A government minister has stressed that Jewish students should not just listen to the tales of their parents about Israel.

Instead they should learn the history and facts about what really happened and read about Baruch Goldstein, Ben Gurion and Rabien Yitzak. He added that it was Theodor Herzl who stated that the building of the wall separating Israel and Palestine would be a form of ethnic cleansing to protect the Israeli interest against supposed Asian barbarism and this is where it all started.

Ronnie Kasrils, the minister of intelligence, aka “a Jewish voice”, gave a talk on Tuesday at Wits, titled “Do South Africans have a responsibility to the people in Palestine-Israel?”

This resulted in some people being upset and walking out during the talk.

The minister was hosted by the Wits Palestine Solidarity Committee (Wits PSC).

The talk was kicked off with Muhammed Desai of the PSC shouting “Amandla Intifada Amandla, Phansi Israel Phansi,” which was followed by a loud echo from the crowd.

Kasrils spoke about how the state of Israel was founded post 1948.

He said that the injustice meted out against Palestine made him think of what was going on in Israel and duly made him have an affinity to the Palestinians.

This injustice was described by Kasrils as a bride. He said after the founding of the Zionist movement in 1987, “a delegation decided to travel to the holy land and saw that the land is beautiful, but married to another man [Palestinians].

“The fundamental cause of disruption in this country is the dispossession of the people of their land. The Zionist movement is responsible for the hatred and problem that is going on.”

“It is important to find justice for people, which I think is the reason for living. Israel in order to deal with the bride-groom situation has tried to adopt the bride and has survived by becoming a functionary and client-state, supported by the US,” said Kasrils.

“Terrible crimes have been committed in the names of Jews and Judaism,” said Kasrils.

In reaction to a question posed by a member of the crowd, Kasrils said: “The Palestinian/Israeli issue is at a breaking stage and the only way in which we can assist is with our support for justice, the kind that South Africa received during the apartheid era.

Kasrils stuck to the point that Zionism should be stopped. He said, “It is however, not for us to impose solutions, rather it is for the people there to engage in dialogue and negotiate ways out of the track of violence.”

The crowd broke out into whistles and cheer when Kasrils said that Israel’s recent attack on Lebanon shows that Israel is indeed a dictator.

He concluded by saying that he would like to see a land where Muslims, Christians and Jews amongst others can live side by side together in one state.

(An edited version of this article was originally published in The Vuvuzela on October 06, 2006)