WHEN ISRAEL ROLLED OUT THE RED CARPET FOR A NAZI SYMPATHIZER

Whenever anyone criticises Israel’s atrocities they are swiftly labeled as anti-Semitic at best and a N*zi at worst. Even Nelson Mandela, not long after being released from 27-years in prison, was described as such for his support of the PLO and Yasser Arafat. But what many don’t realise is that Israel once warmly welcomed and feted a well-known N*zi sympathiser, that is, the one and only apartheid-era South African prime minister John Vorster.

In 1976, Vorster visited Israel as a guest of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rubin. However, three decades prior, in the 1940s, Vorster was arrested and detained for 14 months for being a member of Ossewa Brandwag, a right-wing racist organisation infamous for its rabid support of Ad*lf H*tler and his N*zi party. In fact, he was a co-founder of the group, which gained notoriety in the 40s due to its opposition to South Africa backing the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Vorster’s Ossewa Brandwag organisation, whose members publicly wore swastikas and performed N*zi salutes, preferred H*tler’s Germany. They also allegedly spied on the South African government on behalf of Hitler and threatened the African country’s Jewish population.

All of that, yet Vorster’s disreputable history was not enough to stop the Israeli government from rolling out the red carpet for his visit.