Israeli Officials Accuse South Africa Of Boycotting Israel

Commentary | Israeli leaders are seething over the latest call for a boycott of Israel by a ranking member of the South African Government. On Sunday, South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Ebrahim Ismael Ebrahim, told reporters at the City Press, that he was “discouraging” South Africans from “associating” with Israel. Ebrahim went on to say, “Israel is an occupier country which is oppressing Palestine, so it is not proper for South Africans to associate with Israel. We discourage people from going there except if it has to do with the peace process.”

The Israeli Ambassador to South Africa Dov Segev-Steinberg is demanding clarification from South Africa over what his government feels is a call for a boycott of Israel. Jerusalem’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jonathan Rosenzweig, said, “The truth is coming out. This is a public call for a boycott.”

The latest uproar comes just three months after South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry issued instructions that any products or goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank may not be labeled as a “Product of Israel.”

The South Africa Israel Public Affairs Committee commented on the latest dispute between Israel and South Africa, saying Ebrahim “allowed his personal agenda to drive South Africa’s policy towards Israel to the detriment of South Africa and its economic well-being and international relations.”

“Of course it is perfectly acceptable for the South African government to allow visits to all Arab/Muslim countries in spite of their appalling human rights records and real application of Apartheid policies,” the statement said. “South Africa’s ‘balanced’ approach to Libya and Syria has been noted in their lack of statements on what has [been] and is transpiring in these countries.”

Yet again, we witness another critic of Israel treating the current situation in the Middle East as if it has no history at all. They have no other context except to see Israel as an oppressor and the Palestinians as the victim. They choose to willfully ignore the 1400 year history of Islamic violence against the Jewish people. They willfully ignore the 3500 year history of the Jewish nation of Israel. They willfully ignore the fact that Jews have maintained a continuous population in Israel since the destruction of the nation by the Romans in 72 CE. They willfully ignore the fact that since the population of Jerusalem was first officially recorded in the 1850’s, Jews have always been the majority in the city. They willfully ignore the 63 years of Palestinian and Arab terror against Jewish civilians in Israel and the many decades of Arab attacks on Jews prior to the re-establishment of the Jewish nation of Israel in 1948.

Perhaps, if men like Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim of South Africa were to stop demanding that Israel surrender it’s ancestral sovereignty in the land of Israel, there could finally be an end to the conflict. Perhaps if the Islamic world were to finally accept as reality that Israel exists as a Jewish nation, and that Jews are not willing to return to living as protected Dhimmis under Islamic suzerainty, the two sides could finally sit down and negotiate a solution to this mind numbing crisis.

This has never been about land; it has always been about religion, as stated by Yassar Arafat himself, when he mentioned the four guiding principals of the PLO: “1. Jews are the enemy of Allah. 2. Islam is fighting a continuous religious war against the Jews. 3. The killing of Jews is a religious obligation. 4. Palestinians are the vanguard in this war against the Jews, and all Islamic nations are obligated to assist in this war.”

No one is saying that Israel is 100 percent innocent of wrongdoing but all it takes is a honest reading of the comments by Islamic leaders, Muslim clerics and Arab government officials to realize that they are still unwilling to allow a nation of 5.5 million Jews to exist independently in their midst. This attitude was made clear for the world to see on August 2, 1948, when Hassan Al Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood that is currently ruling Egypt, told the New York Times, “If the Jewish state becomes a fact, and this is realized by the Arab peoples, they will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea… Even if we are beaten now in Palestine, we will never submit. We will never accept the Jewish state… But for politics, the Egyptian army alone, or volunteers of the Muslim Brotherhood, could have destroyed the Jews.”

Despite all the Israel civilians blown to bits by Palestinian suicide bombers; despite the many thousands of rockets launched on Israeli civilians from Gaza; despite the thousands of calls for an Islamic Holy War against the Jews; the demonization of Israel continues unabated. Those opposed to Israel’s existence are incapable of seeing two sides of any issue between Israel and the Palestinians. They is not interested in a peaceful solution for the people of Israel and Palestine. They are interested in a complete capitulation and surrender by Israel, followed by the return to virtual slavery of millions of Jews; living under the banner of all conquering Islam. That, Mr. Ebrahim, is not peace, It is genocide.