LETTER: For SA to be more supportive of Israel, the Zionist Fed needs a better strategy
Instead of recognising that the public’s distaste for Israel is due to the SA Zionist federation’s own bad PR strategy, it tries to convince readers that it is because its audience is stupid
On April 10th 2019, this publication printed an opinion piece by the chair of the South African Zionist Federation’s Cape Council. The Zionist Federation would have your readers believe that the South African government’s towards Israel is the result of the ANC’s stupidity, and that somehow the ANCs political strategists are too dense to realise that the “hating the Middle Eastern Country has never garnered the ANC votes or won it any international favour”. The claim is plainly absurd: for a start SA’s Muslim voters are 20 times the size of the country’s Jewish populations so at least along ethno-religious lines, there are very real incentives for the ANC to be seen to be siding with the Palestinians over Israel. Further, the core of the ANC and its brand is as a liberation movement; the cost of protecting that brand is worth the spend, because as a liberation movement its voters remain loyal and forgive its failures and excesses. Frankly it is impossible to understand how the liber...
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