An opinion piece in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian is indicative that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has no red lines when it comes to dehumanizing Israelis.
Dudu Masango-Mahlangu is a member of the South African Council of Churches and a Board Member of BDS South Africa. For her, Israelis are inhuman child-killers, the deliberate murderers of innocent Palestinians, and modern-day Nazis.
Referring to the numbers of dead and injured Palestinians as a result of rioting on the Gaza border, Masango-Mahlangu says:
But it was not necessarily the numbers that saddened me — statistics sometimes desensitise us.
It was the reading of the names, ages, occupations and how each of the victims was killed or maimed that made me weep. I wept for the Palestinian child who was murdered and, simultaneously, I wept for the inhumanity of the Israeli who pulled the trigger.
Israelis as deliberate child-killers
She continues on the theme of literally dehumanizing Israeli soldiers who are characterized as cold and deliberate child-killers:
But the murdering of Palestinians in the past year has mostly been the calculated result of a human being, watching, waiting, aiming and firing — coldly, methodically and calmly — from a distance of more than a kilometre. This means that an Israeli sniper, on May 14 2018, deliberately aimed at the forehead of 11-year-old Yasser Abu Naja, ending his life.
What goes through the mind of a sniper who is aware that their bullet will shatter to pieces a young child’s skull?
The death of any child is a tragedy. It is tragic that Palestinians have brought their children to a conflict zone near the border and that terror organizations have encouraged children to become involved in riots at the scene. It is tragic that children have been killed or injured during these riots, many simply due to their close proximity to the violence.
But to suggest that Israeli soldiers have deliberately and calculatedly targeted children is a blood libel and tars the IDF with murderous intent.
Masango-Mahlangu writes that she is unable to find the humanity in the soldiers who she holds responsible for serious injuries to Palestinians that she describes in graphic detail, including “a shattered liver, a destroyed lung, a butchered leg, an exploded eye;” amputations, paralysis due to “injuries to the spinal cord.” She even writes:
Several hundred Palestinians were deliberately shot in the groin — both male and female — leaving them unable to have children. A 15-year-old Palestinian from Northern Gaza, whose name has been withheld for privacy, was shot with a single bullet in the testicles. He is now unable to walk more than 30m and has dropped out of school.
For the past year, Hamas has sent kids to the Gaza border fence as cannon fodder. By not explaining Hamas responsibility, Masango-Mahlangu plays into the terror group’s hands.
Her graphic descriptions of Palestinian injuries are less about Masango-Mahlangu’s faux search for Israeli humanity and everything about delegitimizing Israel, which she refers to as a “regime,” a description usually employed for military dictatorships or autocracies, not a liberal democracy like Israel. She also refers to “Israeli apartheid,” which, according to her, is the reason that Palestinians are protesting at the border fence.
Antisemitic Nazi and Holocaust analogies
When Masango-Mahlangu refers to the “Gaza ghetto,” it is the opening salvo in a despicable and arguably antisemitic conclusion to her opinion piece.
The wretched of the earth in the concentration camps of the Holocaust raised their fists and embarked on uprisings against the Nazis. They refused to submit; they resisted even though the suffocating stench and very real possibility of death surrounded them. It was in those who resisted the Holocaust that we find hope for good to triumph over evil.
Likewise, it is in the Palestinian child who comes out week after week to break out of her ghetto that we are persuaded to persevere in our solidarity so that a free Palestine is not only possible but also inevitable.
Palestinians are refusing to submit on their knees and are insisting on fighting on their feet — just as people did in Nazi Germany. It is in this resistance that one observes the tenacity of the human spirit, the beauty of humanity and the seeds for a more peaceful, just and loving world. This tenacity should assist us in overcoming despair and not being deterred.
What sort of Holocaust revisionism is Masango-Mahlangu engaging in when she claims that the “wretched of the earth” i.e. Jews in concentration camps rose up against their Nazi captors? While there were escapes from the camps, there were no mass uprisings during the war, an option that Holocaust victims never had under Nazi control.
Tellingly, Masango-Mahlangu doesn’t specify Jews in her Holocaust analogy but it is clear that she is comparing the situation of the Palestinians to the Holocaust however inaccurate her reading of history is. Ergo, it is Israelis who are now the Nazi oppressors while the Palestinians are the Holocaust victims.
Gaza is not a concentration camp nor a ghetto. Israelis are not committing genocide against the Palestinian population. To suggest so is to minimize the very devastating reality of the Holocaust and is employed specifically to hurt Jews.
It is worth noting that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism includes: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Related reading: How to Criticize Israel Without Being Antisemitic
False facts and extremist sources
The opinion piece also includes some outright falsehoods:
Seventy-five percent of the Palestinians protesting at the fence that separates the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Israel are refugees who can see their former homes and homeland but are denied entry. They have been imprisoned in the Gaza Strip, the most densely populated piece of land in the world. These Palestinians are unable to return to their homes. Israel controls all of Gaza’s land, sea and air borders, deciding who is allowed in and who is allowed out. Gaza is an “open-air prison”, according to South African law professor John Dugard.
- John Dugard is hardly the neutral academic to quote. Professor Anne Bayefsky has referred to former UN official Dugard as “the UN’s Spokesperson for Suicide Bombers” and “the most fanatical spokesperson for terrorism at the UN outside the Arab and Moslem world.” Indeed, Dugard has a long track record of anti-Israel activism.
- The Gaza Strip is not “the most densely populated piece of land in the world.” While it is certainly among the most densely populated, other territories including Monaco, Singapore and Gibraltar are have a greater population density. Indeed, population density is a measure of urbanization and not necessarily of inherent poverty as shown by the wealth of those aforementioned territories. In addition, while Gaza’s population has risen since 2014, a Business Insider article published at that time demonstrated how Gaza’s population density is actually similar to that of numerous US cities.
- Israel doesn’t control “all of Gaza’s land, sea and air borders.” Masango-Mahlangu has conveniently omitted Egyptian control over its border with Gaza.
Related reading: The Gaza Blockade: An Explainer
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By the end of her piece, Dudu Masango-Mahlangu has revealed who she really is. While she references her Christianity in her refusal to find humanity in Israeli soldiers, the reality is that her support for BDS is not a peaceful solidarity effort but a call for violent uprising on the part of the Palestinians. Her dehumanization of Israeli soldiers and the associated blood libels; the imagined and historically revisionist view of Israelis as the new Nazis and the Palestinians their victims — Masango-Mahlangu has crossed the line from legitimate criticism into delegitimization, demonization and ultimately antisemitism.
Shame on her and BDS South Africa and shame on the Mail & Guardian for publishing thinly disguised hate speech.
We’ve sent a letter of complaint to the Mail & Guardian. Let them also know what you think. Please send a letter to the editor – [email protected]
Image of Masango-Mahlangu via YouTube/SABC Digital News;
