Last year saw dramatic upsurge in SA anti-Semitism

DAVID SAKS
Just over 170 incidents classified as anti-Semitic acts, were recorded by the SAJBD and CSO in the course of the year. This is by far the highest annual total recorded since detailed records began to be kept from the early 1990s, far surpassing the previous highest total of 102 logged in 2010, and more than three times the previous year’s figure.
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Approximately three-quarters of all incidents occurred in the July-August period, corresponding to the Gaza conflict and its immediate aftermath.

Despite the often threatening nature of anti-Semitic rhetoric, particularly in the social media, none of the incidents recorded involved actual violence, whether against Jewish people or their property. In this regard, South African Jewry was significantly better off than other major Diaspora countries, where numerous cases of serious assault and arson were reported. 

France experienced by far the highest number of physical attacks on Jews and Jewish installations.

Of the incidents recorded in South Africa, approximately a quarter (44) fell into the category of direct verbal abuse, whether face-to-face or by phone, and 15 per cent into that of hate mail sent directly to Jewish individuals or institutions, whether by post, e-mail or SMS.

A secondary form of hate mail was the posting of offensive and/or threatening comments on websites, Facebook and Twitter sites maintained by Jewish individuals or institutions.

Another major category, amounting to nearly one-third of the total, took the form of extreme anti-Semitic abuse and threats propagated via social media.

Examples were Facebook and Twitter posts like “Keep Calm and Kill Jews” and “Attacking Jewish schools is mandatory ‘till Jews go back to Poland. These bugs r a cancer”. On investigation, it was often found that these messages were sent out under false or stolen identities, for example, at the behest of the ANC Youth League.

A common feature of the anti-Semitic discourse during the Gaza conflict was the ubiquity of the “Hitler was right” theme, expressed by among other things the mantra: “I could have killed all the Jews, but I left some of them to let you know why I was killing them.”

Responses of the SAJBD to ant-Semitic incidents took a variety of forms, depending on the nature and circumstances of each case. They included political lobbying, laying criminal charges, lodging formal complaints with the SA Human Rights Commission and exposing incidents of anti-Semitism and those perpetrating it in the media.

One of the SAHRC complaints laid was against the Congress of SA Students (Western Cape branch) for depositing a pig’s head in what was thought to be the kosher meat section of a Woolworths store in Sea Point.

The latter act had been followed by a media statement inter alia declaring:“We will not allow people who will not eat pork to pretend that they are eating clean meat, when it is sold by hands dripping with the blood of Palestinian children.”

Among those against whom criminal charges were laid, was Cosatu Western Cape Provincial Secretary Tony Ehrenreich, who wrote on his Facebook page: “If a woman or child is killed in Gaza, then the Jewish Board of Deputies, who are complicit, will feel the wrath of the people of SA with the age old biblical teaching of an eye for an eye.”