Four decadent narratives have captured South Africa like no other free country.
Narrative 1 blames Israel for being the victim of atrocities.
Narrative 2 holds that Nazis have to be white.
Narrative 3 does not regard Muslims gang raping Jewesses as violence against women.
Then there’s narrative 4: the conflict is about land rights, nothing to do with Palestinian Arabs wanting Jews dead.
Let’s be clear. Anyone who cheers for groups that by word and deed declare genocide to be their agenda, sings along with, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Juden free’. It took Oct 7 for a Diaspora community to cotton on to what it means having a government and black parties in Parliament playing with fire, lobbing the ‘genocide’ grenade at Israel, calling Jewish day schools breeding grounds for killer Zionists, and generally throwing in their lot with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Iran.
One cannot side with that axis of evil and not side with Hitler’s Holocaust...Which is exactly what corrupt politicians have done. A gun toting numbskull captures what’s become of a country formerly respected the world over and hailed as Africa’s economic hub.
A besieged Jewish community has cause to fret that its heavyweight business clout has bought very little in terms of lobbying power. Muslim interests are all over the ruling party like a rash. Until Oct 7 the Jewish Board of Deputies flattered to deceive. Visits were made, smiley photos taken at the Presidential house (forgetting that as VP he’d looked over the shoulder of a President named Zuma who auctioned the country to a foreign brotherhood) and invites extended. The ruling rogue elite were not impressed.
Why would they be? What were Jews in limbo compared to rogue states and terror groups which move oil and donor billions around? So it was that in quick order the government gave red carpet treatment to a trio of terrorists: Leila Khalid the old matriarch of terror; Mahmoud Abbas the Holocaust denier, kleptomaniac and inciter and, most horrendous of all, the political head of Hamas.
By hosting Meshaal, South Africa became the first country outside the Muslim world to fete a genocide-mad Islamist.
How different from the era of Nelson Mandela. The great man was undoubtedly a Zionist, though an ambivalent one. He folded Yasser Arafat in his arms and covered the grizzled cheeks with kisses. It ought to have shocked no one. After all Mandela had lectured the West that, “your enemies don’t have to be our enemies.” He also said, “Our attitude toward any country is determined by the attitude of that country toward our struggle.” The Jewish Board wriggled in their seats – Israel had traded with the Apartheid regime.
Still, the icon stood foursquare behind Israel, when he was allowed to by the Muslim lobby. One time he took the suicide bombing to task, during the intifadas, and an uproar ensued. ANC apparatchiks and the Muslim community promptly prevailed on Mandela to retract. Today – such a far cry from the heydays when the Chief Rabbi and Mandela were bosom buddies, and held hands before a nation basking in bonhomie – diplomatic ties with Israel have been severed.
Counter-intuitive is hardly the word. South Africa is witness to a miracle of magnitude eight. It’s been blessed to have prophecy come true. The country continues to be a Diaspora haven – relative that is, to America, Australia, France and Great Britain. To add to the implausibility, ISIS and Hezbollah and probably Hamas run offices and training camps in the country. Can such a miracle be connected to a prophecy?
Mr Koppel Bacher of Johannesburg had an audience with the Lubavitch Rebbe in 1987 at 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. What message, he asked the Rebbe, could he take back to a community teetering on a precipice. Revolution beckoned. Public violence was the order of the day. Fear and despair stalked Jew and gentile. The Rebbe’s message to Koppel Bacher was a one liner. A community of some 120,000, either packing up or holding out, heard it and wistfully sighed as if they would have liked to believe the Rebbe. ‘Tell them not to be afraid,” he told Koppel Bacher. “Moshiach is coming soon. It will be good until he comes, and even better afterwards.”
Four decades have passed. South Africa presents yet another ‘basket case’ example of post-colonial Africa – the worst if one looks at two ugly numbers: a murder rate and unemployment rate that soar above the continent’s norm. Mixed into this unpromising milieu anti-Semitic acts of violence, until Oct 7, were so few and far between that the Jewish Board had to justify honoraria’s, jobs and budgets by prising anti-Semites out of the woodwork, making a great show of it and celebrating hollow victories.
Post Oct 7, keeping a stoic attitude is difficult. Black politicians crowed like roosters for Hamas. And the ponderous hippo of a President stuck to his Cabinet guns: Palestine will be free from the river to the sea. The Chief Rabbi felt compelled to amend a Sabbath prayer.
“How can we pray for a government that supports an organization responsible for the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust,” wrote Chief Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein, “an organization whose official policy is to murder Jews and which poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the Jewish people and the State of Israel…When the government crosses the line and adopts a stance this immoral, we can’t in good conscience pray for them.”
No we can’t. But it won’t matter a jot; Jew baiting is a risk free device for diverting anger and harvesting votes. The white-made billionaire President (mining magnates offered Ramaphosa the devil of a bribe if he promised to not nationalise their gold, platinum and diamond conglomerates). He took the bribe, honored the terms, and protected looter and murderous cohorts, who wouldn’t blink at having him killed should he turn whistle blowing honest. Villainy is locked into every public space and endeavor.
If only Jews were as capable in politics as they’ve been in business, they might have impeded the rot. Sadly an investment in hoisting the President onto the throne went down a black hole. But then foresight is not an exact science. Myopic stupidity is a different kettle of fish. On the one hand the economy bursts at the seams with Jewish empires, not counting expat billionaires. On the other hand this economic clout was never put to use. Quite the contrary: rather than call out the government for labor policies based on skin color and political affiliation, rather than lean against the ill wind that blows no good, Jewish magnates took to championing depraved policies of a depraved government with no love for Jews. With undimmed virtue and patriotic flame, they led the CEO herd into the government corral.
Jews, of all people, setting race quotas are quite unfathomable. The founder of a dominant pharmaceutical chain discriminates against the hiring of – You guessed right: fellow Jews. Even black political figures were shocked. It made bad business sense to boot. Such a scandal it made that a fortune was wiped off the family holdings.
What did the Board do? It doubled down! “Dis-Chem admits ‘no whites’ letter and backlash cost the pharmacy hundreds of millions,” ran the headline. Beneath it we read the donkey-like statement: “The group continues to focus on its transformation journey, with an improvement on its B-BBEE [broad-based black economic empowerment] Scorecard level expected for the financial year.” Transformation and BEE, if you want to know, are dog whistles for anti-white discrimination.
For what? To impress shameless anti-Semites rulers? If that is not complicity in the rot and ruin of the country, what else could it be?
Oddly, it took not a brave Jew but a fundamentalist Christian to confront the anti-Semitic government. Not only was he black, he was the topmost judge in the land. Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng holds the covenant between God and Abraham to be irrevocable.
“I’m under an obligation as a Christian to love Israel, to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, which actually means the peace of Israel. And I cannot, as a Christian, do anything other than love and pray for Israel, because I know, hatred for Israel, by me and for (South Africa) can only attract unprecedented curses upon it.”
Regrettably the finger-wagging came years late. The government was already too far gone to avert the Almighty’s “unprecedented curses.” All that remains is to witness the ultimate game play at the close. Will the Rebbe’s blessing on South Africa prevail over the bible’s curse?
Steve Apfel is a veteran authority on anti-Zionism and a prolific author in general. His works have appeared in many journals and sites. Access selections of his work at