By Iqbal Jassat
Has William Gumede adopted to be a “spokesperson” for the apartheid regime of Israel on a voluntary basis or is something more sinister afoot?
His recent column “SA must forge rapprochment with Israel” (Sunday Times – April 27), suggests that he has completely missed the wood for the trees – either unwittingly or deliberately pushing an agenda that smacks of Israel’s playbook.
The stance he promotes – apart from a narrative that obscures Israel’s colonial and apartheid status – also feeds into the outrageous demands by Helen Zille and her party, to wrest control of South Africa’s foreign policy.
Calling on the government to reinstate ties with Israel and to walk away from perhaps the most crucial embodiment of our international moral standing resulting from the groundbreaking case against the Zionist regime’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), is tantamount to denying our own freedom struggle.
Gumede ought to know the enormous sacrifices made by an array of individuals and organisations ranging from the Anti-Apartheid Movement to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) plus countries such as Cuba, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Soviet Union and a progressive India (not the current sectarian Modi model), to propel the liberation of South Africa.
If foreign policy makers dismiss humane values of ethics, justice and morality as is the case with the Trump administration’s disastrous reliance on transactional trade-offs, our young democracy will be stripped of an identity forged on fundamental human rights.
It is ironic and quite astounding that Gumede would be punting ties with a regime and shockingly doing so by ignoring horrendous war crimes including ethnic cleansing it continues to commit against indigenous Palestinians, at a time the world has been touched by the remarkable courage Pope Francis possessed to speak truth to power.
Gumede’s prescription is a non-starter and utterly misguided though it is expected that apartheid Israel’s freak rightwing lobby will applaud it.
Iqbal Jassat
Executive Member
Media Review Network
Johannesburg
South Africa
