Whoever’s handling Israel’s foreign affairs isn’t doing a sterling job. Deciding who to send to the Nelson Mandela memorial in South Africa today became a matter fraught with intrigue and embarrassment when PM Netanyahu decided at the last minute not to attend. The official reason was that the trip would’ve cost $2-million.
Bibi is notorious for his profligacy. He was flayed for having a $140,000 bed built for the plane that flew him to Europe recently. Only a few days ago, the average Israeli working stiff discovered the $1-million cost (40% over budget) of maintenance for his three (count ‘me!) private residences. The electricity bill on his Caesarea villa alone was $75,000! The $3,000 ice cream bill is another tidbit that entertained Israeli media for weeks (pistachio is Sarah’s favorite!).
While it is entirely possible that Netanyahu judged that the preferred choice between being parsimonious and getting his picture taken at Mandela’s funeral was to show his newly frugal nature, that sounds suspect to me. Netanyahu never misses an opportunity to be on the world stage, as he would’ve been among the leaders of seventy countries who attended. Not to mention that South Africa’s government has recently declared Israel a place none of its leaders would visit, in solidarity with the BDS movement. Bibi’s never been one to pass up a chance to poke a stick in the eye of his enemies. As this story in Haaretz says:
The stated reason was the trip’s high cost, but many people see the underlying reason as more political than financial.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is immensely complicated, and the relationship between Israel and South Africa has been a troubled one ever since the ANC-dominated government came into power in 1994.
Israel is branded an ‘apartheid’ country by various quarters, including some politicians in South Africa, who see the Palestinians as equivalent to South African blacks – and apartheid is what Mandela fought against.
…But if “the whole world is coming to South Africa” – as foreign ministry spokesman Clayson Monyela said – and Israel is not among them, what message would its absence send? Would it be an admission that because of the apartheid label, Israeli leaders fear being embarrassed by expected protests from anti-Israel groups?
My guess (which I haven’t been able to confirm independently) is that either the South African government asked him not to attend or the Shabak learned that South African activists would mount protests against his presence. It’s very possible that this decision may have resulted, directly or indirectly, from the BDS’s attempt to ostracize Israel from the community of nations.
The next obvious choice to attend would’ve been Pres. Shimon Peres, who was said to have a ‘bad cold.’ He declined as well, though he appeared Monday at a press conference at his residence with no apparent cold symptoms. Peres is not liked in South Africa for his role in supporting the white apartheid regime and collaboration with it on building a nuclear weapon. This is documented in Sasha Polakow-Suransky seminal book on the subject. While Peres was pretending to support Mandela’s liberation struggle, he was engineering the development of WMD for both countries.
That left the Knesset speaker and ardent settler, Yuli Edelstein, to cobble together a delegation of mostly right-wing MKs. Edelstein was a Soviet prisoner of conscience who claims to have met Mandela once. The fact that Edelstein is a settler and opposes creation of a Palestinian state doesn’t appear to have crossed anyone’s mind as a reason he might be an inappropriate choice.
I’ll let you be the judge as to whether such a statement would’ve found favor in Mandela’s eyes:
Edelstein said that Mandela was a freedom fighter but that “more than that he was a man that [sic] knew that you do not correct an injustice with another injustice and violence with more violence.
He added that the State of Israel will remember Mandela as a man who “abandoned the path of violence in his just struggle for equality between black and white people.”
“I hope that the leaders in our region will abandon terror like Mandela and will choose dialogue as a way to live in peace with Israel,” the Speaker of the Knesset added.
In fact, Mandela endorsed the armed struggle and never “abandoned” it in the “just struggle for equality.” He only renounced it after the white government did and just before the fall of apartheid. Read this apt denunciation of Bibi’s similarly fraudulent appraisal of Mandela’s record on armed struggle. In fact, the U.S. government didn’t remove Mandela and the ANC from the terror watch list until 2008. That means that Bill Clinton, one of those joining the U.S. delegation to the memorial, labelled Mandela a terrorist (irony of ironies!). We should remember that Israel has by no means renounced violence against the Palestinians. Under those circumstances, Mandela wouldn’t have either. He would’ve dismissed Edelstein’s pallid call for “dialogue” as the empty ruse it is.
In fact, Edelstein would’ve been a perfect choice to attend F.W. DeKlerk’s funeral since both are/were, in a sense, settlers (though DeKlerk opted to abandon apartheid, to his immense credit, while Edelstein still clings to the Israeli version). For an Israeli leader who tramples on every belief Mandela held sacred, to stand at the head of the Israeli delegation is an insult. Perhaps that’s what Israel intended. What better way to poke a stick in the eye of a government which has endorsed BDS? Though I’m not even certain Israel was thinking that far ahead in devising such a crafty plan.
Such a good post, Richard. I am glad I read this, and I believe your analysis is on the spot.
Thank you.
In december 2012 the African National Congress made BDS part of its official policy:
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/historic-decision-south-africas-anc-makes-support-israel-boycott-its-official
I wonder whether Western mainstream media are going to mention the absence of high-ranking Israeli officials.
Edelstein used to be Minister of Hasbara (before that ministry was closed down recently), I guess he’s going to use all his skills in South Africa.
Great post Richard. Indeed it is the irony or ironies that
Israel is even sending a delegation to Mandela’s funderal – it’s
like Dracula going to a vegetarian convention. And it’s not only
for the past (as some liberal Zionists suggested Israel apologize
for its cooperation and special relationship with the white
supremacist regime) – but mostly for the present as Israel
practices a form of Apartheid ten times more brutal whose ultimate
goal is the complete expulsion of all native Palestinians. To have
a delegation from Israel at Mandela’s funeral is an insult to his
legacy.
The government agencies doing the commemoration should not allow Israeli attendance, period.
@ Davey: Governments can’t do that unless they’re prepared to sever relations entirely.
The behavior of Israel is embarrassing to watch.. and I bet
some people here are struggling to fight the feeling of being on
the wrong side of history. But why do you call the delegation a
delegation of mostly right-wing MKs? MK Pnina Tamnu-Shata (Yesh
Atid) — center MKs Dov Lipman (Yesh Atid) — center Nitzan
Horowitz (Meretz) — left Gila Gamliel (Likud Beytenu) — right
Hilik Bar (Labor) — center Moreover, the parties I denoted as
‘center’ are often considered ‘center-left’ in Israel. In the
israeli political landscape, this is actually considered (sadly..
but this is a different issue) a significantly left leaning
delegation. If you just split the Knesset in 2, 4 out of 6 MKs are
in the left half.
You’re right. I didn’t pay enough attention to party affiliations when I wrote that. But as you say, centrist in Israeli terms is quite right wing. Yesh Atid is more a center-right than center-left party. And Labor is no longer a left-wing party. It hardly has any ideology except self preservation.
@emma i just goggled Pninia she is an Ethiopian Immigrant to Israel. So sending a black woman to the funeral of the man who needed apartheid seems justified.
Rabbi Dov Lipman now MK seems to be the main guy trying to get the ultra-Orthodox/Haredi to become full members of Israeli society.
Nitzan Horowitz is an openly gay man with extensive experience in the media and foreign affairs having worked for Haaretz.
even Hilik Bar who is just plain sabra seems to have done some interesting things like being the first person to be elected to be the chair of a major party before being in the knesset.
Gila Gamliel is a woman rights activist and a descendant of Yemenite and Libyan refugees (i.e she is Mizrahi)
Looks like they were smart choices afterall…
They sent a black woman, a gay man, an Arab Jew, a rebel rabbi and a white man who wants social equity. Judge a book not by its cover but by the contents of its pages.
The only member of the group whose politics come anywhere close to those of South Africa or Nelson Mandela is Horowitz, who represents Meretz in Knesset. The others, except for possibly the single Labor Party member, are typical Israeli pols ranging from far right to center right.
You’re attempting to put a spin on the delegation it doesn’t deserve.
Richard you are correct that most of the delegation is not up to par with Mandela Politics. Though I am unsure how many of the 70 countries delegations would muster as well…
I believe today Hamid Karzai accused America of being a colonial power by forcing Afghanistan to sign the “bi-lateral” agreement. So who knows if Obama “of all people” is not up to Mandela’s standards… Perhaps Mandela is special a one in a generation like Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr. Or potentially Barghouti (time will tell on this one I am still not convinced but he did write a good letter about peace today that seems promising)
What I was attempting to do was derive an understanding of why would Israel chose these individuals. From what I can see it’s purely PR.
Its hard to deny the fact of ones own eyes in seeing an Arab woman sitting next to a gay man sitting next to a rabbi sitting next to a black woman who all are there to represent Israel makes Israel appear to be a modern egalitarian society. (fact or not)
@ ben: A number of the attendees are war criminals at worst, questionable choices at best. So you are right about that.
@ Ben
Israel may have sent Pnina Tamano-Shata as part of the Israeli delegation to the Mandela Memorial but today the Magen David Adom barred her from blood donation in the Knesset because she has a “special kind of Jewish-Ethiopian blood”
I think there’s a saying about “putting lipstick on a pig……”
@ Deir Yassin: can you get me a link to that story?
○ AFP: Israel spurns blood of Ethiopian-born lawmaker
@Oui: Thanks!
@ Richard
There’s an article on Ynetnews, and a later article update (including the Ynetnews-article) and other informations on Mondoweiss:
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/12/attending-memorial-rejected.html
It seems that the Ethiopian member of the Knesset, Pnina Tamano-Shata organized her first demonstration when she was 16, to get the right to become a blood donor.
In an article by Lahav Harkov in JPost: “Edelstein: Regional Leaders Should Renounce Violence like Mandela”, there’s a very telling photo: the Israeli delegation including the Ethiopian MK under a huge photo of Mandela.
@ Deir Yassin: I didn’t know Mondoweiss had already covered the story. Good story. Thanks.
It sounds exactly like what I would expect from a “hasbara delegation” (with special emphasis on including a black ethiopian Jew), I am just surprised they didn’t include the token Druze as they usually do when they send representatives to countries with most opposition to Israeli policies in an attempt to obfuscate and confuse, which is btw, exactly what Apartheid S. Africa used to do.
[comment deleted–comment was far off-topic. It also raised issues repeatedly raised & discussed long in the past by other commenters before you. If you stay on topic you will tend not to do this sort of thing.]
Well in diplomatic “circles” one (a state) sends to such funeral persons of the same level or so close as possible as the deceased was. USA sent to South Africa one present and 3 former presidents, Finland 1+1 etc. Sending a strange mixture of backbench parliamentarians to such a high profile funeral is most probably seen as a diplomatic insult.
What would Israel say if to the funeral of the long serving head of the “Jewish” state important countries would send such a strange mixture of low ranking parliamentarians representing sexual, color, religious and ethnic minorities/majority? Israelis would hardly see the sender nation as a advanced modern multicultural “democracy”.
You Israelis have rather strange views of state level politeness and diplomacy. Like that low sofa treatment given to Turkish minister, which has cost your country a lot, but which the crowds there did consider as hilarious joke. Or choosing as the foreign affairs minister a guy who publicly recommended bombing the Aswan damn. Smart choices …
Smart choices …
It’s the effect and very intentional. Before the US Presidential election, BN tried to pre-empt the American choice by backing ally Mitt Romney. After BN’s own shocking election misser, he managed to construct a cabinet where any peace deal forged by Obama/Kerry would meet many obstacles. BN looked a the short term. Out of necessity, Obama had to wait for his second term to attain the unreachable goals and his legacy.
Hi Richard. I heard about Bibi not going from my
Palestinian friend posting it on Facebook. I joked with her saying
that Lieberman would be going instead. I agree I think the ANC
under the table told Bibi not to come and he used the Money problem
to save face. Its like when Mayor Ford was told not to attend the
Santa Claus Parade this year because the organizers wanted the
celebration to be about Santa and not be distracted by the media
circus that would have been caused if he went. Perhaps the people
who are doing Mandela’s funeral asked Bibi not to come so that the
ceremony would not be interrupted by anti-Israeli
protestors.
Former Israeli Ambassador to South Africa Alon Liel
believes Netanyahu made the right decision not to make the trip,
but not for the reasons stipulated. “Netanyahu is not a welcome
guest in South Africa today. I think it was right of him not to
go,” Liel told Ynet
Palestinian Struggle and Nobel Peace Prize
Apartheid: Mock Memo to Thomas Friedman – 2001
why would a trip cost him $2mil but not his entire delegation?
@ axisofresistance: Bibi needed a 2nd plane for his armored vehicles & extra security personnel. Apparently, pro-Palestine activists throw lethal eggs during protests.
Also BN’s name is mud outside of the US and Israel, so it make sense they would send unknowns to South Africa in his place.
Worthwhile read …
Brandeis professors call on university to ‘resume, redouble’ ties with Al-Quds University
Appreciate your lone voice and early response!
Wait a sec. I thought Mandela was inspired by the Menachem
Begin’s Irgun
http://972mag.com/mandela-i-read-the-revolt-by-menachem-begin-and-was-encouraged/83461/
@ Pip: Yeah, must’ve been inspired by Begin’s embrace of armed struggle, just like what Palestinian militants do!
Well, Richard.
Begin’s Irgun was a terrorist organization.
Than again, the Irgun Party never gained control of the government the way Mapai, the ANC and the PLO did.
The Irgun as a political party (Herut) eventually DID become the government (in 1977). But the political forces which eventually became Labor also engaged in acts of terror (even assassinating a Jew in 1921).
Further, PLO no longer engages in terror. Other Palestinian militant groups do & Mandela would have absolutely no problem with that until Israel ends Occupation, recognizes Palestinian state on 67 lines with East Jerusalem as capital, plus refugee return.