JAMES KIRCHICK RESPONDS:

I appreciate the substantive and enlightening comments of Tony Leon and Michael Mahoney to my article. Leon, who has practical experience with the issues discussed in my piece, characterizes the ANC’s conception of its foreign policy as a “desire to recast the world order in a direction more favorable to the developed world.” In reality, the ANC’s foreign policy is one that, whatever its benign pretensions, shares an intellectual affinity with the regimes in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Tehran and with organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. Not for nothing did the former Iranian ambassador to South Africa, Javid Ghorbanoghli, respond to the latter’s backing down on its opposition to sanctions against Iran at the United Nations in an opinion piece entitled, “Mr. Mbeki, This Is No Way to Treat a Friend.”

Professor Mahoney’s main contention resides with my use of “the West” as a means of discourse. Whatever their differences, a common set of ideals and specific initiatives cohere between the foreign policies of democratic, liberal countries such as the United States, Australia, Western Europe, Israel, and several other nations, which can reasonably be labeled “the West,” and particularly on the issues raised in my article. On the other hand, weakening support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and ending the regime of Robert Mugabe are all policies on which the nations that constitute “the West” differ significantly from South Africa, which has stood by Iran, propped up Mugabe, and granted legitimacy to Hamas and Hezbollah.

But it is not just critics of the ANC who adopt this rubric; South African President Thabo Mbeki speaks frequently of the “African Renaissance” (which he envisions himself leading) and dismisses European and American—or Western—recommendations on issues from aids to Zimbabwe with the stubborn refrain, “African solutions to African problems.” On the subject of aids, which has taken hundreds of thousands of South African lives on Mbeki’s watch, the South African president has for years casually denied that HIV causes aids, sat in silence as his internationally disgraced health minister advised aids patients to eat beetroot and garlic to treat their disease, and has lashed out at critics of these irresponsible policies with accusations of racism. Moreover, high-ranking officials in the ANC government have denounced HIV anti-retroviral drugs—Western, as opposed to African “traditional” remedies—as “toxic.”

Mahoney responds to the thrust of my article by invoking the history of American foreign policy adventures. Yet it is unreasonable and unfair to expect American critics of South Africa’s foreign policy to defend the policies of the United States in general and the Bush administration in particular. And while a debate on the merits of American foreign policy is tangential, at best, to a discussion of South Africa’s foreign policy, a reasonable case can be made in response to the specific allegations Mahoney makes regarding American dealings with Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, and the Chinese communists. First, the failure to support the former two leaders might possibly lead to the emergence of Islamist governments, and China is an emerging superpower that must be reckoned with, irrespective of its atrocious human rights record. Moreover, a direct comparison of South Africa’s and America’s dealings with tyrants neglects the fact that the United States is the world’s only superpower, with all of the attendant responsibilities and difficult decisions such a role entails. The same rationalizations cannot possibly apply to a sub-Saharan African developing country’s dubious support for terrorist groups half a world away that are committed to the destruction of a fellow United Nations member state, or its propping up of a neighboring genocidal dictator whose policies have led to the outpouring of millions of refugees. However, a debate over American foreign policy this is not, and it is unproductive to respond to criticism of the ANC’s fondness for illiberal movements by offering condemnation of America, of which there is no shortage these days.

Finally, Mahoney notes (as I did myself) that Muslims account for only 1.5 percent of the population of South Africa. But they represent nearly 10 percent of the population in Cape Town, the only major municipality that the Democratic Alliance controls, an observation for which I am grateful to Leon, who brought it to my attention. Whether or not the ANC’s anti-Israel stance can be attributed to South Africa’s increasing Muslim population, I would venture that the lack of an electoral explanation makes its position on the Arab-Israeli conflict all the more disturbing. Mahoney writes that “The ANC’s anti-Zionism is rather simply an outgrowth of its own understanding of anti-imperialism.” He is absolutely right, and it pains me to admit that the ANC’s frequent denunciations of Israel are predicated not upon any particular set of controversial policy decisions Israel makes or has made, but rather upon the very legitimacy of the Jewish state itself.

Circumcision

TO THE EDITORS:

In his article “Circumcision as Rebellion” (AZURE 28, Spring 2007), Ido Hevroni refers to the legendary debate between R. Akiva and the Roman governor Turanus Rufus, epitomized by the latter’s question, “Why are you circumcised?” The debate, according to Hevroni, is “a symbolic clash, not only of two nations at war, but of two conflicting approaches to civilization.” In other words, what we have are two fundamentally different, and incompatible, worldviews. While the Jewish one champions “an image of man who alters, even creates, a world of his own,” its Roman-Latin counterpart sees the world as “closed… ruled by the blind forces of nature.” A consequence of this latter outlook is “the Hellenistic adoration of the body and concern for its completeness… the principled refusal of educated Hellenists to tolerate the deliberate injury the Jews carried out on their bodies and those of their children.”

Yet if the debate about circumcision truly revolves, as Hevroni argues, around the concept of rebellion, then we must consider another midrash that also deals with the Bar Kochba revolt, yet takes an entirely different approach from the one advanced in the story above. This can be found in the Jerusalem Talmud, Ta’anit 4:24, and in a somewhat similar version in Lamentations Rabba 2, both of which describe a certain aspect of the events in Beitar, a famous site in the history of the revolt:

R. Yohanan said, “Eighty thousand pairs of trumpeters surrounded Beitar. And each of them was in command of several companies.”

And Ben Kozba was there and with him two hundred thousand who had removed a finger.

They sent sages who said to him, “Until when will you make Israel a mutilated nation [missing a finger].”

He said to them, “That is how we can test them.”

They said to him, “Only someone who can uproot a cedar in Lebanon [a scholar] while riding on a horse [a rich man] can be numbered in your battalions.”

He had two hundred thousand of the one and two hundred thousand of the other.

On the simplest level, we may argue that the heroism of Bar Kochba and his soldiers is illustrated by their willingness to remove one of their own fingers in a show of solidarity with the cause. Yet the sages’ rejection of this act reveals another, problematic side to it: This “test of courage” in truth instills in the soldiers a sense of pride in their power. It was this pride, in fact, that the sages were intent on dampening; thus the image of the “uprooting of the cedar”—a well-known symbol of pride in midrashic sources. In contrast with Hevroni’s midrash, then, which praises a rebellion against an invader through the “mutilation” of the body, here we are presented with its very opposite.

This midrash would thus seem to belie a distinct reservation about the Jewish revolt against Roman rule. Indeed, by presenting the motivation of Bar Kochba’s soldiers as one of pride and machismo, this midrash would appear to fly in the face of Hevroni’s assertion that the act of circumcision (or self-mutilation) is in fact an act of rebellion against the gods of circumstance. And certainly, there was much room for reservation about the failed revolt; after all, the fanatical, near cultish following of Bar Kochba led to his eventual portrayal as the messiah. Could it not be the case that this midrash stood as a warning to R. Akiva, Bar Kochba’s most ardent supporter, to think more carefully about the man to whom he was lending his support? At the very least, it would seem that a more comprehensive survey of the writings of the sages on the matter of the Bar Kochba revolt reveals an emphasis on the need for moderation in considering one’s support for or opposition to it.

Since Hevroni’s article stresses the argument about the wholeness of the body, however, we must conclude by remembering that, in the final analysis, the balance is nonetheless tilted against the Romans, since the torments they imposed on the very body they went to such lengths to glorify led, in the case of R. Akiva, to spiritual wholeness.

Yisrael Rosenson
Jerusalem

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