Last week, the South African foreign minister announced that her country’s ambassador to the Jewish state, recalled last year over Israeli efforts to contain riots in Gaza, would not be returning, and that a liaison office in Tel Aviv with “no political mandate [and] no trade mandate” would serve in lieu of an embassy. Such a move demonstrates the extent to which the preferences of the boycott, divest, and sanction movement (BDS) have become policy in Pretoria. Ben Cohen explains how this came to be:

The conventional, and largely correct, answer as to why [South Africa is so hostile to Israel] goes back to the struggle in the late 20th century against apartheid. . . . Like most of the regional struggles of that era, the African National Congress’s battle against apartheid was incorporated into the wider cold war in Africa, with the Soviet Union presenting itself as the most stalwart friend of the anti-apartheid cause. With the USSR came its allies, especially the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); by the 1970s, the supposed correspondence between “apartheid” and “Zionism” . . . was firmly established in the PLO’s propaganda arsenal.

Yet it isn’t nostalgia alone that propels current South African loathing of Israel. Enmity toward the Jewish state is a pillar of the country’s foreign policy, but it isn’t the only one. Others include an unwavering solidarity with dictators. South Africa was famously an enabler of the totalitarian nightmare imposed by Robert Mugabe on neighboring Zimbabwe; that principle has survived in the [current] government’s vocal backing for the illegitimate regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. In supporting Maduro, South Africa finds itself in the company of Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, and all those other notorious human-rights abusers who scream about national sovereignty [only when] their own offenses are called out. . . .

[Moreover] in South Africa’s progressive circles, denying your poorer compatriots economic and educational opportunities is a blessed act when it is presented as part of the war against “Zionism.” Hence the corporate fight over the last two months concerning the proposed takeover of Clover—South Africa’s biggest dairy company—by an Israeli-led consortium. Were the bid to receive approval, thousands of jobs would be created in South Africa—where a full 28 percent of the workforce is unemployed—as well as in neighboring countries that are part of Clover’s regional distribution network. But that is less important to South Africa’s BDS lobby than an ideological victory over “Zionism,” and so the talks, and thus the jobs, are on hold.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.