African Christian Leaders Hold Jerusalem Start-Up Summit

Ilanit Chernick August 30, 2017

About 70 delegates from countries including Nigeria, Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, Tanzania and Kenya took part in a four-day event in Jerusalem.

Christian leaders from several African countries concluded meetings recently with Israeli start-ups, politicians and businesses during the African Leadership Summit hosted by the Institute for Christian Leadership Development.

“Africa Celebrates Jerusalem” is this year’s theme for the summit, which aims to strengthen ties between Israel and Africa. The main goal is for African Christian leaders to connect with the different sectors of the country including agriculture, economic and technology.

Pastor Segun Olanipekun, summit coordinator and chief executive officer of the Institute for Christian Leadership Development, said what encouraged the organization to call the summit was the leadership crisis in Africa.

“There’s not a lot of leaders that the youngsters can look up to because of the poor and inept leadership. Israel has united and strong leadership and we are looking to it for help,” he said.

Olanipekun explained that Israel’s leadership and the Jewish people have a purpose, to build a nation. “Israel has empowering start-ups... it grows and exports [fruits and vegetables] from the desert – Africa has good, fertile land but we are begging for food. As Africans we desire all of this and we want to learn from Israel,” he said. “We want to reconnect with the covenant of Abraham – the land, the people and the culture.”

Talking about the summit’s theme, “Africa Celebrates Jerusalem,” Nigerian-born Olanipekun (he also lived in Kenya and now resides in South Africa) said he is encouraging all African countries to show support for Israel and the Jews. “Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish and Christian faiths. If the Jews lose Jerusalem, Christianity loses its roots and foundation.

“Jerusalem must remain the capital. It belongs to the Jewish and Christian faiths and drives millions of people,” Olanipekun added. “The ultimate goal is to have a generation of African leaders who support Israel and to increase the presence of Israel in Africa and Africa in Israel.”

“We want Israeli farms in Africa that employ local people – Africa has land, Israel has good technology – our partnership can only do good for the world,” Olanipekun said.

Pastor Ben Naude from Johannesburg said that if “we’re going to counter organizations like BDS,” it was important to give Israel positive exposure and to educate people about the truth.

“There are so many cultures and groups who live here and they live together peacefully – South Africa can learn a lot from this,” he said.

“At the end of the day, Israel has incredible technology and agriculture – you can’t argue with this, the technology in cellphone in your hand was created here – minds and opinions [of Israel] must change.”

“Israel and the Jews have a zest for life and focus on the positive; in South Africa we need to learn from this, come together and go forward instead of focusing on the bad,” Naude said.

Nigerian Pastor John Adejolrooluwa, who is the leader of the Plummet Mission, a Missionary House that trains missionaries and sends them mostly to African countries, said education was the only way to combat the negative rhetoric on Israel.

“We have to reach out to as many people [as possible] and make them question this negative narrative and work with the Israeli government – make an effort to show that part of the problem is Israel’s neighbors and their connections and influence with bodies like the UN who are making certain [negative] proclamations about Israel,” he said.

“We are committing to Israel and we will not believe this negative, man-made bias,” Adejolrooluwa said.

Addressing the delegates, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky spoke of his journey at the agency and of his life in Russia, also emphasizing the values and ideals that went into creating “the Holy Land.”

The summit has taken place in Jerusalem biennially since 2013.

Young ANC leader defies Israel-apartheid comparisons, sees his political future doomed

 

By  RAPHAEL AHREN April 10, 2017, Times of Israel

Comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa is all the rage again. A United Nations agency recently published (and the United Nations secretary general rejected) a report accusing the Jewish state of having “established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.” Campuses around the world are currently marking Israel Apartheid Week to “raise awareness of Israel’s apartheid system.”

The question of whether today’s Israel is akin to the old South Africa was forcefully rejected by former anti-apartheid activist Benjamin Pogrund in an op-ed in The New York Times last week, once more triggering passionate discussion over the question.

The African National Congress, Nelson Mandela’s revolutionary movement currently rules the country, endorses the Israel-apartheid comparison. In 2012, ANC chairperson and former South African deputy president Baleka Mbete accused the Jewish state of being “far worse than Apartheid South Africa.”

But in recent months, a growing number of young black South Africans — including members of the ANC’s youth division — have visited Israel and now forcefully reject the parallels drawn between the racist regime under which their parents suffered and the current reality for Palestinian Arabs — in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Prominent among them is Nkululeko Nkosi, a 23-year-old member of the ANC Youth League.

“Precisely because we South Africans know intimately what apartheid involved, we have a duty to question whether it is an appropriate term to be used in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Nkosi wrote in a recent article for a pamphlet published by “Africans for Peace,” a group trying to change the narrative about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Put simply, because nobody knows the pain of apartheid better than we do, we are able to guide the rest of the world on when to describe a situation using that term and when to avoid doing so.”

Nkosi, who hails from Kathlehong township in Johannesburg and recently obtained an undergraduate degree in law, went on to argue that apartheid was about race, while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict encompasses both religious and territorial disputes.

Nkululeko Nkosi /courtesy)

“On my last trip to Israel, I found that unlike apartheid South Africa, there is no deliberate effort by the government to segregate a specific group in Israel,” he wrote. “In day-to-day discussions with ordinary Israeli citizens, I learned from Arabs and Jews, and I sensed their burning desire to live together as harmonious neighbors. In apartheid South Africa, Afrikaners disdained black South Africans, these sentiments are still in evidence today.”

Nkosi ended his article with a plea to fellow South Africans not to “steal” the term apartheid by inaccurately applying it to the Middle East.

During Israel Apartheid Week at Columbia University, pro-Israel students countered anti-Israel displays with a 12-foot-high Pinocchio doll meant to call attention to “lies about Israel,” March 1, 2016. (Courtesy Students Supporting Israel – Columbia)

“For black South Africans, apartheid was more than just systematic discrimination against our people. It was a project that aimed to rob a specific race of its history, culture, dignity, and humanity,” he wrote. “Those who apply the term ‘apartheid’ to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse are guilty of perpetuating that same theft, by denying the uniqueness of the racism and hatred that we faced.”

Israelis and Palestinians may feel that one group hates the other, but this reality “is very different from the legally-blessed racism, based on the discredited idea of white supremacy, that once reigned in my country,” he posited.

Nkosi, who once hoped to run for national office for the ANC but has been shunned by the party for his pro-Israel views, first learned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2013, when a group of students disrupted a performance by a famous Israeli pianist.

“For a while, I held the view that Israel was an apartheid state and suspected that something was amiss when a couple of colleagues visited Israel only to face backlash here at home,” he told The Times of Israel in a recent interview. “I then also wanted to visit Israel for myself and develop my own views on the matter. It was after my trip to Israel that I started to question a lot of things and sought more information and made comparisons between apartheid South Africa and Israel.”

Even though the ANC officially discourages travel to Israel, thousands of South Africans visit the country every year. According to Israel’s ambassador in Pretoria, Arthur Lenk, the number of South African tourists who visit the Jewish state “significantly” increased in 2016.

 “Many are Christians who come as pilgrims, others are business leaders of all faiths looking to boost trade or tourists to discover Israel or to visit friends or family,” Lenk said. “I am glad so many South Africans are seeing Israel for themselves instead of believing politically motivated rhetoric of some who gain from divisiveness.”

Nkosi’s all-expenses-paid visit to Israel in 2016 was organized and sponsored by the South African-Israel Forum, a nonprofit seeking to promote bilateral relations. “I got the opportunity to meet with Israelis and Palestinians,” he said, recalling that he visited universities with “vibrant Arab student populations,” as well as the Qalandia refugee camp.

In 2015, the ANC publicly denounced the South African-Israel Forum’s work, calling it a “campaign by Israel to distort our stand on Palestine” that will put the party “in disrepute.”

Ironically, perhaps, it was the ANC’s encouragement to think differently that impacted Nkosi. “My view differs from the ANC’s because I have been taught by the ANC to discuss and question everything,” he said.

 “I used to have hopes of ascending the ANC ranks,” Nkosi told The Times of Israel, but its current politics “suggest that there may not be an ANC to inherit for young people like myself.”

The disdain is mutual, as the party not only officially discourages travel to Israel but also publicly shames members who speak positively about the country.

‘What is clear is that my political career in the ANC and youth structures is finished’ Last week, the ANC Youth League’s secretary-general issued a statement condemning a “certain individual [who] is parading around, on a pro-Israeli trip in the USA, claiming to be a youth leader of the ANC.” He and “other foreign agents” who “advance the agenda of the imperialist Israeli regime,” automatically lose their membership, according to the statement. Nkosi, too, has been insulted and intimidated due to his pro-Israel activism, it seems my trip to Israel and my subsequent views translate to the end of any [political] ambition.”

And yet, Nkosi is optimistic regarding the future of Israel-South Africa relations. While he acknowledged that the ANC, which is closely affiliated with the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement, is unlikely to engage in constructive political dialogue with Jerusalem, he hopes that Pretoria’s current economic worries will lead to some sort of rapprochement down the line.