Under A Death Threat, Shashi Naidoo Reconsiders

Shashi Naidoo is a South African model and actress. In mid-June, she uploaded a photo of herself with Black Coffee, a South African DJ. The was her first mistake. For she did not realize that because Black Coffee had performed in Israel in April, not only he, but anyone who dared to associate with him, would draw the ire of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (anti-Israel) movement in South Africa. She had done something scarcely forgivable, letting herself be photographed with someone who had performed before an Israeli audience.

But then Shashi Naidoo did something even more unspeakable. She answered those who had criticized her for having appeared in a photo with Black Coffee, posting online comments on Israel, Gaza, and Hamas. And worst of all, she told the truth.

The model rejected accusations that Israel was an “Apartheid state,” and argued that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas was responsible for poor living conditions in Gaza.

This is how she put it, eloquently telling the world what all fair-minded people know, and what sent the BDS into paroxysms of fury:

“Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, which even Taz [presumably one more anti-Israel political group in South Africa] agrees is a terrorist organisation, refuses to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and is hell bent on its destruction,” she noted during the exchange. “[T]his has been clearly articulated inter alia in its manifesto, on air by its leaders and by virtue of the fact that they indoctrinate their children to hate Jews, have monetary incentive programmes to kill Jews and celebrate [the] death of innocent Israeli men, women and children.”

All of which is true.

“Taz makes reference to Gaza being a ‘toxic waste dump’,” Naidoo continued. “No question Gaza is a sh*thole of immense proportions. Why? Because instead of using the millions of USD it gets in foreign aid to provide food housing, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure to help its citizens, it uses it to build terror tunnels and rockets to pursue its ambition of annihilating Israel.”

And that’s true, too.

Within a few hours of posting that, Shashi Naidoo received ten death threats. She soon went into quite a different mode, one of abject apology born of fright. She posted a tearful apology on Instagram. She hadn’t known what she was doing, she hadn’t meant it, clearly she had to learn more. A pitiable performance.

Then, this time sitting between two stern-looking Muslims, presumably from BDS, she tearfully apologized yet again. Real, not crocodile tears, for herself, for the death threats she’s endured, for the humiliation she has already undergone in having to publicly denounce herself and to take down her earlier post on Instagram:

“I’ve been very disappointed in myself for not knowing and being fully aware of what was happening in Gaza,” she said.

In her social media post, Naidoo had referred to Gaza as a “shithole” during a debate with an Instagram user. She later admitted — or claimed? — that her longer response had been “copied and pasted” from a friend who she thought had a more “educated” viewpoint.

Here is how she put it:

“I stupidly copied and pasted the response [of a friend] verbatim in a feeble attempt to appear smart on social media without reading it comprehensibly (I know), thereby entering an issue of world importance I had no real fundamental understanding of – my biggest mistake.

“Words will never be enough to express how truly sorry I am. It will be in my actions going forward that I do better.”

Was that true? Because what she posted was indeed an excellent and detailed response. It does not sound like something she would have thoughtlessly — “without reading it” — lifted from elsewhere. And even if she had copied and pasted it, it has the ring of expressing her sincere views. But what can she do? There  are not only those death threats to consider. She has already lost a few jobs as a “brand ambassador” and “jewelry model,” and she’s no doubt worried about further damage to her career. So why not ascribe her posting to someone else, and claim her crime was one of thoughtlessness, when her real crime was one, precisely, of too much thought?

One acquires a sense for these things. To my mind, what she posted was eloquent and true and she meant every word, whether she or someone else wrote them. Now she is trying — understandably, forgivably — to save both her career and her life, and will say whatever the BDS bullies tell her to say.

Now she has promised to  go — as her new masters insist — on a “fact-finding mission” to “Palestine.” There, guided by past masters in anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian propaganda, she will no doubt have her eyes opened to the endless cruelties of the neo-colonialist and racist Israelis, and to the endless sufferings of the “Palestinians” who want only to live in peace, and grow their olive trees, but the Israelis won’t let them. And Naidoo has promised to “report back” on what she finds. Well, with those death threats still fresh in her mind, what kind of report do you think she’ll deliver? It will be as fair-minded and judicious as BDS, or Mahmoud Abbas, or the ghost of Arafat, could possibly want.

In her tearful denunciation of her own self, Shashi Naidoo brought to mind the testimonies against themselves made by erring — i.e., “reactionary” — Chinese during the 10-year Cultural Revolution, or those earlier denunciations that Old Bolsheviks made against themselves as “capitalist spies”  during the Soviet Purge Trials of the late 1930s, all of them reading from the same grim script, just before being taken out and shot.

Right now Shashi Naidoo has lost one job as a “brand ambassador,” and another as a jewelry model. But there’s no telling what further harm might be done to her career if she doesn’t do as the BDS enforcers require. It was a pitiful retraction. But can one blame her? Those who have never had to endure death threats from “Palestinians” or, for that matter, from other Muslims, might ask themselves what they would do in such a situation. These Muslim terrorists mean business. Not everyone wants to be a hero; a death sentence for writing the truth is not everyone’s cup of tea. And of course, Naidoo is a model. Killing her wouldn’t be necessary.  A little acid thrown in her face, disfiguring this model forever — that’s also a possibility.

Whatever Shashi Naidoo comes back with from her trip to “Palestine,” after undergoing her forced “re-education,” will be understood to have been forced upon her under threat of death. No one of sense will believe what she says under these terrifying conditions. Meanwhile, the statements she originally made still hover in the truth-telling air. Once they were posted, these words could never really be made to disappear. She may have taken her first Instagram comments down. But they still exist permanently in the ether; screenshots can be taken; her words can still be retrieved and read by anyone. And they will always have the ring of truth because, of course, they are the truth.