Jerusalem’s deputy mayor hailed the South African Miss Universe hopeful, Lalela Mswane, for her bravery in defying the South African government’s call for her to boycott the annual pageant over its location in Israel.
“I thanked #MissUniverse South African contestant Lalela Mswane for speaking truth to power and not just being a beautiful but a very brave lady,” Fleur Hassan-Nahoum tweeted alongside a photo of her hugging the 24-year-old beauty queen.
The South African government announced last month that it was “withdraw[ing] its support” of Mswane, citing “atrocities against Palestinians.”
Mswane was also maligned by activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
Hassan-Nahoum’s tweet sparked a backlash from activists, prompting her to later respond: “Getting a lot of #SouthAfrican hate messages since posting about #MissUniverse and all I can think about are the groups that come to Israel from #SA expecting to see apartheid and being very confused when they don’t see and instead they experience racism from #Palestinians.”
After arriving in Israel, Lalela expressed her “deepest gratitude for the overwhelming love.”
As Breitbart’s senior editor Joel Pollak writes:
Mswane won the right to represent her country at the 2021 Miss Universe pageant, which is being held in the Red Sea resort town of Eilat, Israel.
The pageant was already set to be an historic occasion, with the United Arab Emirates participating for the first time, and sending a representative to Israel as a gesture of peace and goodwill, following the signing of the Abraham Accords last year. Morocco, another Arab country opening relations with Israel, is also sending a contestant to the pageant.
But now the pageant has become even more important — ironically, because the anti-Israel “boycott, divestment, sanctions” (BDS) movement decided to target it.
[…]
The BDS effort was boosted by news that a Greek contestant had boycotted the event — until she was revealed to be a fraud.
If character is one of the criteria for judging Miss Universe, then Lalela Mswane has earned the crown — and she deserves to bring it back to South Africa, defying the haters once more. Where she has led, more will surely follow.
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