Analysis: An open mind and a thoughtful one

Tom Wheeler *

When I wrote recently of my positive impression of the moderation I experienced at Israeli President Shimon Peres’s conference on Facing Tomorrow in Jerusalem, I was subjected to vicious criticism by a Muslim commentator which, in turn, elicited a sharp rebuke from a Jewish activist. All were published in The New Age.

I was reminded of this by deputy International Relations Minister Ebrahim Ebrahim’s statement at a press conference last week discouraging, but not preventing, South Africans from visiting Israel.

Ebrahim responded to a question from a journalist that it was not a new policy. I must say, however, that was the first time I had ever heard of such a policy. And no one tried to stop me and my wife from boarding the El Al flight at OR Tambo on our way to the conference.

Nor for that matter did anyone prevent us crossing to and from the Palestine territory in a taxi driven by an Israeli Arab.

When we told a meeting of the Zionist Federation about our experiences, our comments were well received, except for critical remarks by two known right wingers in our audience. They were irreconcilably opposed to the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

Of Ebrahim’s contention that his was not a new policy, I recall vividly my surprising attendance at a state dinner given by then president Thabo Mbeki at Tuynhuis in Cape Town in honour of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas several years ago.

I found myself seated next to the white South African intelligence officer who had been identified to me as Mbeki’s courier between the two sides when he was trying to broker a peace deal.

This was all around the time of the so-called Spier initiative which in 2005 brought together Israelis and Palestinians to learn from the positive aspects of the South African experience in the early 1990s.

I was also greatly impressed by the moderation of Dr Nabeel Shaath, a leading member of Fatah and Palestinian negotiator when he spoke at SAIIA during Arab Week two years ago.

I have heard from more than one source that this “policy change” Ebrahim put forward has more to do with domestic South African politics than with our concern for the Middle East.

Ebrahim’s colleague at international relations, Marius Fransman, who is head of the badly fractured ANC in the Western Cape, also referred to the Israeli issue when he spoke to Muslims in Cape Town recently. Could it be that this issue has been hijacked to try to regain the support of Muslims in the Western Cape disillusioned with the policies of his party in the province?

I recently had a much more positive experience when I attended an Iftaar dinner hosted in Sandton by the Turquoise Harmony Institute.

The guests came from a wide cross-section of the community, Muslims (both Turkish and South African), Christians and Jews. I was requested to speak and was followed by Sports Minister Fikele Mbalula.

Senior politicians including cabinet ministers and provincial premiers, as well as leaders of all faiths regularly attend the events hosted by the institute, a tribute to this Muslim institute’s constructive approach and moderation.

In my remarks I paid tribute to the assistance I had received from other manifestations of the Fethullah Gulen movement, of which the institute is but one. When I was South Africa’s ambassador to Turkey in the late 1990s and early 2000s their chambers of commerce facilitated visits to family-owned companies in smaller Anatolian cities. Several of these companies subsequently invested in South Africa.

They also run a number of excellent schools in South Africa and across the world, and own a newspaper and a university in Turkey.

But perhaps more relevant in the current context are the interfaith dialogues that the institute arranges in South Africa.

I referred in my remarks to one that my wife and I attended at St Augustine’s College in Johannesburg a while back. Speakers were from the Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Jewish faiths, each speaking on aspects of his or her religious practice to promote greater interfaith understanding.

It was no accident that the principal of St Augustine’s College, the Rev Michael van Heerden, as well as Benji Shulman, then with the Union of Jewish Students at Wits, who assisted with arrangements for the dialogue, attended this recent Iftaar dinner.

Perhaps more contact between people and more dialogue, not less as advocated by the boycott-disinvest-sanctions movement, might achieve peace in the Middle East faster than discouraging people from going to discover for themselves what is actually happening there.

Of course, the latter also depends on both an open mind and thoughtful assessment of what is seen and heard – as well as engaging with more than just those who will confirm one’s own preconceptions and prejudices.

* Research associate at the South African Institute of International Affairs.

Published on The New Age, 22 August 2012, Wednesday