Francesca Albanese, Rapporteur at the UN Human Rights Committee, paid a heavy price for her categorical hatred. After Marco Rubio imposed sanctions on the Italian because she “spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the US, Israel, and the West,” she can’t get a credit card or open a bank account. “Treated almost like Osama bin Laden” said the forlorn woman.
Her predicament begs a campaign slogan: ‘Bigotry could get you de-banked.’ Rubio’s “unabashed” antisemites are the rule. The reticent type, if it exists at all, practices hate below the radar. From what befell Albanese, millions of denigrators of Zionists can be taught an object lesson.
And so they ought to be. Contrary to a defeatist view that the toxic hatred cannot be solved, President Trump has made it plain sailing through a covert axiom, “hit them where it hurts.” By imposing colossal reparations, the DOJ Task Force to combat antisemitism coerced Ivy League schools into making onerous and humiliating concessions.
Never before did a US president compel antisemites and institutions to pay with trauma or crushing penalty. No western leader ever fought back with the resolve of a boxer pummelling an opponent to the canvas.
Even so, President Trump has unfinished business.
As far back as early February his executive order put the South African government on notice that it would pay dearly for its:
“Aggressive positions towards the US and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the ICJ, and reinvigorating relations with Iran. The US cannot support undermining US foreign policy.”
There and then Trump cut off aid to South Africa because the government did “bad things.” You like keeping company with regimes that wish America ill? No more money for your people. Goodbye.
It was punishment all right, but for ordinary citizens. Trump let the government off the hook.
A contaminated fly in the ointment for his realignments and concepts in the Middle East walked away unscathed.
Today it remains for Trump to ‘pull an Albanese’ on his South African counterpart. President Ramaphosa and cohorts need to be de-banked for doing “bad things” such as making Israel defend a claim of genocide in a kangaroo court known as the ICJ.
During the course of a somewhat theatrical meeting in the Oval Office, reporters asked Trump if he expected Ramaphosa to drop the case. His indifference, a couldn’t care less attitude, was noteworthy.
“I don’t expect anything to be honest. I don’t know. They’ve got a case. There’s a lot of anger… We’ll have a ruling, and who knows what the ruling is going to mean”.
If we are defined by the company we keep, President Ramaphosa is by definition Tehran’s lawfare asset. The kleptocracy he superintends amplified antisemitism which, before Oct 7, had been ‘tolerable’, into bold expressions and actions, proving that the disease is much more than hating Jews. Fundamentally “it is a highly effective political tool particularly in times of crisis” or, as Professor Ruth Wisse describes it, “the organization of politics against the Jews.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, South Africa’s government has been captured not just by Israel’s existential enemy, Iran but by home-grown Islamists.
Tehran’s operative in Ramaphosa’s cabinet was one. Naledi Pandor, a black convert to Islam, gives substance to lore that an evil face is a mirror into the soul. She phoned Hamas ten days after it unleashed Oct 7 - Hamas claimed she congratulated it. What is known is that soon after the call she made a whistle stop visit to Iran.
The ANC ruling party was bankrupt and about to be liquidated. Lo and behold on her return it announced that money was no object. Not only could the ANC pay off debts but it had a trove to spend on proceedings at the ICJ.
Pronto, a bulky squad of lawyers, jurists and hangers-on was despatched to convince a bench packed with anti-Zionists that Israel intended genocide. Bear in mind it all happened before Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza, before the IDF had killed or displaced one civilian, or rescued one hostage.
Who says that a down and out country can’t make bad mischief even for a Trump administration that takes no nonsense.
President Ramaphosa has been a one-man wrecking ball. South Africa is his collateral damage. The overlord of a bedlam state is the kingpin criminal, Iran asset, BRIC stooge, Islamist ally, kleptomaniac, seizer of private property and anti-white lawmaker.
Not content to make alliances with genocidal regimes, the beefy billionaire cattle breeder has put Islamist ideologues in control of the government’s diplomatic relations. After Trump ordered Tehran’s nuclear plants to be bombed, the department signed a book of condolences at Iran’s embassy in Pretoria. It all reflects a provocative antisemitism capable of poisoning continents.
Take for instance giving senior Hamas member, Naim Bassem, diplomatic red carpet treatment. The terrorist thereupon accompanied Mandela’s raving antisemite grandson to lay a wreath at the foot of the icon’s statue.
Few gambits are grimmer or more disgusting, than exhuming a civil rights icon for waging a vendetta against the Jews. It began with Martin Luther King the Zionist enthusiast. Nelson Mandela came next. That giant of humanity was hardly cold in his grave when he got captured for settling antisemitic scores. Now chaired by the Islamist, Naledi Pandor, the Mandela Foundation meant to foster reconciliation and everything noble the great man stood for, has been emasculated into an organ of Islamic propaganda.
Bird of a feather, Pandor tapped the woman we began with, Francesca Albanese, to deliver the annual Mandela lecture. The Jewish Board of Deputies protested that the,
“Two women now stand together under the banner of the Mandela name, not to bring South Africans together, but to unite them in hate.”
More disgusting, Pandor abused the Mandela Foundation to extend her campaign against Jewish Zionists to Christian Zionists. To call her act insurrection is to put it mildly. South Africa is a Christian country, historically and culturally. So too is neighbouring Mozambique where the African terrorist group Al Shabaab has decapitated Christians, burnt down churches, displaced whole villages and converted tribes to Islam.
While South African troops were part of a peace keeping force to eliminate the jihadi group, Pandor in the name of Mandela promised to pay anyone who combats - no, not Al Shabaab - but Christian Zionism which that Islamic fundamentalist calls, “a force for genocide.”
I took the repurposed Nelson Mandela as a personal affront. In his years of retirement Mandela lent his irresistible stature to empower me to make the country’s mainstream media pay a price for antisemitism.
Trump’s modus operandi to, ‘hit them where it hurts’, by de-banking anti-Jewish bigots, has never been needed more than here, at the tip of an awakened continent. The long-suffering ‘Rainbow Nation’ would be eternally indebted to the US President, doughty defender of Jews and Christians under threat.
After all, what starts with the Jews never ends with them.
A version of this article first appeared on The Spectator.
Steve Apfel, a veteran authority on anti-Zionism, is a prolific author of non-fiction and fiction. He blogs at Balaam’s Curse.