Kathrada's sudden interest in Morgan Freeman

No doubt inspired by the recent success of the boycott movement in persuading Stephen Hawking not to attend the President Conference in June, Ahmed Kathrada, the veteran anti-apartheid activist who served time in prison on Robben Island, has written an open letter to Morgan Freeman condemning him for accepting the “key of knowledge award” by the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University.

Kathrada served on the interim leadership of ANC and the South African Communist Party and on May 17 2013 he will be reporting back on his recent visit to Palestine, where he attended a symposium on Palestinian political prisoners and met with relatives of prisoner Marwaan Barghouti.

He stated that “our focus should be to isolate Israel. Try to make it in such a way that the Israeli citizen will feel uncomfortable in any country they visit as it happened in South Africa.” Kathrada’s endorsement of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel bolsters a long list of prominent members of the ANC and its alliance partners – such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ebrahim Ebrahim, Ronnie Kasrils, Marius Fransman and Zwelinzima Vavi – to mention but a few.

Kathrada’s open letter to Morgan Freeman quotes selectively from Mandela, ignoring the true meaning of Mandela’s words, which implied that South Africans would not be free while conflicts existed in other parts of the world. He distorts Mandela’s quote by limiting it only to Palestine, thereby laying bare his agenda to demonise and delegitimise Israel.

He makes reference to the findings of the notorious Russell Tribunal, which during their sojourn in South Africa likened Israel to an “apartheid state”. The findings of this tribunal were thoroughly discredited by the media as a “kangaroo court”, as the panel and witnesses were all pre-screened and vetted and completely partisan to the Palestinian cause.

What receiving an honour from the Hebrew University has to do with apartheid is quite unfathomable? This university ranks in the top 25 universities in the world – nearly 100 places above South Africa’s best. Moreover, the Hebrew University is built entirely on pre-1967 Israel borders and so is in no way tainted with the so-called “occupation”. Even the Mount Scopus Campus, on which the original Hadassah hospital was built, was designated Israeli territory in 1948. Under the armistice agreement, Israel was assured safe passage through a narrow corridor to access the hospital. After repeated ambushes by Jordanian and Palestinian soldiers, which violated the armistice agreements, and during which Israeli doctors and patients were massacred, the hospital was closed down. These attacks and massacres perpetrated by the Arabs against defenceless citizens should be condemned by Kathrada. The contempt for international treaties and agreements by the Palestinian attackers and their flagrant disregard for human life, makes the Palestinians complicit in human rights abuses which inevitably led directly to the need for Israelis to take defensive steps, such as the building security barrier. Had he been even remotely honest and fair-minded Kathrada would have withheld his condemnation of the “checkpoints manned by armed soldiers to ensure that Palestinians don’t break restrictions” which he sanctimoniously implies did not exist even during the worst days of apartheid.

While Kathrada may know something about Apartheid, he clearly is ignorant about Israeli society. He has visited only the Palestinian territories, where he spent a week feasting on their diet of hate and of perfecting the art of victimhood. He visited Palestinians in refugee camps, which were built by their Arab brethren, the Jordanians, to prolong the suffering of the Palestinian refugees and keep them in a stateless condition. To join in the chorus of naïve visitors who salve their guilt on Palestinian suffering by pouring all the blame on Israel, Kathrada is being dishonest and devious.

If Kathrada were to tour South Africa and visit only squatter cities like Crossroads and Kayelitsha, perhaps he would reach the same conclusion-that present day South Africa is an apartheid state. Why? Because he would find only black people living in these areas under the most appalling circumstances. Perhaps he would declare the situation even worse than conditions during the apartheid period, as he has done in his open letter, writing: “I came back convinced that Israel is an apartheid state. And in certain respects it is worse than apartheid.”

Kathrada is being disingenuous because the income disparities which exist in contemporary South Africa are even larger than they have ever been-in fact the Gini coefficient between rich and poor is the worst in the world-yes even worse than the conditions under which Palestinians live and this is not my opinion but the opinion of all impartial economists.

How dare Kathrada condemn Israel when his own backyard is so unfree and full of human suffering? Perhaps Kathrada needs to be reminded that rape and abuse of women and children in South Africa is possibly the worst in the world. Perhaps he needs to be reminded that infant mortality, HIV/Aids and other lifestyle indicators are far worse amongst his own people than amongst Palestinians. Perhaps he needs to be reminded that Palestinian literacy is over 90%, far better than for South Africans. Mr Kathrada, who has benefitted handsomely from the new dispensation in South Africa does those of his people who have not benefitted at all and continue to suffer terrible living conditions even under the new dispensation, a deep injustice to say that the Palestinians are suffering more than them.

Right at the end of his letter Kathrada’s ventures into diminishing the suffering of the Jews with the ultimate insult of accusing Israel of “forgetting the Holocaust” so “quickly”. Does he insinuate that Israel is guilty of the same crimes against the Palestinians? One shudders to think what is on his mind!

Perhaps Kathrada should be reminded that once a year on Yom Hashoa, 85% of the nation stop dead in their tracks, wherever they are to remember the holocaust. Aharon Appelfeld words sum up this seminal event: “The Holocaust is a central event in many people’s lives, but it also has become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it. Besides, in Israel, everyone carries a biography deep inside him.”

There is the contrary view that foes of Israel are prone to indulge in and that is a to accuse it of not forgetting the Holocaust and of not moving on. As Kathrada joins the ranks of those who aspire to harm and destroy the Jewish state, this merely reinforces Israel’s resolve to never again allow a repeat of that horrific time, by being constantly vigilant.

The words of Iris Chang, in The Rape of Nanking resonate: “As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.”