Jewish Life Digital Edition October 2015 | Page 34

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The SA Jewish Board of Deputies

World Leaders

Hatred is on the rise, locally and globally
by Wendy Kahn

Dr Bernard-Henri Levy

Ronald Lauder

‘Shoot the Jew’ sung outside Wits Great Hall
(Sung to the tune of “My Favourite Things”)
Assault 3 boys with kippas at Rosebank Mall
Pig’s head at Woollies
And Hitler’s fan club
A deputy minister’s hateful call.
Well… they aren’t my favourite things.
They have made the past year deeply upsetting for South African Jewry. While our
statistics still reflect significantly lower
rates of anti-Semitism than those in our fellow Diaspora communities, we still feel
deeply concerned by the nature of the hatred and vitriol.
Yes, most of the incidents are fuelled by
the virulently anti-Semitic BDS group, masquerading as ‘human rights activists’, using
this platform to spew their hatred. I have, in
the past, shared a string of incidents providing proof of their anti-Semitic intent and
agenda. But this hostility has now moved
across onto university campuses, where
we’ve seen hate-filled ‘Israel Apartheid
Weeks’ trying to intimidate our students,
calls for Jewish students to be kicked out of
Durban University of Technology, and of
course the thuggish behaviour as BDS activists disrupted the Reshef concert, and this

30 JEWISH LIFE n ISSUE 89

Jacob Zuma

year stopped SAUJS’ guest Bassem Eid, a
Palestinian human rights activist, from
speaking at UJ.
The BDS movement has created a politically correct platform to spread the hatred
of Jews. They shared their platform with
deputy minister Obed Bapela at the protest
outside the SAZF conference, where, amid
the hostile crowd who were calling for Jews
to be killed and for them to be kicked out
of SA, he stood up and threatened some of
our communal organisations and me personally. That was just the precursor to his
shockingly anti-Semitic article on the front
page of the Sunday Times. He used several
classically anti-Semitic themes, questioning Jewish dual loyalty, implying we are a
danger to our country, and, of course,
threatening Jewish business. Fortunately,
neither our government nor the ANC supported these atrocious statements and
both issued statements distancing themselves from his singling out of Jewish
South Africans.
As I write this article, the SAJBD has 10
cases at the SA Human Rights Commission
and another four criminal cases which we
are actively monitoring and pursuing.
We decided that for our Biennial Nation-

al Conference on 22 November this year,
we would focus on anti-Semitism not only
in South Africa, but also globally.
We have chosen as our keynote speakers
two men who are in the forefront of the international fight against anti-Semitism and
racism: president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, and Dr Bernard-Henri Levy, French philosopher and activist.
Lauder, in his role as president of the
WJC, has become the global Jewish voice
protesting the international growth of this
type of hatred. His activism extends beyond anti-Semitism and includes protesting against all forms of racism, including
against Christians and Muslims. Our chairman, Mary Kluk, joined Lauder and chancellor Angela Merkel for a ‘Protest against
Jew Hatred in Berlin’ last year, an event
that left a deep impression on her. Over
the past couple of years, he has visited international communities in distress, bringing them the support of world Jewry and
ensuring he is engaging with the highest
levels of government in their countries to
fight the hatred against their Jewish communities. I attended a conference in Budapest a couple of years back, where we, as
the World Jewish Congress, under Lauder’s
leadership, supported Hungarian Jewry
during their challenging times.
Levy is the quintessential voice on antiSemitism. He was interviewed on CNN for
political analysis during the horrific Charlie Hebdo and kosher grocery store massacres in France earlier this year. His poignant analysis of the ‘Million Man March’
in Paris can be viewed on http://cnn.
it/1DyHIuc. Levy was selected to be the
keynote speaker at the first ever United
Nations session on anti-Semitism – a real
tribute to the high esteem he is viewed
with internationally.
Join the SAJBD at our conference on 22
November as we take a firm stand against
hatred with two renowned leaders in the
fight against global anti-Semitism. JL

photographs: SUPPLIED; wikipedia.org

at Board Conference