In medieval Europe, Jews were balmed for the Black Death that wiped out over half the continent’s population.
Of course, the real culprit were rats who the Nazis than cunningly caricatured as Jews in propaganda movies and posters blaming the ‘vermin race’ for both Germany’s loss in the First World War and the cause for the Second World War.
The Extermination Camps of Europe were designed to expunge this disease once and for all.
Except the ‘disease’ was not the Jews but the hatred of Jews – anti-Semitism.
After 2000 years of blame and persecution, the prevailing wisdom following the restoration of the Jewish People in their ancestral homeland in 1948 was that anti-Semitism had run its course. Jews had their own country and no longer easy prey in Europe’s Ghettoes as the world’s ‘scapegoat’.
It became geographically even easier – Israel was one big ‘Ghetto’.
Where once it was the ‘Jews’ who were blamed for the ills of the world, post- 1948, it was the nation state of the Jews – Israel – that emerged as the new scapegoat.
The disease of anti-Semitism had morphed into a new virulent strain from the plural Jew to the singular Israel.
This explains how eleven months before the current unrest in Iran, its Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi expressed in February 2017 to the state news agency IRNA that Israel “is the biggest threat to the peace and security in the region and the world.”
Tiny Israel, which at its most vulnerable centre, is a 20-minute bicycle ride – I should know as an avid cyclist – is a threat to the world. Ghasemi is following in the same verbal footsteps as Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels. He is hardly alone in his mindset.
In 2013, with Israel being the only stable country with a thriving economy and an enviable democracy, a survey conducted in Turkey revealed that nearly half that country’s citizens saw Israel as the biggest security threat, followed by the United States, and only then Syria, which was in the throws of the worst stages of its civil war, with hundreds of thousands – many of them Palestinians – butchered by government forces.
How often do we hear from Arab leaders as well as leaders around the world that the ills of the Middle East are caused by Israel in its failure to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians!
Translated – the troubles of the Middle East, like the troubles of the past in Europe are all caused by Jews, whether projected in the plural or the singular.
So, it was only a question of hours – at the most days – before Israel was accused of the widespread protests across Iran that began on the 28 December 2017.
We did not have long to wait!
Only two days after the protests began on the Thursday in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city by population, than on the Saturday, Iran’s state-sponsored Kayhan newspaper claimed that the current wave of protests is part of “an Israeli plot against Iran and Islam.” In its Sunday article the following day, its editor-in-chief, Hossein Shariatmadari reported that Israel, the USA, and England “were responsible for the unrest that has spread across the country” that had at that time claimed over 14 lives.
This was followed on the Monday by no-one less that Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani that his country would respond to “rioters and lawbreakers,” claiming the protests were fueled by the USA, Arabia and ISRAEL in an attempt “to destabalise the Islamic Republic.”
If Rouhani genuinely believes that thousands are marching in towns across Iran to chants of “Death to the dictator” and demanding an end to Iran’s involvement in the civil wars in Syria and Yemen are following orders from Israel, either he is maliciously lying, failing to face reality, behaving like a typical anti-Semite or all of the above.
In fact, Rouhani has difficulty even referring to Israel by name when he says, “Our unity was a bullet (arrow) in their eyes, and our progress and success in the world of politics and against the US and the Zionist regime was not bearable to them.”
His sentiment was echoed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who made his first public statement on Tuesday, claiming that “enemies of Iran” – very much implying Israel – had stirred up unrest using “cash, weapons, politics and intelligence apparatus to create trouble for the Islamic Republic.”
Fathoming out why the Iranians are protesting, Meir Javedanfar, a Middle East Commentator and a lecturer in ‘Contemporary Iranian Politics’ at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, has been monitoring Iranian social media since the unrest began. Iranian-born Javedanfer says Rouhani’s reforms “did not seem to be improving the desperate situation in many Iranian households which was the prime factor in driving Iranians to believe that their country’s problems were larger than one leader.”
It was one thing to see that the conservatives that preceded him “couldn’t change things,” said Javedanfar, but “Rohani was someone who had great potential, had deep roots in the security establishment and who Khamenei trusted. After they saw that even he is failing to make their lives better, the people really lost hope. They feel that if he can’t fix things, nobody can.”
So, to fend of his inability to “fix things”, the Iranian president blames foreign intervention, notably – Israel.
Photo credit: Pintrest
South Africa’s ANC is always quick to blame Israel as was so evident at its recent conference where it voted overwhelmingly to downgrade diplomatic relations with Israel. How often do we hear from ANC leaders and BDS advocates that Israel supported apartheid South African, when in truth, Israel’s support compared to other countries was infinitesimal.
Here are the facts not BDS fiction:
In 1986, during the height of Apartheid, South Africa’s main trading partners were, U.S.A. – $3.4 billion, Japan – $2.9 billion, Germany – $2.8 billion, U.K. – $2.6 billion. In defending Britain’s position at the time, Sir Alec Douglas Home referred to Britain’s heavy investment in South Africa and the strategic importance of naval facilities at Simonstown. By comparison, Israel’s puny $200 million total trade with South Africa amounted to less than 1% of South Africa’s total trade.
The Apartheid regime could have been brought to its knees much earlier, had its oil supply been cut off. All its $2 billion annual oil import came from Arab states, mainly Saudi Arabia. A $1 billion barter deal was concluded with Iran, exchanging weapons from South Africa’s own armaments producers in exchange for oil. A similar deal for $750 million was concluded with Iraq. Is it not irrational that none of these countries are judged by the same yardstick as being applied to Israel? Foreign investment was a major source of support to the regime. Arab countries accounted for one third of the foreign investment in South Africa, totaling over 9 billion dollars.
Does South Africa blame any of these countries like the US, the UK, Britain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Iran? No, of course not. It only singles out Israel to blame.
Photo Credit: Middle East Monitor
Last week, there were calls and protests in South Africa for the release in Israel of the ‘poster girl’ Palestinian activist, Ahed Tamimi, who was caught on camera aggressively assaulting an IDF soldier. According to her father Bassem Tamimi, Ahed has participated in anti-Israeli activities in her village of Nabi Saleh since she was four years old. A serial protestor, she is known in Israel as ‘Shirly Temper’ for her rehearsed and well-orchestrated protests in front of pre-arranged cameras to besmirch Israel’s image.
With all this fuss over one girl who was arrested for unlawful behaviour, why are South Africans not demonstrating in support for the hundreds of thousands of protestors across Iran who are bravely confronting the police and military.
Why can’t South Africa’s president join the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, in expressing concern for the number of casualties and urging “restraint” as well as respecting, “Fundamental rights, including freedom of expression and freedom to demonstrate.”
So quick to urge the EU to take strong positions on Israel, why does the ANC government not join the EU’s foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini, when she lamented on the 2 January, “the unacceptable loss of human lives” in the protests and said that “Peaceful demonstration and freedom of expression are fundamental rights that apply to every country, and Iran is no exception.”
Well there is one “exception” in international relations and that is Israel. If Jews if ever considered themselves God’s “Chosen people”, they would quite happily some other people were “chosen” for a change, for being always unjustly singled out for blame, which says less about the blamed and more about the blamers.
To this day, there is no known antidote to the global epidemic of anti-Semitism.
