A President presides over the putrid carcase of what used to be a country with pretensions. The Mandela logo could not stir a celebrity black movement of some vibey and violent adventurers; the luxury of liberating a country was too removed from the practical work of governing it. So a rainbow nation born with contagious hope and fierce ambition took a decade to blend with chaotic Africa.
Successive mobster layabouts were not up to maintaining the bare minimum – rule of law and public services – to spare the people. By any definition South Africa is a failed state whose cause and consequence are corruption, chronic poverty and violence. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/failed-state
Take violence. Every administration, from the time of President Mandela to the time of the incumbent Ramaphosa, cemented the country as a byword for murder. From the birth of majority black rule in 1994 to the year 2022 some half a million innocents had their lives terminated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_South_Africa
What gives this bloody record and reputation a sardonic turn is the haste of all its guilty governments to call for Israel to pay the price for shedding Palestinian blood.
No member of the United Nations quite matches South Africa for speed of condemnation.
Take the last of quick mini wars between Gaza and Israel. “Operation Breaking Dawn” was so quick that the compulsory condemnations of Israel from every quarter were forestalled. Only South Africa had the quickness to complain. Naledi Pandor, the very ugliest of anti-Semites in the President’s cabinet, pleaded with the international community
“to intervene and end the current and continual attacks by apartheid Israel against the people of Palestine”.
The point is not her infantile words or her fibs. Being a quick complainer is also beside the point. And so is the crude and common tactic of manipulating Palestinian Arab "suffering" for a lightning rod to strike at the Jews. The real point is the bedlam of a mind oblivious to a very black pot calling the Jewish kettle black.
How would a bigot’s rhetoric look superimposed on reality? Take Palestinian Arabs killed under Israel’s watch and compare it with innocents killed under the watch of Israel’s quick-fire accusers.
Palestinian Arabs killed in IDF Ops of all types, including anti-terrorist raids
includes Militants + civilians
1998 – 2022
1st Intifada 1550
2nd Intifada 3200
3rd Intifada 1300
Def Shield 240
Cast Lead 1400
Protective Edge 2100
Pillar of Defence 150
Wall Guardian 300
Breaking Dawn 36
Total 10 276
South Africa, the accusers
includes civilians only
1994-2022
Total 537,000+
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israel_Defense_Forces_operations 3 and 4 digit stats are rounded up
+ Crime crisis continues in first quarter of 2022 with wo…
Eye-popping comparisons:
Israel: 10276 vs. S. Africa: 537,000
Average # Palestinian Arab fatalities during 25 years:: 411 per year
Average # murdered in SA during 28 years:: 19 178 per year
- Murder victims in the SA toll were 100% innocent. Fatalities in the Palestinian Arab toll are mainly terrorist combatants..
- Those that live by the sword shall die by the sword. Therefore remove terrorist combatants so that stats relate only to innocent Palestinian Arab ‘civvies.’
According to Int. Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism: http://www.ict.org.il unarmed Palestinian Arabs killed as % of all Palestinian Arabs killed = +/- 5%!
- Therefore:Palestinian Arab civilians killed by Israel = 21 per year
For the comfort of Israel’s quick-fire accusers who look on the IDF as a brutal killing machine, the tally should be in the hundreds of thousands. The yearly toll of 21 innocent Palestinian Arabs is too low for the comfort of accusers.
Contrast this with violent SA (a country not at war) at 19 000 murders per year. Israel’s killing toll - while at war - is therefore 913 times lower than the murder toll in peaceful South Africa.
The emotion of hatred is perverse. It may corrode even a nation by consuming it inside out. From King Abimelech in Genesis to Adolph Hitler, from Iranian mullahs to the crazies of Gaza and the comrades who consigned South Africa to the junk heap: haters obsess about the Jews at the cost of their own.
Warning the US Congress about making deals with Iran, Walter Russell Mead reconstituted the insanity into politics.
“Quite sane leaders when it comes to Israel lose their minds. Nations and political establishments warped by Israel-hatred tend to make one dumb decision after another.”
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks converted ‘mind-losing’ to propaganda.
“To overthrow (Israel) you have to invent your own discourse, your own narrative. All that matters is that people believe it. That is what is now happening in the campaign against Israel. It brings together people who have nothing (except hatred for Israel) in common.”
And all too frequently, ugly haters such as Naledi Pandor are enemies of human rights, and even the sanctity of life itself.
Steve Apfel is an authority on anti-Zionism and a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. His blog, Balaam’s curse is followed in 15 countries on 5 continents