THE latest revision of apartheid history by veteran journalist Allister Sparks, in effect claiming that apartheid is an Israeli invention, and merely one of the Jewish state’s policies alongside the Land Act and Group Areas Act certainly takes the cake so far as mendacity and propaganda is concerned.
Sparks, forever the judeophobe, in his recent opinion piece published by Business Day, excludes black Jews from the equation, alongside Jewish refugees from Africa and the Middle East in order to paint a picture of a nationalist struggle not so different from our own. A struggle, one might add, that lacks a freedom charter, cannot and never will be, a freedom struggle. However much one sides with the current halo around all things Palestinian, the problem of divergent and complex interests tied to factions within Islam and Christianity remains.
Despite the religious indictment there are some very good reasons why a Palestinian state should exist. All those in favour of self-determination for Palestinians say aye, myself included. But this kind of blanket, no strings attached support does not solve the ongoing factional violence which culminated in last week’s threat to exterminate the state of Israel along with its Palestinian population using Vx gas and other chemical weapons. Instead of blaming Assad or the rebels, Sparks would like to blame Israel and the USA. He would be better off advocating for a Bill of Rights for the Palestinian people and a Chemical Weapons Convention.
Another strategy is to blame the world’s Jews for all manner of problems in the hope that by doing so, the masses on the ground (including Jews) will either forget about the past or find cause to live out the past vicariously, within changed or altered circumstances. One is reminded of the quote by Franz Fanon: “It was my philosophy teacher from the Antilles who reminded me one day: “When you hear someone insulting the Jews pay attention; he is talking about you.”
The openly biased counter-accusation by Sparks of Israeli ethnic cleansing in 1948 in the ongoing guilt trip against anything Jewish really jars in its lack of relevance today, especially the problem of a new Cold War. But this is really just the stock in trade of a true Anti-Semite. Invitation accepted. Sparks is demonstrably in favour of a world without Jews, for if Jews have cause to blame the Holocaust for all their troubles, then it must take some plot by the devil himself to create a situation in which neighbouring Syrian Sunnis are being massacred in conditions similar to the First and Second World Wars and to avoid writing about it.
No longer are we able to say shame and Xyklon B in the same sentence, and still be Jewish, because now we have a Sarin Gas nightmare, a blot against the global and collective memory of our species. Never again, as I have said so many times before means, never again for everyone including Syrians.
The problem of a Jewish State which only accepts Jewish refugees alongside the tragedy of millions of Syrian refugees creating an international crisis in humanitarian aid is not solved by the man’s absurd claims to be in favour of the audi rule, but only if it is to hear one side of the debate, since very rarely if ever are black Jews living in South Africa given an opportunity to state their case in a country which refuses to recognize divergence of opinion within the community and Jewish cultural and political rights in particular.
Sparks and his futile and ignorant onslaught against all Jewish people living in South Africa must therefore be rejected as nothing more than a propagandist whose thinly veiled attack against diplomatic peace efforts, are in effect evidence of hate speech, bigoted opinion which avoids the very real threat of chemical warfare being unleashed on the self-same group of people he claims to be supporting.