Campaign spurs anti-semitic actions

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AT THE opening of this year’s Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), former president Kgalema Motlanthe warned the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) organisers against allowing antisemitism to creep into their campaign.

“Anti-semitic actions couched in the language of human rights, and disguised by its discourse, cannot be countenanced.

“Such actions not only undermine the humanity of a people, and entrench a painful history, but also serve to undermine our commitment to principled and moral action.

“It is crucial that the struggle for human rights and an end to oppression be severed from such religious intolerance and bigotry.”

The article by Sheila Barsel in last week’s Sunday Tribune does not take heed of this warning. Instead, she maintains there is nothing antisemitic about the BDS organisation or its IAW campaign. Such a claim, she feels, is not “accurate”.

In the interests of providing her with an “accurate” picture, I will share with her with a perspective of what takes place as a result of such activities.

The reality is that BDS campaigns, by their inflammatory, extremist nature, routinely result in ugly forms of intimidation and Jew hatred.

When an Israeli jazz quartet played at the Wits Great Hall in 2013, BDS protesters outside sang Dubula I’juda (shoot the Jew). BDS national co-ordinator Mohammed Desai said: “The whole idea of anti-semitism is blown out of proportion.”

The BDS Woolworths campaign achieved little more than intimidation of shoppers and staff, a looted store in Pretoria and a pig’s head being placed on a kosher meat shelf in a Woolworths store in Sea Point.

When BDS hosted plane hijacker Leila Khalid at Durban University of Technology, protesters called for the university to “deregister” (expel) Jewish students.

There are recurrent calls for boycotts against Jewish businesses, not Israeli companies, but companies founded or headed by Jewish South Africans, people who have created countless jobs and worked hard to build our economy. BDS’S calls to boycott these businesses bring back painful reminders of our past.

Eleven years ago, BDS conceptualised its flagship programme, IAW, which became its annual platform to instigate hatred – not just against Israel, but against Jewish South Africans.

This vendetta has done nothing to further peace efforts between the Palestinians and Israelis. It has only polarised South Africans and incited hatred towards South African Jewry.

In 2009, at one of the first IAW events, Cosatu’s Bongani Masuku threatened Jewish students and their families in a lecture hall at Wits University. His case is not in the Equality Court. In 2013, Wits Jewish students were called “f ****** Jews and f ****** kikes”; the same year PSC and BDS activists forcibly broke up a recital by an Israeli pianist at the university and threatened members of the audience.

BDS protesters outside the Zionist Federation Conference during IAW in 2015 were videoed chanting: “Go back to your land. Go to Israel. Voetsak. We will kill you.”

In view of all this, please forgive us, Barsel, if we aren’t comforted by your assurances that this is merely an “absurd accusation”.

As anticipated, IAW 2017 played itself out as all its predecessors did. Since Barsel was not on the Wits campus this time, I will fill her in on what transpired. PSC students violently tried to shut down any discourse that deviated from their own narrow messaging.

When Arab Israeli student Yahya Mahamed tried to share his personal experiences, they cut the cable for the sound system and violently stormed the Saujs-demarcated area where he was speaking, shouting him down.

Surely such an affront to freedom of speech and the values of academic engagement should be condemned?

In view of Barsel’s assertion that “the accusation (of anti-semitism) is irrational”, it behooves her to view some of the video footage on what transpired last week. I would be more than happy to send her the relevant links. They feature one IAW supporter goose-stepping and making stiffarm Nazi salutes, as well as another who told Jewish students the reason people wanted to kill Jews was “they don’t behave when they are in other people’s countries”.

Barsel writes that she is “proud to be associated with IAW”. In view of everything that has happened around this event, what is it exactly that she feels so proud of ?

• Kahn is the national director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies.