South African Christians are donating two emergency rapid response vehicles for use in Israeli communities near the border with Gaza, in a repudiation of their government’s policies towards the Jewish state.
The faith-based move comes at a time when South Africa has emerged as one of the most active opponents of Israel around the globe, having taken it to the U.N.’s International Court of Justice on genocide charges over the nearly year-old war against Hamas in Gaza and squarely allied itself with Iran and its terrorist proxies.
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The vehicles will be donated to the Magen David Adom rescue service next month for use in communities that came under ground attack during the Oct. 7 invasion in which Hamas-led terrorist killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, wounded thousands of others, and triggered the war.
“The name of South Africa has been tarnished by the ANC government over a protracted period, particularly after the October 7 attacks, but there is a lot of support for and admiration of Israel in South Africa based on Judeo-Christian values,” Chris Edens, the head of the South African office of the evangelical organization Bridges for Peace, which is behind the initiative, told JNS on Thursday.
He noted that the decision to donate the vehicles, which cost $80,000 each including personnel training, was a direct response from Christians to the South African government’s anti-Israel policies.
“Funds for Israel were flying off the charts post October 7 and it is quite gratifying that financial support is consistently higher than we have ever experienced,” Edens said.
Relations between Jerusalem and Pretoria have plunged to an all-time low with no operational embassy or consulate in Tel Aviv, both countries’ ambassadors recalled, and in a year in which besides taking Israel to the U.N. court, then-South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor visited Iran. Last December, Johannesburg hosted a Hamas delegation to South Africa.
Magen David Adom employs about 1,400 emergency response vehicles—ranging from ambulances to scooters—nationwide but seeks to expand its fleet to 2,000.
‘Bless Israel Boxes’
The evangelical organization has also distributed more than 4,000 blue and white “Bless Israel Boxes” to churches across South Africa, inspired by the iconic tin blue boxes used by the Jewish National Fund to collect coins for Israel dating back 120 years.
“It offers the ability in a practical sense to connect those who will never get to Israel but want to support Israel,” Edens said.
The Christian group has also teamed up with the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) to send thousands of handwritten “letters of love” from Christian supporters to Israeli soldiers on the front lines and families that have been displaced by the war.
“You don’t hear this on the media, but there are thousands upon thousands of believers in South Africa that are standing with Israel, and we want to show our comfort and support to stand strong,” Liz Campbell Robertson, chair of the Christian branch of WIZO in Cape Town, told JNS.
Earlier this year, a group of Japanese Christians donated two ambulances to Israeli communities along the border with Gaza to replace some of those destroyed in the Oct. 7 attack, in another show of faith-based support.
The move was led by the mayor of the city of Gifu, the capital of the Gifu prefecture where Chiune Sugihara, the vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas/Kovno, Lithuania, who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis during World War II, was born in 1900. News of that donation caused a stir in Japan.