Hired to bless a conference, he seized the moment to curse Israel

• Author: Steve Apfel
• Published date: 15 March 2021
• Date: 15 March 2021
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

Members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), emphatic haters of the country the Jews made, heard it directly, as it were, from the donkey's mouth. The Land of the Chosen could take a lesson in religious freedom and tolerance from a lawless South Africa.

"It (freedom and tolerance) is a source of strength and pride to South Africans as much as it is a source of shame and distress for all Jews," he said.The rabbi was comparing a tolerant country at peace with its neighbours to a country stuck in the minefield of a murderous neighbourhood. A hall thick with anti-Zionists erupted in delight. For testimony to how much anti-Zionism that venue held, BDS workers sold 'Made in Palestine' mementoes at a table during tea break.

The rabbi had picked the right audience for cursing. By edict ANC members are forbidden to ever set foot in Israel. Schooled in the belief that European colonists made use of the Holocaust to descend on Palestine and to thieve it from under the nose of the natives, delegates had to love him. The words of an Elder of Zion would have strummed on every bigoted nerve in that gathering.

As if thieving the land of born and bred Pal Arabs were not enough, the Zionist Jews were intolerant of Muslims and Christians. So the audience gathered – deliberately or stupidly matters not one iota to the outcome. Here was a cursing rabbi speaking, hobbled hatreds grasped, truth to power.

Across town the curse raised a counter storm. The Jewish community was up in arms. Orthodox, Reform and others doubted that ANC members had understood the rabbi correctly. What would they know or care about a dispute over prayer rights at the Kotel and the conversion divide between Orthodox and non-Orthodox. Could they even pin down Palestine on a map? The cause of the rabbi's diatribe would have been lost on that gathering.

Lost or misconstrued: Israel-haters could not have been more delighted to learn that Israel makes life difficult for Christians and Muslims, and that the rabbi felt ashamed of his own country.

At the community's push-back the rabbi actually began to sound just like hitman Balaam expostulating to his cheated client. It was not for him, he explained, to say what the Jewish community wanted him to say. His conscience "forced him" to:

To hold a mirror up to Israeli society

To speak the truth

To hold Israel accountable

To demand equality and justice

At this grand self-appointment as a firebrand prophet and watchdog, the rabbi stuck his Left foot...