Critics accuse Israel of being like the apartheid South Africa of an earlier era. The president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, says those who accuse Israel of being like South Africa, are themselves like those of an earlier era who blood-libeled Jews with false accusations. Well then, who is closer to the truth?
To answer that question, we first need to understand what
is meant by blood libel. It happened that when Moses fell out the rank of Pharaoh’s
favorite adviser, he decided to rouse up the Jews with false spins concerning
their status in Egypt, and to make false promises concerning the future that
awaits them if they will follow him on his quest to steal a country and turn it
into an empire that will rival Egypt, Persia, Babylon and every other empire in
the region at the time. Moses added that this was the will of God who chose
them to be his favorite children, and urging them to go to the promised land
where Moses will take them.
The words of Moses so hypnotized the Jews, they went into
a mindless frenzy that got them to imagine God had sent an angel to kill the
first born in every Egyptian family but that they had the task of telling the
angel where to find the kiddies to be slaughtered. And while doing that, the
Jews were preparing the fastest meal they could cook and bake, which compelled
them to make the unleavened bread that later acquired the name matzoh. And this
is how the blood of massacred children was forever associated with the Jewish
matzoh bread.
When it did not go well for the Jews, trying to steal
Palestine and establish themselves in it, they fled to Europe where they made a
mess of their lives there too. They thought they were rejected by the Europeans
because they looked differently, so they decided to look more like the locals,
thus came up with the idea of intermarrying with them as much as they could.
There were a few legitimate marriages to be sure, but most of the others
consisted of kidnapping the abandoned street children of Medieval Europe — a
widespread phenomenon at the time — raise those children as Jews in the
ghettos, and marrying them whereby they produced European-looking Jews.
Alarmed by the Jews kidnapping Christian children, and
hearing about the coincidence of the Jews making matzoh bread at the same time
as they slaughtered Egyptian babies, the Europeans became convinced that the
Jews were kidnapping their children to make matzos bread with their blood. This
is what came to be known as blood libel. Because it is a horrendous accusation
to make even though it’s easy to prove false, invoking the blood libel became
the favorite cudgel utilized by the aggrieved Jews to clobber those who say what
irks them.
So, we’re back to the question: Who is closer to the
truth? Is it Herzog saying that those who accuse Israel of being like South
Africa, are themselves like those of an earlier era who accused Jews of blood
libel? Or is it the critics who accuse Israel of being like the apartheid South
Africa of an earlier era?
The truth is that there are many similarities between today’s
self-declared Jewish state of Israel, and yesterday’s apartheid South Africa.
An increasingly large number of people come to see this reality as something
that can be argued, accepted or modified but cannot be rejected as totally false
on its face. And so, for Herzog to recall the medieval belief that Jews made
bread with the blood of Christian children, and equate it with the saying that
Israel resembles apartheid South Africa in some ways, is to use a remedy that’s
so excessive, it worsens what it’s trying to cure rather than alleviate it.
This says that the reaction of Isaac Herzog is a
grotesque exaggeration of what the situation is really like. But this does not
surprise anyone who is familiar with the way that the Jews operate. The reality
is that to get away with many of the things they say and do, the Jews first
monopolize the discussion by angrily accusing those who speak up to tell the
truth, and shut them up with the charge that they are spreading antisemitic tropes.
With this, the Jews open the way for themselves to move unopposed in the
direction of controlling the political landscape.
Feeling confident that no one will dare contradict him,
Isaac Herzog took the flight of fancy that landed him – not in the nirvana of
his imagination – but the disrespected land of “too unserious to be taken
seriously.” This leads to the question: what comparison is realistic in the
debate concerning the regime that’s now occupying Palestine?
To make that determination, we need to dress a proper
assessment of the differences and similarities between apartheid South Africa
and today’s Israel. From there, we measure what might have motivated each side
to act as they did, and where the leaders wanted to take their jurisdictions. In
brief, we need to probe the thinking of the leaders on each side.
It is easy to know what the leaders of South Africa
wanted. They were motivated by the belief that the land belonged to them
because they fought the Brits and won the spoils of war. Ultimately, they
wanted to build a White South Africa up to the level of an advanced big economy.
When it became impossible for them to do this, they surrendered to the Black
majority rather than dig in, which would have triggered a civil war and
destroyed the country.
As to what the Israelis want, we find it in the
pronouncements of Isaac Herzog its president who said the following according
to the Jewish News Syndicate of December 15, 2022:
“Isaac
Herzog slammed as blood libel comparisons of the Jewish state’s policies
towards the Palestinians to South African apartheid. He also described the BDS
movement as a brutal campaign spearheaded by groups seeking to build a
long-term policy that will undermine the existence of the Jewish state. The
comparison between the State of Israel and the apartheid regime is not a
legitimate criticism—it is a blood libel. It is dangerous since the legitimacy
of the State of Israel and the justification of its existence are related to
its ability to protect itself and hence they are trying to undermine this
ability”.