Letter from the SAZF (Cape Council) of South Africa

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Here at the tip of Africa the South African Zionist Federation (Cape Council) and its many supporters work hard to defend Israel against her many detractors and their attempts to delegitimize your amazing country. We pray for the welfare of the State of Israel, we hold rallies in your support and we defend you when you are attacked in our media.

We are facing growing assaults from the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign with regular attempts to boycott Israeli goods from avocadoes to beauty products and from University programmes to opera tours. The Israeli apartheid analogy has particular appeal in South Africa where the majority of the population were, until recently, victims of the immoral legislation of the then ruling National Party.

We work hard to provide platforms for your politicians, media experts and the like to come and speak to our society, to come and set records straight, to expose and erase prejudices, to challenge biases and to have the opportunity to reach a broad spectrum of South African society with a message of truth, balance, fact and hope.

 Unfortunately our major problem is lack of funding. The honoraria demanded by some of your best spokesmen to come here to share their wisdom with us (quoted in dollars (approx R7.5 = $1), as well as frequent demands for first class airfares are way beyond our reach.

We want you to come and share your experiences with us. We need you to supply voices of reason, not rhetoric. We need your help with hasbarah.

We are all in this together to ensure the failure of attempts to destroy Israel through a campaign of delegitimization. Our efforts to help you should not be prevented because the costs demanded by Israeli speakers, as well as by other speakers from around the world, are too high for us to meet.

We appeal to speakers to be prepared to make a sacrifice to come and speak to us. We do commend and acknowledge those speakers who have come at their own costs to assist us.

We are all in this together.

Julie Berman

Director

January 2011