This article has already been doing the rounds for a few days now – and with good reason: a former Israel hater from South Africa who visited Israel and changed his mind makes for great reading.
Read the entire thing (trust me, it’s worth it). But here, I’ll highlight a couple of really important points.
Firstly, he acknowledges we are the indigenous people of Israel.
First, studying the history was crucial in terms of fully grasping the truth of the situation. I learned that Jewish people are indeed indigenous to the land from which they were forcibly removed. Following this expulsion from their homeland, Jews suffered the indignity of being the skunk of the world.
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Not surprisingly, fervent critiques of Israel erase this history and focus all energies upon the conflict immediately before and after the declaration of a Jewish state in 1948. Those who butcher the history of Israel in this manner are themselves guilty of causing and perpetuating conflict. They deliberately do this to conceal the truth, which to them is an inconvenience.
However, this is not too difficult for me to grasp as a black man, whose painful past is always used as a footnote by others…..The insistence of the Arab world on denying Jewish people, the indigenous people of Israel, the right to sovereign existence is a main reason this conflict has lasted for so long.
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However, Israel is not a settler state. The Jewish people are indigenous to Israel, including the contested West Bank and the holy city of Jerusalem. These are descendants of Jewish refugees who were displaced centuries ago and they are back to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination. There is no self-respecting, sober intellectual who will argue that returning to your ancestral homeland from whence you were displaced makes you a settler.
And secondly, he admits that the goal of BDS is to destroy the Jewish state of Israel, an idea he rejects as being antisemitic.
Traveling through the country encouraged me to reflect upon the suggestions by some sections of the Palestine solidarity movement—particularly those advocating for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel—that it is possible to establish one country between Israel and Palestine based on a “one-state” solution, like the one we established here in South Africa. Though supporters of this solution claim it is democratic, the rejection of a Jewish state is in fact a modern way of institutionalizing anti-Semitic posturing.
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However, after actually visiting Israel, my views on BDS have changed drastically. I am no longer involved in the BDS movement and don’t believe it to be a legitimate cause.
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The argument by BDS supporters that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be solved with a one-state solution, following the South African model of democracy, is false and dangerous.
