Regime-supported anti-semitism high in SA

Original Post Date: 2007-08-14 Time: 00:00:00  Posted By: Jan

Government-supported anti-semitism rises dramatically in South Africa in 2006/2007 Submitted by Adriana Stuijt:

August 12 2007 — Anti-semitism has risen to an unprecedented level in South Africa in 2006 and new incidents are reported frequently this year, too — even though there’s only about 80,000 of the 1980’s original 120,000 Jews left in South Africa, a report from the international Jewish Board of Deputies has noted.

In fact South Africa recorded its highest number of antisemitic incidents since the start of detailed record keeping on this subject in SA two decades ago.
Hostile atmosphere at government level:

The prevalence of strong anti-Israel sentiment within the mainstream South African political, media and NGO culture clearly contributed to a more hostile atmosphere towards Jews and Jewish institutions and was the obvious motivation for at least half the incidents recorded.

Antisemitic activities peaked during July-October 2006 — a period coinciding with the war in Gaza and Lebanon and its aftermath. Incidents were of a more direct nature than in the past, including a sharp increase in instances of verbal harassment and intimidation.

Seventy-nine antisemitic incidents were recorded in South Africa in 2006, a more than three-fold increase on the previous year's total.

The July-October period by itself saw twice as many antisemitic incidents recorded in four months than in the whole of 2005.

Incidents were also of a more in-your-face nature, including verbal abuse, threats and intimidation (40 cases), assault (four), vandalism (seven, cemeteries mainly being targeted) and bomb threats (two). Only a few instances of anonymous hate mail being received were recorded, in contrast to previous years when this was the main form that anti-Jewish harassment took.

More than half of the incidents took place in Johannesburg, with Cape Town accounting for most of the remainder.

The Jewish population is primarily located in the two main urban centres of Johannesburg (50,000) and Cape Town (18,000).

Other Jewish population centers include Durban (2,700), Pretoria (1,500), Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, East London and the Greater Plettenberg Bay area.

Cases of assault included a Jewish youth being struck in the face with a bottle in a Johannesburg pub after objecting to an antisemitic joke and of Durban youths being drawn into an altercation at a Durban nightclub in the course of which one was called a “**** Jew” and another stabbed in the face with a screwdriver.

Threat by farmer – A Pretoria man who is converting to Orthodox Judaism and wears a kippah and tzitzit was threatened and insulted by a farmer for whom he was doing building work. The latter called him a “Judenvark” (“Jewish pig”) and pointed his rifle at him.

Anti-Jewish propaganda in the public realm occasionally surfaced.

At a mass Muslim march in Cape Town (most Cape Town-based Muslims are Afrikaans-speaking) protesting against cartoons portraying Mohammed in Danish and other European newspapers, placards reading “Die Grootste Mites: Israel, Die Holocaust, Vryheid, Demokrasie” (“The greatest myths: Israel, the Holocaust, freedom, democracy”) were amongst those displayed.

A journalist interviewing some of the marchers recorded (Die Burger, 18/2) that many Muslims blamed the Jews for the cartoons.

Now-retired Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon's Jewish background was again used against him and his party in the course of a municipal by-election in Cape Town in June 2006. A pamphlet was distributed in the name of the African Muslim Party (but in fact not endorsed by it) prior to the election reading:

“Did you know Tony Leon and his Israeli wife are supporters of the Racist and Murderous Israeli Government policies…Tony Leon and his wife are Zionists themselves!!…As Muslims, we are warned through the Quran to fight against oppression.” The DA nevertheless won the by-election comfortably.
At an academic seminar in Pretoria, sponsored by the Iranian government in December, an ANC Member of Parliament, Farida Mohamed, cited the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a ‘credible historic document’ and inferred that the ‘historical authenticity of the Holocaust was a matter of debate’.

An ANC spokesman subsequently reiterated his party's position that ‘the Nazi genocide should be condemned with the contempt that it deserves”.

Boycots of Jewish business:

There are ongoing efforts by Muslim groupings to organize boycotts of businesses that support Israel and sell Israeli produce. During the year, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the umbrella organization for the local trade union movement that claims a membership of two million issued numerous strongly worded statements calling for South Africa to break off all relations with Israel.

In November, COSATU supporters combined with those of the militant Muslim group Qibla in a protest march in Cape Town. A memorandum calling Israel an “illegitimate, terrorist state, racist, expansionist and chauvinistic and has no right to exist” was handed over to the Foreign Minister.

Following objections from the SAJBD the Johannesburg branch of the Goethe-Institut, the Federal Republic of Germany's cultural institution operational worldwide, cancelled a scheduled seminar on the Israel-Lebanon conflict, at which Minister Ronnie Kasrils was keynote speaker.

The Board protested against the extreme anti-Israel bias of the organizers of the event. Kasrils had previously likened ‘Israel's tactics in Lebanon to those of the Nazis’.

In the course of strike action against Karan Beef, a Jewish-owned company, antisemitic remarks were made by a representative of the S A Commercial, Catering Workers Union, viz. “this boer is insolent, maybe he’s Jewish, I don’t know if he’s Jewish, but if he’s Jewish comrades, we are going to force him to go back to Israel…. If he’s Jewish and loyal to Israel its obvious how he came to own a place like this”. The SAJBD lodged an official complaint with the Union, which has refused to apologize.

Anti-Jewish employment bias at SABC – A commission report into bias at the SA Broadcasting Corporation revealed that a number of political analysts had been blacklisted by Snuki Zikalala, the chief executive for news and current affairs.

The commission found eight instances in which Zikalala restricted the use of commentators or analysts.
Included in the blacklist was Paula Slier, a Jewish journalist.

Zikalala, as cited in the commission report, justified his ban on the use of news items produced by Slier by saying, “from the movement where I come from we support PLO. But she supported what's happening in Israel. And then I said to them Paula Slier, we cannot use her on the Middle East issue because we know where she stands”. Zikalala's views contradict the official policy of the SABC, which is to be non-partisan in its news reporting.

LINK
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/xmlpath.pl?id=5/e
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History of the Jews in South Africa:

Jewish immigration to South Africa commenced in the early decades of the 19th Century. The community, mainly of British or German origin, remained small until its numbers were dramatically augmented by the influx of large numbers of Jews from Eastern Europe, mainly Lithuania, after 1880.

This, together with immigration from Germany in the 1930s and later from Israel and neighboring southern African countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe, saw the community reach a peak of 120,000 in 1980.

Thereafter, emigration declined as a result of the extended political and economic crisis that beset the country. This extended to the two decades leading up to the transition from white minority process that continued well into the post-1994 era, as a result of high crime levels and general uncertainty about the future. In the early 2000s, however, emigration declined to normal levels and the community had stabilized at around 80,000 souls.

Despite its reduced numbers, the South Africa Jewish community remains a highly cohesive and well-organized one, with an impressive network of religious, educational, cultural and welfare institutions.

Over 80% of Jewish children are currently enrolled in the Jewish day schools and the same proportion is affiliated with one or another religious congregation (the breakdown being 85% Orthodox, with nearly all of the remainder, aside from the single Masorti/Conservative congregation in Johannesburg, being Progressive).

The Official Opposition, which holds fifty seats, is the Democratic Alliance. The latter's Jewish leader, Tony Leon, retired from politics at the end of 2006 after eleven years at the helm, during which time the party's support (mainly drawn from the ranks of the white minority) increased more than six-fold.
Another prominent parliamentarian is Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils.

There are two other Jewish MPs, (health spokesman) Dr Ruth Rabinowitz (Inkatha Freedom Party) and Ben Turok (ANC). In spite of their small numbers, SA Jews remain prominently represented at all levels of civil society and in the judiciary.

Antisemitism in South Africa today is largely confined to radical groupings within the country's 800,000-strong Muslim community.

The Cape Town-based Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) openly backs extremist organizations such as Hamas and Hizbullah, and its leaders have on a number of occasions made antisemitic statements.

Also in Cape Town is the Islamic Unity Convention, which has been engaged in an extended court battle with the SAJBD over antisemitic broadcasting by its mouthpiece Radio 786… and Qibla, founded in 1979, which has been designated as a terrorist movement by the US State Department.

The Pretoria-based Media Review Network, a Muslim media advocacy group which promotes the ideologies of Muslim extremist organizations the world over, continues to be a vociferous presence in the South African media and propagates antisemitic material, including Holocaust denial, on its website.

In recent years, a number of South African Muslims have been arrested in various localities abroad on suspicion of being involved in planned or actual terrorist attacks.

Far-right white organizations are virtually dormant in South Africa and these pose virtually no threat to the Jewish community today. Incidents of antisemitic harassment involving individual whites nevertheless continue to take place, albeit relatively infrequently.

Anti-semitism in Freedom of Expression Institute – The Palestinian Solidarity Committee, while it eschews overt antisemitism, is a vociferous anti-Israel voice that calls for the dissolution of the State of Israel and for the boycott of Israeli products.

Various South African non-governmental organisations, including the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), also go beyond their respective mandates to single out Israel and its supporters for special criticism.

During 2006, the SA Jewish Board of Deputies sharply criticized the FXI in the media for its long record of anti-Israel bias, which had resulted in Jewish organizations being singled out for disproportionate attack by it.
Legal actions

Anti-semitism on Radio 786 – Significant progress was made in the SAJBD's long-running battle with Radio 786, a Cape Town-based Muslim community radio station under the auspices of the Islamic Unity Convention (IUC).

The SAJBD's complaint dates back to 8 May 1998, when Radio 786 broadcast a programme featuring many instances of antisemitic conspiracy theorising and Holocaust denial. This was followed by an extended series of court cases and appeals as the IUC pursued every possible legal avenue and stalling tactic in an effort to avoid the issue going to a formal hearing.

During 2006, both the SAJBD and S A Zionist Federation issued statements criticizing the government for displaying bias against Israel, and responded to antisemitic articles in the national press. However the SAJBD has for the most part greatly tempered all public criticism of the SA government’s increasing number of human-rights violations and its growing number of interventions in the freedom of speech.

Some Jews criticise this muted criticism — noting that if ‘things ever do get really dangerous for Jews in South Africa, there will be no one (151)— according to the twisted logic of ANC foreign policy (151)— to speak for the community in international institutions like the UN Security Council’.

“Freedom is fragile, and indivisible, and the (SA Jewish Board of Deputies) ought to defend it — whether the rights of Jews, or fellow South Africans, or persecuted peoples in distant lands are at stake.’

Read:
http://www.jewishblogging.com/blog.php?bid=109795

READ THE ENTIRE 2006 REPORT:

http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=2/a/vii/110320071
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2007 incidents:

“On the Palestinian issue South Africa, with seat on the UN security council, is on record in support of ‘continued armed struggle against Israel’ in statements to the security council. Intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils recently posted a video of his speech at Birzeit University in May on his ministry's website in an attempt to refute charges made by the Israeli ambassador, who(151)—quoting Palestinian news sources(151)—said Kasrils ‘had incited Palestinians to murder Israelis’.

View the ‘mesmerising’ Kasril’s video here:

Note — on the following video, South Africa’s intelligence-minister also lied outright in this speech – claiming that the ANC leaders had never ordered any kind of ‘armed violence’ unless ‘the gun was pointed at the freedom fighter…’ when in fact the exiled ANC-executive, including now-president Thabo Mbeki and now police-chief Jackie Selebi and 11 others, together had formally approved a wide-spread terrorist-campaign placing bombs in public places, thus killing many thousands of unarmed, innocent civilians.

VIDEO – http://www.intelligence.gov.za/MediaStatement…/p>

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