Are South Sudanese Zionists?

By Zechariah Manyok Biar

October 26, October, 2010 — Long time ago, a young man polluted the air (to avoid the literal term) inside the house and guests were with him. Having done something shameful, he turned to his best friend and whispered to him that they would say that an old man sleeping next to them was the one who did the shameful thing in the presence of guests. The old man was listening too, though the young men thought that he was sleeping. The old man refused to be used as scapegoat and said, “My son, let me be bad as I am and not in your stead.”

What is going on now in some of the Arab media resembles the above story. Some Arab writers have started connecting South Sudanese to Zionist ideology in order to rally Arab support behind Northern Sudan against the free will of Southerners in the upcoming referenda. Ziyad Abu Ghanima wrote in Jordan Ad-Dustour on September 29 this year that “All facts and indicators show that ‘Southern Sudan’ will be a Zionist-American creation meant to hold Egypt hostage to Zionist interests.”

There is nothing that shows that South Sudan has connection to Zionist ideology, but the writer wants to tell the Arab World that South Sudanese are waging “war against the Arabs and the Muslims” so that the Arabs and Muslims support Northern Sudan to keep the country united by force. We know very well that anything connected to Zionism becomes the automatic enemy of the Arab World because of the ongoing war between Israel and Palestine.

The writer is also accusing the United States of being behind the upcoming secession of South Sudan. In order to make emotional appeal to some of the Arab countries that are friends to the USA, the writer accused these Arab countries of being “Arabs and Muslims in name only!” as if real Arabs and real Muslims are incapable of making separate choices of who they want to relate to in this world. This attitude of thinking that real Arabs and real Muslims should unite even against the oppressed simply because the oppressor claims to be real Arab and real Muslim is what we are fighting against in Sudan, not the Arabs or Muslims.

We have Arabs and Muslims with us in South Sudan and we count them as our brothers and sisters. During the north-south war, we captured a lot of Arabs and Muslims but we never killed them until they were set free in 2005. The opposite was true with our Prisoners of War in North Sudan. They were all killed immediately whenever they were captured. Does this fact tell the writer the truth of the situation in Sudan and what we are fighting against? We are fighting against oppressors in power in Khartoum, not the people in the North and their religion.

Another writer Essa bin Mohammed al Zedjali of Arab News claimed on October 24, 2010 that Israel is the main supporter of SPLM/A. This claim is also meant to rally the Arab World behind Northern Sudan against Southern Sudan. Only those who want to believe what they want to believe will be the ones to believe Mr. Mohammed’s claim.

If Israel were the main supporter of the SPLM/A, then the presence of SPLM would have been visible in Israel. But the opposite is true. Even these writers know that Israelites only allowed in Sudanese refugees recently. But these refugees were from Darfur, not from South Sudan.

The Darfuri are Muslims. If anybody who does not talk against Israel is a Zionist, then Darfuri refugees might be Zionists. But we know that they are not. Israelites also would not have allowed Muslims refugees from Darfur into Israel if Zionists were the enemies of Muslims. Darfuri refugees were allowed to enter into Israel because Israelites did not care about the identity of the refugees. Darfuri refugees were accepted in Israel because Israelites do not tolerate genocide. It had nothing to do with Zionism and South Sudan.

The reality is that South Sudanese are fighting for their freedom. Zionists were and are still fighting for their freedom, but in their own way. If some people think that we are bad in what we are fighting for, then we must be bad as freedom fighters in South Sudan and not as Zionists. Our ideologies and those of Zionists are two different things, though we share fighting for freedom.

Zechariah Manyok Biar, BA. Edu., MACM, MSSW. He can be reached at manyok34@gmail.com