My 2012 visit to South Africa to promote my book “Israel
Reclaiming the Narrative” was timely.
My book highlights the lies and hypocrisy of the Arab
narrative which positions Palestinians as the innocent victims of oppression.
The truth is that they have a long history of violence and terror and have
rejected every pragmatic peace deal offered to them. Whenever any group of
organization pose as “pro-Palestinian” you can bet they are, at the same
time, virulently anti-Israel. Scratch them and you will find, more often than
not, this extends to them being anti-Semitic.
My visit coincided with the infamous and fraudulent “Israel
Apartheid Week” in which South African campuses were the scene of hideous “Hate-Israel”
theater where half-truths and innuendos posed as facts.
Most telling was the endorsement of this hateful circus by
the South African Council of Churches who, in their official letter dated 24th
February, spoke in anti-Semitic terms of Israeli violence against “non-Jews,”
positioning the Palestinians as a Jesus figure, and Israelis as a form of
anti-Christ. This blasphemy harks back to the dark days when Jews were
portrayed as Christ killers and demonized and led to their slaughter at the
hands of the Church. Indeed, under the cloak of Replacement Theology, this Jew
hatred festers today as was evidenced by the decision of the SACC to isolate
one country, and one country only, for condemnation – Israel.
With all the heinous crimes in the world, only Israel
warrants a whole week of “academic” assault. Israel is pilloried as evil
beyond all other nations on earth. The SACC, in their letter, questioned what
sort of regime Israel is. Let me answer them.
Israel is the one regime that airlifted more than fourteen
thousand Ethiopians out of their war-torn country and given new lives in the
Jewish state.
Israel was the first country to recognize the newly
independent Christian nation of South Sudan.
Israel is there now helping to
develop their agricultural, medical, security, and industrial infrastructure.
Where is the South African Council of Churches on this issue? They are strangely
silent when it comes to the suffering and slaughter of their co-coreligionists in
Africa and the Middle East. Instead, they concentrate their bile on the one
Jewish state in the world in an attempt to turn it into the one pariah state in
the world.
Dare I say that these accusations can be leveled at the
ANC-led South African government?
Israel is the regime that flew half way across the globe to
rescue and help the earthquake stricken people of Haiti. Israel was the first
country to set up field hospitals to operate and treat the victims.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East in which the
Christian population is growing and living in peace and security. That alone
should merit the praise of the South African Council of Churches – but, no! Not
even that.
So when people like members of SACC, the BDS Movement and ANC
leaders including Archbishop Tutu, call Israel a racist, oppressive, country I
would ask them to look, as I did during my visit to South Africa, at the
townships of South Africa. There I saw what I call an Apartheid of Poverty. They
are not townships. That name is deceptive. They are slums.
Nobody, not even the Palestinians, live in tin shacks with
no sanitation or electricity. The Palestinians are middle class compared to the
abject condition I witnessed throughout South Africa in these slums.
I would have thought that these people, numbering in their
millions, deserve a week of campus activity. Instead, they are ignored. The
South African Council of Churches would rather spend their resources
criticizing the Jewish State of Israel rather than addressing the human rights
crime of poverty in their backyard. I wonder why? Maybe it’s the Replacement
Theology, that leads directly to anti-Semitism, that has a leading role in
their hypocrisy?
So I left South Africa with one troubling thought in my
mind. On an issue like this, it is clearly not Israel that is the racist. It is
people like the SACC, ANC and BDS activists that have perverted South Africa into
becoming the leading hub of delegimitization against my country to cover up the
shame of their failures in their own country.
For decades, it sponsored and fostered malevolent events
such as the infamous Durban “Zionism is Racism” horror show, through to
the Tutu inspired “Russell Tribunal,” a one-sided and hateful kangaroo
court. This circus tried, once again, to pose Israel as an Apartheid state.
With its tainted jury and manufactured half truths it had nothing to do with
truth or reconciliation. It was not an attempt to further peace between Israel
and the Palestinians. It was yet another showcase for bias and hate mongering
that has continued to this day with horrendous official statements of the ANC
party.
Truth be told, if these frauds and liars dare look honestly
northward up the sweep of Africa and across the Middle East, they would find
only one country that can genuinely be called the “Rainbow Nation” of liberal
democracy where people of all faiths are free to express themselves both
religiously and politically. That nation is Israel.
Until they can speak to God, and to themselves, with
honesty, organizations like the BDS Movement, the South African Council of
Churches ANC and, yes, the government, South Africa has a long road to travel
before it can be considered a place that contributes to peace in our troubled
region.
Barry Shaw is the author of “Israel Reclaiming the
Narrative”. www.israelnarrative.com
He is also the Special Consultant on
Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic
College.
No comments:
Post a Comment