Israel to summon South African Ambassador for reprimand following #IsraeliApartheidWeek campaign
13 March 2017
South Africa’s Ambassador Sisa Ngombane has been "summoned", according to Israeli media reports, following the recent #IsraeliApartheidWeek campaign in SA. According to the Israeli publication, Jerusalem Online: "The Israeli Foreign Ministry has stated that South Africa's ambassador to Israel will be summoned for an official reprimand following anti-Israeli remarks made by two senior officials in the South African government.”
The two officials, according to the publication, are ANC DSG Jessie Duarte and ANC NEC Member as well as SA Minister of Water Nomvula Mokonyane, both of whom recently spoke at Palestine solidarity events forming part of the annual #IsraeliApartheidWeek campaign.
Duarte, speaking in Klerksdorp, demanded that South Africans should not fight in the Israeli Defence Force while Mokonyane, speaking at Stellenbosch University, said that the Israeli army is a “murderous machine” and accused Israel of “water apartheid” against the Palestinians. Mokonyane said:
“There are two faces to the Israeli water story. The first is widely and extensively marketed. This is that technologically and in practice, Israel is a leading water innovations country with an excellent track record in water research, inventions, practices and products that are exported worldwide. At the same time Israel has been using water and the control of water access as a tool to control the Palestinian state....Israel is the world’s leading practitioner in Water Apartheid.”