In 1993, Nelson Mandela declared that the African National Congress recognised both Palestinian and Israeli claims: ”As a movement we recognise the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism just as we recognise the legitimacy of Zionism as Jewish nationalism.”
By trashing Zionism, Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils has removed himself from this consensus and moved toward a radical position.
”The State of Israel,” he tells us, ”is based on a framework of myths.”
Borrowing heavily from the work of British Trotskyist John Rose, Kasrils attempts to define and destroy several ”myths of Zionism”. By removing these foundations, Kasrils hopes to deprive Israel of legitimacy.
It is worth defining what Zionism actually is, since Kasrils never does.
In the words of Israeli novelist Amos Oz, Zionism ”is simply the idea that those Jews who regard themselves as a people — not just as a religion — are entitled to have a homeland in their home country”.
There are also many different kinds of Zionism: ”There were Marxist Zionists, fascist Zionists and religious Zionists, social democratic Zionists and vegetarian Zionists,” Oz notes.
Kasrils reduces this diversity to a crude caricature.
Some of the ”myths” Kasrils describes are obvious falsehoods that no serious supporter of Israel actually believes. Others — such as the ethnic cleansing of nearly one million Jews from Arab countries in the latter half of the 20th century — are historical facts.
And some ”myths”, such as the Biblical claim to Israel, are mirrored in Palestinian claims about the Qur’an, which Kasrils does not bother to interrogate.
The biggest ”myth” is Kasrils’s confused history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is not only inaccurate but incoherent.
To borrow the words of George Orwell: Kasrils’s account bears ”no relation to the facts, not even the relationship, which is implied in an ordinary lie”.
To take one example: Kasrils tells us that in 1948, the Arab League of States sent ”only five” armies to invade Israel, implying that this was a minority. But in 1948, the Arab League only had seven members.
The rest of Kasrils’s twisted tale is full of incorrect dates and places, deliberate omissions and outright fabrications. Where does Kasrils find such misinformation?
One source he has used in the past is the Media Review Network, a Pretoria-based Islamist propaganda machine whose website features articles denying the Holocaust, as well as attacks on Jews, gays and other groups.
In a speech he delivered in Sandton in July 2002, Kasrils stated: ”I wish to place on record my appreciation of the Media Review Network for providing me with much of the material referred to.” Does he know what this group really stands for?
When Kasrils refers to legitimate sources, he often distorts them. For example, Israeli historian Benny Morris does not simply show that there were some atrocities in the late stages of the 1948 war, but also concludes that ”there was no Zionist policy to expel the Arabs or intimidate them into flight”.
It is also untrue that Zionism ”equates all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism” — though certainly some criticisms deserve that label.
The only parties who have declared that all of their opponents are bigots are those who supported the infamous claim that ”Zionism is racism”, which was passed in the United Nations General Assembly by the Soviet bloc and the Arab states in 1975, and rescinded in 1991.
In South Africa, this stone was first cast by Kasrils himself.
In a speech to Parliament in October 2001, before introducing his ”declaration of conscience” against Israeli policies, Kasrils declared that opponents of the ANC’s views on the Middle East were simply racist supporters of apartheid.
”Substitute from their speeches Israel for the old apartheid government,” he said, ”substitute Palestinians for the ANC liberation movement, and we get a playback of their support in justification of the past for racist Pretoria and apartheid South Africa.”
Furthermore, it is the height of arrogance for Kasrils to claim to speak in the name of the victims of anti-Semitism, to assert that attacking Zionism ”honours those who perished in the Holocaust”.
Had Israel existed in the 1930s and 1940s, there would have been no Holocaust.
Kasrils has, in fact, lost his credibility to speak on behalf of Holocaust victims or other victims of human rights abuses.
Last year, on November 17 — a day marked in shame in the annals of African history — Kasrils signed, on behalf of the South African government, a defence and intelligence pact with the regime of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
This came only months after Operation Murambatsvina (drive out the trash), in which Mugabe destroyed the homes of 700 000 people in the dead of winter.
Coincidentally, 700 000 is about the number of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 war. But Kasrils, far from speaking out, defended the Zimbabwean government and publicly rebuked a journalist who raised the issue at a press conference.
In his article, Kasrils makes no mention of the Oslo Peace Accords, the recent disengagement from Gaza, or of any other steps Israel has taken towards peace.
It seems he belongs among those who Alan Dershowitz refers to as ”more Palestinian than the Palestinians”, those for whom no compromise by Israel will ever be enough.
But let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that Kasrils is right: that Israel was founded on a ”framework of myths”.
So what? Every nation has its ”myths”, its icons, its fanciful memories of past victories and defeats.
Israel’s legitimacy does not, in the end, depend on the strength of her ”myths” but on the strength of her people. ”Myths” can be a positive binding force, but deeds build a nation.
As Hannah Arendt once noted, Israel’s ”artificial” character — the fact that it was built by human beings — is ”of much more permanent human and political value” than the sort of ”ideological distortions” that are the common currency of all nationalisms.
It is this point that Kasrils and other radicals fail to grasp. They are more interested in undermining Israel than building Palestine. That is partly why Palestinian suffering continues.
Pollak is a political speechwriter for the Democratic Alliance. He writes in his personal capacity