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 inculpate all and sundry when it comes to foreign policy before the International Criminal Court.

[AI rewrite published by The Star, 18 December 2024 without writers consent]

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 -

Minister Pandora: South Africa is sleepwalking into a catastrophe

NOT content with promoting human rights (an objective which seems to change from country to country), South Africa has taken it upon itself to interdict a single party to a conflict whose seeming binary nature is the source of major global tensions. On the one side, a group of Jihadists whose charter outlines a ‘battle against the Jews’ over the final status of Jerusalem. On the other side, an embattled ‘democratic state’ whose claims of Jewishness and democracy is subject to dispute even amongst Jews.

It should not matter on which side one is here if the end goal is secularism, universal suffrage and human rights for all, but in this conflict nothing is as it appears. Take Gaza’s Anti-Secular allies — Iran is an Islamic Republic which prohibits trade unions (not to mention women’s rights and the death penalty for LGBT):

“Trade unions are not recognized in Iran.” says Kemal Özkan of IndustriALL Global Union

“The Iranian labour law currently forbids and prevents the formation of trade unions. In Iran only Islamic labour councils are accepted but they are not trade unions – they are tripartite organizations bringing together the Ministry of Labour, the employers and some selected workers based on their loyalties and religious affiliations to the government. As a result they are inappropriate and ill-equipped to deal with the demands and needs of Iranian workers.”

Or how about the real elephant in the room? Houthi Yemen, armed to the teeth, already participating in a regional conflict via its ongoing attacks against shipping in the Red Sea, ostensibly to effect a blockade of Israel. If the ongoing firing of rockets by either Houthis or the Gazans themselves isn’t something that gets newspaper headlines these days, then you will probably wonder why you missed this news item, the 2019 re-establishment of Slavery by the Houthis?

“Since their coup, the Houthis have sought to turn back the hands of time and take back Yemen to the era of the oppressive Imamate and all forms of slavery.

A civilian, who works for a pro-Houthi tribal leader in Saada, told Turkey’s Asharq Al-Awsat news outlet: “I have been working for years at the sheikh’s house without pay. I cannot go back to my family or do anything out of my own free will.”

“I do not know the meaning of freedom,” he said.

The United States literally fought a civil war over the issue of slavery without much objection to the loss of life on the Confederate side. This week the country tabled a bill to review its relationship with Pretoria.

Article 13 of South Africa’s Bill of Rights expressly forbids slavery, servitude and forced labour, Ours is one of the few constitutions in the world to declaim on this important issue, (not that we ever enforce such prohibitions, nor care about labour rights in the face of a seven day work week?)

Yet such are the blinkers provided by the likes of Minister Naledi Pandor, whose speech to a rousing audience of Pro-Palestine congregants at the Masjid al-Quds this week, painted a rather different picture. Wearing a hijab she claimed to not know who ISIS is despite the fact the SANDF are currently engaged in a SADC operation against ISIS in Mocambique? Later at SONA she claimed anyone opposing her views is an “Israeli agent”. She may as well be living on Pluto, since becoming a roving plutocrat?

I’ve written extensively about her many dropped narratives, half-truths, redacted quotations, outright lies and failure to defend the non-aligned movement of which Mandela, a bipartisan on the conflict, and founder of our country was very much a part. If you are not yet familiar, take a tour of this page: Everything You Know about Palestine is Wrong. Or read my unanswered letters here, and here.

The idea that South African solidarity transforms the intractable religious conflict into the 21 century equivalent of the anti-apartheid movement is magical-thinking at best.

Take any metric associated with human rights under Gaza’s Hamas regime: whether the rights of women, LGBT or the disabled, and one can only come to the conclusion — if the Jihadists were to win the war, the entire region would be universally, an area governed by autocrats, dictators, religious police and clerical militia. In short MENA would be bereft of Jews (as it already is) but without any of the necessary conditions for a sustainable, or moral existence as many at St Georges Cathedral would like to call it.

And let’s not neglect to consider what a future Pandora-sponsored, ICJ legal determination may bring, especially one that delivers us all the paradox of a “Protected Jihad” for a “Protected People” ?

In this situation under the general abrogation of religious freedom (freedom from the religion of others) effected via martyrdom and self-sacrifice, alongside the removal of core rights and fundamental freedoms we take for granted, (Yes those Zionists deserve their liberty as much as Palestinians) nobody will be allowed to oppose Houthi slavery, nor the Hamasist fantasy, that Palestinians (former citizens of British Palestine) are the ‘Chosen People’, in a weird inversion of the ancient texts associated with the Judeo-Christian canon?

That many contemporaries are rewriting the Holy Book, as if the Canaanites (who occupied all of what is now modern Syria) or the Philistines (who once occupied Gaza), having long since exited history, are the victors is abundantly clear. We would be better off if all religious texts were simple abolished and ‘G-d did not exist’ or ‘G-d is dead’, for all intents and purposes.

In such a battle of competing monotheisms, competing definitions of who is entitled to be a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim, and who is not under Pandora’s Grand Inquisition, there is only one winner, and that will be the group which succeeds in winning the battle over narrative.

Take note: I have merely the fate of my own humble byline to consider, rendered as it has been, by a Marxist Pretoria in ways that make the apartheid regime seem like quaint liberals compared to the machinations of the current bureaucrats in office. Freedom of the press in my country has long been ripped asunder by the Independent Group and its opposition to the outcome of WW2.

READ: Quo Vadis, whither South Africa’s Religious Freedom?

by davidrobertlewis -

Quo Vadis: Whither South Africa’s religious freedom?

SOUTH AFRICA has a troubled history of religious freedom going back to the Protestant Reformation and the plight of Huguenot refugees fleeing religious persecution under Catholic France. ‘God Is Not a Christian’ claimed the late Desmond Tutu, who also said: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray. ‘ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

It was thus colonialism which brought religion to the continent, and for the better part of the 20th Century, the struggle was between theocrats in Pretoria — those who believed the Afrikaners were Africa’s equivalent of “God’s Chosen People”, armed with a Covenant literally signed in blood (at Blood river) — and those who believed in a more inclusive, secular national identity, one based upon the universal declaration of Human Rights, as illustrated by our Freedom Charter.

My own family history which spans the Huguenots, the Scottish Celts, and Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia (and even Basotho who fled Zulu militarism), struggled with these conflicts, based as they are on competing theologies, traditions, beliefs and practices. For the most part, the Latviks and Litvaks of Eastern Europe were socialists who practiced their religion in the face of the Enlightenment and Haskalah.

Persons such as Eli Weinberg, Esther & Hymie Barsel, Yetta Barenblatt and Baruch Hirson, were acknowledged for their contribution to the anti-apartheid movement on 1st March 2011, with a series of stamps released by members the African Union — the postal services of Liberia, Gambia and Sierra Leone

Zionism for these individuals had appeared wholly unnecessary until the events of the Holocaust and Farhud, the forced dispossession of Jews from MENA which preceded it. The trend of Medieval persecution and Czarist & Ottoman-Arab pogroms, resulting in wholesale slaughter, only got worse, effectively negating the emancipation of the Jews of Europe which had occurred under Napoleon.

In 1917 a mass expulsion of the Jews of Jerusalem was ordered by Djemal Pasha, though the outcome was narrowly averted due to the influence of the Prussian government, the eight thousand Jews of Jaffa nevertheless suffered deportation, and their property was seized as the region’s Jewish population was affected by the events of WW1, which included the Armenian Genocide. A report by a United States consul describing the Jaffa deportation was published in the June 3, 1917 edition of The New York Times.

A series of laws introduced by then Minister of the Interior D F Malan under the Smuts government during the 1930s was aimed at preventing Jewish immigration to our country, and introduction of the Nuremberg Laws created pseudo-scientific, racial and legal distinctions between Jews and Germans of ‘pure blood’ in Nazi Germany.

South Africa under the Nationalist government whose membership cards carried the Swastika, was soon to follow with its own system of race classification. (You can read my earlier writing on the subject here and here). Having gained the franchise, denied them under the Boer Republics, South African Jews were in danger of having their citizenship revoked by the Nationalists, as Malan’s brown shirts met boatloads of refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in Table Bay Harbour with force.

Celebrated Weekly Mail editor Irwin Manoim in his book ‘Mavericks Inside the Tent, a history of the Progressive Jewish movement in South Africa and its impact on the wider community’ outlines many of the predicaments faced by South Africa’s Jewish community during the tragic period of apartheid: “Jews were disproportionately strongly represented among anti-apartheid activists, a point frequently made by hostile authorities,” he writes. “But the most outspoken, committed and courageous of the Jewish anti-apartheid activists were largely secular, operating outside the organised Jewish community.”

Manoim narrates the role played by Jewish clerics such as Rabbi Andre Ungar (deported by Min TE Donges) and Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris in opposing the regime. Donge’s order read: “I have to inform you that … you are hereby ordered to leave the Union of South Africa not later than the 15th of January 1957 … If you fail to comply with this notice, you will be guilty of an offense and liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding £100, or in default of payment of the fine, to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months.”

Both individuals are air-brushed out of history by the likes of Naledi Pandor, whose followers on social media enjoy raising the issue of Percy Yutar the chief prosecutor at the Rivonia Trial. It is important to note that Mandela, a bipartisan on the Israel/Palestine issue, was arraigned alongside fellow Zionist Arthur Goldreich, and that Denis Goldberg, Lionel Bernstein, Robert Hepple, Harold Wolpe and James Kantor were all Jews.

It was thus that the issue of the Star of David became a point of order in the Johannesburg City Council this week. EFF councilors objected to city councilor Daniel Schay wearing a ‘Star of David’ on his tie.

“If they have issues with Jewish religious symbols they must come out and say it,” responded Schay.

“Freedom of religion is protected by the constitution. It is the first time in this Council’s chambers that somebody’s religion and expression of their religion is being questioned…This is unacceptable,” charged another councilor.

Published by the Star, morning and afternoon editions, 6 February 2024

by davidrobertlewis -

Paradox of the Gatekeepers of War

THE WORLD is embroiled in a conflict over the meaning of war, the right of self-defense, non-aggression and armed struggle, the very institutions of peace, justice and global harmony. Having taken Israel to the ICJ and gained interim measures, none of which involve a direct ceasefire order (the only tangible step, an order for the release of hostages — for Israel to report and abide by the convention), we are all stuck kicking a can of worms down the road.

Our country has failed to extract any compliance with the ICJ order from Hamas. Though Naledi Pandor has been robust in her criticism of Israel, urging the Security Council to enforce the convention, and South Africa may have some influence with the Palestinians, it has delivered nothing solid from any of the organizations whose beleaguered citizens it champions.

As Hamas leaders fly to Cairo to discuss a possible truce, and UN aid agency UNWRA is embroiled in a controversy surrounding the documented participation of its members in the tragic events of 7/10, we all become entangled in a power-play with Israel over the terms of the ‘Genocide Convention’ with world media attention turning to the plight of Jews within South Africa. Since the preliminary hearing, there have been several controversies involving a cricket captain, utterances by the Chief Rabbi, and even a debacle involving the wearing of a Star of David by a City of Johannesburg councilor.

If Pandor’s interpretation of the ICJ interim order means the Palestinian people are now a ‘protected group’, does it follow that their ongoing Jihad against Israel is similarly protected? Is the global Inquisition of Jewish Identity under the rubric of ‘Zionism vs Anti-Zionism’ even lawful, and is South Africa protecting its own citizens from religious-motivated attack?

The woke left have certainly not risen up to defend secular rights and freedoms for all, those who claim like the Proctors of Salem, to be able to tell a ‘Zionist from a Non-Zionist’, or a Witch from a Non-Witch, have not been forthcoming when it comes to protecting the universal rights of those under their immediate purview. To paraphrase, Sartre (after Voltaire), if the Zionist did not exist, the Anti-Zionist would have created him.

Any one of these subjects would ordinarily elicit a response, deserving of an essay or two. I hope they do. But for now, let me address this nugget:

An Almighty Rabble: Rabbi and Counter-Rabbi?

An organisation calling itself ‘South African Jews for a Free Palestine‘ released a statement this morning on Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein’s utterances throwing shade on the ANC, alleging ‘Iran is funding South Africa’s case and SA banks may be acting as conduits for terrorism’.

Jo Bluen posted “Rabbi Goldstein has acted as a gatekeeper of Judaism in South Africa. He has rejected the Jewish identity of people who belong to non-Orthodox Jewish communities and has been known to “encourage the institutionalisation of certain Ultra Orthodox customs within the community”.

The statement goes on to list a number of issues to do with language, colonialism and allegations of ‘lack of pluralism’. Is the Chief Rabbi whistling while Gaza is burning?

Unfortunately it is not simply the Chief Rabbi, but South Africa’s legal system which has issued similar determinations that otherise and exclude Jews outside the fold.

I for my part have been anathematized by a racist 2010 finding that since I am a “Jew in breach of my religion” I cannot claim anti-Semitism on the basis of an outrageous inquisition of identity by a party whose disciples see fit to define ‘who is and who is not a Jew’, who is authentically Jewish and who is not. Both Spinoza and Trotsky received similar treatment.

JFP claim: “Not only has Rabbi Goldstein himself refused to attend events that have platformed non-Orthodox rabbis and leaders but he has also implored other Orthodox Jewish leaders to do the same in the spirit of rejecting pluralistic attitudes. These include events with talks and panels on topics including Progressive Judaism, LGBTQ+ belonging in the context of Torah, and gender egalitarianism – which might be considered among the “liberal values” he claims that Apartheid Israel defends. Rabbi Goldstein’s reluctance to engage with these issues within the context of Orthodox Judaism, and his support for the active suppression of this engagement, only serves to uphold the legacy in many Orthodox Jewish communities of exclusion, queerphobia and misogyny. This environment has led to many queer Orthodox Jews having to leave their families to find belonging, and at least one recent case of death by suicide.“

The criticism is certainly justified, but I suggest it would be better directed at our Judge President, the same justice system which upheld a 2009 order banning the Dalai Lama.

by davidrobertlewis -

South Africa’s Cherry-picking Genocide case before the International Courts

IN 2016 South African Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Michael Masutha confirmed during a media briefing that South Africa had submitted to the United Nations (UN) its ‘notice of intention to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC)’

Readers should note here, the ICC decides cases involving individuals while the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hears cases between states.

The timing of the South African Government’s withdrawal decision may have been prompted by wanting to be the first country to withdraw from the International Court structure. “At the time, several states were considering doing so,” writes law scholar Jeremy Sarkin.

“Withdrawing could therefore have been done then as a means to show some leadership to other African countries (Burundi, Gambia) that were also considering this option.”

The ICC announcement followed an embarrassing episode in which the African Union found itself divided over the refusal or failure of “Uganda, Chad, Kenya, Djibouti, Malawi, Congo, South Africa, and Egypt to be involved in detaining and surrendering President Al Bashir to the ICC”. The court itself was accused of “hunting” African leaders “to the exclusion of any other head of state or government official elsewhere in the Global North.” The ICC categorically denied any accusations of “partiality”, arguing that the sum of African cases referred to the Court has “more to do with the Court’s jurisdiction being limited to states parties to the Rome Statute, and for crimes committed after 2002.”

In the end it took a High Court judgement to scupper such plans — delivered on 22 February 2017, the decision of the North Gauteng High Court criticised the Government’s conduct, declaring ‘unconstitutional and invalid’ the executive’s decision to deliver to the UN South Africa’s notice of withdrawal from the ICC, and ordered the Government to ‘rescind with immediate effect’ the said notice. “On 13 March 2017, the Justice Minister, in compliance with the court order, gave notice to Parliament that he was revoking the bill that, if signed into law, would have officially decreed the divorce, and severed the almost 20-year-old tie between South Africa and the ICC.”

Enter the SA-Israel-Gaza case

This week a team of South African jurists lead by Professor John Dugard, filed a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague alleging that Israeli action inside Gaza ‘amounted to the crime of genocide’. The application “concerns acts threatened, adopted, condoned, taken and being taken by the Government and military of the State of Israel against the Palestinian people, a distinct national, racial (sic) and ethnical (sic) group, in the wake of the attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023″

South Africa claims that it ‘unequivocally condemns all violations of international law by all parties, including the direct targeting of Israeli civilians and other nationals and hostage-taking by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.” And “no armed attack on a State’s territory no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can, however, provide any possible justification for, or defence to, breaches of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”

It is an astonishing allegation considering the ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli civilian centres by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the timing of the massacre, which occurred on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, on the religious holiday of Simchat Torah.

South Africa further claims a ‘moral duty’ to bring the application before the court (a duty entirely absent where the ANC is concerned when it came to actioning on an ICC warrant for the arrest of Omar al-Bashir, convicted for the 2009 Darfur Genocide), and proceeds to outline a tragedy involving the ensuing war and events of the past months. The litany of horror is indeed sobering and cause for alarm.

The application is historically significant since it effectively brings one of the oldest ongoing conflicts, under the auspices of international structures, institutions created in the aftermath of the Nuremberg Trials which followed World War Two and the creation of the United Nations. In this respect, any attempt, no matter how misguided, to resolve and mediate matters, providing a path to peace without resorting to outright war and murder of civilians, is worthy of support — unfortunately as already alluded to, the case is flawed for a number of reasons which will be outlined in brief below:

1. Nations are not races — neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians comprise a distinct racial group, as such — to put this another way, wearing a Keffiyeh or Yarmulke is no indication of one’s alleged ‘race’ — there are black and white Arabs on both sides to the conflict, and the issues at hand, especially with regard to the status of Jerusalem appear to be religious in nature. (please read my piece debunking racialisation of the conflict here)

2. While the case begins by condemning the actions of both parties, it then proceeds to outline what is in effect a casus belli in favour of the Palestinians and their own motivations for armed struggle. Thus the October Simchat Torah attacks are provided with a sheen of legitimacy via an historical association with South Africa’s armed struggle, albeit an expression of solidarity, if not outright support of Jihad. (One should note that Mandela was a bipartisan on the issue supporting the rights of both parties). The religious war is cast by Dugard et al as nothing more than self-defense, in the face of a secular Nakba (a nationalistic catastrophe not entirely of the Palestinian’s own making). In this view Israel’s reaction in whatever form, whether via a blockade of the Jihadists or bombing of Gaza and its tunnel networks, is condemned as entirely disproportionate — motivated by malice instead of rockets and pure survival.

3. Although the application is at pains to reiterate UN condemnation of the annexation of East Jerusalem and settlements following the 1967 war, it fails to acknowledge UN Resolution 181 which partitioned the former British territory and created Israel in the first instance, and thus both the UN and Mandela’s support of the status quo of Israel’s existence, which Hamas and the ‘Palestinians’ for the most part, oppose. This cherry-picking of issues and one-sided irredentist narrative, cast within legal terms, is pretty much par for the course amongst those who support the de facto return of the Palestine colony “from the River to the Sea” and who deny the events which lead up to the creation of the Israeli state.

4. More significantly, the application painfully ignores the role played by the ‘President of the All-Palestine Government in Gaza’ (1948-1956) Amin al-Husseini in promoting and furthering a policy known as the ‘Final Solution’, following his participation in the 1941 Farhud in MENA, which resulted in an actual genocide. One has merely to pose the question of what problem was the ‘Final Solution’ seeking to solve in order to discover the primary subject of the 1938 Evian Conference, a tragic moment in which world powers, and later South Africa under Jan Smuts, deliberated on the very issue of the flood of Jewish refugees flowing into British Palestine and elsewhere. As German philosopher Immanuel Kant had once put it, ‘there are Palestinians amongst us’, he was however referring to the ‘Jews of Europe’.

Set aside the tragic drama of the October ‘Simchat Torah attack’, the Israeli declaration of war, the professed motivations for self-defense by either party, the resulting military intervention, alongside the catastrophic, forced movement of the Gazan population, (which have included the bombing of civilian centres, and casualties which include journalists, medical staff, and children, all very real humanitarian issues) and one cannot help but come to the conclusion that the entire world, would have been in a better position if it had acted to prevent this disaster at the outset — if more care was taken to debating both sides instead of negating either party — and if South Africa had acted sooner by supporting the ICC in stopping prior acts of genocide in Darfur and elsewhere in Yemen and Syria.

In this respect our country deserves to be taken to task for an historical failure, the lack of will to support multilateral institutions, in particular the recent undermining of the UN with regard to the General Assembly censure of the Russia-Ukraine war. The South African case would be a lot firmer if our country were able to claim a moral high ground, on the basis of legal principle and foreign policy evenly applied. If we were able to lodge our opposition to war in all its forms and by implication a defense of our pacifist constitution, instead of cherry picking issues and taking sides, shifting with the tide of public opinion.

READ: ICJ Gaza genocide case: South Africa set to discover law of unintended consequences

READ: Why are we going to the International Court of Justice?

READ: Irwin Cotler: South Africa is inverting reality by accusing Israel of genocide

by davidrobertlewis -

Min. Pandor, don’t call me an Infidel

Dear Minister Pandor,

Statement by DIRCO 30 October refers.

Judaism is a religion. It is also an ethnic and historical community. Our views as Jews are certainly not monolithic. There are many Jews who do not support war, or who find the politics of the Netanyahu administration reprehensible.

There are those who disagree with the status quo, and who nevertheless support the two state solution, those who support Israel and who also support Palestine, those who do not support either Israel or Palestine, and even those who may over-identify with the cause, and who are willing to support whatever occurs on account of their own claims against ‘Imperialism’ on behalf of the oppressed and so on. The saying goes, take two Jews and you will get three opinions.

It does not assist the situation to declare what South Africans must believe, whom we should support, and which organisation is representative of our views in this conflict.

And it certainly does not assist the cause of peace to platform the perspective of those who claim Jews are Infidels or Kufrs when they’re in the Middle East, and Haraam or forbidden when your department disagrees with their views?

Hard as this may seem, one cannot simply remove Zionists from the picture in the Middle East, and as a statement by your department released yesterday suggests.

Turning such persons as Zev Krengel of the Zionist Federation into Heretics, results in sanctions and censorship on the basis of ethno-religious identity, sanctions that are dangerously and scandalously progressing towards that of a modern religious inquisition — a persecution of belief, outlawed by our own secular constitution.

Let me be the first one to tell you that I find your department’s open threats of prosecution against those who support Israel’s ‘right to self-defense’ — a viewpoint held by the majority of leaders of the free world — in the absence of consensus on your own legal position — completely illogical given the circumstances of 7 October, and especially given the rights of free speech guaranteed by our constitution.

If persons such as Krengel have something to say, they should be allowed to say it in public. If their views are disagreeable, they should be debated and their views proven wrong, rather than closed down by government fiat or departmental proclamation.

Such an easy resort to a fatwa and threat of punishment are the hallmarks of totalitarian regimes, as they were the currency of the apartheid state and demonstrate quite amply why South Africans should be concerned about your recent trip to Iran and callous phone calls to various Iranian proxies in the Middle East.

Not only has your spokesperson made the astonishing claim of ‘repeated discredited information related to the beheading of children in Israel’ without bothering to attend the recent press briefing in which the first forensic reports were released to the public,(following Hamas live-streaming of its bloody mayhem), but you further confuse ’cause and effect’ by claiming: “This disinformation is part of the arsenal of dehumanisation tactics used to justify a ‘by any means necessary’ approach.”

Such a statement is immediately contradicted by the reality of Palestinian open support of ‘just war ‘ and ‘by any means necessary’ — policies long since advocated by Hamas, as a recent SABC programme aptly demonstrates.

The events disputed by your department are extremely troubling — the least of which is the lamentable loss of life experienced on both sides and especially the loss of life of innocent children, those who deserve our support.

Instead of compassion your spokesperson chose to weaponise the plight of Palestinian civilians — innocent persons who should not be political footballs nor sacrificial lambs. It is Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh who has openly demanded the blood of these children for his revolutionary cause in pursuit of his “Final Battle”, while holding hostages, and continuing rocket attacks against civilians — action that risks drawing all nations into another World War.

We are a nation at peace, and no South African wishes war to become the order of the day. The cause of the Palestinian people and the rest of the world, is not served by your department authoring cant and issuing propaganda over what has occurred.

Sincerely yours

David Robert Lewis