Just a few weeks before former South African President and African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela passed away, we were treated right here in Great Neck to a visit from a real man of courage, South African Member of Parliament Reverend Kenneth Meshoe.
Reverend Meshoe spoke the truth about Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu and the ANC’s anti-Israel activities and agenda.
Reverend Meshoe explained that the ANC’s and its leaders’ anti-Israel agenda is so extreme that, among other things, the ANC and its leaders have prevented life-saving Israeli medical equipment and techniques from being used in South African hospitals, resulting in harm and deaths to South Africa’s own people.
On Sunday morning, Nov. 10, 2013, the Great Neck Synagogue Men’s Club hosted Reverend Meshoe and his lovely wife Lydia (who is also a member of the South African parliament).
Reverend Meshoe is the founder and president of the African Christian Democrat Party, the chairman of the South African Israel Allies Caucus, a founder of the Hope of Glory Tabernacle church, a devoted Christian leader and a staunch supporter of Israel.
Reverend Meshoe first described his experience living as a black South African under apartheid – and explained why the accusation that Israel is an “apartheid state” is completely false. Hurling such a slanderous accusation at Israel is insulting to people in South Africa such as Reverend Meshoe, who really lived under apartheid’s yoke.
Reverend Meshoe explained that as a black South African living under apartheid, he could not vote, travel freely, or hold high government office. He had to live in separate designated areas (black only townships). He was relegated to separate areas in public facilities, waiting rooms and buses.
People of color had inferior hospitals and medical care and other services. If a white doctor was even willing to see black patients, the black patients were examined in only in a hidden back room.
Reverend Meshoe eloquently noted that he and his colleagues have visited Israel many times and observed firsthand that none of the hallmarks of apartheid are present in Israel. Reverend Meshoe and his colleagues saw blacks and whites, Jews from all over the world (Europe, Ethiopia, Middle Eastern Countries) and Muslims all sitting together in hospital waiting rooms, restaurants, trains and buses in Israel.
Public bathrooms and other facilities are not segregated. Arab Israelis have the right to vote and are a significant voting bloc. Arabs work as university professors, doctors, emergency room heads, soldiers, judges and even as Knesset members in Israel. A black Ethiopian Jew won the Miss Israel contest. None of this was ever possible under South Africa’s apartheid system.
Israeli self-defense measures against continuing Palestinian terrorist attacks which claimed thousands of Israeli civilians’ lives is not “apartheid,” Reverend Meshoe also stated.
For instance, the security fence is simply an absolutely essential security measure to prevent the murders of more Israelis. (Palestinian homicide bombers murdered and injured thousands of Israelis during the Second Intifada before Israel erected the security fence.)
Reverend Meshoe also recounted his battle against anti-Israel laws and regulations which the ANC and its leaders have attempted to enact in South Africa.
For instance, the South African Trade and Industry Ministry proposed a regulation requiring all Israeli products to bear the label “Made in Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Reverend Meshoe led a protest march of 2,000 Christians and Jews through the streets against this regulation.
Reverend Meshoe also stopped the final enactment of the proposed regulation by pointing out that the regulation violated the South African law that products must be labeled with their country of origin, since there is no country called “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
Another deep concern which Reverend Meshoe has attempted to combat is the ANC’s and its leaders’ placement of their anti-Israel political agenda over the lives of the South African people.
For instance, Israel has developed the world’s leading technologies for cleaning drinking water – but the ANC refuses to use these technologies despite the fact that obtaining clean drinking water is a major life-threatening issue confronting the South African people. In addition, Israel has developed sanitary equipment and techniques for circumcisions.
The ANC’s and its leaders’ refusal to allow these to be used in South Africa has resulted in the deaths of numerous babies who subjected to unsanitary circumcisions. The same is true for other Israeli medical advances.
In response to a question during the Q&A period, Reverend Meshoe spoke about the enormous influence of radical Islamists even though Islamists are a very tiny minority in South Africa.
Reverend Meshoe explained that radical Islamists provide financial backing to the ANC leadership.
In addition, he explained that Islamists have taken over local economies by opening stores and lowering prices for staples to below cost until other stores in the community were driven out of business.
Reverend Meshoe’s talk attracted many residents of Great Neck who formerly lived in South Africa. These Jewish South African expats vividly recalled how the Jewish community in South Africa worked tirelessly for an end to South Africa’s apartheid system, and were then horrified and disappointed when Mandela, Tutu and the ANC embraced Palestinian terrorists and turned out to be vicious enemies of Israel.
Reverend Meshoe’s talk was particularly timely in view of the undeserved accolades of “sainthood” being heaped on Mandela after Mandela passed away last week.
In addition to Mandela’s support for car bombings that murdered and injured hundreds of innocent South Africans, Mandela embraced and “made common cause” with virtually every bloodthirsty murdering terrorist on the planet – including Yasser Arafat, Castro, Qaddafi, and domestic U.S. terrorists who injured U.S. Congressman.
Leading Arab-American propagandist James Zogby wrote this week that Mandela “stood firm” that the PLO and ANC were allies, and that when Arafat and Mandela met and embraced in 1990, Mandela stated: “There are many similarities between our struggle and that of the PLO.” (This, after Arafat and the PLO murdered 22 schoolchildren and injured 68 more at Maalot, murdered disabled wheelchair-bound American Leon Klinghoffer, and murdered the Israeli athletes at Munich, to name only three of the many atrocities committed by Arafat and the PLO.)
Zogby also (fondly) recalled Mandela saying to him in 1991 that Arafat “is a friend and a good man.” And in 2004, Mandela mourned Arafat’s passing with the statement: “Yasser Arafat was one of the outstanding freedom fighters of this generation.”
The real freedom fighters are men like Reverend Kenneth Meshoe.
Liz Berney, Esq.
Great Neck
