Luba Mayekiso
International Christian Embassy Jerusalem/Africa for Israel Christian Coalition
Luba Mayekiso’s involvement in advocacy
is not something he chose deliberately,
nor even something he now looks back on
and says in honesty that it was something
he wanted to do. He firmly believes it was
“part of the plan that G-d had for me”. As
national director and chairman of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem
South Africa and co-founder of Africa for
Israel Christian Coalition (AFICC), that’s
some master kind of plan – and it all began with a quest to better understand the
Hebraic foundation of his faith.
“By some remarkable miracle, we met a
vet who happened to be a very passionate, though soft-spoken, Orthodox Jew.
He was willing to listen to and try and
provide Jewish answers to our millions of
questions; he invited us into his home to
share Shabbat and Pesach. He then recommended that we join the Gitlin Library
in Cape Town so that we could find additional resources to read. It is there that
we were invited to a function and to hear
Ishmael Khaldi, a Bedouin diplomat in
the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
What we heard during this talk opened
our eyes but left us troubled: why had we
not heard this side of the story before?”
This led the Mayekiso family to meet
more people with whom to discuss and
strategise how they could tackle the Christian world, to better enlighten people. “In
summary, it began with one Jewish person
who was willing to open up, talk and share,
and the rest is history – and that is my lasting message. Jewish people must be proud
of their identity and faith and be willing to
share, and we can defeat the negative myths
about Israel. It is easy to demonise Israel
and for South Africans to believe those lies
because we have no reference point.”
The biggest challenge, he believes, is ignorance. If we can teach people a correct
theological understanding of Israel, and
couple that with the correct history, rather
than wishful Palestinian narratives, then
three-quarters of the battle is won. “Our
emotional heartstrings are being manipulated by comparing Israel to apartheid
South Africa, knowing that most people
will thus condemn Israel without bothering to ascertain the true facts.”
And Mayekiso carries out this faithful
mission by talking, tea