The ANC’s hosting of Palestinian liberation movement Hamas this month was met with triumphant applause in many quarters, but provoked fury in others. Our readers responded vociferously on both sides, compelling this debate between leading Afro-Middle East expert Na’eem Jeenah and Wendy Kahn of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies.
Hamas established a party-to-party relationship with the ANC
The Israeli response to the visit of a Hamas Politburo delegation was predictable, as was the response of the South African pro-Israeli lobby. The unhappiness of the Palestinian embassy and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah was slightly more surprising, especially considering that Hamas is party to the agreement by which the current leaders of the PA were appointed.
Most interesting, however, was the manner in which the ANC received the Palestinian delegation. The warm welcome by the ANC’s Top Six was replicated at other levels of leadership and membership, as evidenced in the Cape Town rally for Hamas co-hosted by the ANC, and the engagement by ANC leaders (including numerous cabinet ministers) and members at other, smaller, meetings.
Led by Politburo head Khalid Mish’al, the Hamas group included five top leaders. The movement clearly took the visit, nine years in the planning, extremely seriously. And in many hours of interviews, its leaders responded carefully to questions, knowing this was the first opportunity for South Africans for first-hand engagement.
It was also deliberate in presenting itself as a Palestinian national liberation movement.
Palestinian flags flew at all events, but no Hamas flags were visible.
For the ANC, the visit was to be another box ticked in terms of its attempt for us to play a role in Palestinian reconciliation. For this, the ANC argued, it has to talk to all sides – the response it will give Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors.
Some senior party members said Hamas’s passion reminded them of our struggle and how far our politicians had strayed from those ideals. The visit, coming amid #FeesMustFall, certainly must have raised questions in ANC minds.
Hamas established a party-to-party relationship with the ANC in a Letter of Intent signed by Mish’al and Jacob Zuma. One issue which the delegation was able to get support for was Gaza, where 1.8 million Palestinians have been besieged for years, and which has faced three destructive Israeli onslaughts. The ANC agreed to examine possibilities for South African support for the territory.
While there was broad agreement on a number of issues, there were a few sticking points. Hamas, for example, wanted the ANC to support a push at the International Criminal Court against Israeli war criminals. But with the ANC wanting us to terminate our ICC membership, such commitment was not forthcoming.
Some ANC members had hoped the visit would help spur their debate on whether the Palestinian-Israeli future should be a single democratic state or a two-state solution, which is the official ANC position. But with Hamas not having expressed unequivocal support for the one-state idea yet, both could be influenced by each other on the matter.
While Hamas pronouncements seem to indicate that it supports a two-state solution along the June 1967 borders, the group is vigorously debating the issue.
Some South Africans in solidarity with the Palestinians were also disappointed, having hoped the Palestinian movement would unambiguously support a one-state solution. Some on the left were also irked by the open support that Mish’al expressed for the ANC, but it was unrealistic to expect him to criticise his hosts who had taken what Hamas sees as a courageous step.
However solidarity activists welcomed the clear support repeatedly articulated by Mish’al for the global boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. He raised it at all meetings and interviews, and Hamas wanted to get full ANC support for it. After PA president Mahmoud Abbas’s opposition to BDS on his visits to South Africa, they appreciated Hamas’s support.
At the Cape Town rally, Mish’al condemned extremism and, referring to groups such as Islamic State, told Muslim youth these were inconsistent with Islam.
He emphasised Hamas would not tolerate continued desecration of the Al Aqsa Mosque and continued Judaisation of Jerusalem, and supported the uprising.
Despite the angry response from Israel and the local Zionist lobby, the Hamas delegation charmed large sections of South Africa – both in favour of the Palestinian cause and in favour of the movement.
The pro-Israeli lobby will certainly attempt to up its game, by pushing for Israel in our rural areas. Already, serious attempts have been made by the Zionists to win over traditional leaders and African independent churches.
The Hamas visit will encourage this.
* Na’eem Jeenah is the Afro-Middle East Centre’s executive director
An organisation whose core ideology is hatred of Jews was welcomed
So why all the fuss? What is the problem with rolling out the red carpet to welcome Hamas? There seems to have been real confusion as to why Jewish South Africans specifically, but also other citizens, were outraged by not only the visit but the royal treatment Hamas leader Khalid Mish’al and his delegation received.
I’d like to share some thoughts as to the source of our distress.
An organisation whose core ideology is predicated on hatred of Jews, with recurrent incitement to kill us, was afforded a hero’s welcome to our country.
South Africa, through its own painful history, is a nation that knows better than any the danger of incitement to hate, whether based on race, religion or other such grounds.
Hamas’s founding charter states categorically (Article 7): “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me come and kill him.” The preamble encourages Islamic groups all over the Arab world to do the same, “in the fight against the warmongering Jews”. Yet this organisation was welcomed with open arms.
Hamas has continuously stated that it has no intention to create a negotiated settlement in the region for Palestinians and Israelis as envisaged and supported by our government in South Africa. Its charter affirms: “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. … Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. Initiatives, proposal and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.”
I do wonder if the lavish reception they received in South Africa was also a “waste in time” getting in the way of their Jihad objectives.
And we’ve seen over the past year Hamas’s commitment to this objective of murdering Jews. Last year, Hamas praised the murder of worshippers in a synagogue in Har Nof. Prior to that, when three Israeli teenagers on their way home from school were kidnapped and brutally murdered by Hamas members, Khalid Mish’al spoke warmly of the “blessed hands” of the perpetrators.
The Guardian recently quoted Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum as stating: “Let me say, loud and clear, to our people in the West Bank: Don’t you have cars? Don’t you have motorcycles? Don’t you have clubs? Don’t you have bulldozers? Don’t you have trucks? Anyone who has a knife, a club, a weapon or a car, yet does not use it to run over a Jew or a settler and does not use it to kill dozens of Zionists, does not belong to Palestine.”
And Hamas has encouraged and congratulated the many Palestinians that have heeded this call stabbing innocent fathers, mothers and children in over 50 attacks throughout Israel.
It was deeply hurtful to us that at no time during the visit was there any acknowledgement of the founding principles of anti-Semitism and incitement to genocide against the Jewish people espoused by Hamas.
So Mish’al and his Hamas delegation get embraced by ANC leadership and we are led to believe the important lessons of South Africa’s transformation will be shared. Sadly, not one iota of the principles of peace-making were imparted.
On the last day of their visit, Mish’al confirmed that “attacks on Israelis will go on”. At the rally in Cape Town on October 21, he told the crowd that “the Jerusalem intifada” would continue. Knife attacks on Israeli civilians not just in Jerusalem, but also in Be’er Sheva, Ra’anana and Petach Tikva would continue.
The only reason we could possibly understand the ANC hosting a racist organisation bent on the genocide of the Jewish people was if it could in some way change its intent.
The only rationale we could comprehend for welcoming Hamas to our country would be if the ANC could share the importance of a negotiated settlement towards a two-state solution (something we as the South African Jewish Board of Deputies continually call for, as our government has committed itself to over and over again).
If this were indeed the intention, however, Mish’al’s statements throughout his visit, culminating in his commitment to continue the killing spree in Israel, make it clear this was a futile exercise, one that has only compromised any role our country can play in facilitating a peaceful way forward to a negotiated, two-state solution to the conflict.
* Wendy Kahn is the national director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.