BDS was comically described by a Johannesburg writer “as pretty much how I don’t like my Biltong – droeg (dry), and way past having any flavour left to chew on.” Of course, for some, this is how they like it, so it remains on the shelf but BDS is hardly a WOW item anymore – if it ever was!
That it made it to its 12th year, inspired two delusional South Africans Kwara Kekana (SA BDS national spokesman) and Muhammed Desai (SA BDS national coordinator) to pen: “South Africa Marks 12 Years of BDS Successes”
Unsurprisingly, the only forum that saw fit to publish this lavatorial tripe was the perennial anti-Semitic ‘Electronic Intifada’ poignantly labeled by some as the “Electronic Intifarta”.
The stench of anti-Semitism is all too pervasive!
I mean, how does one take this lot seriously when its founder, Omar Barghouti, a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and a co-founder of BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) holds a PHD from Tel Aviv University (TAU). Was he “oppressively forced” to study at TAU, ranked in 2016 as the top academic institution in Israel and outperforming on the international ranking any South African university?
Hardly practicing what he preaches, when legitimately asked how he could call for an academic boycott of Israel while studying at TAU, this fraud replied:
“Palestinians have no choice but to use the services of the oppressor.”
No choice? Do people actually believe this bunk?
What this unabashed hypocrite failed to admit was that there are fourteen universities or colleges in the West Bank, one in East Jerusalem and nine in Gaza (*see below). Barghouti chose TAU, like so many Palestinians and Israeli Arabs because of its high academic standards .
For that we cannot blame him; only for failure to disclose the truth.
Lies and deception are embedded in the DNA of BDS.
Success, What Success?
For Kekana and Desai to boast success, one needs to understand their definition of success.
Many claim, particularly South Africans, that they support BDS because “it’s a vehicle supporting the two-state solution”. This is fine. Most Israelis support a two-state solution in a genuine peace deal.
However, who does not support this vision – is BDS.
Its founder Barghouti never disguises the fact that he does not subscribe to a two-state solution. He calls for a binational state which would effectively replace the State of Israel and restore the name “Palestine” for the entire area from the river to the sea. He believes that the creation of a Jewish state “was a crime” and his vision is for Israel to be “ethnically cleansed” of Jews.
In other words, Israel, the ancestral home of the Jews from the time of Abraham, Moses and Isaac “is a crime” and needs to be “cleansed of its Jews.”
Is this what the activists of BDS support and are now celebrating on its 12th anniversary?
Truth be Told
For the record, it was the Roman Emperor Hadrian (AD 76 -138), in his efforts to defeat the Jewish People and Nation, who changed the name of the land from Judea (the ancient Hebrew and Biblical name) to “Palestine”.
Roman Emperor Hadrian
After crushing the revolt by the Jewish leader Bar Kochba in 135 AD, Hadrian applied the name Syria Palestina to the entire region that had formerly included Judea province. He chose this name revived from the ancient name of Philistia (Palestine) and combined it with that of the neighboring province of Syria, in an attempt to suppress Jewish connection to the land, although the actual Philistines from which the name derives, had long disappeared from history during the period of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911- 605 BC).
What Hadrian tried 2000 years ago, is what Omar Barghouti and his BDS cohorts are trying to do today.
They will not succeed.
Besides, the BDS founder generally refuses to cooperate with Israelis, even if they are sympathetic to his cause. He has said Palestinians who engaged with Israelis have “moral blindness,” calling them in an article in 2005, the year he founded BDS, as “clinically delusional”.
The BDS founder calls for a right of return for Palestinians from 1948 for as he puts it, “If the refugees were to return, you would not have a two-state solution, you’d have a Palestine next to a Palestine”.
Barghouti’s answer to the problem would be to wipe Israel off the map; in other words, his SOLUTION is DISSOLUTION – dissolution of the State of Israel.
Suicide is not an option for Israel.
Is this the direction that BDS wants to celebrate after 12 years?
Back to Africa
How ironic, that the same month – August 2017 – I am reading Messrs. Kekana and Desai’s pride in trying to keep Israel out of Africa, I am reading a major news item in the Israeli press that “Israel is the first country to get aid to Sierra Leone.” Israel moved swiftly to deliver food aid to the disaster-stricken country following devastating floods and mudslides earlier in the week that claimed the lives of at least 300 and left more than 3000 people homeless. Peter Hirschon, a former South African from Cape Town, who serves today as Israel’s non-resident envoy to a number of West African countries – including Sierra Leone – said from Israel’s Embassy in Senegal “it was the right thing to do,’ and shows that, “African countries can count on Israel in times of need.”
Boston Herald – The Latest: Israel says delivers food aid to Sierra Leone Associated Press Tuesday, August 15, 2017 (Credit: The Associated Press)
It sure can.
Hirschon said that within 24 hours of hearing of the urgent need to feed the survivors, Israel had trucks rolling with 20,000 portions of staples like beans and couscous in the capital of Freetown to distribute to the homeless.
Noting how Israel and Africa can benefit from bilateral relations, Hirschon said “It is easy to stand with countries when things are easy; the question is whether you stand by them when times are tough.”
Israel’s hand to Africa began in the 1950s.
A half century before the State of Israel was established, the father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, had looked to Africa, noting the parallels between the black and Jewish experiences. In his book Altneuland (Old-New land) published in 1902, Herzl wrote that “once I have witnessed the redemption of the Jews, my people, I wish also to assist in the redemption of the Africans.”
Prime Minister Golda Meir
Soon after the Jewish “redemption” was achieved with Israel’s independence in 1948, Herzl’s interest in helping Africa was taken up by Golda Meir, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, who believed that the lessons learned by Israelis could be passed on to Africans who, particularly during the 1950s, were engaged in the same process of nation building.
“Like them,” she said, “we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops, how to irrigate, how to raise poultry and how to live together.”
She initiated Israel’s policy of cooperation with the newly independent nations of Africa, introducing a cooperation programme based on Israel’s development experience, which continues to this day.
Since its establishment under Meir’s inspiration in 1957, the organization MASHAV, headquartered in Haifa, has striven to share with the rest of the developing world the know-how and technologies which provided the basis for Israel’s own rapid development. MASHAV grew organically in response to repeated requests on the part of the peoples that freed themselves from the yoke of colonialism and were seeking practical and political means of ridding themselves of poverty, hunger and disease that was the heritage of that era.
Since its establishment, over 270,000 professionals from more than 132 countries have participated in MASHAV‘s training programmes.
By 2010, MASHAV had trained a quarter of a million students, predominantly African in education, health, science and agriculture.
The expertise and technology acquired in cultivating areas such as deserts affected by water scarcity has been on the forefront of Israel’s outreach to Africa. Israel has been fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah in making “the desert bloom” through its cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs and is bringing it to Africa.
This will accelerate this October at the Israel-Africa Summit in Togo which will be attended by between 25-30 heads of African states. Needless to say, South Africa will not be attending and to which BDS counts as a success. For a country suffering huge challenges in water scarcity, agriculture, energy, education and cyber security– all areas in which Israel can monumentally assist, South Africa is going to pass on participating.
Who is the “loser”? and this is what BDS will tick off as a success!
Winners & Losers
While BDS boasts success, foreign capital flowing into Israel boasts record highs. After 12 years of campaigning, the global BDS movement has not had the slightest impact.
As one report so accurately reveals, “Its victories have consisted of coaxing a handful of pop stars and academics to cancel appearances in Israel, and winning empty, sanctimonious declarations of support from the likes of student governments, cooperative grocery stores and leftish church groups.”
Far from being isolated, Israel’s exports are reaching record highs and it attracts billions of dollars in foreign investment.
Dubbed the “Silicon Wadi”, considered second in importance only to its Californian counterpart, Silicon Valley, Israel is at the vanguard in the hi-tech revolution. Nowhere is this more evident than in Intel’s purchase earlier this year of Jerusalem-based Mobileye for $15.3 billion.
2017 is far from over, but it can already be stated that the Intel-Mobileye deal was one of the most important events of the year for Israel. Mobileye develops advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) providing warnings for collision prevention. Increasingly, this Israeli technology will be installed in all cars, saving millions of lives each year. Kwara Kekana and Muhammed Desai take pride that South Africa is the “mothership” of the BDS movement, yet Israel is there in South Africa saving lives every day – Kekana and Desai’s lives as well!
How will BDS rationalize with their ‘flock’, that South Africa, which has record highs of fatalities on the road, will be significantly reducing those fatalities from Mobileye technology in their vehicles? According to the AA, 2016 saw 14,071 people die on South Africa’s roads – a significant jump from 12,944 deaths recorded in 2015, a 9% increase, with over 1,120 more people dying, year-on-year.
Or will they spew up the diatribe like BDS founder, Omar Barghouti, “We have no choice but to drive using the technology of the oppressor.”
Mobileye follows the success the Israeli app Waze, referred to “as the world’s best mobile app” and which Google ‘smartly’ bought for $1.03 billion in 2013. The free crowdsourced navigation allows users to share traffic information automatically in real time simply by following their GPS tracks.
I used it when last in Cape Town in 2013 when driving to Darling to see the Pieter-Dirk Uys show.
Despite BDS protestations, South African motorists will drive using Israeli Mobileye to prevent accidents, use Waze to get them to their destinations in the quickest time, while chatting on their Smartphones embedded with Israeli technology. They will do so because they are ‘Smarter’ than BDS, who construe failure as a success.
Israel’s trajectory in the fields of hi-tech in the new millennium has been quite remarkable. As Mobileye Technology Officer, Prof. Amnon Shashua, explains, “hardware infrastructure is something that’s very difficult for Israel because it’s a small country.” However, “mathematics, computer science, anything that requires just a pencil and paper is something that is very natural for Israel.”
When it comes to “moving” ahead, Israel’s motto is:
“Data is the fuel that drives us.”
If South Africa and other countries had to literally follow BDS, the only directions on its trajectory would be ‘reverse’.
This is what happened to the world when it regressed into the Dark Ages.
“Rock Around the Clock”
‘Dillusionists’ Kwara Kekana and Muhammed Desai claim BDS success within “the South African cultural sector with some of the country’s biggest artists, comedians and film stars coming out to back the movement” and touts South African film director John Trengove withdrawing from an Israeli film festival hosted in Tel Aviv. Big deal BDS!
Tel Aviv is up there with the liveliest cities of the world for its ‘all day all-night’ non-stop action. Contributing to this reputation is the increasing popularity of overseas artists performing in Tel Aviv.
The likes of the Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alicia Keys, Madonna, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, One Republic, Queen, Rod Stewart, Sia, Aerosmith, Guns n’ Roses, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Radio Head have all performed here in recent years and there is already a lineup for 2018.
Who is John Trengove?
Time for Honesty
It is not simply the question of who the winners and who are the losers but what does BDS understand by “winning”?
Kekana and Desai proudly praise the role of COSATU (South Africa’s national trade federation) “as being one of the main drivers of the Public Services International adopting BDS as a strategy.”
Found Guilty Of Hate Speech – Bongani Masuku
But BDS needs to look at itself in the mirror and note the 2017 ruling of SA’s Equality Court against COSATU’s Bongani Masuku for “hate speech”.
In a public address at Wits University, as well as in various written communications, Masuku had repeatedly threatened that Jewish South Africans would be “targeted” because of their support for Israel.
Masuku, in threats reminiscent of the Nazis in the 1930s, said Jewish lives would be made “hell”, something that his European fascist idols brought to fruition.
He further threated that vigilante action would be taken against Jewish families suspected of having members serving in the Israeli military, and that Jews who continued to stand up for Israel should “not just be encouraged, but forced to leave South Africa.”
So, these are the people that BDS is proud to parade in the vanguard of its 12-year success?
BDS activist As’ad Abu Khalil acknowledged in 2012 that “the real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel.”
This is what it is all about.
And this is where it becomes disturbing because the only area where they are “succeeding” is in stoking hatred of Jews or against the national collective of the Jewish people – the State of Israel. They join the long line of others from the Babylonians to the Nazis, who have been on that same mission and where are they today and where is Israel?
Former Israel’s Foreign Affairs minister Abba Eban
Israel’s message on the 12th anniversary of BDS, quoting its esteemed Cape Town-born and late Foreign Affairs minister, Abba Eban:
“Israel’s future will be longer than its past”.
*Palestinian universities and colleges in the West Bank and Gaza:
West Bank
Gaza Strip
