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International relations and co-operation minister Naledi Pandor. Picture: SYDNEY SESHIBEDI
International relations and co-operation minister Naledi Pandor. Picture: SYDNEY SESHIBEDI

International relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor appeared on television on Friday night to explain the government’s “nonaligned” position in not supporting the UN General Assembly vote to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.

Pandor calmly stressed that diplomacy and dispute resolution could still be used to resolve this conflict. But then she outrageously launched into a tirade on the world’s alleged failure to do anything about Israel’s killing of children and so on. This was astonishing for a number of reasons.

First, the issue had nothing to do with Israel. Second, her breathtaking hypocrisy of talking about the diplomatic and negotiating options for Ukraine yet frothing about Israel, a conflict that has been the subject of negotiation on numerous occasions. The Oslo Accords resulted in the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat’s demand.

Pandor exposed that though officially the ANC supports a negotiated two-state solution in Israel, it in fact supports the position taken by its friends, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), whose positions are that the “Zionist” entity must be terminated to be replaced by an Islamist state.

Third, the accusations against Israel are mostly antisemitic tropes such as “Israel kills children”. No, it doesn’t. Children rarely get killed other than in exceptional circumstances such as last May’s war. Hamas started that war, over the course of which it indiscriminately fired 4,000 missiles into Israel.

Eventually, Israel launched a strike at the sites where Hamas stores its missile launchers. Hamas heartlessly stores these munitions in built-up areas so that civilians are used as human shields. Some of the children who died were killed by Hamas rockets being blown up, or that misfired.

Pandor has done us a favour by revealing the ANC’s true support for the destruction of the Jewish state. 

SC Weiss
Parktown North

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