printIn June last year we advised South African Jews to go to Israel. Almost a year hence, and who knows how many bodies later, mainstream media have finally caught up:
“Sheldon Cohen was sitting in his car outside a Johannesburg sports stadium last week waiting for his son Noah to finish soccer practice.
Sheldon, 47, was talking to his father, Jack, on his cellphone when three young men ran past and shot him in the neck. Jack, realizing something terrible had happened, sped to the stadium.
The killers, who had moments before tried unsuccessfully to snatch a cellular phone from a woman parked nearby who was also waiting for her son, had seen Sheldon on the phone and thought he was calling the police. So they killed him. Jack arrived shortly after to see his son’s body slumped in his car, with grandson Noah standing watch.
A week earlier, a Jewish man walking to synagogue in Johannesburg was stopped by several men in a passing car. One man got out of the car and demanded that the Jewish man hand over his tallit bag, thinking it contained valuables. The Jew refused, and was shot to death. Searching through his victim’s bag, the attacker found nothing of value to himself and left it on the sidewalk.
According to South African press reports, police recorded 126,000 armed robberies in the 2006-2007 fiscal year. Exactly a decade ago, that figure stood at 70,000.
….of the Jews who leave Johannesburg, about a third go to Australia, and two-thirds to Israel and other places.
Ofer Dahan, the Jewish Agency’s emissary in South Africa, says there has been a dramatic increase in applications for aliya over the past two months.
Dahan says there is a 100-percent increase in interest in aliya from last year, and a 300% increase in those opening aliya files over the past two months. In 2007, 240 South African Jews and former Israelis made aliya, an increase from 143 in 2006 and 98 in 2005. Dahan says his staff are working round the clock, and have even had to hire outside staff to help cope with the demand.”
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What the Jerusalem Post reporter failed to tell his readers (we didn’t) was why exactly a move to Israel—ostensibly a spot where homicidal Palestinian suiciders often attack—is so much better than SA, and even parts of the US.
We gave the numbers:
“Israel’s overall death rate from crime is very low; lower than that of the US, which is, overall, about 6 in 100,000. … Remarkably, in 2004, Israel’s death by murder was 3.7 per 100,000 for civilians only; 4.3 when soldiers were included. (“Homicide rates in 2004 in a number of major U.S. cities, including the nation’s capital, exceeded rates of Palestinian fatalities at the hands of Israel’s army in the past year.”)
It shows you, this one-woman band is able to offer better statistics-backed advice to desperate South Africans, who need level-headed advisors, than the mainstream newspapers with all their resources and biases. It’s about knowing what information matters.
Afrikaner non-Jews might want to consider converting. Israel may just be their last resort. The country is hungry for western immigrants, affords a nice life-style, as well as the hot weather Afrikaners so enjoy. Military service will also thrill the typical hardy Afrikaner.
And don’t forget: Israel was perhpas the only good friend the Old, orderly South Africa (warts and all) had:
“One of the most hidden but critical of South Africa’s strategic relationships during the apartheid era was that with Israel, including both the Labor and the Likud governments. Israel officially opposed the apartheid system, but it also opposed broad international sanctions against Pretoria. For strategic reasons, much of the debate in Israeli government circles stressed coordinating ties to Pretoria within the framework of the tripartite relationship among Jerusalem, the United States (Israel’s primary benefactor), and South Africa. Israel was also opposed to international embargoes in general, largely as a consequence of its own vulnerability to UN and other international sanctions.
South Africa and Israel had collaborated on military training, weapons development, and weapons production for years before broad sanctions were imposed in the late 1980s. Military cooperation continued despite the arms embargo and other trade restrictions imposed by the United States and much of Western Europe…”
Update: Those who are new to our ongoing discussion of the New South Africa, and in particular to the treatment emigration from that accursed country has received on BAB, please read “Advice to South Africans Contemplating Emigration,” and “Please Can My Sister Become and Illegal Immigrant.” We also direct welcomed newcomers, and or weary old timers with who’ve forgotten, to our Africa Archive.