“The government of South Africa is creating an atmosphere of anti-Israeli sentiment and anti-Semitism that will make a pogrom against Jews in the country just a matter of time,” said Avigdor Lieberman, chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in response to statements over the weekend by a South African minister on a moratorium of government visits to Israel.
“The things that the Minister said over the weekend about how ministers in the South African government won’t visit Israel anymore out of solidarity with the Palestinians are a mix of hypocrisy and classic anti-Semitism,” he said.
South Africa’s International Relations Minister, Maite Nkaona-Mashabane termed Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails ''political prisoners'' and said South Africa’s Ministers are “losing sleep” over plans to build new homes for Jews in the West Bank and Jerusalem. She further announced that, despite the two countries having diplomatic ties, South Africa’s ministers do not visit Israel.
She said ''the struggle of the people of Palestine is our struggle.”
The minister also praised Iran for its “respect for human rights.”
“The same government that just one year ago, its police indiscriminately shot and killed 34 minors because they ‘dared’ to strike, and afterward the government even wanted to bring the miners who survived to trial using a law from the days of Apartheid, the same government that does not get involved, and is not concerned by, what happens with its neighbors – not the murder of journalists in Mali, or the terrorist attacks in Kenya – is concerned by what is happening to the Palestinians thousands of kilometers away,” Lieberman wrote on his Facebook page.
He urged all Jews in South Africa “to make aliyah (immigration) to Israel immediately, without delay, before it is too late.”
In recent years, South Africa has been a harsh critic of Israel, with prominent figures often drawing parallels between the country’s apartheid era and Israel today, slamming Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians, and voicing support for cultural, economic bocyott of Israel.
In September, a protest in South Africa against an Israeli musician turned into anti-Semitism as protestors began to chant "kill the Jews.'
Last week, thirty-two graves in the Jewish cemetery of the South African city of Krugersdorp were desecrated, according to community residents.
Around 70,000 Jews live in the country.