Abdurrahman Aydın / World Bulletin 

Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the International Relations Minister of South Africa, told South African ministers last week to not visit Israel, although she did not officially order them to cut diplomatic relations with Israel.

She stated at a Cosatu international relations committee meeting "Ministers of South Africa do not visit Israel currently. Even the Jewish Board of Deputies that we engage with here, they know why our ministersare not going to Israel."

Responding to her statement, Avidgor Lieberman, Israel’s former foreign minister, accused her and South Africa of “anti-Semitism.”

He wrote on his Facebook page “The comments by the South African foreign minister at the weekend, that South African government ministers will no longer visit Israel as an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians, are a combination of hypocrisy and classic anti-Semitism.”

Lieberman went further and even claimed with out any evidence, “The South African government is creating an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic atmosphere, which will result in pogroms against the country’s Jews. I call on all Jews still living there to make aliya as soon as possible, before it is toolate.”

In his The Electronic Intifada blog, Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian activist and author, explained “Aliya” as “the Hebrew word for government-subsidized Jewish immigration and colonization in present-day Israel and the occupied West Bank”. He noted that “Lieberman’s attempt to frighten and intimidate South African Jews into leaving their country recalls a similar, unsuccessful appeal by then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who demanded almost a decade ago that all of France’s Jews must flee their country to escape “anti-Semitism”.”

Wendy Kahn, national director of South Africa’s Jewish Board of Deputies, also criticized Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. He said the minister’s policy amounted to “discriminatory punitive measures” against Israel.

For the majority of South Africans, there is a big similarity between the Apartheid policies of the former White supremacist South African regime and Israel’s policy of colonization in Palestine. This can clearly be observed in the statement of the South African International Relations Minister who said “The last time I saw a map of Palestine, I couldn’t go to sleep. It is just dots, smaller than those of the homelands, and that broke my heart.”

“Homelands” is a reference to the bantustans; so-called independent states established by the former apartheid regime in the 1970s to convince the world public opinion that black South Africans had independence.

The bantustan solution intended to hide the white supremacist nature of the South African regime behind a mask of black “sovereignty”.