In the wake of Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Mail & Guardian would like to throw down a challenge to South Africa’s Jewish community — or at least the many members of the community who uncritically back the government of Ariel Sharon. Jews have played an influential and honourable role in struggles for peace, freedom and justice in many parts of the world, including South Africa.
The notion that leaders can be held to account for their crimes is one that first finds expression in the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. The Jewish prophet Yeshua ka Nosri, known as Jesus to Christians, gave the first expression to the left-wing world view: implying support for the wretched of the Earth, for the merciful, for those who struggle for a better world, and for peacemakers. How can the tradition of Isaiah, Amos and Jesus be reconciled with 37 years of illegal armed occupation of Palestinian land; with further incursions into the Palestinian West Bank through walls, electrified fences, closed zones and ever-expanding settlements; with the confinement of the Palestinian people to virtual bantustans; with the repeated rejection of Palestinian offers of a truce; with a policy of extra-judicial execution of Palestinian leaders and military kragdadigheid that has seen five Palestinian children killed to every Israeli child? How can it be reconciled with a deliberate blindness to the just claims of the Palestinians, and the self-evident fact that suicide bombing is the monstrous fruit of desperation and hatred which the Israeli government systematically fuels?
Yassin was far from being the unspotted saint of some commentaries. He advocated violence and praised suicide bombings — and the M&G abhors terror attacks on civilians, whatever the context. But state assassination is no less terroristic, and may be seen as a far worse ill because of the power of the state. Above all, it is absolutely unclear how the murder of Yassin can advance the cause of peaceful settlement in the Middle East. South Africans should know from their own “dirty war” that organisations with popular support cannot be destroyed by decapitation — indeed, such tactics generally have the reverse effect of creating martyrs and inflaming hatred of the oppressor.
If Sharon’s plan was to weaken Hamas at the point of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as suggested in some quarters, the latest assassination can only strengthen the organisation and its most militant elements. Respected Jerusalem-based analyst Barak Barfi points out that in Palestinian politics, Yassin was considered a moderate who did not hold with a military solution to the Middle East conflict, and who often spoke of century-long truces that would give the state of Israel de facto recognition. His death, and the earlier assassination of his relatively pragmatic deputy, Ismail Abu Shanab, effectively abandons the field to the real hard-liners who advocate violence as the only possible approach. Yassin’s successor, Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, is said to be one of them.
Though relatively small in number, South Africa’s Jews have historically been an important source of financial and moral support for the state of Israel. If their representatives began to speak out against Sharon’s policy of mindless reprisal, and to press for peaceful solutions — beginning with formal Israeli recognition of the 1967 borders — they might have some beneficial influence. Amid the growing carnage and spiralling hatred, it is time to re-assert Jewry’s humanitarian traditions.
Siyakwamukela Baxter!
Some would argue that coaching South Africa’s soccer, rugby or cricket teams is as stressful as being the country’s president or being governor of the Reserve Bank. While not everybody knows the difference between fiscal and foreign policy, everybody is an expert on the game.
We therefore put out our welcome mat for new Bafana Bafana coach Stuart Baxter and hope he will enjoy South Africa and all it has to give.
Sceptical locals are already asking: “Stuart who?” It’s a fair question, as he comes to the job with a CV speckled with successes in the Japanese and Scandinavian leagues, hardly nations high on the soccer Richter scale.
Baxter walks into a job that has had almost the number of incumbents as the years South Africa has been playing international soccer. He will learn the hard way that passion for the game sometimes borders on the irrational. He will be expected to win all the matches all the time. Even if he does, doubters will question whether we are playing “our style” of football.
The young Englishman has other local peculiarities to master: we doubt he’s worked with the “special projects” man — the team inyanga — whose status on the technical team is the same as that of the physiotherapist. He will have to know that when fans roll their hands around each other, he should substitute, pronto. And should John Moshoeu still be around, he will learn that the apparent boos in the stadium are actually cries of affection for the man they call “Shoes”.
We pray Baxter finds his place in the sun here. He should not be like our last import, Carlos Queroz, who came here an unknown, failed under a welter of xenophobia, and then went on to coax miracles out of Real Madrid.