Memo to South Africans: There's No Halo On You

"The record of South Africa’s government over neighboring Zimbabwe, where Mugabe has turned torture and political murder into a grizzly routine, has been a disgrace. . . . South Africa voted against a UN Security Council resolution toughening sanctions against Mugabe and his cronies. In the last 40 days, in defiance of the UN’s main refugee agency, South Africa has sent a breathtaking 17,000 Zimbabwean refugees back to Mugabe’s hell on earth. And that’s not even mentioning the anti-foreigner pogroms which erupted across the country in May, leaving scores dead and injured.

"Imagine if, during this unspeakable violence, a group of Israelis, solemnly invoking the persecution, ghettoization, murder and genocide which have indelibly marked the Jewish experience, had landed in Johannesburg on a fact-finding mission. Such a delegation would have been - to say the least - mocked and reviled."

- from a wee essay by Ben Cohen, at the indispensable Z-Word.