ANT KATZ

A war is no doubt being waged for Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) by the US-based NGO Boycott Divestment and Sanction (Israel) in South Africa (BDS-SA) and the SA Union of Jewish Students (SAUJS) : 

• The ANC formally joined the fray on the side of BDS – see stories below;
• BDS kicked off the week with an interfaith press conference at Freedom Park in Pretoria which included speakers from the Jewish, Hindu, Christian, Tamil and Muslim faiths. Among them was Merlynn Edelstein of the Jewish community who explained that “Judaism talks of a value called loving kindness, called ‘chesed’. How is this compatible with what is happening in Israel. It is in no way compatible!” she told the attendees;
• Christian Zionist and youth groups led by DEISI were supporting SAUJS students on campuses where they have a presence – and representing the pro-Israel lobby where SAUJS is not present;
• On Monday the Gauteng ANC branch tweeted an untrue but cleverly worded quote, supposedly from Nelson Mandela, which they have since taken down. SAUJS, backed by communal organisations and StandWithUs representatives from Israel, took to twitter and literally tweeted thousands of individuals showing the Madiba quote to be false;
• An Israeli Druze speaker, Riad Hassoun, together with a group of SAUJS students, were harassed after Hassoun spoke at UCT on Monday – marring an otherwise peaceful day nationally;
• SAUJS had several political leaders speaking at Wits on Monday including Terror Lekota and Dr Kenneth Meshoe;
• On Tuesday morning Jewish Students arrived on the Wits campus to find two mannequins hanging – one from makeshift gallows and another from a tree (PICTURED). “SAUJS were on that one like a rash”, says Hovsha, placing signs on the hung figures which read: “In Palestine, if you sell land to a Jew you can be hanged!”;
• The events of IAW have been largely ignored by the mainstream media, says the Fed’s Benji Shulman, except for the DailyVox website which, he says, is being sponsored throughout the IAW week by Middle East news channel AlJazeera and reporting on IAW events;
• Tuesday’s activities on the ground have been dominated by the Jewish students and their activities – “it is almost dead here”, one Wits student told JR Online;
• But the social media war has been heating up considerably Tuesday with both sides working from on- and off-campus “war-rooms”;
• On Tuesday BDS supporters started tearing down posters that the SAUJS students had put up – and even tried to run off with a bundle of posters. Two StandWithUs Israeli supporters came quickly on the scene and while one sat on the bundle to try and stop any further damage, the other took video showing  BDS-supporters trying to tear strips from the sides of the posters, the Israeli was kneeling on – although it was all non-violent. Jewish Report will post the video as soon as it is made available by the SAJBD;
• While SAUJS say they have had good turnouts at their events, the say BDS events have been “poorly advertised” and poorly attended.

While Jewish Report has contacts on all the major campuses and will be updating readers and users regularly, anyone who has pictures or news can send them to online.editor@sajr.co.za.
 
The pictures in this and all other linked articles, see below, are free-to-use as long as they are credited to SA Jewish Report.

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What else has happened with IAW?

In a letter to BDS, Fed chair Ben Swartz writes a tongue-in-cheek letter thanking BDS for helping Israel and the world to promote the Zionist cause, and castigating them for what they are not helping to do. If you don’t have a good laugh at Thank you, BDS, for making us stronger, you must be a member of BDS. But, whether you laugh or cry at what Ben has to say to BDS, you will come out on the other side of it far better informed about the anti-Israel lobby group’s activities.

In South African Christian Zionist advocate Willie Patterson’s IAW ‘silly season’ in full swing globally he writes: “The annual worldwide BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign is in full swing during the month of March.” Patterson, an ardent Christian Zionist, points out that the various programs are cleverly designed “in an effort to brand Israel as an Apartheid state.”

Wendy Kahn and Although some individuals in the ANC support the BDS movement, says Patterson, the SA government refrains from publicly supporting them. In fact, the government never stopped trade relations with Israel. This statement, while true, is somewhat reduced by Board slams ANC over support for IAW, BDS posted on this website yesterday.

Last week saw BDS winning Round #1 when they hijacked the Library Lawns and started IAW a week early. Granted, Wits did try to stop it (read Wits management adopt tough stand on BDS and Stand-off after ‘BDS-inspired Wits subterfuge’ published on JR Online last week) – but management’s efforts to meet their promises turned out to be fruitless and the demonstration continued unabated.

ABOVE: AMuslim woman voting in Israeli elections

Tourists from around the globe visit Israel which is one of the fastest-growing tourist destinations in the world

Members of every faith on Earth are allowed to practice freely in Israel

See more of the great SAUJS visual material on other linked stories