Diplomat’s SA-Israel campaign starts in Soweto

Israeli Ambassador David Saranga’s visit to Soweto last week, where he met the sister of Hector Pieterson – the little boy shot and killed during the 1976 Soweto Uprising – left him feeling inspired about being in South Africa.

Saranga is in South Africa for a few weeks to meet and find ways to support Israeli embassy staff and the Jewish community here. He also hopes to bolster the South Africa-Israel connection, and is working around the clock to absorb as much as he can about the situation so he can offer wisdom and guidance.

Although aware of the South African government’s negative stance on Israel, he said he wasn’t surprised by the warm welcome he got in this country.

South Africans, he said, were far more favourably inclined towards Israel than most other countries, citing the latest Pew Research Center Report on this issue.

“The research, which came out a few weeks ago, showed that South Africans are among the top 10 countries with a positive attitude towards Israel,” he told the SA Jewish Report.

That, he said, was despite the government’s attitude and the fact that internationally, views of Israel were far more negative than positive, according to the survey of 24 countries conducted earlier this year.

“We always knew that public opinion in South Africa was pro-Israel, but we want to strengthen the people-to-people relationships and leverage this support to build bridges,” Saranga said.

Saranga, who has been here for two weeks so far, is the director of the digital diplomacy bureau in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a seasoned diplomat with three decades of experience in the foreign service. He has served as ambassador to Romania, and was senior foreign policy advisor to former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. He has held the positions of media and public affairs consul in the Israeli consulate in New York; director of the European Parliament liaison department for the Israel delegation to the European Union (EU) in Brussels; and director of public affairs in the Israeli embassy in Madrid.

“The challenge for us here is huge, especially with the government’s stance and the consequences of its International Court of Justice appeal,” he said. “However, we are diplomats and as such, we are always open to dialogue. We want to resolve the misunderstandings in this country through dialogue.”

Saranga said he was unafraid of challenges. Looking back on his work in Spain, he said, “I arrived in Madrid one week before the Second Intifada began in Israel while public opinion in Spain was hostile toward Israel for many reasons. Interestingly while the left and right wing in Spain had little common ground, they agreed on the topic of Israel. So, while buses were exploding back home and I was worried about my family and my people, I still had to put Israel’s message across in Spain.”

While working in the EU in Brussels, he had to deal with “so many in the EU criticising Israel because their constituencies were formed mainly of Muslim immigrants in Europe”, Saranga said. “No matter what they believed, if they bashed Israel, they got points with their constituencies.”

Though he said it might seem like Israeli diplomats have a rough ride wherever they go, it wasn’t all like that.

“Even in the most hostile of environments, we find so many friends and supporters. As diplomats, we have open doors to us everywhere. It doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with our political stand, but they see the work we do in security, agriculture, water management, technology, and science and recognise that it’s in their interest to have a good relationship with us.”

Saranga said he recognised that most of the media focused on negative coverage of Israel, but behind the scenes, there was always good diplomatic relations and dialogue. Because of this, he said, he tended to focus on social media platforms as there, “you don’t need intermediation, you can have direct communication. You can communicate with different communities and find ways of making them see Israel’s relevance to them.”

As someone who has dealt with Israel’s digital presence at the coalface, Saranga admits that “there’s hostility towards Israel all over the world. You can’t be surprised at that, with just 15 million Jews in the world, and 1.9 billion Muslims.

“The way to deal with it isn’t to try and convince the whole world, there’s no point. I wish we could, but we can’t. We need to bring our message to the people who shape the messages and who haven’t bought into the anti-Israel bias.

“If someone is already against Israel, no message of mine will change that, but if someone wants to know more about the country, then we can make sure they have access to more information.

“I know people might not understand why or agree with me about ignoring hate media, but how many fights like this have you won? None. Exactly, so let it go. Don’t fight it. Concentrate on things that we can change or have an impact on rather than something we have no chance of changing.”

Saranga said Israel’s platforms in Persian and Arabic were very strong. “More than 90% of the followers of our Persian language – the language spoken in Iran – Instagram come from Iran, and they have positive sentiments towards Israel,” he said. “This amounts to millions of Iranians who are following us because they want to hear our message.”

Since his arrival, Saranga has had back-to-back meetings in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and said it would take him a while to come up with different ways to do things and build bridges in South Africa. “I’m still in the process of learning the landscape. How serious would you take what I have to say now after just two weeks?”

But he has been learning since he arrived. “If you want to understand a society and country, you must learn the different aspects of it, its past and culture,” he said. “For me, a first-time visitor to South Africa, it felt important to go to Soweto.

“It wasn’t easy being at the Hector Pieterson Museum and to hear to the stories, but after meeting Hector’s sister, Antoinette, I felt so optimistic. She spoke about reconciliation with no anger in her voice. It was an eye opener also learning about the many Jews who fought against apartheid.”

Saranga said it showed how barriers could be broken and bridges built or mended, which gave him hope for relations between South Africa and Israel.