Joel Pollak: Miss South Africa Lalela Mswane May Have Single-Handedly Destroyed the BDS Movement

Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak said on Wednesday that Miss South Africa Lalela Mswane may dismantle the anti-Zionist BDS campaign by competing in the upcoming Miss Universe pageant in Israel next Monday.

Pollak previously noted how left-wing groups sought to pressure Mswane to withdraw from the 70th Miss Universe pageant, including framing Israel as an “apartheid” state.

“She has single-handedly — possibly — destroyed this movement, because the symbolism of South Africa is very important to the BDS movement,” Pollak said on Wednesday’s edition of the Vinnie Penn Project, a radio show broadcast from New Haven, CT. “To have Miss South Africa going to Israel saying, ‘I’m not going to listen to these haters. I’m going to listen to the voices of peace, the people who are reaching out to each other across the Middle East.’

He emphasized, “She may single-handedly have dismantled this movement.”

Vinnie Penn asked Pollak about the origins of the BDS campaign against Israel.

Pollak explained, “Twenty years ago, a group of radical anti-Israel activists started the campaign to isolate Israel, and they compared it to apartheid South Africa, so they wanted to isolate[Israel] the way apartheid South Africa was once isolated. Of course. apartheid South Africa doesn’t exist anymore, and that’s what they would like to see happen to Israel, as well.”

BDS leftists based in South Africa initiated their intimidation campaign against Mswane, Pollak said.

“The BDS movement in South Africa decided that Miss South Africa, a woman named Lalela Suwanee, who has a law degree and is absolutely striking — she’s brilliant, she’s beautiful, she is a role model for black girls not just in South Africa, but across the world, she’s just an amazing woman they decided that she had to boycott the Miss Universe Pageant in Israel because they would not tolerate a South African woman going to Israel.”

He continued, “She stood up to them, she stood up against the pressure from the BDS movement.”

Penn remarked, “This is very courageous. … It can be a risky endeavor [in this] climate, globally, but it is extraordinary.”

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