EFF turns Easter message into anti-Israel diatribe

JORDAN MOSHE

Wishing the public a “happy and revolutionary Easter weekend” is how the message issued on 18 April by EFF spokesperson Mbuyeseni Quinton Ndlozi began. The party then went on to caution people to travel safely and drink responsibly.

Mentioning the last supper, the statement reminded readers to be mindful of the needy, and to “prioritise the poor and less privileged as the best embodiment of Christ today”.

Immediately thereafter, the religious message turned political. Reminding readers that Palestine is “the birth and death place of Jesus Christ”, the EFF urged solidarity with the people of modern-day Palestine, whom it said, “represent the suffering, permanently crucified, disfigured, and humiliated naked body of Christ hanging on the summit for all shame”.

This state of affairs is attributed to Israel, described as being guilty of “racial discrimination, colonisation and apartheid”. The EFF asked the public not only to pray for the oppressed, but “participate in the international isolation of the apartheid state of Israel until they recognise Palestinian rights to equality and return of their land”.

The party’s appropriation of a religious figure for political ends and its suggestion that Jesus was a Palestinian has been widely condemned. According to Benji Shulman, the director of public policy at the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF), this appropriation is something the EFF does frequently, even in the face of obvious historical truths.

“Jesus was a Jew from Judea,” says Shulman. “Unfortunately, a statement like this smacks of classic Christian anti-Semitism, because they are trying to separate Jesus and his Jewish roots just like they try to separate Jewish roots from Israel.”

Also expressing outrage is the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) leader, Reverend Kenneth Meshoe, who said that there was absolutely no place for such use of religious figures in the wilful distortion of history. In a responding statement, he said, “The ACDP condemns the unacceptable habit of the EFF of releasing statements during Easter and Passover alleging that Jesus Christ was a Palestinian.

“I appeal to […] the leadership of the EFF to respect our faith, and stop spreading lies about Jesus Christ. All honest South Africans and people around the world know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, not Palestine. When Jesus was born, the word Palestine was not even coined. The EFF’s political goal of trying to undermine the state of Israel is rejected with the contempt it deserves.”

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) said that Ndlozi’s invocation of the viciously anti-Semitic “Christ-killer” imagery to defame the Jewish state was deplorable, if predictable. According to Associate Director David Saks, this slander against the Jewish people is historically one of the most pernicious, inciting anti-Jewish bigotry and frequently even acts of murderous violence against Jewish communities everywhere.

“Likening the alleged crimes by Israel today with what Jews were supposedly guilty of twenty centuries ago has the obviously intended effect of portraying Jews as being cruel and evil by nature,” he says. “Whereas all mainstream Christian movements have now distanced themselves from such venomous ideologies, the EFF appears to be quite comfortable to fall back on the crudest medieval-era rhetoric and imagery in order to demonise not only Israel but the Jewish people as a whole.

“The SAJBD rejects it with the contempt it deserves, and all decent-minded South Africans will surely do likewise.”