UPADTE III: The Jew Who Prosecuted Mandela: Percy Yutar Said He Was A South African Patriot

Democracy, Elections, History, Judaism & Jews, South-Africa

“Persecutor” is how my father—once a leading South African anti-Apartheid activist—used to refer to the man who “prosecuted Nelson Mandela for sabotage and conspiracy against the state in 1963 and sent him to jail for life (in the event, he served 27 years).” (The Guardian)

But Percy Yutar was his real name. And “some Jewish leaders hailed him as a ‘credit to the community’ and a symbol of the Jews’ contribution to South Africa.”

“Yutar went on to become attorney general of the Orange Free State and then of the Transvaal. He was elected president of Johannesburg’s largest orthodox synagogue.”

In the opinion of my father (Rabbi Isaacson), recent attempts to portray South Africa’s Jewish community at large as having a record of resistance to Apartheid are pure fiction. My father himself was censured many times by the Board of Deputies and other Jewish leaders—told to quit his anti-establishment activities or risk the loss of the rabbinate. Decamping to Israel, as our family did, was prompted as much by ideals as by the constant threats over the loss of a living.

While the leadership of the then-banned African National Congress was festooned with radical Jews, the truth is that most South African Jews (who have a proud and celebrated history in South Africa,) were not behind this noisy minority. If anything, I suspect them of supporting the Nasionale Party, which governed from 1948 until 1994, by the overwhelming consent of the white minority. Like it or not, white South Africans had a functioning democracy (with popular referenda conducted on most important national questions).

I came from a liberal family. Yet other than my father and my cousin (a Black-Sash activist), I hardly knew a Jew who did not vote National Party (NAT). American paloeconservatives have kibitzed about the South African Jewry’s liberalism. Where from? What do they know? Did they ever survey the community back in those days?

Online sources such as Wikipedia and The Virtual Jewish Library assert the community’s liberal voting patterns. They do not argue it. As far as I can see, they do not provide statistical support for this alleged liberal voting record. I’d like to see some substantiation of these so-called “enlightened” voting patterns.

I am convinced that these depictions are cunning, after the-fact attempts to portray the Jews as more liberal than they in fact were. Yes, Jews have always been socially altruistic, but not to the point of self-immolation. This was a community with vast wealth. Risking the riches they so richly deserved is what Goyim do; Jews not so much. UPDATED II: Risking the future of The Children: that’s not what Jews do. I bet you that, if they preached Progressive Party in public, the same Jews probably voted NAT.

Again, father and cousin aside, I did not know a Jew who did not support the Nasionale Party.

Some members of my family were business tycoons. The same family spawned pig farmers, Jews who lived on the land starting in the early 1900s. (Yeah, funny, I know; they farmed pigs, but didn’t eat ’em.) We’d get together for dinners, during which not even young, outspoken family members (invariably attending medical or law school) ever expressed dismay at the undemocratic nature of South African politics.

I recall vividly when my cousin, a land developer and a pig farmer, decided to emigrate to England after the son of his most loyal farmhand burgled the family homestead and attempted an attack on the family. My cousin was outraged. How could this young black man betray him so? (I could see a few reasons, not least of them the squalor in which farmhands and their families were housed. Free “housing,” yes, but not pretty. I would never have argued this in his company. It was just not done.)

The Jews I knew were what we called verkrampte. (Hard core)

Chris McGreal of The Guardian confirms my suspicions:

“The apartheid regime had a demographic problem and it could not afford the luxury of isolating a section of the white population, even if it was Jewish. Within a few years many South African Jews not only came to feel secure under the new order but comfortable with it. Some found echoes of Israel’s struggle in the revival of Afrikaner nationalism. … The Jew in South Africa sided with the Afrikaners, not so much out of sympathy, but out of fear sided against the blacks. I came to this country in 1946 and all you could hear from Jews was ‘the blacks this and the blacks that.'”

UPDATED I (Jan. 31): THOSE OF YOU who’ve read “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” know that the book speak favorably about the strong Afrikaner-Israel connection, and that the book thinks Percy Yutar did just fine by putting the Marxist Mandela away for his crimes against civilians (for the most).

UPDATE (Feb. 1): Percy Yutar died age 90, in 2002. As this New York Times report tells it,

“According to many South African historians and writers, Mr. Yutar’s vigorous persecution of blacks in the 1960’s was linked to his Jewish background. Glenn Frankel, the author of ‘Rivonia’s Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa,’ said that Mr. Yutar saw the trial as a patriotic opportunity, especially because some of Mr. Mandela’s co-defendants were Jews. … ‘Who better to prosecute Jewish traitors than a loyal Jew?’ Mr. Frankel wrote, describing Mr. Yutar’s thinking. ‘Who better than he to put things right and prove that not all Jews were radicals hell-bent upon overthrowing the government?'”

Mr. Yutar, one of eight children in a family of Lithuanian immigrants, was born in Cape Town on July 29, 1911. As a young man, his left hand was caught in an electric mincing machine when he was working in his father’s butcher shop, leaving his hand badly mangled.
He attended the University of Cape Town on a scholarship and was awarded a doctorate in law. Jews, however, were not welcome in the higher echelons of South Africa’s civil service, and Mr. Yutar settled for a job tracing defaulting telephone subscribers for the postal service. Still he persisted in his legal career and slowly moved up the ladder to junior law clerk and junior prosecutor. Eventually, he became deputy attorney general for the Transvaal Province and gained a reputation as an especially ambitious and energetic prosecutor.

‘Light Unto the Gentiles’ (But the Gentiles Aren’t Listening)

Africa, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Nationhood

“Israel’s legislature,” writes John Derbyshire, “passed a law against illegal immigration “that allows indefinite imprisonment without trial for illegal aliens and 15-year sentences for those who assist them. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported the legislature and called the African illegals ‘a national scourge.’ Israel is also building a 150-mile fence to seal the Sinai border.”

A good candidate for the title of World’s Most Dysfunctional Region is the belt of six sub-Saharan African countries from Somalia through to Chad, total population 153 million. People who live there often want to live somewhere else. They trek north into Egypt and Libya. But those nations were no better than semi-civilized even before the past few months’ ructions. The nearest functioning state the East Africans can get to by land is Israel. They have to go through Egypt and then the Sinai Desert, but what took Moses forty years is a lot easier now.

The Israeli government estimates 50,000 came in the past seven years, most from Sudan and Eritrea. That 153 million figure I quoted is close to Mexico and Central America’s combined population, which is around 156 million. East Africa’s failed states are to Israel what our southern neighbors are to us, except the USA has 307 million citizens while Israel has fewer than eight million.

Hence the law the Israeli legislature passed last week.

As a nation, Israel will probably outlive America. Into the Cannibal’s Pot examines the issue.

(“The Titan Is Tired” was my last meditation on Israel and The National Question.)

“Not only is a highly selective immigration policy an effective, non-aggressive tactic against terrorism—it is also the perfect complement to a peaceful foreign policy, predicated on the negative, leave-me-alone rights of the individual, and not on the positive, manufactured right of humanity to venture wherever, whenever.” (“Ron Paul Should Take the Lead on Immigration”)

UPDATE II: Jan Brewer Braves White-House Bully/Crybaby (Land Without a People)

Barack Obama, English, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Nationhood, States' Rights

The coterie of media cretins that covers the president has peddled an image of Obama as a “cool cat.” “No Drama Obama” is how he’s been billed “by his sycophants.” More pertinent titles that better describe BHO’s conduct are “drama queen” and “Chief Touchy-Touchy,” in the words of Michelle Malkin. And the brave Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer has been contributing mightily to the frequency and intensity of those “presidential snit fits”:

So, it turns out that the cool cat billed as “No Drama Obama” by his sycophants is actually quite the drama queen. While the White House publicly pretends to ignore conservative detractors of his administration, Chief Touchy-Touchy seems to be personally consumed by our critiques. Yes, mine included.
On Wednesday, the president had himself a mini-“Toddlers and Tiaras”-style meltdown with Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer after landing in Phoenix for a post-State of the Union dog-and-pony show.
As Brewer told pool reporters on the scene, Obama took umbrage at Brewer’s recent memoir. She minced no words on the cover: “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border.”
And she minced no words describing her impressions of Obama as they sparred over her state’s tough immigration enforcement law, which is now the subject of a Justice Department witch hunt. Brewer called Obama “patronizing” and “condescending.” I’d say she was excruciatingly polite.
According to Brewer, “He was a little disturbed about my book. … I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read [an] excerpt.”
In the shadow of Air Force One, Obama complained that Brewer hadn’t “treated him cordially” and then stalked off while she was responding midsentence. Photogs captured the fracas on film.
The civility police gasped at Brewer’s “disrespectful” finger-pointing. On cue, one progressive commentator insinuated the gesture was a “racist” jab tantamount to lynching.

[SNIP]

Bravo Jan Brewer!

And to Malkin for: “Michelle Obama — the president’s ‘bitter half'” and “Mr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants’ problem has never been the color of their skin. It’s the thinness.”

MORE Malkin at the Washington Examiner.

UPDATE I: (Jan. 30) Jan Brewer’s courts are quick to lay down the law of the land in a land without a people: “When a judge ruled that Alejandrina Cabrera’s name couldn’t be on the ballot for City Council in San Luis, Arizona, because she couldn’t speak English well enough, it was not only a blow to her, but to her fellow citizens, Cabrera told CNN. …” (MORE)

UPDATE II (Jan. 31): The Clip:

UPDATED: LaHood Is Still In The Egyptian Hood

America, Barack Obama, Bush, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Russia

Egypt’s road to majoritarian politics—which is what America demands for that country—is stalled at the military dictatorship stage. The latter is probably preferable to a people’s republic governed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafist al-Nour Party, which won the ballot in the newly installed democracy. [BBC]

It is a fact—and three of the Republican presidential candidates will applaud it—that America runs community agitators across the world. These Republican- and Democratic Party Saul Alinskys (neoconservatives and neoliberals) work to incite democracy and undermine order. This has obtained with respect to both Bush, Obama (who are, to all intent and purposes, non-identical, evil ideological twins), and before them.

Could Egypt’s leader, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, be hip to the ill-effects of American community organizing abroad? Egyptian authorities have stopped Sam LaHood from leaving Egypt.

In addition to being the son of Ray LaHood, the secretary of transportation and a former Republican congressman from Illinois, LaHood heads the International Republican Institute, an American-backed democracy-building group. (Neocon meddlers.)

He is “one of six Americans working for the Republican Institute or its sister organization, the National Democratic Institute.” Obama had a fit. Ditto the Republicans. LaHood’s their operative.

Representative Frank R. Wolf, a Republican from Virginia who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, said the Egyptian government continued to flout American efforts and to undermine democratic rights. “This is out of control,” Mr. Wolf said on Thursday. “If the administration follows the law, there’s no way they can continue the aid.”

(NYT)

A tug of war between Washington and Cairo over American aid for Egyptian human rights and democracy-building groups goes back to the era of former President Hosni Mubarak. To maintain control over organizations that might pose potential challenges to his government, Mr. Mubarak required nonprofit groups to obtain licenses, which were almost never issued.
Instead, the generals have echoed the Mubarak government’s refrain that any unrest was the work of “foreign hands.” Often, the military-led government has pointed specifically at Washington, suggesting that the United States was financing Egyptian groups behind the frequent turmoil in the streets.

(NYT)

And the aforementioned Generals may have a point. Ask the Ukraine (“Orange” Revolution), Georgia (“Rose”), Lebanon (“Cedar”), Kyrgizstan (“Tulip”), etc. Attempts to foment revolution are probably underway in Belarus, Russia, Iran, Syria (pending).

UPDATE (Jan. 30): “The God that Failed,” via Nebojsa Malic:

Parallel to the open warfare, the Empire continues its cloak-and-dagger efforts to subvert target states through “color revolutions.” The latest target is Russia, where questionable claims of electoral fraud have been used as a pretext for the “White” revolution – planned, organized and financed by Washington.
The troubles with these faux-revolutions are many. One of the most pernicious, of course, is that they undermine the very concept of democracy as a system of government by consent. In the virtual world of the Empire (and its EU extension), only those that serve and obey are “democrats,” regardless of what they actually believe and how many votes they get at the polls. As Philip Cunliffe observed several years ago in Serbia, “what counts as democracy is what the EU decides is democratic, and the democrats are those who are anointed by the international community, regardless of who actually receives the votes.”
It is bad enough that the Empire made democracy a religion, and a false one at that. Now it is going around the world subverting that very religion, leaving millions of cheated, angry people in its wake. Worse yet, the tendrils of this approach are showing up at home, from street protests to party primaries.