Antisemitism won’t stop us being Jewish and South African

It’s no secret that antisemitism has risen precipitously in the wake of 7 October 2023, subjecting Jewish communities worldwide to levels of open hostility not seen since the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel. Fellow diaspora communities have endured firebombings, shooting attacks, physical assaults, vandalism, and harassment at unprecedented scales. In South Africa, we too witnessed a significant spike in antisemitic incidents in the months following 7 October. While our recorded incidents have since decreased substantially, they continue to occur, and we have witnessed a troubling resurgence of online hostility in recent weeks. 

To understand contemporary antisemitism, we must first grasp what the term means and how its manifestations evolve over time. We call anti-Jewish hatred “antisemitism” not because Jews are uniformly Semitic (we encompass many races and ethnicities), but because the term was coined in 1879 by German agitator Wilhelm Marr to rebrand crude Jew-hatred (Judenhass) as pseudoscientific racial ideology. This whitewashing of irrational prejudice as rational opposition established a pattern that persists today. 

Antisemitism rarely announces itself crudely. One of the most troubling features of recent years is how it increasingly enters public discourse wearing “respectable attire”. It presents as “antizionism”, “political protest”, or “just criticism”; as “providing context”, or “asking difficult questions”; as the need to “acknowledge both sides”; or as pre-emptive defence against accusations of bias. Antizionism has become one of antisemitism’s most effective modern vehicles precisely because it allows ancient prejudices to be repackaged as contemporary political discourse. 

It’s crucial to understand that our history has created particular sensitivities within our community. This is true for every population that’s endured injustice or systemic discrimination. Historically, Jewish acceptance has almost always been conditional on a disavowal of our peoplehood. During the French Revolution, we received civil rights as individuals but were denied collective recognition, captured in the declaration: “Everything must be refused to the Jews as a nation, and everything granted to Jews as individuals.” In the Soviet Union, antisemitism was formally condemned while Zionism was attacked as illegitimate Jewish nationalism. Jewish existence was permitted; Jewish peoplehood was not. Does this sound familiar? 

We’ve been marginalised, ghettoised, and turned into refugees throughout history; we’re conditioned to react with the utmost seriousness to any attempts to other or exclude us. The modern manifestation of this exclusion, demanding conditions for our acceptance, has become increasingly evident in South Africa and represents one of the primary battlegrounds for our community and for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) in particular. This contemporary form insists that Zionism is uniquely evil and must be rejected. Jews, therefore, must publicly denounce Zionism to gain entry into the “community of the good”. 

In effect, Jews may join only through a loyalty oath that includes antizionism: performing a rejection of half of our own people in their sovereign state. We’re asked to undertake an action that is profoundly anti-Jewish and historically dishonest. 

In South Africa, we have witnessed this dynamic across professional, academic, social, and cultural spheres. In the past year alone, the SAJBD has assisted members of numerous professional bodies, from medical doctors to advocates, in confronting hostile environments. Jews have also faced pressure at sporting events, cultural performances, and public gatherings. In this way, antizionism functions less as an ideology and more as a sorting mechanism: Jews are compelled to declare their ideological purity to remain acceptable. All of these confrontations represent clear attempts to sideline members of our community, effectively ghettoising us to the margins of South African society. 

When one looks plainly, we see that antizionism demands Jews accept perpetual minority status, while being blamed for the consequences of that vulnerability. No other indigenous people are told that prolonged exile voids their connection to their homeland, or that survival itself now constitutes injustice. 

Within this framework, Jewish trauma is treated as suspicious, manipulative, or fabricated. Antizionism demands that Jewish safety always come second to someone else’s ideological comfort. And when Jews object, we’re told that we’re proving the point. In this binary framework, Israel is the perpetual villain. The villain can never be the victim. Acknowledging discrimination against Jews would cause this edifice to collapse, and so our suffering, no matter how acute, must be denied, inverted, or attributed to Jews ourselves. Even antisemitism is blamed on Jews – if it’s bad, it must be the Jews’ fault. 

This distortion is aided by a tiny minority of Jews who reject Zionism. Those who constantly preface their statements with the term “as a Jew”, suggesting that the mere fact of their birth gives them authority to speak on issues on which they hold no expertise and on which they represent no-one but themselves. These activists insist that Jewish identity is merely religious, erasing the foundational connection of Jewish law, language, calendar, prayer, and collective memory to the Land of Israel. The attempt to separate Judaism from Zionism is a denial of authentic Jewish tradition. 

The token Jew functions as a fig leaf concealing the ugly antisemitism that underpins much of the antizionist movement. By elevating fringe Jewish voices, movements hostile to Jewish life and self-determination claim Jewish endorsement while dismissing the views of the vast majority of Jews as corrupted, brainwashed, or morally illegitimate. Being born Jewish doesn’t excuse their bigotry, nor does it launder anybody else’s hatred. 

Despite these pressures, we, the vast majority South African Jewish community, refuse to allow others to define our identity. Zionism is an integral component of Jewish peoplehood. Zionism is defined as the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland. Anyone who tries to reinterpret Zionism in a way that adheres to their particular ideological position is at best mischievous and at worst deeply malicious. 

This is why we respond forcefully when antisemitism surfaces. When someone posted on Facebook that the SAJBD offices should be “fumigated”, implying that Jews are vermin and evoking the most catastrophic chapter of our history, when our people were gassed, we refused to look away. We took robust and immediate action. Likewise, we didn’t remain silent when a school refused to play our children in a tennis match, nor when others dismissed this blatant antisemitism as acceptable political protest. We live in a country with robust protections for minority rights, and we must continue to assert them vigorously. 

When then Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola stated that Jews “exist among us”, as if we were some foreign entity, we protested. We equally reject broadcaster Redi Tlhabi’s statement on social media that “The lie will be told for years. The goal has been achieved, convincing a section of society that they’re victims and hated by everyone in a country that has shown so much grace”. The implication that the country in which we’re equal citizens has “shown us grace” is discriminatory and unacceptable in a democracy. 

For centuries, Jews survived by adapting to powerlessness. The miracle of our existence isn’t merely that we survived but that, despite everything arrayed against us, we continue to be Jews. But we’re no longer powerless. We live in a constitutional democracy that affords us our full position and rights in South African society. The SAJBD, together with all communal organisations, exists to ensure the proud and active continuation of Jewish life in this country. But this can only occur if we, as a community, choose to remain in the public sphere as contributing South Africans and as Jews. 

• Karen Milner is the chairperson of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.