So why all the fuss?
What is the problem with rolling out the red carpet to welcome Hamas to South Africa? There seems to have been a real confusion as to why Jewish South Africans specifically, but also many other citizens were outraged by not only the visit but the royal treatment that Hamas leader Khalid Mashal and his delegation received during their time here.
I’d like to share some thoughts as the source of our distress.An organisation whose core ideology is predicated on hatred of Jews, with frequent and recurrent incitement to kill us, was afforded a hero’s welcome to our country. South Africa, through its own painful history, is a nation that knows better than any the danger of incitement to hate, whether based on race, religion or other such grounds. Hamas’s Founding Charter states categorically (Article 7), “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: O Moslem there is a Jew hiding behind me come and kill him.” The preamble encourages Islamic groups all over the Arab world to do the same, “in the fight against the warmongering Jews”. Yet this organisation was welcomed with open arms.Hamas has continuously stated that it has no intention to create a negotiated settlement in the region for Palestinians and Israeli’s as envisaged and supported by our government in South Africa. Its Charter affirms that, “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. …Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” Initiatives, proposal and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.” I do have to wonder if the lavish reception they received in South Africa was also a `waste in time’ getting in the way of their `jihad’ objectives.
And we’ve seen over the past year Hamas’s commitment to this objective of murdering Jews. Last year Hamas praised the murder of worshippers saying their morning prayers in a synagogue in Har Nof in Israel. Prior to that, when three Israeli teenagers on their way home from school were kidnapped and brutally murdered by Hamas members, Khaled Mashal spoke warmly of the “blessed hands” of the perpetrators. The Guardian recently quoted Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum as stating, “ let me say, loud and clear, to our people in the West Bank: Don’t you have cars? Don’t you have motorcycles? Don’t you have clubs? Don’t you have bulldozers? Don’t you have trucks? Anyone who has a knife, a club, a weapon/ or a car, yet does not use it to run over a Jew or a settler and does not use it to kill dozens of Zionists, does not belong to Palestine.”And Hamas has encouraged and congratulated the many Palestinians that have heeded this call stabbing innocent fathers, mothers and children in over fifty attacks throughout Israel. One of the daily incidents of these barbaric stabbings and shootings involved four young Henkin children (including a baby) watching their parents in the front seats of the car being brutally murdered. The next day a father was murdered and his wife and young child knifed in an incident in the Old City of Jerusalem followed by a 16 year old boy being stabbed on his way to prayers. And so it has proceeded every day for the past month – Hamas’s vision coming to fruition.It was deeply hurtful to us that at no time during the visit was there any acknowledgement of the founding principles of antisemitism and incitement to genocide against the Jewish people espoused by Hamas and reiterated consistently to the present.Surely the ANC could predict the alarm bells that would be raised by our ruling party signing `letters of intent’, and further enters into discussions to open up a Hamas office in our country, with an organisation that continues to incite violence and hatred against Jews.So Mashal and his Hamas delegation get embraced by ANC leadership and we are led to believe that the important lessons of South Africa’s transformation will be shared.Sadly, not one iota of the principles of peace-making were imparted during the many meetings that were held. On the last day of their visit, Mashaal confirmed that ”attacks on Israeli’s will go on.” At the rally in Cape Town on 21 October he told the crowd that “the Jerusalem intifada” would continue. Knife attacks on Israeli civilians not just in Jerusalem, but also in cities such as Be’er Sheva, Ra’anana and Petach Tikva would continue.
The only reason that we could possibly understand the hosting of our ruling party of a racist and antisemitic organisation bent on the genocide of the Jewish people was if they could influence and in some way change their intent to remove Jews from their homeland through the current policy of systematically knifing to death civilians. Hence, the only rationale we could comprehend for welcoming Hamas to our country would be if the ANC could share the importance of a negotiated settlement towards a two state solution (something we as the SABJD continually call for, as our government has committed itself to over and over again).
If this was indeed the intention, however, Khalid Mashal’s statements throughout his visit, culminating in his commitment to continue the killing spree in Israel, makes it clear this was a futile exercise, one that has only compromised any role that our country can play in facilitating a peaceful way forward to a negotiated, two state solution to the conflict.
