Imagining A World Without Hate: The falsehood of the Jews' "Otherness."
Jabulani Mzaliya[1]
Introduction
The temptation to engage with the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Board) on the back of its 47th Conference becomes an all too inviting proposition for someone like me who has attended the SAJBD Conference in the course of my work for the first time. The reflections that are contained in this paper are those that consumed me as I sat at the Sandton Sun listening to the conversations, albeit for a short time. I must concede that some of the views and the reflections have been building over time and what my attendance of Conference did was to reignite them.
Let me state upfront that this paper is not a frontal attack on the activities of the Board. It accepts that apologetics exist in all societies. The limited success of other apologetics in any given polity should not be blamed on the successful ones. My take is that the Board has been successful in defending the interests of Jewish people such that the failure of others to do so to the same extent that the Board has done, should be laid at their door, and not of the Board's.
The topic that I have chosen resonates with the subtheme of a particular session of the 47th Conference: the end of hatred. My additions of the falsehoods about Jews in general are based on the received and observed reduction of the people of Jewish descent as self-centred, forgetful of their history of suffering, insular, conspiring, money-loving, skeptical of criticism, hoarders of wealth, handwringing, bribing etc. etc.
These falsehoods are not my creation. In its article, The International Jew: The World's Problem, The Ford International Weekly of May 22, 1920 raised these issues in some countries more sharply. It stated:
"In Russia he [the Jew] is charged with being the source of Bolshevism, an accusation which is serious or not according to the circle in which it is made… In Germany he is charged with being the cause of the Empire's collapse…. In England he is charged with being the real world ruler.... In America it is pointed out to what extent the elder Jews of wealth and the younger Jews of ambition swarmed through the war organizations – principally those departments which dealt with the commercial and industrial business of war.
Because of these sentiments, Jewish people have attracted accusations that they are not in sync with the national moods of the countries they find themselves in. This, in turn, provides fertile ground for them to be dismissed as "the other." Impolitic as it is to raise these issues, I intend to dispel this perception of Jewish "otherness" in this paper. My aim is to assure South Africans of Jewish descent of their rightful place in a democratic South Africa.
Entering the debate about Jewry in both South Africa and in the world is a discourse which one enters with dollops of trepidation. The South African discourse in particular, is pregnant with unnecessary invectives. As it was in the 1920s quote I started with, the issue of South Africans of Jewish descent invokes passion. Fierce debates and freedom of expression allowed by our Constitution can sometimes generate further passions. An outsider listening to, or reading from the media exchanges, would be convinced that the diversity of views is emblematic of a nation that cannot fully heal itself from its sad past. The blogosphere is replete with accusations and counter-accusations, slander, hate speech and innuendo.
I am aware that Jewry is not a monolithic entity and various sects, persuasions, ideologies and views exist. I will deliberately gloss over these differences because they would be atomizing a minority which I seek to be blended into an inclusive pan-South Africanness. As a superstructure, the Board of Deputies Conference is a perfect platform to address Jewry in its generality. Sharing an existence of more than 100 years with the African National Congress, the histories and the experiences in South Africa that I will elaborate on are likely to coincide with those of the Board.
In order to dispel the "otherness" of South Africans of Jewish descent, I seek refuge in literature than in history. In the villainous portrayal of Shylock throughout Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, it is his response to Christians who have accosted him that the play finds resonance with this paper. Shylock's erudition was aimed at dispelling the "otherness" which the Christians had seen in his desire to get back the loan owed to him.
"SHYLOCK: I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?
If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? If you wrong us do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that." [2]
I will use this text as my point of departure to suggest, in a non-prescriptive manner, some of the areas where South Africans of Jewish descent can further play a role to normalize our society. My intention is not an invitation of externals, but a cajoling of fellow South Africans to truly and freely exercise their South Africanness in a manner that will promote the welfare of all South Africans.
My Reflections
The sense that I got was that the organizers of Conference expected a specific outcome relating to issues of the protection of the Jewish people under the Constitution, their access to human rights, crime against them and other related issues. I agree that responses to these questions are urgent as they are in many other communities.
To straight-jacket and steer Conference deliberations towards an expected outcome limits the broader analyses of a range of issues of self-reflection, contrition and course redirection. "Feel good" outcomes are self-delusionary, and they fail to unlock challenges and opportunities for the Jewish community in South Africa. Directing deliberations towards a pre-determined outcome plays into the perceptions of community's insularity.
Jews continue to view themselves as apart from the greater South Africanness. When there has been concern that in post-Apartheid South Africa there has been sustenance, internecine competition and a proliferation of Black professional bodies such as the Black Management Forum (BMF), the Black Business Council (BBC) etc.,[3] there has been conspicuous silence about the continuation of an exclusively Jewish Board of Deputies. The Black bodies are being criticized for holding onto the past divisions; they are being asked to "move on" and "to forget the past" a concern and a request that has not been extended to other similar White insular organizations. 1994 is seen as cut-off date for the divisions of the past.
A subtle introduction of the affirmation of the end of Apartheid in 1994 is used rather selectively so as to undermine the after-effects of the more than three hundred years of imperial, colonial and Apartheid effects. A demand for ahistoricty is being made on Black South Africans to forget their past even when there are communities that thrive because of their constant reference to their own histories. So even before we start, different demands about history are racialized. For Black people the power of history as a binding concept is being relegated to the limited understanding of history as just the past.
The "otherness" that Jews feel is largely based on the Torah's reminder that Jews were strangers in Egypt for 400 years.[4] This feeling is pervasive throughout history even when there is an accepted Constitution that considers all South Africans as equal, integrated and a single nation, Post-1994 South Africa is no historical and or Biblical Egypt. I wish to argue that the feeling of being ivrim in South Africa today may be more in the mind than in reality.
The Board of Deputies does not always speak out on national issues. When they occasionally do, they do not speak with one voice. While I admit that this failure of the Board of Deputies to speak with one voice is a consequence of the divergent voices and emphasis of its constituent parts, the onus of the unification of the Jewish voice will always be expected from the superstructure, the Board of Deputies.
The Board is trying to reinvent itself in self-atonement for the past indifference to the suffering of Black people. While this is necessary and welcome, it nevertheless seeks to do so within the parametres of its own insularity. As it plays itself out, at least to me, the winning of hearts and minds of the South African population is done by praising Jewish heroes of the anti-Apartheid struggle whom they despised or ignored in the past. Since these were the heroes of the nation, I consider it incorrect that the Board now tries to reclaim them as Jewish without the participation of the broader South African public for whom these anti-Apartheid Jewish activists sacrificed their lives by committing class suicide.
The non-mention of Mrs Helen Suzman as one of the pioneers of South Africans of Jewish descent was not taken well by one Conference delegate. Mrs Suzman was a thorn in the flesh of National Party politicians and Parliamentarians. He was Apartheid Parliament's lone voice against injustice. That she was of Jewish origin is undisputed. Her dedication to the liberation of the country should be counted amongst many others of Jewish descent in the anti-Apartheid movement.
You must have been blind to the Apartheid-era Parliament if you did not understand the uphill that she faced against a male-dominated Calvinistic Parliament with a National Party majority which passed oppressive laws with alarming speeds. It was not only that she was disrespected by the uncontrollable occasion of her gender, but also by the man-driven bias against her as of Jewish descent. Lest we forget, Parliament was still carrying remnants, or their offspring, of those Nationalists who were fervently anti-Semitic.
In the current political discourse, and with the 2014 elections fever heating up, Mrs Suzman, in spite of her immense contributions to the anti-Apartheid struggle, poses a dilemma for many South Africans, including those of Jewish descent. To posit her as a poster politician for liberalism is to misunderstand Black attitudes towards the evolutionist ideology resident in that political outlook. This dilemma concerns the reclaiming of her legacy for reasons other than honest ones:
The Board of Deputies has not, amongst itself, come to an amicable accommodation of its past role in the struggle against Apartheid.
While it may be true that the Apartheid politicians tendered an apology for their ill-treatment of the Jews, it is also true that they did so for ulterior motives.[6] Weiner argues that the apology was to bolster the ranks of the White population.[7] When the apology was made by these Afrikaners politicians, the past excuses that the Jews were not "assimilable" into White culture were conveniently forgotten. The often cited visit by the then Prime Minister Vorster to Israel was not, in my view, occasioned by any love for the Jews on his part, but by the loneliness of isolation.
The open arms acceptance of Vorster on a state visit to Israel in April 1976 was also driven by the same isolation. To trumpet it as a normalization of Israeli-South African relations was a slap in the face of many South Africans who felt this was legitimizing Apartheid. The idea built on the rather dubious covenantal relations between the Afrikaners and the Jews had with God, The biggest problem with this covenant was the assumption that because there is this relationship with God, other people or other "tribes" were not worthy of it.
It would be to expect the impossible for Jews to refuse the class and the privileges they were being ushered into by this apology. Generally, human nature tends on the side of privilege. It is usually the brave and the daring that spurn privilege for the less glamorous life of being pursued and persecuted for the greater common good. In order for all of us to craft a new nation, a large section of South Africans of Jewish descent will have to disown their historic Whiteness. Their industry and innovation notwithstanding, it is also true that these positive attributes depended largely, and perhaps entirely, on the privileges accorded by the Whiteness they were ushered into. The residual effects of the benefits of Whiteness are so visible that even a blind man can see and feel them.
There is an uncorroborated feeling from the President's Forum of the World Jewish Affairs that Jews and their organizations had more access to the Apartheid politicians than they have with the democratic State's politicians. [8] This is in spite of the fact that after 1994 there are more Jews in positions of authority than ever before. I know of numerous concrete examples where there has been contact at various levels between Government and the Jewish people, either in their individual capacities or in their collective.
If we were to believe the President's Forum's assertion of the distance between the democratic State and its citizens of Jewish descent we will be:
There is a need to congratulate the Board for two, among many, activities that it has engaged in which locates it within the peculiarities of South Africa. The Board has shifted gear to acknowledge the role activists of Jewish descent have played in the democratic journey as a way of atoning for the past indifferences:
Concerns have however, been raised from inside Jewry itself about the timing of the awards. Goldreich's was only done posthumously, and Pogrund's takes place at the twilight of his career and only after he has declared himself a committed Zionist. Within South African Jewry there are concerns that these awards are not sufficient to reverse the harm that was done by their previous silence. The refrain that "we could have done more," or "we did not know," sounds like an all too familiar White denialism.[12] The decision to turn a blind eye to the past sufferings of fellow South Africans was a conscious decision of the Board and the amends now cannot obliterate that history. The awards do not have retrospective effect, and cannot ameliorate for the suffering for the Board's indifference at the time when its help was needed most.
There have been unfair anti-Semitic pronouncements and actions emanating from some prominent Black South Africans. My view is that not all Black people speak for the African National Congress. Any statement issued by an individual should be weighed against the pronounced policies of the African National Congress. These policies are easily accessible and known by the members of the Jewish community because some of them are the organizations' members of good standing. Even those who consider themselves leaders of the African National Congress sometimes vent their anger outside the remit defined by the ANC's policy resolutions.
To locate the relevance of the Jew in South Africa today by selective reference to their humiliation in the past would be a helpful exercise. To do so is not to open old wounds, but to be true to the concept of forgiving but not forgetting the history we come from.
Many of the misfortunes visited on the Jews were hidden under powerful euphemisms and I will touch on just a few of them.
The notion that the land where current Israel stands was vacant is as hollow as the Afrikaner historical assertion that South Africa was vacant. While this might have been one of the reasons that defined the relations between the State of Israel and the ApartheidState, it is also true that on the flip side it created streams of solidarity between the Palestinians who lost land and Africans who also lost land.
The theory of the unoccupied land had found traction within Jewish historical interpretation that many now accept unquestioningly. In South Africa it may not be a force that it once was, but it comes back now and then from conservative elements.[18] Neither science nor evidence has been brought forward to account for these assertions of the empty land in both instances. Where terra nullius is argued, it is argued around the notions of justifying colonization.
Finding traction between the two nations, Jews and Afrikaners, is the assumption of the "Chooseness" as an elementary proposition irreducible to any other theological proposition" [19] Both of them argue that they had a covenant (berit) with God and their survival is presaged on this direct connection that they have with God. At the same time, the "Chooseness" sits side-by-side with the feeling of "otherness", and this "otherness" is usually invoked when they feel that certain harm or injustice is being meted out to them. Some form of "exceptionalism" is assumed. These triple references claim a form of "betterness" than others, and that what the two do, right or wrong, has some divine justification. There is some form of claimed tribal holiness which does not resonate in my mind, more so because even as a Catholic, I have not been comfortable with the allocative holiness that has been bestowed on the Head of my denomination.
In his Speech on the 28th of August 1963, civil rights activist Dr Martin Luther King Junior aspired to "a day when all God's children black and White men. Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands." [20] I am particularly appealing to a section of what Dr King aspired: that South Africans of Jewish descent have to narrow the divides between Jew and Gentile. In order to counter the misplaced perceptions of the Jews as "the other," he has to accept the equality and the humanity of those who have been referred to, rather loosely in my view, as the Gentiles.
Jewish scholarship has to be extended to respond to the unresolved semi-mythologies of the Twelfth Tribe. Without any benefit of scholarship it may well be that the Lemba people found in Southern Africa represent this universality of the Jewish faith. After all, Operation Solomon and the airlifting of the African Jewish sect from Ethiopia, was the starting point of this engagement with Africa. It should, in my view, be continued. As a rider to this assertion about the Africanness of the Jewry, two points need to be made:
Israel is not only a State surrounded by hostile neighbours – it is one of the most militarized States in the world. In fact it is the fourth largest militarized State in the world. The domination of the military as a way of life could be the necessary reaction to the surrounding hostility. But it has its drawbacks. Relying on the military narrative as the "be-all and end-all" of Jewish life is both ill-informed and fatalistic. Jewish life pivots around multi-centres of social norms and values and the military is but one of them. For the narrative to be so militaristic subsumes all the others under its overarching rubric. If the first thought of people is about Israel and its military and war, then the other attributes of Jewish life which could inform and influence humanity are dwarfed.
The highlighting of the military prism denies the presence of those Jews who are opposed to it. Existing side by side with the military prism is the non-military one, as evidenced by the peace movement, the pro-Palestinian lobby, the conscientious objectors' movement, and the whole NGO movement not steeped in the prism of the military. These too, are as Jewish as they come, and belong to the community in its diverse opinions and ideologies. Contrary to popular belief, stable states are those that encourage this diversity of opinions.
The narrative of the militarized Israel has to be balanced with a narrative than comes from the other side. As I have indicated earlier, the best proponents of the Palestinian narrative should be the Palestinians themselves. But the non-traction of the Palestinian-centric narrative has to be understood as a function of three reasons:
I have deliberately resorted to history because it seems to me that while History is a powerful tool to remember the past, current conduct sometimes resort to the same historical mistakes. The Berlin Wall represents one of these areas of unfortunate amnesia. It may just be a question of semantics, but the so called "separation barrier" is nothing but the Berlin Wall re-incarnated, only higher and longer. While the Berlin wall ran for the 155 kilometres, Israel's "separation barrier" is expected to reach at 650. While the average height of the Berlin Wall was 3.6 metres, the fenced portion of the Israeli "separation barrier" will reach six metres and the cement portions will reach 8. The figures need no interpretation.[21]
As if the barrier's intimidating massiveness is not sufficient, the movement of Palestinians between their side of the "barrier" and the Israeli side for work purposes is dignity sapping at best, but also deadly at worst. Numerous stories of pregnant women refused access to give birth on the Israeli side of the border have been told. Franklin gives a frank account of the humiliation that Arabs find themselves exposed to when they want to cross the border.[22]
While the issue of security is central to the whole existence of the state of Israel, the segregated bus lines for Jews and Palestinians was taking it too far.[23] It is reminiscent of the segregation of buses in South Africa as a consequence of the passing of the Separate Amenities Act. The notion that a section of one race has the proclivity to cause insecurity and the other will always be a victim of that particular insecurity is uncorroborated. A Jew may be as dangerous to the security of the State of Israel as any Arab would be, and an Arab would be more dangerous to his own State than a Jew.
Linked to this preoccupation with militarism is the use of that military outside the ethics of a Just war. The disproportionate force by the Israeli Defence Force will not end the animosity between itself, the State of Israel and its Arab neighbours. On the contrary it may erode the support that the State of Israel gets from its traditional allies, only because of its disproportionality. Even as I write, some concerns about these military excesses are being raised within the European Union.[24]
There is a need to consider the geographic spread of South Africans of Jewish descent through the length and breadth of the country by deliberate decentralization from the main centres of Cape Town and Johannesburg where they are mostly found. While this may have unintended consequences of reducing the communal spirit that joins South Africans of Jewish descent, it will encourage social cohesion and dispel the perceptions of insularity.
Those aspects of the Jewish faith and culture which would make a better South Africa should be promoted and made accessible to all South Africans. The values of the Torah can find wider acceptance; the brit milan (male circumcision) particularly in the current concerns about the ritual in African communities and the architecture of the schul, the temple and the synagogue can grace the vast landscape of the South African towns and countryside.
The Torah is much a universal text as it is the motive document for the Jewish values. Many Protestant churches in the African localities still quote Old Testament, specifically the five books. The values contained in these texts are shared values across the religious communities. Using these texts as the shared texts, it should lead to the encouragement of harmony between Jews and other religious communities. Cast as anti-Semitic but intended for the opposite, the epigram "How odd of God to choose the Jews," has been touted by many as God's mistake in choosing a certain category of people as his children. However the retort by Ewer "but odder still are those who choose the God of Jews but spurn the Jews," is an appropriate response to the sharing of the same God and thus the same texts. [25]
This brings in a dimension of the Jewish population dynamics in South Africa.
Both the Palestinians and the Jews have a right of return. Because the two are inextricably intertwined in that one threatens the numerical and the security concerns of another, a managed form of the right of return needs to be crafted in such a manner that it is not perceived as a threat. If the 7million Palestinians in the Diaspora were to exercise their right of return, the issue of numerical imbalances would have to be taken into consideration.
In this consideration, the shrinking lands of the Palestinians cannot be dismissed. This is even more so because the right of return includes the return of to their homes and property.[27] Gradualism even as I concede the urgency, is the suggested approach. The first step is to accept the resolution of the Two-State Solution which I allude to in the next paragraph.
The policy position of the South African Government is a TwoState solution to the historical challenges of the Middle East. This position which, in our view, is the most viable under the circumstances has global support. It would enhance the prospects of peace in the Middle East if the Board were to pronounce on this matter of a region that is a strategic confluence of different religions, continents, cultures and global trade routes.
The trial run for the Pogroms and Holocaust was in Namibia under General van Trotha's scorched earth policy that starved the Herero's out of their reasonably fertile lands to the unforgiving barrenness of the desert from 1904. [28] The Namibians' calls for reparations and/or compensation have been rejected by successive German governments.[29] The simple principle of equal treatment, calls on Jewish the faith to articulate for other similar victims the same treatment that they have articulated for themselves.
If the German Government can agree to reparations for the Jews, why would they resist doing so for the earlier, and strikingly similar, transgression? If the Board remembers the brutality of the Holocaust, why can't they speak out vociferously about the excesses of Apartheid? For both the Jews and African people, I borrow Thompson, assertion that the "Debt has not been paid, the accounts have not been settled."[30]
Jews were not the only targeted group during the Holocaust. There were also gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, and others who were considered by the Nazi German state to be deviant. It helps Jewry as a body not to forget the plight of these people during their own Holocaust but also in the continued marginalization of these people in the present juncture.
As Africa opens up for business, South African companies have to follow the lead that has been created by a foreign policy position of Government of making Africa a better world. South African Jewish businesses and enterprises should be part and parcel of the drive to improve the continental economy through investments. The rapture of relations between African countries and the State of Israel after the Yom Kippur War may still be linger, but I think investments in Africa by South African Jews can be of mutual benefit for three reasons:
The philanthropic contributions of the late Ina Perlman will never be forgotten. Her space in the provision of relief in times of disasters and hunger will always be vacant.[31] I trust that there are many South Africans of Jewish descent who will not allow this gap to be vacant in memory of her tireless efforts to address the plight of the needy. This is all the more necessary when climate change comes with unpredictable disasters and inclement weather patterns.
While we understand Jews to be found in all corners of the world, there is nothing that precludes them from sometimes being insular so as to respond to peculiar conditions and the challenges of the countries they live in. At the same time, it should be accepted that the Board does not exist in isolation. It should respond to the peculiarities of the South African conditions. Underpinning this peculiarity is a trio challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
The fight against crime is a national concern that should embrace all community structures that seek to assist the security authorities to end this scourge. The notion of ethnic targeting by criminal gangs, that is to pretend that crime is specifically against Jews, is both unscientific and unproven. The Board would have to engage in a meaningful way with the Jewish Community Security Organization (CSO) so that this organization operates within the confines of the Constitution and the law.[32]
It would be helpful to all South Africans if the CSO could be an anti-crime unit that prevents crime that affects all South Africans. How does one readily identify a South African who is a Jew and the one who is not? Supposing that these distinctions can be readily made, would members of the CSO ignore a criminal act against a non-Jewish South African because he is not one of their own? There is always a thin line between crime prevention and vigilantism and the latter should be avoided at all costs.
There should be acceptance that not all criticism of the indiscretions of the State of Israel is necessarily a criticism of Jews as a whole. Neither should there be a castigation of the Jews who have different and unpopular views as self-hating Jews. The almost unproven psychopathological condition which is attached to the so-called self-hating Jew is a sophisticated avoidance of a different opinion. Central to this point are two questions: Are all Israelis Jews and are all Jews Israelis? Are all the actions of the State of Israel always correct?
The South African struggle was against the Apartheid system and its excesses and not against Whites as a people. South Africans of Jewish descent were active participants or they had a front seat view of the conduct of this struggle. In the same way that the good actions of the State of Israel should be commended, there should be equal expectation that those actions that are despicable should be condemned.
Sometimes one cannot help but think that Jews are their own worst enemies. The reactions to Justice Richard Goldstone's findings on the Gaza War in 2007 raised concerns about how Jewry can be self-destructive in articulating certain defensive positions and loyalty to their faith.
Australian journalist John Pilger's documentary, "Palestine is Still the Issue" was criticized by some Jews of South African descent even before it was released on the South African circuit. By unsuccessfully appealing to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) for eTV not to flight the programme, the Board displayed the censorious streak that some of its opponents accuse it of. Jassat claims that the eTV producer, Debora Patta received death threats.[36]
The American Jewry had also done the same even before the documentary, although put together years earlier (in 1977), had not been shown on the American circuit.[37] While carrying no brief for Pilger and for the documentary's bias or otherwise, the very fact that criticism was leveled at it even before it was released on the local circuit plays into the bigots who see the world Jewry as the "problem" I raised in my 1920s quotation.
The six-vessel Gaza Bound Turkish flotilla which was raided by an Israeli Commando on 31 May 2012 also brought the matter of excessive and disproportionate force to the fore. It may be neither here nor there who started the fight, but the killing of nine activists and the wounding of others who were on a humanitarian mission shadowed Israel's desire to resist the breaking off of the blockade of Gaza. In other words, the actions were seen as inhuman, much more so because of the inequality of arms and the excessive force. But is also eroded the little balance that Turkey as a non-secular state holds on the security of Israel. For the Turkish Prime Minister to have referred to Israel as a "terrorist State" was an unfortunate consolidation of that view.[38]
What followed this deadly scuffle was a self-forgiving commission conducted by elements of the Israeli army itself. Because the outcomes of these commissions are usually a slap in the wrist, or the results are foregone conclusion, the legitimization of inordinate force against less armed enemies does not bode well for the image of the Israeli army.
Reliance on a bully for survival is not a sure fire way of permanent survival. The power relations are changing in the globalizing world and it would be strategic for the security of Israel to be alive to these changes. Two examples show this shifting state of play.
The disregard for democracy in Egypt in favour of the military regime is not going to reverse the yearning for democracy in that part of the world. The recent upheavals, where the democratically elected President of Egypt was removed from power, what is in effect a coup d'etat, has only short term benefits for the security of the State of Israel. To encourage democratic processes to take their course, and to be proponents of democratic elections as long the preferred candidate or political party wins, is political dishonesty.
The Muslim Brotherhood was more dangerous because it was underground. Now that the Egyptian military has pushed it back to the underground, its contribution to peace in the region which would flow from it as an elected and legitimate government has been lost. Neither is there any guarantee that outside its force of arms, the army is a well-liked and democratic institution in Egypt. The shortness of the army's currency is as much occasioned by the need to preserve order as is its security relevance to Israel. It may well be that its quietness on the issues related to the challenges of the Middle East is because it is being bought by the greenbacks specifically for it to be quiet.
From the Jewish people the world has learnt how a nation can rise from the ashes of its humiliation through the genocidal actions of both the Holocaust and the pogroms. Their ability to rise from their tragic historical episode is a clear display of how the human spirit can survive over adversity. To their credit Jews, never wallowed in the tragedy of their past, but focused on the promise of the future. The Board of Deputies can help South Africans to share this promise of the future.
With the evidence of this history, we should all be appalled by historical revisionism that sometimes surfaces from dubious scholars that denies the Holocaust. Or that glorifies those in whose name the extermination of the Jewish race was conducted. Holocaust-deniers, Hitler-adorers and Himmler-lovers do not understand the lasting pains, and do not have sympathy with the issues of genocides as a blight on humanity. The rise of neo-Nazism and the silence accompanying it, call for the vigilance of all of us who were victims of such destructive ideologies which usually arrive by stealth.
Current analogies of the conflict in the Middle East are related to the idiom and language of the South African struggle against Apartheid. To what extent do the invocations of the idiom and language of Apartheid resonate with what is happening in the Middle East? How do South Africans of Jewish descent honestly respond to these analogies? How can we bring our collective memories and our sacrifices to assist in the resolution of this seemingly intractable conflict? What voice comes from South Africans of Jewish descent to the current revived talks on the Middle-East driven by United States Secretary of States John Kerry?
In case there is discomfort that I am a prophet of all that is doom, allow me to state the following positives:
In conclusion, I wish to return to the mission of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. It is to
"work for the betterment of human relations between Jews and all other people if South Africa, based in mutual respect, understanding and goodwill, and to protect the civil liberties if South African Jews. It is committed to a South Africa where everyone will enjoy freedom from the evils of prejudice, intolerance and discrimination."
I wish to convince myself that in this long paper I have not drastically veered off from this mission. I have tried to respond to the specific questions by locating Jewry within the broader South Africanness. All this needs is to revisit the Shakespearean text that I quoted earlier, and substitute the word Jew for any other community. The universal applicability of the text would lead to the harmony I am advocating for.
References
[1] Jabu Mzaliya taught Politics at the University of Zululand (Durban-Umlazi Campus). He writes in his personal capacity.
[2] Shakespeare, W. The Merchant of Venice. Act 3, Scene 1.
[3] Paton, C. Black Business Council opposes BMF call for unity. Business Day. 01 July 2013.
[4] Exodus 22:21
[5] Braude, C. South African Jews Struggle with Legacy of Apartheid. The Jewish Daily (Forward). September 22, 2011.
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_South_Africa
[7] Weiner, R. South African Jews A Silent Minority. Jewish Currents. Spring 2010.
[8] The President's Forum of World Jewish Affairs. 26 November 2003.
[9] Report of the South African Board of Deputies, 2011-2003.
[10] Exodus 16:1-3
[11] Frankel G. Rivonia's Children: Three Families and the cost of conscience in White South Africa. Jacana Media. 1999.
[12] Makhanya, M. Apartheid denialism drives a knife into the belly of Black SA. Timeslive. 19 February 2012.
[13] Jemison, E.L. The Nazi Influence In The Formation of Apartheid in South Africa. The Concord Review. 2003-2004.
[14]Milwaukee Journal. June12, 1948.
[15]Vernon, K. Penpricks: The Drawing of South Africa's Battle lines. Spearhead Press. 2000.
[16] Cuthbertson, A, M. et. Al. Writing A Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race and Identity in the South African War. 1899-1902.OUP. 2002.
[17] Abraham, D. The Collapse of The WeimarRepublic: Political Economy and Crisis. Holmes and Meir. 1986.
[18] De Vos, P. The Historical Amnesia of Pieter Mulder. Constitutionally Speaking. February 21st 2012.
[19] Frank, D.H. (Ed) A People Apart: Chosenness and Ritual in Jewish Philosophical Thought. SUNY. 1993.
[20] King, M. I have a Dream.." Speech to the March on Washington. 1963.
[21] Shibaba-Eldin, A. Celebrating Berlin While Enabling Israel's Apartheid Wall @ www.twitter.com/hamoods
[22] Franklin, C. Humiliation by checkpoint. Jews for Justice for Palestinians. June 13 2013.
[23] Israel introduces "Palestinian only' bus lines, following complaints from Jewish settlers. Haaretz. March 3 2013.
[24] Bet-El, E. The Heavy Price Of Not Taking EU Seriously. Haaretz. August 13, 2013.
[25] Weintrab, J. Commentaries and Controversies. April17, 2013.
[26] Wende, H. Hope returns - behind high walls. Mail and Guardian. 7 January 2011.
[27] LeVine, M. Why Palestinians Have A Right to Return Home. Al Jazeera. 23 September 2011.
[28] Ghosh, P. Namibia: Germany' Forgotten Genocide. International Business Time. March 10 2012.
[29] Sarkin, J. Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims In The 21st Century: The Socio-Legal Context Of Claims Under International Law by Herero Against Germany for Genocide In Namibia, 1904 - 1908. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2009.
[30] Thompson, D. The Debt Has Not Been Paid, the Accounts Have Not Been Settled. African Studies Quarterly@ http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i4a4.htm
[31] Women Marching Into The 21st century: Wathint' Abafazi Wathint'Imbokodo. Department of Arts and Culture. 9 August 2000.
[32] Or, Y.E. Jewish Security Plays Fast and Loose with the Law. Ground Up. July 17 2013.
[33] Varner, B. Israel, Hamas Guilty of ear Crimes. Probe says. Bloomberg, September 15, 2009.
[34] Bearak, B. S. African Jews Relent On Bar Mitzvah. April 24, 2010.
[35] Davis, D. Who is Goldstone To Judge? The Spectator. 21 October 2009.
[36] Jassat, I. Pilger's Documentary Raises Ire of Jewish Lobby. Media Monitors Network. September 12, 2002.
[37] "Palestine Is Still The Issue." Carlton Television. 16 September 2002.
[38] Glaser, J. Turkish PM Calls Israel a "Terrorist State," US State Dept. refused to Comment. Antiwar. Blog. November 19, 2012.
[39] Around the Jewish World South African Rabbi Says Jews Must Do More for Black Outreach Programme. JTA. August 10, 2004.
Jabulani Mzaliya[1]
Introduction
The temptation to engage with the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Board) on the back of its 47th Conference becomes an all too inviting proposition for someone like me who has attended the SAJBD Conference in the course of my work for the first time. The reflections that are contained in this paper are those that consumed me as I sat at the Sandton Sun listening to the conversations, albeit for a short time. I must concede that some of the views and the reflections have been building over time and what my attendance of Conference did was to reignite them.
Let me state upfront that this paper is not a frontal attack on the activities of the Board. It accepts that apologetics exist in all societies. The limited success of other apologetics in any given polity should not be blamed on the successful ones. My take is that the Board has been successful in defending the interests of Jewish people such that the failure of others to do so to the same extent that the Board has done, should be laid at their door, and not of the Board's.
The topic that I have chosen resonates with the subtheme of a particular session of the 47th Conference: the end of hatred. My additions of the falsehoods about Jews in general are based on the received and observed reduction of the people of Jewish descent as self-centred, forgetful of their history of suffering, insular, conspiring, money-loving, skeptical of criticism, hoarders of wealth, handwringing, bribing etc. etc.
These falsehoods are not my creation. In its article, The International Jew: The World's Problem, The Ford International Weekly of May 22, 1920 raised these issues in some countries more sharply. It stated:
"In Russia he [the Jew] is charged with being the source of Bolshevism, an accusation which is serious or not according to the circle in which it is made… In Germany he is charged with being the cause of the Empire's collapse…. In England he is charged with being the real world ruler.... In America it is pointed out to what extent the elder Jews of wealth and the younger Jews of ambition swarmed through the war organizations – principally those departments which dealt with the commercial and industrial business of war.
Because of these sentiments, Jewish people have attracted accusations that they are not in sync with the national moods of the countries they find themselves in. This, in turn, provides fertile ground for them to be dismissed as "the other." Impolitic as it is to raise these issues, I intend to dispel this perception of Jewish "otherness" in this paper. My aim is to assure South Africans of Jewish descent of their rightful place in a democratic South Africa.
Entering the debate about Jewry in both South Africa and in the world is a discourse which one enters with dollops of trepidation. The South African discourse in particular, is pregnant with unnecessary invectives. As it was in the 1920s quote I started with, the issue of South Africans of Jewish descent invokes passion. Fierce debates and freedom of expression allowed by our Constitution can sometimes generate further passions. An outsider listening to, or reading from the media exchanges, would be convinced that the diversity of views is emblematic of a nation that cannot fully heal itself from its sad past. The blogosphere is replete with accusations and counter-accusations, slander, hate speech and innuendo.
I am aware that Jewry is not a monolithic entity and various sects, persuasions, ideologies and views exist. I will deliberately gloss over these differences because they would be atomizing a minority which I seek to be blended into an inclusive pan-South Africanness. As a superstructure, the Board of Deputies Conference is a perfect platform to address Jewry in its generality. Sharing an existence of more than 100 years with the African National Congress, the histories and the experiences in South Africa that I will elaborate on are likely to coincide with those of the Board.
In order to dispel the "otherness" of South Africans of Jewish descent, I seek refuge in literature than in history. In the villainous portrayal of Shylock throughout Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, it is his response to Christians who have accosted him that the play finds resonance with this paper. Shylock's erudition was aimed at dispelling the "otherness" which the Christians had seen in his desire to get back the loan owed to him.
"SHYLOCK: I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?
If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? If you wrong us do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that." [2]
I will use this text as my point of departure to suggest, in a non-prescriptive manner, some of the areas where South Africans of Jewish descent can further play a role to normalize our society. My intention is not an invitation of externals, but a cajoling of fellow South Africans to truly and freely exercise their South Africanness in a manner that will promote the welfare of all South Africans.
My Reflections
The sense that I got was that the organizers of Conference expected a specific outcome relating to issues of the protection of the Jewish people under the Constitution, their access to human rights, crime against them and other related issues. I agree that responses to these questions are urgent as they are in many other communities.
To straight-jacket and steer Conference deliberations towards an expected outcome limits the broader analyses of a range of issues of self-reflection, contrition and course redirection. "Feel good" outcomes are self-delusionary, and they fail to unlock challenges and opportunities for the Jewish community in South Africa. Directing deliberations towards a pre-determined outcome plays into the perceptions of community's insularity.
Jews continue to view themselves as apart from the greater South Africanness. When there has been concern that in post-Apartheid South Africa there has been sustenance, internecine competition and a proliferation of Black professional bodies such as the Black Management Forum (BMF), the Black Business Council (BBC) etc.,[3] there has been conspicuous silence about the continuation of an exclusively Jewish Board of Deputies. The Black bodies are being criticized for holding onto the past divisions; they are being asked to "move on" and "to forget the past" a concern and a request that has not been extended to other similar White insular organizations. 1994 is seen as cut-off date for the divisions of the past.
A subtle introduction of the affirmation of the end of Apartheid in 1994 is used rather selectively so as to undermine the after-effects of the more than three hundred years of imperial, colonial and Apartheid effects. A demand for ahistoricty is being made on Black South Africans to forget their past even when there are communities that thrive because of their constant reference to their own histories. So even before we start, different demands about history are racialized. For Black people the power of history as a binding concept is being relegated to the limited understanding of history as just the past.
The "otherness" that Jews feel is largely based on the Torah's reminder that Jews were strangers in Egypt for 400 years.[4] This feeling is pervasive throughout history even when there is an accepted Constitution that considers all South Africans as equal, integrated and a single nation, Post-1994 South Africa is no historical and or Biblical Egypt. I wish to argue that the feeling of being ivrim in South Africa today may be more in the mind than in reality.
The Board of Deputies does not always speak out on national issues. When they occasionally do, they do not speak with one voice. While I admit that this failure of the Board of Deputies to speak with one voice is a consequence of the divergent voices and emphasis of its constituent parts, the onus of the unification of the Jewish voice will always be expected from the superstructure, the Board of Deputies.
The Board is trying to reinvent itself in self-atonement for the past indifference to the suffering of Black people. While this is necessary and welcome, it nevertheless seeks to do so within the parametres of its own insularity. As it plays itself out, at least to me, the winning of hearts and minds of the South African population is done by praising Jewish heroes of the anti-Apartheid struggle whom they despised or ignored in the past. Since these were the heroes of the nation, I consider it incorrect that the Board now tries to reclaim them as Jewish without the participation of the broader South African public for whom these anti-Apartheid Jewish activists sacrificed their lives by committing class suicide.
The non-mention of Mrs Helen Suzman as one of the pioneers of South Africans of Jewish descent was not taken well by one Conference delegate. Mrs Suzman was a thorn in the flesh of National Party politicians and Parliamentarians. He was Apartheid Parliament's lone voice against injustice. That she was of Jewish origin is undisputed. Her dedication to the liberation of the country should be counted amongst many others of Jewish descent in the anti-Apartheid movement.
You must have been blind to the Apartheid-era Parliament if you did not understand the uphill that she faced against a male-dominated Calvinistic Parliament with a National Party majority which passed oppressive laws with alarming speeds. It was not only that she was disrespected by the uncontrollable occasion of her gender, but also by the man-driven bias against her as of Jewish descent. Lest we forget, Parliament was still carrying remnants, or their offspring, of those Nationalists who were fervently anti-Semitic.
In the current political discourse, and with the 2014 elections fever heating up, Mrs Suzman, in spite of her immense contributions to the anti-Apartheid struggle, poses a dilemma for many South Africans, including those of Jewish descent. To posit her as a poster politician for liberalism is to misunderstand Black attitudes towards the evolutionist ideology resident in that political outlook. This dilemma concerns the reclaiming of her legacy for reasons other than honest ones:
- Firstly, the Opposition party has positioned her as the voice of reason for the liberals' fight against Apartheid. Because her name is used to claim a particular slice of history, it becomes contested. Through no fault of her own, and in spite of her selfless dedication, she becomes the ball in the ping pong of political contestations - the meat in the sandwich, as it were.
- Secondly, the exploitation of her Jewishness to serve as an agent for the relevance of the Jewish people in the struggle against Apartheid is opportunistic. It may be a function of co-incidence that just as the Opposition party is claiming her for its own political benefit, some South Africans Jews lay similar claims to her. The reality of the matter is that the political gerrymandering of the time led to her being voted into Parliament by Houghton. She was officially referred to as the Honourable member for Houghton and not a member representing the Jewish community because her Jewishness was hidden under aprons of the Whiteness I have referred to elsewhere in this paper.
- Thirdly, neither the new Opposition nor the Board stood up with her, for her and alongside her when she was a thorn in the flesh of the Apartheid Government inviting all sorts of accusations about her "unpatriotic" behaviour. The reclamation of Helen Suzman becomes as opportunistic as the sudden realization that the Jewish Rivonia Trialists were the favourite sons of the Board.
The Board of Deputies has not, amongst itself, come to an amicable accommodation of its past role in the struggle against Apartheid.
- On the one hand, there were those who, at great comfort to themselves, quietly acquiesced into the system, using the argument of safeguarding the interest of a threatened minority and that Apartheid was not a Jewish issue, as convenient excuses. This was accompanied by the silence of the Board when there was a United Nations sanctions busting arms sale between Israel and Apartheid South Africa.[5] It was well-known that the armaments were to sustain a state that was denying its citizens political rights.
- On the other, there were those who were prepared to pay the ultimate price by joining the struggle against Apartheid because the very tenets of the ideology were antithetical to Jewish morality. Anti-Apartheid activists and trade unionists of Jewish descent faced a double jeopardy: firstly, avoiding Apartheid police who hunted them down, and secondly, enduring scolding from their own communities. It would be wrong to paint all Jews and all Jewish communities with the same brush. I am aware that in some Jewish communities, the minyan extended beyond the prayers to discussions about the plight of the disadvantaged.
While it may be true that the Apartheid politicians tendered an apology for their ill-treatment of the Jews, it is also true that they did so for ulterior motives.[6] Weiner argues that the apology was to bolster the ranks of the White population.[7] When the apology was made by these Afrikaners politicians, the past excuses that the Jews were not "assimilable" into White culture were conveniently forgotten. The often cited visit by the then Prime Minister Vorster to Israel was not, in my view, occasioned by any love for the Jews on his part, but by the loneliness of isolation.
The open arms acceptance of Vorster on a state visit to Israel in April 1976 was also driven by the same isolation. To trumpet it as a normalization of Israeli-South African relations was a slap in the face of many South Africans who felt this was legitimizing Apartheid. The idea built on the rather dubious covenantal relations between the Afrikaners and the Jews had with God, The biggest problem with this covenant was the assumption that because there is this relationship with God, other people or other "tribes" were not worthy of it.
It would be to expect the impossible for Jews to refuse the class and the privileges they were being ushered into by this apology. Generally, human nature tends on the side of privilege. It is usually the brave and the daring that spurn privilege for the less glamorous life of being pursued and persecuted for the greater common good. In order for all of us to craft a new nation, a large section of South Africans of Jewish descent will have to disown their historic Whiteness. Their industry and innovation notwithstanding, it is also true that these positive attributes depended largely, and perhaps entirely, on the privileges accorded by the Whiteness they were ushered into. The residual effects of the benefits of Whiteness are so visible that even a blind man can see and feel them.
There is an uncorroborated feeling from the President's Forum of the World Jewish Affairs that Jews and their organizations had more access to the Apartheid politicians than they have with the democratic State's politicians. [8] This is in spite of the fact that after 1994 there are more Jews in positions of authority than ever before. I know of numerous concrete examples where there has been contact at various levels between Government and the Jewish people, either in their individual capacities or in their collective.
- Firstly, a letter of congratulations to the Board for its 110th anniversary was sent from the President. A copy of this letter was contained in the conference pack booklet entitled "South African Jewish Board of Deputies at 110."
- Secondly on the 28th August 2011, Deputy-President Kgalema Motlanthe was the Board's guest at the 46th Conference, themed "Transformation: Confronting our History, Embracing Our Responsibility," which brought back painful memories of the past and also showed that the fissures of the past and old resentments still afflicted the Jewish community. In his address Deputy President assured the Board of its place in a democratic South Africa.
- Thirdly, in July 2013 the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development was deployed by his organization, the African National Congress, to be part of the delegation to Paris to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Rivonia Trial where Professor Dennis Goldberg was to deliver a lecture. I suppose he did so with great enthusiasm because Professor Goldberg was a self-less individual who sacrificed all to fight a just cause, even accepting the discomforts of incarceration to do so.
- Fourthly, the genesis and the metamorphosis of the Hate Crime and Hate Speech laws are a consequence of the interaction between the leadership of the Jewish community and Government. There is no recorded history where access to the Apartheid Government by Jewish organization led to any change of policy and law. On the contrary, laws that were made were unchallenged, and those who dared to challenge them did so on the pain of incarceration.
- Lastly, there are other Ministers whom the Board has met, either individually or collectively. These include the Ministers of Sports and Recreation; of Women Children and People with Disabilities and Arts and Culture. There are also many other official engagements outside Cabinet, either driven by the national office or by the constituent parts of the Board.[9]
If we were to believe the President's Forum's assertion of the distance between the democratic State and its citizens of Jewish descent we will be:
- Firstly, perpetuating the mistaken notion that Apartheid, like Egypt, was a better proposition than the present. I am using Egypt as nostalgia for the past that was horrible but remembered only for the temporary inconvenience faced by the Israelites when there was no water in the wilderness.[10]
- Secondly, negating the pictorials and the press cutting booklet, The South African Jewish Board at 110 issued as part of the Conference pack that was distributed by the Board at the 47th Conference where there is an adequate account of how close the Board has been to both politicians and issues of national importance.
There is a need to congratulate the Board for two, among many, activities that it has engaged in which locates it within the peculiarities of South Africa. The Board has shifted gear to acknowledge the role activists of Jewish descent have played in the democratic journey as a way of atoning for the past indifferences:
- Firstly, the posthumous Human Rights Award to Arthur Goldreich who imparted the military skills to Mkhonto Wesizwe was an acknowledgement of the role that many people of Jewish descent played in our struggle. As convener of the Logistics Committee of the High Command, his ability to procure materiel for the nascent military wing was a dangerous and a self- less exercise. [11]
- Secondly, the recognition of the role by Mr Benjamin Pogrund at the 47th Conference at the discretion of the Board was a welcome gesture. Mr Pogrund was a tireless journalist for the Rand Daily Mail who authored a book on Robert Sobukwe, "How Can Man Die Better: The Life of Robert Sobukwe. Mr Pogrund is a journalist of international repute.
Concerns have however, been raised from inside Jewry itself about the timing of the awards. Goldreich's was only done posthumously, and Pogrund's takes place at the twilight of his career and only after he has declared himself a committed Zionist. Within South African Jewry there are concerns that these awards are not sufficient to reverse the harm that was done by their previous silence. The refrain that "we could have done more," or "we did not know," sounds like an all too familiar White denialism.[12] The decision to turn a blind eye to the past sufferings of fellow South Africans was a conscious decision of the Board and the amends now cannot obliterate that history. The awards do not have retrospective effect, and cannot ameliorate for the suffering for the Board's indifference at the time when its help was needed most.
There have been unfair anti-Semitic pronouncements and actions emanating from some prominent Black South Africans. My view is that not all Black people speak for the African National Congress. Any statement issued by an individual should be weighed against the pronounced policies of the African National Congress. These policies are easily accessible and known by the members of the Jewish community because some of them are the organizations' members of good standing. Even those who consider themselves leaders of the African National Congress sometimes vent their anger outside the remit defined by the ANC's policy resolutions.
To locate the relevance of the Jew in South Africa today by selective reference to their humiliation in the past would be a helpful exercise. To do so is not to open old wounds, but to be true to the concept of forgiving but not forgetting the history we come from.
- In the period during and immediately after the Second World War, anti-Semitic sentiments were routinely supported by the government of the day. The Government that came to power in 1948 consisted of some of the most rabid anti-Semitic politicians this country has ever produced. Unburdened by the confines of principle, Nazi-supporting organizations such as the Ossewa Brandwag, the New Order and the Greyshirts mushroomed even when the blood of the Jews had not dried in the concentration camps of Buchenwald, Dachau and Auschwitz, to name but a few. [13]
- Sidney Robey Leibrandt, the heavy weight boxer who had converted to Nazism when he attended the 1936 Olympics in Germany was released from a life sentence with five others by the new Government, much to the chagrin of the United Party. All these prisoners were anti-Semitic either directly or by having supported the German war effort. There were many others but Leibrandt is often cited because of his high profile as a heavy weight boxer and also that the Germans had infiltrated him by submarine on the West coast.[14]
- Both the Immigration Quota Act of 1930 and the Aliens Act of1937 were aimed at the exclusion of Jews from immigrating to South Africa or prohibiting them from ascending to certain reserved professional positions in the civil service. The two acts also prohibited the naturalization of Jews. These Acts were enacted at the time that the Jews in Europe were desperately looking for destinations to emigrate to as a consequence of their persecution in Europe.
- The "Hoggenheimeer the Jew" cartoon that dominated pro-Afrikaner cartooning circles in the early 1940s caricatured a gluttonous Jew who was intent on maximizing profits at all costs. He is recognizable in a black dinner jacket, a pinstriped pair of trousers and an obese fellow whose body was encased in a waist coat with a gold chain. He is gouging himself at a table laden with food, and sipping expensive wine and puffing an inextinguishable cigar.[15]
- In this cartoon character, Bonzaaier, the cartoonist, exploited the sentiment of commercial and industrial competitors that Jews were a comprador class representing foreign capital. The cartoon was specifically throwing barbs at the mining ownership and the Randlordism of the Openheimers and the Barnatos because they spoke "in broken accents."[16] Jews, represented by this cartoon character were blamed for the lower mining involvement and control of the industry by Afrikaners.
- The scapegoating was textbook repetition of Nazi anti-Semitism. Even though the causes of the failures of the WeimarRepublic were known to have been resident in the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, it became convenient for Hitler and his Nazis to find a scapegoat for the misfortunes of the post- First World War Germany on Jews. [17]
Many of the misfortunes visited on the Jews were hidden under powerful euphemisms and I will touch on just a few of them.
- The 1920 text that I quoted earlier referred to the International Jew as the World's "Problem." The invocation of the word "problem" invites calls for a solution. The "Final Solution," which was used as a euphemism by the Nazis to exterminate Jewish citizens, could not have found a better berthing ground than the need to solve the so-called "Problem."
- The current South African political dispensation has to be appreciated as the ideal political settlement that could have ever been achieved in a country that was so fractious. But it came at a price of withstanding ridicule from those who hated Jews. There is ample evidence that the prisoners in RobbenIsland, in particular, were divided on the issue of Jews, with the Pan Africanist Congress prisoners ridiculing the Charterists in the African National Congress for being controlled by Jews.Just because the Africanists were ideologically opposed to White membership and participation in their political formation, they blamed the few Jewish members of the African National Congress for being voluntary members of the organization. These few Jews were thought to have carried so much influence that, in spite of their numbers, they could determine the direction which the many thousand members of the African National Congress should take. There could be no better complement paid to Whiteness and its racial superiority than that which comes from Africanists who claimed to be opposed to it.
- Evidently, at both ends of the political spectrum; the right-wing as evidenced by the new right's rabid anti-Semitism on websites, and the hard left as evidenced by the Pan Africanist Congress's view that the African National Congress was a Jewish Project, Jews found no support, but only disapproval from these political ideologies. This post- Apartheid dispensation needs to be safeguarded to prevent the extremists from disturbing it. This defence requires the active involvement of the Jews.
- The euphemism of the slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" was used as a justification for the labour camps. Its South African equivalent was the creation of the myth (amongst many other myths) that Black people are generally lazy, and thus not worthy of the freedom that would accrue from hard labour. I still cannot fathom why the Nazis thought there would be acceptance of the euphemism of slavery under the theme "work will set the Jews free." These exhortations were later proven to be false, and aimed at nothing but to hide the real intentions of the words behind them.
- The film "The Eternal Jew" which was released in 1940 under the pretext of "revealing the truth about Jews," laid the foundation for the extermination of the Jews. It showed the Jew as ever present and his manipulation of the financial, commercial and administrative processes as ever-lasting. It displayed blatant Nazi paranoia against the Jews, and proved that the so-called "realities" can be distorted to serve genocidal tendencies.
- Underpinning these euphemisms are further euphemisms which further alert us to the need for solutions. Thus the issue of the Jews as well as that of Blacks became a Question. Once a nationality is referred to as a question as in the Jewish "Question" or the Bantu "Question," the vultures of racial bigotry hover above.
The notion that the land where current Israel stands was vacant is as hollow as the Afrikaner historical assertion that South Africa was vacant. While this might have been one of the reasons that defined the relations between the State of Israel and the ApartheidState, it is also true that on the flip side it created streams of solidarity between the Palestinians who lost land and Africans who also lost land.
The theory of the unoccupied land had found traction within Jewish historical interpretation that many now accept unquestioningly. In South Africa it may not be a force that it once was, but it comes back now and then from conservative elements.[18] Neither science nor evidence has been brought forward to account for these assertions of the empty land in both instances. Where terra nullius is argued, it is argued around the notions of justifying colonization.
Finding traction between the two nations, Jews and Afrikaners, is the assumption of the "Chooseness" as an elementary proposition irreducible to any other theological proposition" [19] Both of them argue that they had a covenant (berit) with God and their survival is presaged on this direct connection that they have with God. At the same time, the "Chooseness" sits side-by-side with the feeling of "otherness", and this "otherness" is usually invoked when they feel that certain harm or injustice is being meted out to them. Some form of "exceptionalism" is assumed. These triple references claim a form of "betterness" than others, and that what the two do, right or wrong, has some divine justification. There is some form of claimed tribal holiness which does not resonate in my mind, more so because even as a Catholic, I have not been comfortable with the allocative holiness that has been bestowed on the Head of my denomination.
In his Speech on the 28th of August 1963, civil rights activist Dr Martin Luther King Junior aspired to "a day when all God's children black and White men. Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands." [20] I am particularly appealing to a section of what Dr King aspired: that South Africans of Jewish descent have to narrow the divides between Jew and Gentile. In order to counter the misplaced perceptions of the Jews as "the other," he has to accept the equality and the humanity of those who have been referred to, rather loosely in my view, as the Gentiles.
Jewish scholarship has to be extended to respond to the unresolved semi-mythologies of the Twelfth Tribe. Without any benefit of scholarship it may well be that the Lemba people found in Southern Africa represent this universality of the Jewish faith. After all, Operation Solomon and the airlifting of the African Jewish sect from Ethiopia, was the starting point of this engagement with Africa. It should, in my view, be continued. As a rider to this assertion about the Africanness of the Jewry, two points need to be made:
- Firstly, It may well be that the South Africanness of the Jews can be built on the rock that there are Jews of African origin, not out of conversion, but from the same historic and Biblical origins that all Jews claim.
- Secondly, it may well be in the interest of Jewry that African Jews, such as Geoff Ramokgadi do not become tokens of the Africanness of Jewry, but worthy partners in the promotion of Jewry across the racial boundaries. This, in my view, would be locating Jewry within its universality. It cannot, like all other issues of human interaction, be universal if it excludes the African injection into the concept.
Israel is not only a State surrounded by hostile neighbours – it is one of the most militarized States in the world. In fact it is the fourth largest militarized State in the world. The domination of the military as a way of life could be the necessary reaction to the surrounding hostility. But it has its drawbacks. Relying on the military narrative as the "be-all and end-all" of Jewish life is both ill-informed and fatalistic. Jewish life pivots around multi-centres of social norms and values and the military is but one of them. For the narrative to be so militaristic subsumes all the others under its overarching rubric. If the first thought of people is about Israel and its military and war, then the other attributes of Jewish life which could inform and influence humanity are dwarfed.
The highlighting of the military prism denies the presence of those Jews who are opposed to it. Existing side by side with the military prism is the non-military one, as evidenced by the peace movement, the pro-Palestinian lobby, the conscientious objectors' movement, and the whole NGO movement not steeped in the prism of the military. These too, are as Jewish as they come, and belong to the community in its diverse opinions and ideologies. Contrary to popular belief, stable states are those that encourage this diversity of opinions.
The narrative of the militarized Israel has to be balanced with a narrative than comes from the other side. As I have indicated earlier, the best proponents of the Palestinian narrative should be the Palestinians themselves. But the non-traction of the Palestinian-centric narrative has to be understood as a function of three reasons:
- The first is the inequality of arms in the interest articulation mechanisms (a metaphor I am using instead of propaganda). On the side of Israel is her assistance by an even larger articulation mechanism headquartered in the United States. The reinvigoration of the victimology of Israel and the Jews in general is dynamic and conforms to the growing use of modern technologies and media platforms.
- The second is disarming incredulity. It is incredulous that a people who suffered so much in their history could themselves be purveyors of so much pain against others. The shock of this amnesia stuns the rest of us to silence. The lesson of history that inspired many past leaders of the State of Israel, from Ben-Gurion to Peres, to distance Jews from any association with repressive policies, slides into some oblivion.
- The third is contrition by major powers for having done pretty little, or nothing to save the Jews from their annihilation. The corrective measures for the neglect tend on the side of overcompensation. Over-compensation tends to disregard excesses on the basic understanding of their sad past. The Rwandan genocide and the over-compensation for guilt at doing nothing to prevent it, or to intervene, is at the centre of the silence, accompanied by unlimited overseas development aid, over Rwanda's less than democratic governance, is an additional example of this over-compensation and guilt-shedding.
I have deliberately resorted to history because it seems to me that while History is a powerful tool to remember the past, current conduct sometimes resort to the same historical mistakes. The Berlin Wall represents one of these areas of unfortunate amnesia. It may just be a question of semantics, but the so called "separation barrier" is nothing but the Berlin Wall re-incarnated, only higher and longer. While the Berlin wall ran for the 155 kilometres, Israel's "separation barrier" is expected to reach at 650. While the average height of the Berlin Wall was 3.6 metres, the fenced portion of the Israeli "separation barrier" will reach six metres and the cement portions will reach 8. The figures need no interpretation.[21]
As if the barrier's intimidating massiveness is not sufficient, the movement of Palestinians between their side of the "barrier" and the Israeli side for work purposes is dignity sapping at best, but also deadly at worst. Numerous stories of pregnant women refused access to give birth on the Israeli side of the border have been told. Franklin gives a frank account of the humiliation that Arabs find themselves exposed to when they want to cross the border.[22]
While the issue of security is central to the whole existence of the state of Israel, the segregated bus lines for Jews and Palestinians was taking it too far.[23] It is reminiscent of the segregation of buses in South Africa as a consequence of the passing of the Separate Amenities Act. The notion that a section of one race has the proclivity to cause insecurity and the other will always be a victim of that particular insecurity is uncorroborated. A Jew may be as dangerous to the security of the State of Israel as any Arab would be, and an Arab would be more dangerous to his own State than a Jew.
Linked to this preoccupation with militarism is the use of that military outside the ethics of a Just war. The disproportionate force by the Israeli Defence Force will not end the animosity between itself, the State of Israel and its Arab neighbours. On the contrary it may erode the support that the State of Israel gets from its traditional allies, only because of its disproportionality. Even as I write, some concerns about these military excesses are being raised within the European Union.[24]
There is a need to consider the geographic spread of South Africans of Jewish descent through the length and breadth of the country by deliberate decentralization from the main centres of Cape Town and Johannesburg where they are mostly found. While this may have unintended consequences of reducing the communal spirit that joins South Africans of Jewish descent, it will encourage social cohesion and dispel the perceptions of insularity.
Those aspects of the Jewish faith and culture which would make a better South Africa should be promoted and made accessible to all South Africans. The values of the Torah can find wider acceptance; the brit milan (male circumcision) particularly in the current concerns about the ritual in African communities and the architecture of the schul, the temple and the synagogue can grace the vast landscape of the South African towns and countryside.
The Torah is much a universal text as it is the motive document for the Jewish values. Many Protestant churches in the African localities still quote Old Testament, specifically the five books. The values contained in these texts are shared values across the religious communities. Using these texts as the shared texts, it should lead to the encouragement of harmony between Jews and other religious communities. Cast as anti-Semitic but intended for the opposite, the epigram "How odd of God to choose the Jews," has been touted by many as God's mistake in choosing a certain category of people as his children. However the retort by Ewer "but odder still are those who choose the God of Jews but spurn the Jews," is an appropriate response to the sharing of the same God and thus the same texts. [25]
This brings in a dimension of the Jewish population dynamics in South Africa.
- The Jewish community mostly consists of senior citizens as a result of the emigration of their children to New Zealand, United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. The reasons for the Jewish emigration are varied, but those that had emigrated in fear of the political changes in 1994, have to consider retuning in line with the efforts of the Homecoming Revolution.[26]
- Numbering about 47 000 mainly of Latvian origins in the 1911 census, the fact that South Africans of Jewish descent now stand at about 75000 is disproportionate to the national demographic growth. This means that 102 years later, the Jewish population has grown by only 28 000. Statistics show that in 1970 the number of Jews in South Africa was about 120 000.
- The decline to 75 000 is indeed a cause for concern. This could be a function of further emigration, miscegenation, the aliyah and the general borderlessness inaugurated by globalization. A dialogue is needed to verify the statistics and to find out the reasons for this propensity to emigrate and the disproportionate numbers of national demographic growth.
Both the Palestinians and the Jews have a right of return. Because the two are inextricably intertwined in that one threatens the numerical and the security concerns of another, a managed form of the right of return needs to be crafted in such a manner that it is not perceived as a threat. If the 7million Palestinians in the Diaspora were to exercise their right of return, the issue of numerical imbalances would have to be taken into consideration.
In this consideration, the shrinking lands of the Palestinians cannot be dismissed. This is even more so because the right of return includes the return of to their homes and property.[27] Gradualism even as I concede the urgency, is the suggested approach. The first step is to accept the resolution of the Two-State Solution which I allude to in the next paragraph.
The policy position of the South African Government is a TwoState solution to the historical challenges of the Middle East. This position which, in our view, is the most viable under the circumstances has global support. It would enhance the prospects of peace in the Middle East if the Board were to pronounce on this matter of a region that is a strategic confluence of different religions, continents, cultures and global trade routes.
The trial run for the Pogroms and Holocaust was in Namibia under General van Trotha's scorched earth policy that starved the Herero's out of their reasonably fertile lands to the unforgiving barrenness of the desert from 1904. [28] The Namibians' calls for reparations and/or compensation have been rejected by successive German governments.[29] The simple principle of equal treatment, calls on Jewish the faith to articulate for other similar victims the same treatment that they have articulated for themselves.
If the German Government can agree to reparations for the Jews, why would they resist doing so for the earlier, and strikingly similar, transgression? If the Board remembers the brutality of the Holocaust, why can't they speak out vociferously about the excesses of Apartheid? For both the Jews and African people, I borrow Thompson, assertion that the "Debt has not been paid, the accounts have not been settled."[30]
Jews were not the only targeted group during the Holocaust. There were also gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, and others who were considered by the Nazi German state to be deviant. It helps Jewry as a body not to forget the plight of these people during their own Holocaust but also in the continued marginalization of these people in the present juncture.
As Africa opens up for business, South African companies have to follow the lead that has been created by a foreign policy position of Government of making Africa a better world. South African Jewish businesses and enterprises should be part and parcel of the drive to improve the continental economy through investments. The rapture of relations between African countries and the State of Israel after the Yom Kippur War may still be linger, but I think investments in Africa by South African Jews can be of mutual benefit for three reasons:
- Firstly, the Yom Kippur War, is over time becoming a distant memory. Much as history is a motive tool for national pride and unity, the need for development in Africa eclipses these considerations;
- Secondly, the need for investment in the continent, in my view, trumps the need for holding to old positions. Almost to a man, all African leaders have declared their countries open for business, particularly in the infrastructure sector; and
- Lastly, I think there is a realization of the point I have made earlier in the paper, that there is a realistic realization that the actions of the State of Israel and those of the South African Jews should be separately judged.
The philanthropic contributions of the late Ina Perlman will never be forgotten. Her space in the provision of relief in times of disasters and hunger will always be vacant.[31] I trust that there are many South Africans of Jewish descent who will not allow this gap to be vacant in memory of her tireless efforts to address the plight of the needy. This is all the more necessary when climate change comes with unpredictable disasters and inclement weather patterns.
While we understand Jews to be found in all corners of the world, there is nothing that precludes them from sometimes being insular so as to respond to peculiar conditions and the challenges of the countries they live in. At the same time, it should be accepted that the Board does not exist in isolation. It should respond to the peculiarities of the South African conditions. Underpinning this peculiarity is a trio challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
The fight against crime is a national concern that should embrace all community structures that seek to assist the security authorities to end this scourge. The notion of ethnic targeting by criminal gangs, that is to pretend that crime is specifically against Jews, is both unscientific and unproven. The Board would have to engage in a meaningful way with the Jewish Community Security Organization (CSO) so that this organization operates within the confines of the Constitution and the law.[32]
It would be helpful to all South Africans if the CSO could be an anti-crime unit that prevents crime that affects all South Africans. How does one readily identify a South African who is a Jew and the one who is not? Supposing that these distinctions can be readily made, would members of the CSO ignore a criminal act against a non-Jewish South African because he is not one of their own? There is always a thin line between crime prevention and vigilantism and the latter should be avoided at all costs.
There should be acceptance that not all criticism of the indiscretions of the State of Israel is necessarily a criticism of Jews as a whole. Neither should there be a castigation of the Jews who have different and unpopular views as self-hating Jews. The almost unproven psychopathological condition which is attached to the so-called self-hating Jew is a sophisticated avoidance of a different opinion. Central to this point are two questions: Are all Israelis Jews and are all Jews Israelis? Are all the actions of the State of Israel always correct?
The South African struggle was against the Apartheid system and its excesses and not against Whites as a people. South Africans of Jewish descent were active participants or they had a front seat view of the conduct of this struggle. In the same way that the good actions of the State of Israel should be commended, there should be equal expectation that those actions that are despicable should be condemned.
Sometimes one cannot help but think that Jews are their own worst enemies. The reactions to Justice Richard Goldstone's findings on the Gaza War in 2007 raised concerns about how Jewry can be self-destructive in articulating certain defensive positions and loyalty to their faith.
- Firstly, in being economic with the truth, Goldstone's critics hid the real outcome of his inquiry into Operation Cast Lead. His critics state that Goldstone found Israel guilty of human rights abuse when in the actual fact he found both sides in the conflict guilty of these violations.[33]
- Secondly, it brings substance to the argument I made earlier that the monolithic assumption of Jewry is misplaced. If Jews can be so vicious against their own, imagine the viciousness they can visit against those outside their community. Even worse, if they can be vicious against a Jewish judge, how much more vicious can they be to a Jew of a lesser station in life?
- Thirdly, apart from respect for international law, the reactions cast doubt on the integrity of Justice Goldstone as a person and also cast doubt on his standing as a man of justice;
- Fourthly, his almost excommunication from the Jewish community by refusing him permission to attend the Bar mitzvah of his 13-year old grandson not only nearly undermined the rights of passage for the younger Goldstone, but the very ritual of Bar mitzvah itself.[34] The phrase "temporary ceasefire" between Goldstone and the Board exhibits the language related to the military narrative which I have alluded to elsewhere in this paper.
- Fifthly, the argument that Goldstone's findings were based on the opportunism for the position of the Secretary-General of the United Nations (the Richard-Richard accusation)[35]is self- defeating for it plays into the very hands of the accusation of the opportunism of Jewry in general, an accusation that I seek to dispel in this paper.
- Sixthly, to cast doubt Richard Goldstone's credentials as a Judge during Apartheid only when he was investigating the actions of Israel was selective judgment. The absolute silence from the Jewish community (during Apartheid) smacks of dishonest assessment and acquiescence in whatever decisions and judgments Goldstone came to as a sitting judge in an Apartheid court. Conclusion: he could pass lopsided decisions as much as he did so against Africans, but he should not do so against us.
- Lastly, the expectation that Judge Goldstone, as a Jew, should have turned a blind eye to the actions of the Israeli army is judicial dishonesty which brings the substance to my earlier argument of the expected self- investigation and self-forgiving by the Israeli army, to the fore.
Australian journalist John Pilger's documentary, "Palestine is Still the Issue" was criticized by some Jews of South African descent even before it was released on the South African circuit. By unsuccessfully appealing to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) for eTV not to flight the programme, the Board displayed the censorious streak that some of its opponents accuse it of. Jassat claims that the eTV producer, Debora Patta received death threats.[36]
The American Jewry had also done the same even before the documentary, although put together years earlier (in 1977), had not been shown on the American circuit.[37] While carrying no brief for Pilger and for the documentary's bias or otherwise, the very fact that criticism was leveled at it even before it was released on the local circuit plays into the bigots who see the world Jewry as the "problem" I raised in my 1920s quotation.
The six-vessel Gaza Bound Turkish flotilla which was raided by an Israeli Commando on 31 May 2012 also brought the matter of excessive and disproportionate force to the fore. It may be neither here nor there who started the fight, but the killing of nine activists and the wounding of others who were on a humanitarian mission shadowed Israel's desire to resist the breaking off of the blockade of Gaza. In other words, the actions were seen as inhuman, much more so because of the inequality of arms and the excessive force. But is also eroded the little balance that Turkey as a non-secular state holds on the security of Israel. For the Turkish Prime Minister to have referred to Israel as a "terrorist State" was an unfortunate consolidation of that view.[38]
What followed this deadly scuffle was a self-forgiving commission conducted by elements of the Israeli army itself. Because the outcomes of these commissions are usually a slap in the wrist, or the results are foregone conclusion, the legitimization of inordinate force against less armed enemies does not bode well for the image of the Israeli army.
Reliance on a bully for survival is not a sure fire way of permanent survival. The power relations are changing in the globalizing world and it would be strategic for the security of Israel to be alive to these changes. Two examples show this shifting state of play.
- Firstly, the domination of the United States is being challenged by the rise of multipoles. Russia is regaining her lost glory; China threatens to usurp the economic domination of the United States/Europe confluence. It may well be that Israel has to cultivate relations with the new and emergent powers now rather than the old ones which are plateauing at best or are being eroded at worst.
- Secondly, on the domestic front, the voting power of the Hispanics in the US may prove just enough deterrent for the political interests in Washington to always succumb to the pressures of Jewish interests. The need for the Jewish lobby to find commonalities with the growing political force of the Hispanics will have to be explored. This should be done in the hope that the encounter may bring to fruition a reduced radicalism of the right where some politicians in Washington seem to be more radical than the Jewish lobby groups. The demographic changes of the American voter are an important barometer of the future protection from Washington.
The disregard for democracy in Egypt in favour of the military regime is not going to reverse the yearning for democracy in that part of the world. The recent upheavals, where the democratically elected President of Egypt was removed from power, what is in effect a coup d'etat, has only short term benefits for the security of the State of Israel. To encourage democratic processes to take their course, and to be proponents of democratic elections as long the preferred candidate or political party wins, is political dishonesty.
The Muslim Brotherhood was more dangerous because it was underground. Now that the Egyptian military has pushed it back to the underground, its contribution to peace in the region which would flow from it as an elected and legitimate government has been lost. Neither is there any guarantee that outside its force of arms, the army is a well-liked and democratic institution in Egypt. The shortness of the army's currency is as much occasioned by the need to preserve order as is its security relevance to Israel. It may well be that its quietness on the issues related to the challenges of the Middle East is because it is being bought by the greenbacks specifically for it to be quiet.
From the Jewish people the world has learnt how a nation can rise from the ashes of its humiliation through the genocidal actions of both the Holocaust and the pogroms. Their ability to rise from their tragic historical episode is a clear display of how the human spirit can survive over adversity. To their credit Jews, never wallowed in the tragedy of their past, but focused on the promise of the future. The Board of Deputies can help South Africans to share this promise of the future.
With the evidence of this history, we should all be appalled by historical revisionism that sometimes surfaces from dubious scholars that denies the Holocaust. Or that glorifies those in whose name the extermination of the Jewish race was conducted. Holocaust-deniers, Hitler-adorers and Himmler-lovers do not understand the lasting pains, and do not have sympathy with the issues of genocides as a blight on humanity. The rise of neo-Nazism and the silence accompanying it, call for the vigilance of all of us who were victims of such destructive ideologies which usually arrive by stealth.
Current analogies of the conflict in the Middle East are related to the idiom and language of the South African struggle against Apartheid. To what extent do the invocations of the idiom and language of Apartheid resonate with what is happening in the Middle East? How do South Africans of Jewish descent honestly respond to these analogies? How can we bring our collective memories and our sacrifices to assist in the resolution of this seemingly intractable conflict? What voice comes from South Africans of Jewish descent to the current revived talks on the Middle-East driven by United States Secretary of States John Kerry?
In case there is discomfort that I am a prophet of all that is doom, allow me to state the following positives:
- Firstly, the boldness and the wholesale dedication to the cause of unearthing the perpetrators of crime against humanity by the late Simon Wiesenthal and his Centre held many in awe. In the unrelenting pursuit of justice against the living Nazis and their collaborators, Wiesenthal lived and died for the cause of his people. How can the Centre's expertise be leveraged for the pursuing of Apartheid perpetrators but also extend it to pursue all human rights violators in the world? When the last Nazi has been captured and sentenced, what will happen to the centre and what will happen to its resources?
- Secondly, kibbutzim has been hailed as a system that builds human character of co-operation and sharing, while at the same time imparting skills for the agricultural and farming experience. With emergent farmers being largely challenged in this regard, and the general indifference by the African youth towards farming, the advantages of Kibbutzim can be leveraged for the emergent farmers and the youth. The communal aspects of kibbutzim would easily dovetail with the inherently communal way of life of most Africans.
- Thirdly, the Munich Massacre in 1972 was a blight on the unifying spirit of the Olympics movement. The reaction by Israel was a display of unsurpassed bravery. Stripped of any ideological considerations, one can argue that were the same state of affairs to occur to the athletes or citizens of a liberated South Africa, the modus operandus and the bravery of such a reaction could be used as a template for the rescue of South African citizens so imperiled as the Jewish athletes in 1972. I am proposing a realistic position that even though the liberated South Africa is predicated on a peaceful foreign policy disposition, rescue operations do not always reside in peaceful appeals to terrorist morality.
- Fourthly, the boldness of electing the first woman Prime Minister, Golda Meir, in what was considered to be a patriarchal society, was the precursor for the entry of women into leadership positions. It broke the glass ceiling for women politicians. I may disagree with the manner in which she exercised that power, but the boldness of choosing her was a statement of commitment to the democratic choice of the Israeli citizens.
- Lastly, the view held by the Cyril Harris about the moribund nature of the Mafrika Tikkun emphasizes the need for the out-and-out solidarity with Africans in so far as upskilling is concerned,[39] is not, in my view, a reason for feeling despondent. Much can still be done but there are a number of initiatives that need to be appreciated. One of them is the one where Jewish bodies work together with the South African Ambassador to Ebrahim Rasool. This is not just co-operation between the South African Government and Jews, but it is co-operation across the contending religions.
In conclusion, I wish to return to the mission of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. It is to
"work for the betterment of human relations between Jews and all other people if South Africa, based in mutual respect, understanding and goodwill, and to protect the civil liberties if South African Jews. It is committed to a South Africa where everyone will enjoy freedom from the evils of prejudice, intolerance and discrimination."
I wish to convince myself that in this long paper I have not drastically veered off from this mission. I have tried to respond to the specific questions by locating Jewry within the broader South Africanness. All this needs is to revisit the Shakespearean text that I quoted earlier, and substitute the word Jew for any other community. The universal applicability of the text would lead to the harmony I am advocating for.
References
[1] Jabu Mzaliya taught Politics at the University of Zululand (Durban-Umlazi Campus). He writes in his personal capacity.
[2] Shakespeare, W. The Merchant of Venice. Act 3, Scene 1.
[3] Paton, C. Black Business Council opposes BMF call for unity. Business Day. 01 July 2013.
[4] Exodus 22:21
[5] Braude, C. South African Jews Struggle with Legacy of Apartheid. The Jewish Daily (Forward). September 22, 2011.
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_South_Africa
[7] Weiner, R. South African Jews A Silent Minority. Jewish Currents. Spring 2010.
[8] The President's Forum of World Jewish Affairs. 26 November 2003.
[9] Report of the South African Board of Deputies, 2011-2003.
[10] Exodus 16:1-3
[11] Frankel G. Rivonia's Children: Three Families and the cost of conscience in White South Africa. Jacana Media. 1999.
[12] Makhanya, M. Apartheid denialism drives a knife into the belly of Black SA. Timeslive. 19 February 2012.
[13] Jemison, E.L. The Nazi Influence In The Formation of Apartheid in South Africa. The Concord Review. 2003-2004.
[14]Milwaukee Journal. June12, 1948.
[15]Vernon, K. Penpricks: The Drawing of South Africa's Battle lines. Spearhead Press. 2000.
[16] Cuthbertson, A, M. et. Al. Writing A Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race and Identity in the South African War. 1899-1902.OUP. 2002.
[17] Abraham, D. The Collapse of The WeimarRepublic: Political Economy and Crisis. Holmes and Meir. 1986.
[18] De Vos, P. The Historical Amnesia of Pieter Mulder. Constitutionally Speaking. February 21st 2012.
[19] Frank, D.H. (Ed) A People Apart: Chosenness and Ritual in Jewish Philosophical Thought. SUNY. 1993.
[20] King, M. I have a Dream.." Speech to the March on Washington. 1963.
[21] Shibaba-Eldin, A. Celebrating Berlin While Enabling Israel's Apartheid Wall @ www.twitter.com/hamoods
[22] Franklin, C. Humiliation by checkpoint. Jews for Justice for Palestinians. June 13 2013.
[23] Israel introduces "Palestinian only' bus lines, following complaints from Jewish settlers. Haaretz. March 3 2013.
[24] Bet-El, E. The Heavy Price Of Not Taking EU Seriously. Haaretz. August 13, 2013.
[25] Weintrab, J. Commentaries and Controversies. April17, 2013.
[26] Wende, H. Hope returns - behind high walls. Mail and Guardian. 7 January 2011.
[27] LeVine, M. Why Palestinians Have A Right to Return Home. Al Jazeera. 23 September 2011.
[28] Ghosh, P. Namibia: Germany' Forgotten Genocide. International Business Time. March 10 2012.
[29] Sarkin, J. Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims In The 21st Century: The Socio-Legal Context Of Claims Under International Law by Herero Against Germany for Genocide In Namibia, 1904 - 1908. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2009.
[30] Thompson, D. The Debt Has Not Been Paid, the Accounts Have Not Been Settled. African Studies Quarterly@ http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i4a4.htm
[31] Women Marching Into The 21st century: Wathint' Abafazi Wathint'Imbokodo. Department of Arts and Culture. 9 August 2000.
[32] Or, Y.E. Jewish Security Plays Fast and Loose with the Law. Ground Up. July 17 2013.
[33] Varner, B. Israel, Hamas Guilty of ear Crimes. Probe says. Bloomberg, September 15, 2009.
[34] Bearak, B. S. African Jews Relent On Bar Mitzvah. April 24, 2010.
[35] Davis, D. Who is Goldstone To Judge? The Spectator. 21 October 2009.
[36] Jassat, I. Pilger's Documentary Raises Ire of Jewish Lobby. Media Monitors Network. September 12, 2002.
[37] "Palestine Is Still The Issue." Carlton Television. 16 September 2002.
[38] Glaser, J. Turkish PM Calls Israel a "Terrorist State," US State Dept. refused to Comment. Antiwar. Blog. November 19, 2012.
[39] Around the Jewish World South African Rabbi Says Jews Must Do More for Black Outreach Programme. JTA. August 10, 2004.
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