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In our last edition of the year, I look back at how my predictions for 2023 panned out, and what 2024 may hold. Last year, I...
Last week, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) led the charge in Parliament to expel the Israeli ambassador from South African soil, before he was dramatically “recalled...
South Africa’s minister of international relations and cooperation, Dr Naledi Pandor, signed a memorandum of understanding with Syria this week. Last month, she was in Tehran,...
The South African cabinet has taken the radical decision to bring back its diplomats in Israel, which will effectively shut down its embassy in Tel Aviv....
As Israel’s war on Hamas intensified this week, so too did the one-sidedness of the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) against Israel...
Johannesburg woke up last Friday, 27 October, to big red balloons waving across the Nelson Mandela Bridge, which links Braamfontein to Newtown, but it wasn’t a...
The conflict between Hamas and Israel has spilled onto the streets of South Africa and around the world. Events thousands of kilometres away have brought out...
When Cyril Ramaphosa became president in February 2018, many South Africans were elated. We had survived the cesspool of corruption and state capture that characterised the...
On 11 October, a letter purporting to be from Hamas to South Africa, started spreading like wildfire on WhatsApp, four days after the murderous Hamas attack...
If you’re in an Orthodox shul on Shabbat morning, you may notice that the prayer for South Africa sounds different. It has been rewritten by Chief...
I’m still reeling in shock, disbelief, and anger at the brutal, well-coordinated Hamas attack on Israel from Gaza that began on 7 October. Numbers are hard...
The Abraham Accords normalising Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in September 2020 seemed to come out of the blue. Soon after came normalisation...
Every September, speeches by heads of state at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly’s general debate are meant to take less than 15 minutes. Although often...
With his arrival in 1933, the charisma, chutzpah, and public speaking prowess of Rabbi Moses Cyrus Weiler launched Progressive Judaism in South Africa. Some of the...
The four “Ds” that defined his two terms as the fourth president of Botswana from 2008 to 2018 were “democracy, development, discipline, and dignity”. He was...
“I have not seen the likes of this since the Yitzchak Rabin assassination in 1995. It’s a rip in the fabric of society and the national...
The BRICS group, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, last week decided to more than double in size. At its Johannesburg summit,...
Imagine Holocaust survivors reliving their own trauma by collecting statements from hundreds of other survivors. This is what a special unit of the Israeli police, composed...
Traffic in Sandton will be more snarled up than usual this week because there are a lot of big machers in town. The Sandton Convention Centre...
Most historians consider the Holocaust to have started with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and to have ended after World War II in 1945....
Last week, Robert Bowers (50) received a death sentence for murdering 11 people with an automatic rifle in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United...
“For many years, I couldn’t understand why a struggle 6 000 miles (9 656km) away was far more important to my father than I seemed to be”,...
On the night of 27 June, French police shot dead a 17-year-old of Algerian heritage named Nahel M in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre. Nahel, a...
“A week is a long time in politics” said British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. It’s a long time in war too. Just a few days ago,...
“The image that Palestinians portray in the English media is very different from the messages they send to their own people in Arabic,” Itamar Marcus said....
The leaders of seven African countries last weekend undertook an unlikely and gaffe-plagued peace mission to Ukraine and Russia, where the battle on the ground remains...
Orchards became the latest Johannesburg suburb to celebrate having several of its public roads enclosed on Tuesday, 13 June. And residents are hoping, as with other...
Twitter can be a nasty place. Often, the worst of humanity is on display as users mock, insult, and publicly attack one another online. But there...
Love him or loathe him, most people have a strong opinion about Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Back on the Knesset’s opposition benches in mid-2021...
On 28 Iyar, corresponding to 19 May this year, Israel and the diaspora will mark Yom Yerushalayim. This day commemorates the recapture of East Jerusalem from...
In recent months, the Cape Town Jewish community has been confronted by provocative anti-Israel protests, whereas Johannesburg, with a much larger Jewish community, hasn’t experienced the...
“The most transformative type of education is ‘teaching without teaching’,” said Professor Thuli Madonsela. “It’s what we learn from our teachers without them consciously setting out...
“Everyone is gloomy and unhappy about what’s going on in our country,” said analyst, author, and businessman Moeletsi Mbeki. “Almost 50% of the economically active are...
Since the declaration of the state of Israel in May 1948 – 75 years ago – 24 213 men and women have died defending the Jewish...
In a glimpse of the future, the main speaker at Johannesburg’s Yom Hashoah Holocaust commemoration on 18 April wasn’t there in person. Ella Blumenthal – still...
South Africa faces a political headache in August, when the country will host the summit of the BRICS – the club comprised of Brazil, Russia, India,...
Every year on Pesach, Jewish families around the world faithfully gather to tell the story of the Exodus, when Moses led the Israelite slaves out of...
“The best thing about Roodepoort in the West Rand where I grew up was the train station to Johannesburg,” joked journalist Gus Silber. His father was...
Has the robot Armageddon commenced? ChatGPT took only five days to gain its first million users after its launch on 30 November 2022, and just two...
The heated debate on Israel’s judicial reform played out at the South African Zionist Federation’s webinar, “Courting controversy: the debate on Israel’s judicial reforms” on 9...
