By David E. Kaplan
It was early August 2017 in Madagascar and the stadium should have been packed – parents with their kids – cheering their national teams as basketball players from island nations across the Indian Ocean converged in the country’s capital, Antananarivo, to face off in the Indian Ocean Club championship.
The seats were empty?
Spraying in schools.
Why?
Because of plague.
Madagascar’s prime minister, Olivier Mahafaly Solonandrasana, forbade public gatherings – including basketball tournaments – to keep infections from spreading.
Madagascar’s modern-day plague is caused by the same bacterium, Yersinia pestis, that caused the Black Death estimated to have decimated over half of Europe’s population.
A neglected fact of history is that as the world’s most devastating pandemic swept across Europe in the mid-14th, its anguished masses cried out for explanations for the cause for their misery.
With religion and science failing to provide answers, they needed a scapegoat. One that could not fight back; a people herded together in Ghettoes that were easily identifiable and accessable.
JEWS!
Accusations spread that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells.
The first massacres directly related to the plague took place in April 1348 in Toulon, France, where the Jewish quarter was sacked, and forty Jews were murdered in their homes; then in Barcelona. In 1349, massacres and persecution spread across Europe, including Erfurt in Germany where over 3000 Jews were massacred. Some set fire to their homes and perished in the flames before they could be lynched. This ensuing horror story of massacre following massacre played out in Basel, Aragon, and Flanders. Over 900 Jews were burnt alive on 14 February 1349 in the “Valentine’s Day” Strasbourg massacre, where the plague had not even yet infected the city.
Killing Jews in Strasbourg was “just a precaution!” – a medieval European variation of today’s “preventative medicine”!
Blamed for the Black Death, the Jews of Cologne burnt alive. Reproduced from a woodcut in a 1493 folio of the Liber Chronicarum Mundi.
Poisoning Minds
Today, it is not so much Jews that are falsely accused for the calamities of the world but the State of Israel – the collective Jew.
In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League published a global survey of worldwide anti-Semitic attitudes, reporting that in the Middle East, 74% of adults agreed with a majority of the survey’s eleven anti-Semitic propositions, including that “Jews have too much power in international financial markets” and that “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars.”
In 2003, Israeli-Arab Raed Salah, the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, published the following poem:
“You Jews are criminal bombers of mosques,
Slaughterers of pregnant women and babies.
Robbers and germs in all times,
The Creator sentenced you to be loser monkeys,
Victory belongs to Muslims, from the Nile to the Euphrates.”
During a speech in 2007, Salah accused Jews of using children’s blood to bake bread. “…. let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the Jewish holy bread.”
Kamal Khatib, deputy leader of the northern branch of the Islamic movement, referred in one of his speeches to the Jews as “fleas”, the very “flees” that contributed to the “Black Death”.
Aid to Africa
And yet, when Africa in 2017 faced its worst “Black Death” outbreak in 50 years, it was the “collective Jew” – Israel – that sent aid to plague-stricken Madagascar.
Google aid to Madagascar – and the only country that appeared to seriously assist in the fight against the devastating disease was – Israel.
The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs along with Magen David Adom (MDA) – Israel’s national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance, and blood bank service – in South Africa, joined forces.
Soon after the outbreak, Deputy Israeli Ambassador to South Africa, Ayellet Black, told the African News Agency (ANA):
“We expect all packages to be delivered to the International Red Cross in Madagascar in the next few days.”
She added that “The delivery of different medical equipment such as gloves to carry out medical procedures is being coordinated between Israel’s honorary consul in Madagascar, Benjamin Memmi, and Madagascar’s Bureau for Natural Disasters.”
Black further stressed that “Israel has a long-standing tradition of offering humanitarian assistance and coordinating relief to alleviate disease, hunger and poverty.”
Said Black: “We have experience in helping countries going through natural and man-made disasters and will always provide assistance to help those in need.”
When disaster strikes, Israel’s government, army, and aid agencies are always among the first to send material and expert assistance, whether it’s earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal, tsunamis in Sri Lanka and Japan, typhoon in the Philippines, or other mass disasters in Turkey, India, Mexico, El Salvador, Greece, Rwanda, Armenia, Indonesia, and New Guinea.
Aid to USA
Recently, an emergency response team from Israeli NGO IsraAID arrived in Puerto Rico, after Hurricane Maria devastated the country and other islands in the Caribbean. Israel also dispatched aid experts to Texas to provide vital relief and psychosocial support to the thousands of people who have lost everything in the catastrophic hurricane, Harvey.
Israeli aid to Chili
The Israeli company , , that produces water from air, worked with the American Red Cross and FEMA in the United States to assist people in Texas and Florida by providing clean and safe drinking water in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Watergen, along with a team of their technicians traveled to the U.S. to deploy, operate, and maintain two large scale and two mid-size GEN-350 units.
The units were first set up in Port Arthur, Texas where a water reservoir had been contaminated by Hurricane Harvey and the people in the area lacked clean and safe drinking water. In response to Hurricane Irma, and with the direction of FEMA and the American Red Cross, Watergen then moved operations from Texas to Florida. In the ensuing week, the units dispensed clean drinking water from the air in Miami-Dade County while also distributing drinking water supplies to Broward County and the Florida Keys.
While Watergen is ready to respond “Anytime, Anywhere”, when faced with emergencies, “we must respond even faster,” said Maxim Pasik, the Executive Chairman of the Israeli company. “We are gratified that Watergen has been able to bring some stability to the people in both Florida and Texas during this difficult time by providing clean and safe drinking water from the air.”
Aiding countries in need is in Israel’s DNA.
It is imbedded in the ancient Jewish scriptures from the Mishnaic period as Tikkun olam (Hebrew: תיקון עולם – “repair of the world”)
Go Figure!
So, while Israel was:
South Africa was, and still is, considering downgrading its embassy in Tel Aviv.
Upgrade not Downgrade
The Cultural Religious and Linguistic Commission has warned South Africa’s ruling ANC that downgrading the country’s embassy in Tel Aviv would be unconstitutional.
Last week, Thoko Mkhwanazi Xaluva, chairwoman of the commission, noted at a symposium that if South Africa downgrades its embassy in Israel it will “unfairly impact on the ability of South Africa’s Jews to practice and identify with their religious and cultural heritage. As such, it would probably be unconstitutional.”
It would also be unconscionable!
“It will not only be Jews that will be negatively affected by a downgrade,” said Kingdom of God Church Apostle, Linda Gobodo, “but Christian pilgrimages to Israel that bring the Bible alive. A visit to the Holy Land is the highest spiritual experience that any Bible-believing Christian could have.”
Gobodo’s organisation, Vuka Afrika, like many other Christian organisations, arranges regular pilgrimages to Israel.
“I myself am a regular visitor to Israel,” said Gobodo, “and a downgrade would jeopardize that. South Africa and Israel need to consider an upgrade, rather than a downgrade.”
Wendy Kahn, the National director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies agrees and cautioned that a downgrade would diminish any possible role for South Africa in peacemaking in the Middle East.
Kahn laments that South Africa’s experience of successfully negotiating a peaceful transition at home “could have been utilized in helping to peacefully resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The ANC, with its close relationship with the Palestinians, is well placed to facilitate engagement – if it could just build trust with the Israelis.”
Well, it can still try.
If it is smart.
It can recognise what the USA, Madagascar, and Sierra Leone appreciate in Israel or it can take the path of cozying up – as it is doing – with one of the world’s worst human rights violators – the Republic of Iran!
The world will be watching South Africa as the delegates to the 54th National Conference of the ANC meet on the 16th December 2017 in Gauteng where they will choose a new party leader and will vote, during the ensuing five days, on whether to downgrade its embassy in Israel.
Will South Africa join Israel in fighting the plagues of pestilence or will is itself succumb to the ageless plague of anti-Semitism?
We will soon know!
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