ANC-Hamas: a party in betrayal of itself

The ANC has betrayed its founding principle by aligning itself with the Sunni Islamic jihad of Hamas, the Palestinian wing of the global Muslim Brotherhood.

The founding principle of the ANC in 1912 - endorsed in 1955 by the Freedom Charter - excludes identification with any one political religious body such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which includes Hamas. The ANC was founded so that it would be open without discrimination to people of all religions and of none. The Congress Alliance, which was absorbed at all levels into the ANC by decision of the Kabwe conference in 1985 - following the opening of the ANC to people of all races and religions at the Morogoro conference in 1969,  excluding access to the National Executive Committee - embraced Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists...and Jews.

Ruth First, Joe Slovo, David Rabkin, Morris Isaacson, Denis Goldberg, David Kitson, Rusty and Hilda Bernstein, Arthur Goldreich, Harold Wolpe, Wolfie Kodesh, Jack Simons and Ray Alexander, Ronnie Kasrils, Brian and Sonia Bunting,  Jack Tarshish, Rowley and Jackie Arenstein, the twins Norman and Leon Levy, the former ANC MP Ben Turok, and many more, including this writer - all, all were (and in the case of Denis, Jackie, Norman, Leon, Ronnie and Ben still are) ... JEWS.

We wear the Yellow Star of David on our foreheads, the Auschwitz tattoo on our wrists.

Yet the ANC's national spokesperson Zizi Kodwa - representative of the governing party of South Africa - said last week it had invited the Hamas leader Khalid Mishal together with a Hamas delegation to visit the country "in keeping with our policies of working towards a peaceful world".

Also present alongside Kodwa at a reception for Mishal and the Hamas delegation at Darul Islam Boys' High School in Athlone in Western Cape were the ANC’s provincial chairman Marius Fransman and an executive member of the ANC, David Mahlobo. Fransman told the Hamas delegation: "You have our support."

Article 7 of the Hamas Charter of 1988 states the following: "By virtue of the distribution of Muslims, who pursue the cause of the Hamas, all over the globe, and strive for its victory, for the reinforcement of its positions and for the encouragement of its Jihad, the Movement is a universal one. ...

"Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the Jihad and efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and to the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter.

"... the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The Prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim)."

No honest person thinks this is not the programme of Hamas to this day: "Kill the Jews!"

The word “Hamas” is the acronym in Arabic for “Islamic Resistance Movement”. Its charter is not a programme of national liberation like the Freedom Charter, it is a programme of global Sunni jihad.

Hamas describes itself in article 2 of its charter as “one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organisation, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era. It is characterised by … a complete comprehensiveness of all concepts of Islam in all domains of life.”

In his essay, “Jihad in the Cause of Allah”, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, wrote: “The Jihaad of Islam … [is] inherent in its message from the very beginning – and not because of any threat of aggression against Islamic lands or against the Muslims residing in them. The reason for Jihaad exists in the nature of its message….

 “… [The] ultimate objective of the Islamic movement of Jihaad is as a means of establishing the Divine authority within it so that it … [can then] be carried throughout the earth to the whole of mankind, as the object of this religion is all humanity and its sphere of action is the whole earth….

“Islam has a right to remove all those obstacles in its path … with no interference and opposition from political systems…

“Thus, wherever any Islamic community exists, it has a God-given right to step forward and take control of the political authority so that it may establish the Divine system on earth….”

This is a programme of ideological struggle to establish a world-wide religious dictatorship by means of war.

It is the same programme as that of the Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in promoting the Holocaust through his military pact with Hitler and Himmler, with the aim of supplementing the Nazi war drive with a genocidal jihad across the Caucasus, the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. One battle prevented that jihadi aim of Hitler and Amin from becoming global reality - the battle of Stalingrad.

This crucial wartime ideological relationship has been explored in depth by the former historian in the German Democratic Republic, Dr Wolfgang G Schwanitz, and his recently deceased Israeli colleague, Barry Rubin, in their indispensable study, published last year: Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press). It is an essential book for our time.

The publishers state: "During the 1930s and 1940s, a unique and lasting political alliance was forged among Third Reich leaders, Arab nationalists, and Muslim religious authorities. ...

"In this groundbreaking book, esteemed Middle East scholars Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz uncover for the first time the complete story of this dangerous alliance and explore its continuing impact on Arab politics in the twenty-first century.

"Rubin and Schwanitz reveal, for example, the full scope of Palestinian leader Amin al-Husaini’s support of Hitler’s genocidal plans against European and Middle Eastern Jews. In addition, they expose the extent of Germany’s long-term promotion of Islamism and jihad. Drawing on unprecedented research in European, American, and Middle East archives, many recently opened and never before written about, the authors offer new insight on the intertwined development of Nazism and Islamism and its impact on the modern Middle East."

Seventy-five years later, while the Sunni jihad of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) commits Nazi-style massacres of Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze, Shia Muslims, homosexuals and any individual with a spark of integrity in the Middle East and Libya, and when Islamist mass slaughter of civilians has become a norm from Afghanistan to Turkey, the Sunni jihad led by Boko Haram has already captured a huge area of north-east Nigeria. In east Africa, al-Shabaab rules de facto in Somalia, carrying its massacre of non-Muslim civilians down south into Kenya.

A Sunni Islamist cell in South Africa clearly supported the so-called "White Widow", Samantha Lewthwaite, in her safe haven in the country between 2009 and 2011, after her husband carried out suicide bombing of the London tube trains in the "7/7" jihadi killings in London on 7 July 2005.

The alliance of ANC government with the Sunni jihad is all the more threatening today, given the revelation in February that the State Security Agency (SSA) and foreign intelligence services had "foiled planned suicide bomb attacks by al-Qaeda in South Africa between 2007 and 2010, including one against a Jewish centre in Cape Town, according to secret SSA reports." (" 'White widow's' SA plot revealed", IOL News, 25 February 2015)

The tribalist, corrupt and increasingly manic Zuma ANC of today is no longer the ANC of Dube, Luthuli, Mandela and Sisulu. It has become a racist party, and an adjunct of the Sunni global jihad.

Through its alliance with Hamas, its de facto endorsement of Islamic jihad betrays the ANC at source, and the people of South Africa.

A dark shroud of shame has fallen on the country.