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Comments (0)A former South African Cabinet minister and two NGOs are calling for the war crimes prosecution of an Israeli soldier visiting the country.
David Benjamin, a former South African who is a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, came to South Africa to speak at three Limmud events on the subject of legal issues of warfare.
Activist Zackie Achmat called the invitation of Benjamin, who was the IDF’s legal adviser on Gaza from 2001 to 2005, “the equivalent of inviting Sudanese President Ali Bashir to a conference on genocide.”
The Palestine Solidarity Committee also called Benjamin a war criminal and said South Africans should be outraged by Limmud’s effort of “providing South African audiences with the Israeli army’s justification for their war crimes.”
Limmud, a global Jewish identity conference organization, defended the invitation. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the South African Zionist Federation also condemned the calls for Benjamin’s prosecution, saying they constituted an attempt to demonize Israel.
“This amounts to little more than a clumsy attempt at manipulating the judiciary for partisan political purposes,” the groups said in a joint statement. “Politically motivated attempts to undermine judicial independence as well as freedom of expression in South Africa should be universally condemned, as should any moves to import a foreign conflict to South African streets.”
Meanwhile, a former South African intelligence minister, Communist Party leader Ronnie Kasrils, who is Jewish, submitted a 3,500-page “Gaza docket” to a variety of government bodies calling for the prosecution of Benjamin and 70 other former South Africans living in Israel who hold dual citizenship.
It was unlikely that any action would be taken against Benjamin while he is in South Africa.
The first two Limmud programs featuring Benjamin were held in Cape Town and Durban during the first week of August. The final program was scheduled for Johannesburg on Sunday and Monday.
AMIA Families Demand Removal of Top Cop
Activists in Argentina are demanding the ouster of Buenos Aires’ police chief, who was alleged to have concealed evidence in the AMIA bombing.
Relatives of victims of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, which killed 85 and injured hundreds, joined political and human rights activists in collecting thousands of signatures Thursday evening in downtown Buenos Aires for a petition demanding the removal of Jorge “Fino” Palacios, who was just named to the job.
Palacios had been fired from another top police position because of allegations that he was involved in a kidnapping and repressive counter-demonstration tactics, and that he concealed evidence after the AMIA bombing. Argentine prosecutors blame Iranian and Hezbollah officials for the attack.
In an earlier, compromised investigation, allegations surfaced that local police were involved in the bombing’s planning and that their colleagues covered up for them.
Pope: Nazi Death Camps ‘Extreme Symbols of Evil’
Pope Benedict XVI called Nazi death camps “extreme symbols of evil” and hell on earth.
Speaking Sunday to the faithful gathered at his summer home at Castel Gandolfo near Rome, the pope made his remarks in a blessing in which he recalled Catholic saints celebrated in the liturgy this month.
They include two saints who were killed at Auschwitz: St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic priest killed there in August 1941, and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, better known as Edith Stein.
Stein was a German Jewish convert to Catholicism who became a nun but was deported to Auschwitz in early August 1942 because of her Jewish origins. She was believed killed there on Aug. 9.
“All saints, especially martyrs, bear witness to God, who is love,” the pope said. “The Nazi camps, like all extermination camps, can be considered extreme symbols of evil, of the hell that opens on earth when man forgets God.”
Jobbik Calls for Return of Notorious Gendarmerie
Hungary’s ultranationalist Jobbik Party called for the reconstitution of the infamous Hungarian Gendarmerie.
The Gendarmerie served as Hungary’s main law enforcement agency, responsible for the deportation of Jews and Roma, or Gypsies, during the Holocaust.
Jobbik leader Gabor Vona told demonstrators at an Aug. 3 rally in Budapest that the Gendarmerie was needed to enforce law and order on the Roma in the countryside. He also declared war on financial crime and advised “international bankers” objecting to that “to leave the country.”
About 150 party activists and sympathizers attended the rally in front of the Ministry of Finance and the Banking Alliance to protest an “international financial conspiracy” as well as “Gypsy crime” allegedly threatening the Hungarian nation.
It was held one day after an unprovoked attack on an isolated Roma home that left a woman dead and her daughter seriously injured. Police say it was part of a recent series of racially motivated attacks perpetrated by hooded death squads that has claimed six lives and caused many injuries.
Vona’s call for the revival of the disbanded Gendarmerie was made following a court order banning the paramilitary Hungarian Guard, a Jobbik offshoot, which had been modeled after the murderous Nazi Arrow-Cross movement, another instrument of terror deployed in Hungary during the Holocaust.
Rally participants flew the red-and-white striped flag of the Arrow-Cross and one sign advised “bankers” to “be afraid.” Unlike some previous rallies, there were no violent confrontations nor Hungarian Guard uniforms on display.