Bias beyond belief

Those who dislike us can be quite absurd. Last week, we ran a really positive story about the South African Jewish community raising money to renovate bomb shelters in Israel.

As we know, bomb shelters save lives. Had it not been for bomb shelters in Israel over the 12-day war with Iran recently, many more people would have perished when Iranian ballistic missiles hit urban and suburban areas all over in Israel. One only had to see the devastation of the buildings that were hit to know what could have happened without bomb shelters and reinforced rooms.

The photographs that we carried in the SA Jewish Report said it all.

Our community was able to renovate urgently-needed bomb shelters, save Jewish lives, and is now destined to save many more. I can only applaud this.

However, our haters picked up this story, and spread it on social media, suggesting that it somehow made us so much worse than they thought we were. Somehow, us raising money to protect our civilian brothers and sisters in Israel was deplorable in their eyes.

One person insisted on Facebook, “During the response from Iran, there were videos showing that the shelters were exclusively for European Israelis – dark skinned people weren’t allowed into them. So, their ‘humanitarian’ support is even more selective than one would expect.”

This person clearly hasn’t the foggiest idea about Israel and those who live in it. The concept is ludicrous! Israel is made up of Jews from all over the world, many from African or Arab countries who may be darker, and others of European descent. So many of them, including in my own family, have cross-cultural marriages – shock, horror! This person is suggesting that half the family wasn’t allowed into the shelter by the other half. Really! For goodness’ sake, this isn’t even about doing your homework before you attack us, it’s about logic. But I guess if you are determined to make us look evil, you might say anything.

Also, with so many Arab-Israelis living all over Israel, there are no racial or religious-based shelters, there are shelters for people in the area. Nobody is being chased from shelters. That’s tantamount to attempted murder. Let’s be real here!

Another response to our piece was someone who claimed they wondered if “they” – us Jews – “raise money to buy shelters for homes across South Africa, or are they selective ‘humanitarians’?” Well, I’m happy to answer that this community, believe it or not, is humanitarian across the board, and most South African Jews give fortunes, if they can, to other South Africans.

Have you heard of Afrika Tikkun; The Angel Network; SA Harvest; The Mensch Network; Ikamva Labantu, and I can go on to name many more Jewish-run outreach organisations that feed, house and/or find jobs for millions of South Africans? So, please, get your facts straight, and don’t denigrate us for the sake of it.

One comment, coming from someone born into our community and who has made it his business to demean us publicly, was, “Part of why the world is so messed up is that it seems evil people are much better at fundraising.” I have no words for that.

It does seem that those who wish to destroy us will stop at nothing.

When I read that the Nelson Mandela Foundation had a competition to find ways to deal with Christian Zionists, I had to reread it because it didn’t make sense to me. First, Nelson Mandela was president when this country created a phenomenal new Constitution that gave freedom of religion to all its people. He was also the person who signed it into law on 18 December 1996. In our Constitution, we’re all guaranteed freedom of religion and belief, and any unfair discrimination based on religion is explicitly prohibited.

So, it seemed incongruous that anything like this could come from an organisation built on the name of Mandela, who would probably be turning in his grave at the idea of such a “competition”.

Let’s dig a bit deeper here. Perhaps a “competition” isn’t something to be concerned about. Wrong! In the call for proposals for these “Solidarity in Action Awards”, the organisation makes it clear this competition is somehow to change or alter the belief system of Christian Zionists.

It claims that “Christian Zionism – a theology that conflates biblical prophecy with political support for Israeli settler colonialism – remains a driving force in legitimising occupation, apartheid, and genocide.” The foundation goes on to claim that Christian Zionism is “an ideology that has been a barrier to achieving peace and justice for Palestinians”.

In other words, the people at the foundation believe that there’s something wrong with Christian Zionism, and they want to change or supposedly fix the beliefs of Christian Zionists to fit their own.

I guess in their minds, it’s just fine to have a competition to find ways to change people’s beliefs with “impactful initiatives” because they don’t like what their beliefs stand for. How dare they?

What are they thinking? Perhaps they don’t realise or know that there are between 15 and 18 million Christian Zionists in Africa, and at least six million – and perhaps closer to 10 million – in South Africa. So they may be able to bully us Jews, but there’s fat chance they are going to successfully challenge Christian Zionists.

Perhaps they are considering so called “re-education camps”, as exist in China, where people are detained and reported to be forced to change their thoughts and beliefs. According to Amnesty International, China had a campaign of “mass internment, intrusive surveillance, political indoctrination, and forced cultural assimilation among the Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups”. Amnesty International makes no bones about this being severe human rights abuse.

Is this what the organisation named after our country’s icon of human rights is thinking? How else does it believe it is going to change people’s religion and belief systems?

Much like Jews are entrenched in our ways and beliefs, so, too, are our Christian Zionist brethren. It’s abhorrent to think that anyone has the audacity to assume they can change what someone believes, especially when these people aren’t harming anybody. Shame on the Nelson Mandela Foundation!

Shabbat shalom!

Peta Krost

Editor