Israel irked by ANC bigwigs

ANT KATZ

Israel’s Ambassador to South Africa Arthur Lenk, in the meantime went to the Department of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco) in Pretoria, to deliver a message from his government.

During an IAW speech last week, South African Minister of Water and Sanitation Nomvula Mokonyane, accused Israel of practising apartheid to subjugate Palestinians, and accusing Israel of “lacking any humanity”.

ANC Deputy Secretary-General Jessie Duarte, at an event in Klerksdorp in North West, drew a parallel between Israel today and South Africa under apartheid when, she said, people “were detained without trial, tortured and mishandled by members of the army and police”.

RIGHT: Israeli Ambassador Arthur Lenk

This came after former SA President Kgalema Motlanthe, at the launch of the perennial anti-Israel hate week, advocated for a “one-state” Middle East solution, as a two-state solution was dead. This flew in the face of both SA government policy as well as that of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Motlanthe wrote afterwards in the Sunday Times that he envisaged a secular, federal state “where ethnicity and religion are no longer dividing features of life”.

Mokonyane, a member of the powerful ANC National Executive Committee, said that while “the ANC has seen the dawn of democracy”, this had not been the case for their old allies, the PLO.”

“The Palestinian struggle rages on, even more fierce than ever before. The viciousness and inhumanity with which the Israeli regime handles the resistance of the Palestinian to oppression, has not abated; it now seems to be on steroids,” she said.

Palestinians had endured the “dispossession of (their) lands” said the minister, “through a systematic policy of colonial expansion, ethnic cleansing and military occupation of the most brutal kind.”

Mokonyane, also accused Israel of conducting a system of water apartheid against the Palestinians and accused the Israeli Defence Force of being a “murderous machine”.

Israel was particularly irked by her reference to “the shooting of a Palestinian protester who was lying on the ground”, and her calling it a “demonstration of the culture and character of the Israeli army”. The minister, say the Israelis, was referring to Elor Azaria’s shooting of a wounded terrorist and not a protester.

Duarte said that although this week’s flurry of diplomatic activity included her calling on the South African government to strip South African Jews who had participated in Operation Cast Lead in 2010 of their citizenship, this was something she had said years ago, not now.  

South African Ambassador to Israel Sisa Ngombane was met by Ambassador Elron Yoram the deputy Director-General at the MFA, who conveyed the displeasure of the Israeli government about the statements made by Duarte and Mokonyane “which they described as being unacceptable and harmful to the bilateral relations”, a highly-placed source who asked not to be named, told Jewish Report.

LEFT: SA Ambassador Sisa Ngombane

“Ambassador Yoram made the point that the water figures cited by Minister Mokonyane (used to try and prove that Israel was subjugating the Palestinian community by cutting off their water) were not true. The Israeli government has done better than the requirements of the signed agreements. He also indicated that the reference to Israel as an enemy was unusually very strong and problematic.”

Mokonyane had sent a delegation headed by one of her senior advisers to Israel to investigate Israeli water technology last year. Also, when Dirco’s director general, Jerry Matjile, invited his Israeli counterpart, Dore Gold, to South Africa last year, they signed an agreement on mutual interest in water co-operation.

Following his dressing down, Ngombane promised to convey these issues to South Africa.

“Rallies like these normally lend themselves to this type of language and should solicit no big surprise from Israel,” said the ambassador.