnosticism when it comes to the Middle East? I get the gist, the man was once a bible-scholar, escaped Sunday School or life in a Yeshiva and Seminary and lived to tell the tale? Still nothing like forcing those who happen to believe in such fairy-tales as scripture, to view the world, exactly like Bloom, on pain of facing a secular inquisition, in which the very definition of secularism is up for grabs, where you get cancelled if you don’t cough up the correct words? Or worse, a religious inquisition you get your head chopped off for not uttering the correct mantra?

Is Bloom serious when he claims he “wanted to know from [David ‘Kiffness’ Scott] … whether he confirmed or denied that his global hit had contributed to anti-immigrant and/or racist sentiment in the United States and beyond“?

Cherry-picking from an assortment of online tweets involving the meme musician, the Bloom appears to have relegated his target to the arena of matinee club theatrics (a billion fans would tend to disagree), without bothering to consider why those seeking to cancel Scott are in the same league as those wanting to rename Jerusalem and every other Hebrew city, with their former colonial Arabic names? This whilst seeking to persuade all and sundry that if the Jihad is for a just cause, and the money meant for disaster relief ended up funding a religious rally, which just happened to attack a music festival on a Jewish holiday (50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War), we should just look the other way?

Doing this has resulted in over 12 months of absolute bloody mayhem.

SEE: The Kiffness Refuses to be silenced after Sooliman Critique

by davidrobertlewis -

Logan Case: High Court upholds ‘petty apartheid’

THE SITUATION is all too familiar. A 25-year-old black man Thabiso Danca, found that he was welcome and able to enter a Cape Town pub whenever accompanied by white colleagues. But without the gift of whiteness, he wasn’t even recognized at the door. The situation escalated when Danca, upset at being denied entry on Friday 1 December 2022 appealed to fellow lifesaver, Christopher Logan for assistance. According to a statement by the Pub, “the door personnel requested Danca’s identification to verify his age”
Frank’s door policy, like most pubs, is not under 21, “he failed to produce a valid ID and was denied entry to the pub.” It is clear from photographs that not only was Danca an adult, but he looked like an adult. This is not exactly a case of a ‘baby-faced’ teen appearing at a City venue and being denied entry, or a 21-year-old being confused with a 20-year-old, but rather an adult being told to beat it, because, well he isn’t white.

Given the context of ongoing race-based discrimination, (yes for all practical intents and purposes structural apartheid didn’t end in 1994, it merely lost any legal basis for its existence), Danca was rightfully upset at being treated as a minor. The words patronising and patron both have a similar pedigree, deriving from the Latin Pater, meaning ‘Father’. So we all get the gist of the central complaint, and the sequence of events which resulted in Logan ticking off staff and management in front of social media the very next day. The incident resulted in an altercation in which Logan was accused of ‘being the instigator, and the side-bar drama of who videoed who, from what angle, is of little consequence and absolutely not the crux of the matter.
This week owners of Hank’s Olde Irish Pub in Bree Street were ‘awarded R1.25 million in damages by the Western Cape High Court for ‘false accusations of racism on social media’
In retrospect, given Hank’s Pub’s ability to muster legal forces, it might not have been a good idea for the two friends to confront the Irish establishment directly. But here’s the rub, the entire ‘anti-racist’ movement which characterized the nation’s campuses for the past decade has literally advocated ‘confronting racism wherever and whenever it occurs‘. Yet the wobbly left have been rather silent on this account because the man being accused of defamation isn’t black?
This is not a lesson in how to go about filling out a discrimination claim, but one would have expected there to have been some effort made at tackling the central case, in this respect the SAHRC failed miserably, as the entire matter ended up coming a cropper on the strange assumption that video material of the later Saturday confrontation, the second incident, was somehow ‘the evidence’ of the first and vice versa, and of course, a ‘white person cannot experience racism’. Clearly Logan wasn’t the one being discriminated against here, he was acting out of solidarity with his companion. The fact of the denial of entry is not in dispute.

I very much doubt if one could ever persuade a jury comprising 12 citizens that a Saturday was the Friday in question, but we shall never know? (see below)

So once again our justice system turns out to be nothing more than an obstinate legal bureaucracy, in which the only issue for consideration was whether or not a ‘right of admission policy’, trumped any objections raised about the arbitrary application of a rule according to race-based criteria? All this while our law has been hijacked by libel lawyers intent on expanding the definition of libel law to include influencers and political activity?

Social media influencers not subject to press freedom?

The court has perversely ordered Christopher Michael Logan to pay the damages because he “accused John Papadakis of racism and shared a video on social media, claiming that his friend, Thabiso Danca, was denied entry to the pub because of his race.”

The social media outrage, according to the court, “led to significant reputational harm, financial losses and emotional distress for the pub and its co-owners, the Papadakis brothers”. The damages were awarded to Latari House (the operating company for Hank’s Olde Irish Pub) and brothers Viron and John Papadakis who, at that stage, were co-owners of the pub.:”

Since I have been unable to find any reference on SAFLII to the case, I am unable to read the exact wording of the decision, (anyone willing to assist here?) but from my own experience of dealing with the Western Cape division, the context in which racism occurs in our country has turned out to be of little consequence. This is the self-same division which trashed the TRC Report in 2010 and again in 2018, in the process dumping our Preamble. The Constitution is only in force when it comes to the Constitutional Court, and available to citizens at great cost it seems? The portraits of Judge President’s reaching all the way back to the old Cape Colony still line the High Court’s vaulted halls. Clearly such portraits belong in a museum?

More concerning is the manner in which ‘Papadakis and Co’, (or at least their supporters), have run a campaign before the courts, objecting to the pair’s membership of various student political organisations. You read that correctly, the latest tweets on X.com go so far as calling Logan an “EFF plant”, when the facts are both were members of DASO on campus, and so what? Our Constitution protects the right to membership of political parties irrespective of one’s race or social status?

The resulting miscarriage of justice is all too reminiscent of the manner in which apartheid officials banned student organisations and their members en masse during the 80s, without any opportunity for appeal, as officials continue to defend petty apartheid in our City.

Yes, our justice system has once again demonstrated that it lacks capacity to assess the facts when it comes to capital crimes and defamation cases. Where the West has a jury system, our legal system abolished jury trial in 1969, citing international embarrassment at the appearance of black persons before all-white juries. Closing down public participation in the justice process, lay-assessors are rarely used, the more so when tricky issues such as racism arise. Our courts all too often resort to a strategy known as ‘obfuscation of law’. The Logan decision merely bolsters this perception.

Then again, most Fridays are already Saturday when it comes to the Cape Bar?

SEE: Legal Storm over Irish Pub Racist Saga set to continue

SEE: Police Investigation Clears Pub Owners of Racism

by davidrobertlewis -

Voetsek Ramaphosa’s BRICS anti-liberty brigade

IMAGINE a world in which women’s rights alongside LGBT rights have been abolished, as they are in Iran? South Africa’s constitution replaced overnight with a system based upon ‘supremacy of the ruling party’. The opposition rolled into a new “Government of National Solidarity” (GNS). Dissenters imprisoned, or relegated to political re-education camps? Our country is undergoing a massive economic shift under the influence of China and the new BRICS bloc.

A host of ‘special reforms’ ushered in, without so much as a referendum, at the behest of an unelected, trans-national, supra-government. Sound familiar? The result for those who live in a fashionable bubble praising ‘the great economic leap forward‘ — those not relegated to sweatshops or compulsory labour camps — who may already enjoy this shiny, ersatz lifestyle, are illustrated below, as our country resembles a giant shopping mall?

Yet this dystopian picture of a possible future, close to our own, demonstrates a strange dissonance compared to the mall-world of today.

In this scenario, yet to become our fate, there are noticeable differences: Gone are the brands once linked to Western influence. You won’t find Apple wristwatches nor Nike trainers. There are no KFC nor McDonald’s outlets. Everything is a generic brand supplied by an “Original BRICS Equipment Manufacturer”.

All goods in this dismal imaginary place derive from a single corporation, owned partly by the ruling party, as special “BRICS advisors” help with a range of engineering projects. Government subsidiaries are allowed a semblance of competition. To extract compliance, the daily press has been replaced by the official state propaganda mechanism, Tavda (Tshwane Propaganda). Any content not authorised by the state is henceforth forbidden. The Internet is behind a “National Firewall”. Citizens are compelled to watch the state-run channels on their screens as they do in Russia.

National health is in full swing, as private medical practices are constrained. Henceforth, independent trade unions are to be abolished as they already are in China, Russia and Iran. A single currency has replaced the Rand, let’s call it the new BRICS RIAL. The fantasy may be a lot closer than we think. Could LGBT, alongside minority groups and Zionists, be rounded up for processing as ‘social deviants’? In areas where it is convenient, slavery has returned, as it has in parts of Arabia. A military call-up is in place, as we commit troops to the defense of Russia?

Under Western sanctions, travel in this ‘Mecca of Merchandising’ has been restricted to the ‘BRICS Zone’. In any event, only those granted permission by the party, are allowed to travel. Our shift towards a totalitarian regime occurs just a few steps into our near future, under Ramaphosa’s Special Command Council. The “Third Republic” here is well underway. It draws experience from the previous ‘Coronavirus Command Council.

The laissez-faire, ‘neoliberal system’ characterized much of the 20th century. It was prevalent in the early part of the 21st century as well. This system has now given way to a brutal mix of “Socialism with South African characteristics“. In effect, one can attend rugby matches. Yet, there are no longer any regional teams. Exercising a range of individual rights is frowned upon.

If you think such a dystopian timeline is impossible given the broad, electoral support for the current constitution, think again. No less than John Hlophe, the parliamentary leader of MKP, the largest opposition grouping recently pronounced on what may be termed, a ‘plan to scrap the constitution’. This while President Ramaphosa has seen fit to dictate to his fellow South Africans, our country’s position within an emerging power block known as BRICS.

The BRICS summit held this month was thus an all-male affair held in Kazan Russia, without a single female leader, in other words, no representative of the fairer sex. The macho summit proceeded to rubber-stamp a range of essentially patriarchal policies. These included a major shift in the World Economic Order, at the behest of dictators Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. It marked the first such gathering after the group’s expansion without any mandate from those affected. The new members include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. These are alongside the original five members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

The host, Putin, whose country is involved in a major war with Ukraine has said ‘more than 30 countries including North Korea have expressed a desire to join the BRICS’, which is far from being a political union, though there was little immediate clarity on how an economic expansion would work.

North Korea appears to be stepping up efforts to join the BRICS bloc.

by davidrobertlewis -

President Ramaphosa’s deplorable 7/10 address

“TODAY marks one year since the start of an onslaught against the Palestinian people” reads President Ramaphosa’s perverse statement released to mark the anniversary of the 7/10 attack on the Nova Music festival and Kibbutz Be’eri alongside other communities in Southern Israel, which claimed the lives of 1200 civilians with some 250 being taken hostage.

The event which occurred on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar, was launched to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Both dates are religious holidays equivalent to Eid al-Adha in Islam or Easter in Christianity . The perpetrators could not have picked a worse time to commit their heinous crime, and the result has been bloody mayhem ever since.

The casualties included Joshua Mollel and Clemence Felix Mtengaa, both Tanzanian students, and at least two South Africans who died, amongst many foreigners taken into captivity by Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, an Islamic Jihadist movement (abbreviated as Hamas), and its Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades.

Disabled hostages were quickly slain for ‘being too much trouble’ by Hamas. One a girl with autism, another with cerebral palsy in a wheel chair. It should be noted, South Africa is signatory to the Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Though Ramaphosa’s statement goes on to deplore the slaughter of civilians on either side, he deserves condemnation for the capricious manner in which he seeks to invert the historical record, appearing to make out a case that the attack was merely a legitimate strike against an oppressive regime, thus Israel is the one who attacked a music festival in Gaza?

This absurd rhetoric is typical of those who deny Resolution 181, passed by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1947 — the resolution called for the partition of British Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with the city of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum (Latin: “separate entity”) to be governed by a special international regime.

UN181, which is the basis for the failed 2007 Olmert Plan — was rejected by the Arab community— and immediately resulted in violence, and the status quo we have today.

For those whose political world view is skewed by the so-called ‘Nakba‘, itself a revisionist dogma — the subsequent Arab-Israel war of 1948, the Six Day War, and Yom Kippur War, are all justifiable acts taken in the defense of Arab sovereignty. Nakba theology painfully ignores the plight of over 800 000 Mizrahi Jews similarly dispossessed of their land in MENA and the earlier Farhud, a “violent dispossession” that was carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq, on 1–2 June 1941.

No doubt President Ramaphosa would have supported Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Ottoman Empire during World War 1, as he appears to unconditionally support Jihad and the tactics of martyrdom, alongside German and Arab Imperialism?

Statements such as “we have condemned the atrocities committed against civilians in Israel on 7 October 2023, as we have denounced the killing of civilians in any context” ring hollow, since they are all issued in the past tense, with the President refusing to regret his earlier failure to condemn the massacre. It took 10 days for the President’s office to issue a statement, a point made by members of the local Jewish community.

If the deaths of our own compatriots and fellow Africans on Oct 7 pales in comparison with the loss of life in the aftermath, one can only hope our President comes to his senses and condemns both parties to the conflict, one which I perceive as a tragic case of ‘injustice vs injustice?” At very least efforts at reconciling the parties should not be abandoned.

One could go further and ask why our President lacks the courage to abandon war, as a means to resolve conflict? As the wisdom from Isaiah goes: “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Instead, what is demonstrated here are empty calls for ‘justice and peace’ by an executive unable to tell truth from fiction in its eagerness to satisfy the Palestinian lobby.

READ: RAMAPHOSA GAFFE: A River too Far?

READ: DA goes woke, as President Ramaphosa gets into Messiah mode.

READ: Former Israeli and Palestinian ministers: A way out of this endless war

by davidrobertlewis -

Replacement theology at heart of Middle East conflict

OUR COUNTRY to its credit has enacted legislation to suppress both apartheid and racism. Proposals by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) for introduction of a bill which will ‘domesticate’ the 1973 United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, alongside the creation of ‘apartheid-free zones’ and the criminalization of Zionism, confront us with an absurdity: it is as if apartheid never happened within South Africa, since it appears no laws were adopted referencing the UN convention?

If our 1994 dispensation appears in danger of being replaced by a formidable global campaign connected to a maximalist view of Palestinian territory, associated with the former British Colony, then you may be correct: “From the River to the Sea” is the oft heard rallying cry alongside “Death to Israel and America”, as anyone with a different viewpoint is shouted down. Yet the ‘rainbow-coloured’ demonstrators have not translated into ‘rainbow ideas’ in the Middle East?

This is because replacement theology is at the heart of the conflict. A 2020 academic paper by Philip Du Toit on the question: ‘Is Replacement Theology Anti-Semitic?‘ begins by defining anti-Semitism as “normally understood as prejudice or hatred against Jewish people as a race” before concluding that since Christianity doesn’t perceive the Jews as a race, Christian theology cannot, by definition be anti-Semitic.

In ‘Revisiting the Charge of Taḥrīf: The Question of Supersessionism in Early Islam and the Qurʾān’ Sandra Keiting argues that Islam was supersessionist from its inception, advocating the view that the ‘Quranic revelations’ would “replace the corrupted scriptures possessed by other communities”.

Jonathon Feldstein observes the popular ‘Dome of the Rock’ in East Jerusalem has perhaps become “the cornerstone of Islamic replacement theology” alongside a new tradition that undermines both Judaism and Christianity. “Today, it’s commonplace to hear Palestinians and other Muslims deny any Jewish — and therefore Christian — history to the Temple Mount, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.”

Feldstein’s views are supported by a videographer who prompted Arab Palestinians to explain the plethora of Jewish archeological sites in the region — their answers invariably involve a denial of history, for them, the scientific evidence is a religious ‘falsehood’ to be discarded and ignored, replaced by another narrative, one which seeks to overcome and replace proven historical facts.

Even the Koran references the land of Israel. Al Baqara 2.47 ; Al Maida 5.21; Al Aaraf 7.137; Yunus 10.93; Al Israa 17.2-104;Ta Ha 20.80; Al Mumim 40.53; Al Dukhan 44.32; Al Jathiya 45.16, all refer to Israel as the land of the Jews.

The absurdity of importing apartheid laws to South Africa

The latest PSC dogma and its imported weltanshauung not only seeks to make Jews responsible for apartheid, it criminalises those who profess their religion on the basis of the biblical idea of Zion, in the process relocating South African history to the Middle East.

Furthermore, it provides a canon that replaces the narrative of the Hebrews with that of Arab Palestinians, many of whom were migrants from across the former British and Ottoman Empires. One has merely to examine the history of the Ottoman Railway Company to see why this statement is true. Beginning in 1900, the main line from Damascus to Haifa, allowed mass migration to the new economy surrounding the Zionist endeavor, and the claim is supported by the census data.

Replacement theology as it is constructed in recent times, may be understood as the basis for the apartheid analogy, a process whereby the history of our own country, is similarly replaced and discarded in the furtherance of a strategy which has been termed supersessionism.

It is therefore significant that the UN apartheid convention targets crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” [my bold]

Perversely, the phrase ‘one racial group over any other racial group or groups‘ is routinely omitted by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and PSC, in order to redact the convention to instances of state oppression of minorities, a lamentable situation not uncommon in our world today and certainly not unique to the state of Israel and its neighbors, all of whom should take the blame for the current escalation.

The apartheid convention was enacted in the 1970s primarily to deal with apartheid as it was then constructed within South Africa’s borders — a racist segregationist policy associated with a white Christian minority regime of PW Botha et al — absolutely nothing to do with Jews, who under apartheid were disproportionately jailed compared to their white Christian compatriots, with outspoken Rabbis deported by the regime.

The only genuine question raised by the PSC proposal, (whatever the merits), is whether or not our foreign policy should reflect our constitutional values? At the face of it, foreign policy is best served by an outlook which boldly supports our constitution —  its democratic values — it cannot be that we as a nation are compelled to support those like Hamas or Hezbollah, who are avowedly opposed to secularism, democratic centralism, women’s rights, LGBT rights, independent trade unions, and other rights.

In doing so, we risk rewriting and fabricating our own history.

READ: Debunked: Palestinians and Jews, each form a distinct race & the conflict is thus like apartheid,

by davidrobertlewis -

SABC Propagandist Sophie Mokoena parrots Iran on ballistic missile attack

TUESDAYS massive barrage of 200 ballistic missiles fired from Iran were aimed at Tel Aviv and other urban centres within Israel, resulting in air-raid sirens and people running for shelter. The barrage was twice the size of a similar event in April, signifies a major escalation of the conflict. Instead of relating eye witness reports, Sophie Mokoena chose to parrot the Iranian position that its missiles were solely ‘aimed at military targets’.

This is reminiscent of the chicanery shown by Hamas’ Head of Political and International Relations Basem Naim when he told Sky News the day after the October 11 event that ‘no civilians have been killed by the militant group’. Editorial note: The deaths of any civilian on either side here, whether man, woman, or child is lamentable, as should be any loss of life caused by an inability of either side to resolve conflict through peaceful dialogue.

Naim claimed immediately following the events of 7 October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of some 1200 Israelis and the taking of over 250 hostages by the Islamists, that only Israeli “soldiers” had been killed because Hamas had chosen to redefine civilians as combatants.

One should not underestimate the chilling effect this statement had for those on the receiving end of the attack, and the manner in which the rhetoric has played itself out in Gaza, a state of affairs which is both shocking and deplorable.

It has become emblematic of those embedded within the Palestine movement to claim no civilians on the Israeli side are actual targets when they are clearly targeted, and if they become casualties of war, Israel is to blame. The resulting fiction merely adds fuel to the fire.

Ahmed Munzoor Shaik-Emam for example, claimed (in an SABC interview on Armistice Day 2023 ) the massacre of persons at an outdoor peace festival ‘never happened’, instead these persons were ‘killed by Israelis’, and in any event they ‘were not civilians’.

In many respects, Mokoena’s propaganda reminds one of the mendacity of Cliff Saunders who during the apartheid border war would deny SADF troops were in Angola, or that people were dying in the townships.

So far as the SABC is concerned, one should not require a lecture on the subject of South Africa’s pacifist constitution and its prohibition against war propaganda, yet when it comes to Mokoena, one is moved to respond — not only has she callously issued support for the belligerent parties in several conflicts, (most recently the Russian invasion of Ukraine), but she appears oblivious to the damage this empty rhetoric is causing South Africa’s much vaunted claim to global ‘non-alignment’.

If we’re allies of every tinpot dictatorship out there, then why not just come out and admit: we’re working with North Korea to destroy Samsung, and helping the Houthis, to reintroduce slavery?

Apartheid Bill mooted

The vocal Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), has announced that they will be marching to Parliament on Saturday, October 5 to call for the South African government to implement an ‘Apartheid Bill’ alongside sanctions against Israel.

The so-called “Apartheid Bill,” drafted by the PSC Cape Town , is purported to be a “step toward operationalising South Africa’s commitment to the Apartheid Convention”. The proposed Bill is thus designed to ‘hold entities accountable for human rights violations and will provide the legal framework for South Africa to implement Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and establish Apartheid-Free Zones across the country,” claims the PSC.

Whether PSC succeed in introducing legislation into the House of Assembly is another matter, but any debate on the UN Convention would immediately be struck by the primary problem presented by the actual wording of the document, which is geared towards ‘racial groups’. The phrase is often redacted by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International — if apartheid wasn’t about race, then what have South African’s been going on about these past decades?

As I have illustrated on many occasions, nations are not races, and neither are religions.

by davidrobertlewis -

Mondli Makhanya you’re counterfeit, and you know it.

I HAVE always had a certain level of antipathy towards Israel, a country associated with the Hebrew bible, referenced in the Koran, and ancient Roman history. Unlike South Africa, it is not my homeland, but rather the homeland of my relatives. Living as a Jew in the diaspora and being a Pan Africanist, never inspired me sufficiently into conducting an “Aliyah” pilgrimage to the holy land, another continent.

Though growing up within a mixed religious environment, both sets of parents, and grandparents were secular — there was never any hint of support for government as a theocracy, quite the opposite. The Anglicans and Protestants in my family wanted freedom from clerical authority, the Orthodox Jews in my family wanted the right to privacy and freedom from the religious views of others.

In short, there was no desire to replace religion and the political views of our neighbors with that of our own. The prevailing wisdom was that it was ‘best to stay out of politics’. The price for my participation in the anti-apartheid struggle, the ‘sent-down’ white youth of 1986 and 87, was a rejection of the liberal views of my family in favour of a leftist concern with changing society — an outlook that pivoted on a militant wish to tell others how to run their lives.

The anti-apartheid struggle was anything but a cakewalk. Yet the outcome, which I refer to as Mandela’s blueprint for a ‘great society’ was most definitely a “We the People” constitution. A foundation document which makes it abundantly clear that when it came to the law, God has no bigger role to play than the author of any other text. The status of religious texts when it comes to our country is one of blessings, fairy tales and motivational books. Gone are the restrictive clerical canons of the Nationalist Party.

Pro-Hezbollah Sermon

It is thus I take issue with Makhanya’s latest pro-Hezbollah sermon published by City Press, a publication which like every other Naspers/Media24 outlet has not only banned my writing, but has gone so far as to destroy my photography and interviews with jazz legends (and their families) associated with the history of our country. Yes our High Court could not find the wherewithal to defend my right to representation in a related matter affecting the TRC Report (the failure of Naspers to participate) (Lewis v Min of Justice & Another, 2015 Equality Court) in which your principal was a respondent. The court delivering its jaundiced, 1994-denialist decision (Lewis v LASA, 2018) to the effect ‘the report may be ignored since it would take a long time to read’, torpedoed any hope of resolution — so much for the Preamble to our Constitution and the very basis of your column.

When I read headlines: Mondli Makhanya | The blackmail of anti-Semitism used to pummel the truth to death and Mondli Makhanya | SA’s Jews must draw a red line on Israel’s ‘war crimes’, I am forced to turn to SA Jewish Report to observe what your critics are saying, because you write behind a paywall. The latest: Jewish voices being stifled, is a sad indictment knowing that your publication will not grant a right to reply nor acknowledge such person’s exist.

Let me report on words Mondli may find within the paragraphs of those whom he clearly does not read, nor care to quote: “Calling out a single population group and demanding that it changes its political or conscientious standpoint is blatantly bigoted,” writes Karen Milner, “It’s akin to saying that only Jews whom the writer deems palatable are acceptable in South Africa, and, in this Heritage Month, deeply endangers the fabric of our multiracial society.”

I note here that not only has Makhanya previously deployed the term ‘black’ as a pejorative (as in blackmail) with which to smear the targets of his bile, but he refers to “SAs Jews” as if we are some kind of monolithic bloc, worse, we are mere simulacra with no human agency other than that we are objects representing other objects in the Middle East, things to be lectured at, not humans with the right to respond, or speak up for ourselves.

I therefore register my objection to this obvious patronage, lack of support for press freedom, and condemn the column as needlessly counterfeit and corrupt.

UPDATE: As I wrote this, reports of the death of Hezbollah chief Nasrullah were beginning to emerge, followed by condemnation by the SA government who seems to think “God’s Army” as it is known, is somehow the moral equivalent of the ANC in exile. The Pretoria government’s handlers in Tehran must be pleased.

READ: Most of all I am offended as a secularist.

by davidrobertlewis -

The Howard Feldman, News24 Mampara saga

Off the bat, I admit it, I am no fan of Howard Feldman and ChaiFM. If you’re into over-privileged Jozi Jews. Do a google search and you’ll come up with the bizarre statistic that wait for it: “Most of the (live) Jews in Johannesburg can be found in the north-eastern suburbs. Here are some: Glenhazel, Raedene, Kew, Norwood, Highlands North, Sandringham, Savoy, Waverley, Orchards, Oaklands and Fairmount. Glenhazel and its immediate neighbours are jocularly referred to as ‘The Shtetl’.

I really do cringe when one realises that you’ll find Hebrews in equal parts in working class suburbs and industrial hubs of South Africa, places such as Gqeberha’s Motherwall community. Or that what is left of the Jews of District Six and Woodstock essentially charts a map of emigration and loss due to local Anti-Semitism that included political deportation of Jewish dissidents during apartheid.

Feldman’s narrative is anything but working class. His career as a ‘useful idiot’, (his phrase not mine), writing a column for News24 needs to be seen within a context, that for the most part, South Africa’s Jews, (black and white) are invisible, bar one or two lefties.

Allowing Naspers to say, ‘we employ Jews, so we can’t possibly be anti-Semitic’, whilst refusing to apologise for the antics of former directors, persons such as DF Malan who actively supported Nazism, carrying cards emblazoned with Swastikas, needs to be seen within the context of national reconciliation. The group along with its readers apparently moved on, as making money became more important than facts. I get the Machiavellian drive.

So one can forgive a sense of Schaudenfraude, seeing Howard on the receiving end of Adriaan Basson’s Anti-Semitic venom over a series of social media posts that Basson characterised as ‘glorification of violence’. Well hang me high, because I don’t see peace activists promoting peace amongst the throng of Hamas and Hezbollah supporters.

It does seem advocating total annihilation of the Jewish state is alright by Basson, but calling booby-trapped pagers ‘a stroke of genius’ isn’t? Does this make Feldman the “Mampara of the Week” ‘ a narcissistic bigot’ according to one Ferial Haffajee?

Readers may remember Haffajee as the imbecile who banned Medialternatives, physically destroying my review of ‘A Secret Burden: Memories of the Border War by South African Soldiers Who Fought in It‘ for wait for it, exposing embedded journalism within the apartheid military.

Since I am a peace activist not a war activist I don’t support the logic of either of the parties to the conflict. Like the late Dennis Brutus I don’t follow nation-states or people as such, but rather support ideas. And the paramount idea I wish readers would take home here is secularism, not the absence of religion as misguided atheists might put it, but rather the absence of religious rule.

READ: Africa4Palestine Says Sacking Of News24 Columnist Howard Feldman Was ‘Long Overdue