South Africa chief justice laments country’s lopsided attitude to Israel-Palestinian conflict
Chief Justice of South Africa Mogoeng Mogoeng has lamented his country’s adoption of a lopsided attitude toward the Israel-Palestinian conflict and said that it would have greater influence if it displayed a more balanced approach.
Speaking during in a special webinar for The Jerusalem Post on global racial tensions with South Africa Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, Mogoeng said that his nation’s history of forgiveness and understanding should have informed its approach to peace making, adding that as a practicing Christian he believed that those who curse Israel will themselves be cursed.
The chief justice also spoke about the toxicity of hatred, and the importance of overcoming it to make progress.
In recent years, the South African government has become increasingly hostile to Israel, and in particular through the security measures it has undertaken.
In 2018, South Africa withdrew its ambassador from Israel and formally downgraded its ties following clashes on the Gaza border.
Speaking in the Post’s webinar, Mogoeng took pains to emphasize that the policy of the South African government was binding upon himself and that he was not seeking to reject it.
But, he said, as a citizen he was entitled to criticize laws and policies changes.
“As a citizen of our great country, we are denying ourselves a wonderful opportunity of being a game-changer in the Israeli-Palestinian situation,” said Mogoeng.
“We know what it means to be at logger heads, a nation at war with itself,” he continued. “The forgiveness that was demonstrated, the understanding and big heart displayed by President Nelson Mandela and we, the people and suggest of South Africa, is an asset we must use around the world to bring peace when there is no peace and to mediate effectively based on rich experience.”
The chief justice was also implicitly critical of those in his country and in Africa at large who condemn Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians, but embrace South Africa and Africa’s former colonizers.
“Have we cut diplomatic ties with our colonizers?” he said. “Have we disinvested from our former colonizers and those responsible for untold suffering in South Africa and Africa? Did Israel take away our land or the land of Africa, did Israel take our mineral wealth?”
“We would do well to reflect on the objectivity involved in adopting a particular attitude towards a particular country that has not taken as much and unjustly from South Africa and Africa as other nations that we consider it to be an honor to have diplomatic relations with us,” Mogoeng said.
Speaking more broadly about the ongoing racial tensions in much of the world following the killing of George Floyd in the US, Goldstein said that it was critical “to reach out to each other, and realize we are all human beings created in God’s image.”
“When connect[ed] on a human level, we can see past ideology and that which separates us and create a sense of kindred spirit, and that is how we overcome divisions in our world,” the rabbi said.