High level Israeli delegation attends Madiba's memorial
While the press focused on Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's decision not to attend the memorial service to honour Nelson Mandela ("Netanyahu raises suspicion, cancels Mandela funeral trip", December 6), it failed to give due credit to the high level Israeli delegation that did attend. It is especially notable and poignant that this delegation comprised human rights protagonists and activists. Leading the delegation of five Knesset members was Yuli Edelstein, the Speaker of Israel's Parliament. As a former "prisoner of conscience", he says: "I had the privilege of meeting Mandela as a Minister in 1996, and we shared experiences from prison and the fight for our rights". Edelstein was jailed in the Soviet Union for the crime of teaching Hebrew.
Edelstein was accompanied by Knesset members Penina Tamanu-Shata (Yesh Atid Party), the first Ethiopian-born woman to be elected to Israel's Parliament. Hilik Bar, from the Labour Party, wants to cut defence spending and increase spending on welfare. He is dedicated to reducing the wide gap between the rich and the poor in Israel by increasing spending on poor neighbourhoods.
The South African press completely overlooked the absence of leaders from two of the Brics nations, an alliance of which South Africa is a member. China announced that it would send a vice president, Li Yuanchao, and not President Xi Jinping, while Russia failed to send either President Vladimir Putin or its foreign minister. Without being mischievous, it would have been peculiar for these two states, where human rights are almost completely ignored, to attend the funeral of a world icon that stood for human rights.
– Ben Levitas, chairperson of the Cape council and the South African Zionist Federation