Joel B Pollak is a graduate of Harvard University, Harvard School of Law, and the University of Cape Town. He was a political speechwriter for the Leader of the Opposition in South Africa from 2002 to 2006. He is currently an American political commentator and the editor-in-chief and in-house counsel for Breitbart.com.

The Kasrils Affair

Jews and Minority Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa

By Joel B Pollak, Wendy Priilaid

Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd

Copyright © 2009 Juta & Company Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-919895-07-9

Contents

Preface,
Chapter One – Introduction,
Chapter Two – Politics and South African Jewry before 1994,
Chapter Three – The Post-Apartheid Jewish Community,
Chapter Four – The Kasrils Affair,
Chapter Five – The Aftermath,
Chapter Six – Challenging the Board’s Strategy,
Chapter Seven – Conclusions and Comparisons,
Epilogue – The Zuma Era,
Appendix – The Kasrils Declarations,
Bibliography,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

On Thursday 23 October 2001, the National Assembly of the Parliament of South Africa convened in Cape Town to consider and debate the report of a fact-finding mission that had been sent to Israel and the Palestinian territories three months before. The task of the multiparty delegation had been to study the ongoing intifada, the latest tragic chapter in the decades-old conflict between Jews and Arabs over a land claimed by both. The hope was that South Africa’s parliamentarians, with their fresh experience of conflict resolution in their own country, could offer insights to Israelis and Palestinians, recommend ways of reviving the peace process, and suggest how the South African government could become involved. The work of the delegates was now set before Parliament and the nation.

Exactly six weeks before, on Tuesday 11 September 2001, 19 Arab hijackers had crashed commercial passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The former was destroyed and the latter was severely damaged. Nearly 3 000 people died, and the US declared a ‘war on terror’ that continues to this day.

A debate about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would have been combative under any circumstances, but in the weeks after the ‘9/11’ attack, discussions about the Palestinian intifada and the Israeli response to it had become more heated and passionate than ever before. By the time the fact-finding mission’s report came before Parliament, American-led forces had already begun bombing targets in Afghanistan, Muslims around the world were preparing to observe the fast of the holy month of Ramadan, and terror and its causes were being debated feverishly around the world. The arguments in the National Assembly that afternoon were therefore more dramatic and intense than usual.

The divisions, however, were along typical party political lines. Members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) defended the report, which had largely reflected their party’s position by calling for a tough line against Israel. ‘The report,’ said Thandi R Modise, an ANC Member of Parliament (MP) and chairperson of the National Assembly’s Portfolio Committee on Defence, ‘… draws a parallel between apartheid South Africa and the situation that is obtaining now in Palestine … there is no way that South Africans, those of us who profess to understand, to love and to fight for democracy, can keep quiet …’.

Members of the opposition, led by the Democratic Party (DP), and joined by smaller parties, criticised the report, arguing that it ‘tends to take sides’. Dr B L ‘Boy’ Geldenhuys, who had represented the New National Party on the fact-finding mission — and who would be named South Africa’s ambassador to Jordan in 2004 — added: ‘To equate what the report calls the oppression experien