Attacks on MPs show ‘anxiety’ of anti-Israel lobby

Yet another female politician who went on the recent fact-finding mission to Israel was viciously bullied and subjected to verbal abuse in Cape Town on 14 May.

South African anti-Israel extremists cornered and verbally abused Democratic Alliance (DA) member of parliament (MP), Katherine Christie, as she walked to her car outside Parliament, just one week after DA MP Emma Louise Powell was attacked in a similar manner.

This behaviour by extremists, says South African Jewish Board of Deputies National Chairperson Professor Karen Milner, is “indicative of a great underlying anxiety that exposure to Israel’s reality might challenge their rigid ideological narrative”.

However, it hasn’t deterred South African politicians from going to the Middle East to see for themselves what’s going on. Another group of Patriotic Alliance (PA) members left for Israel on 20 May, proudly sharing on Facebook that their trip was “not a secret”.

They were to be hosted in Israel by South African Friends of Israel (SAFI), the same organisation that hosted the independent delegation of MPs in April. “This trip follows a request from the PA so that its political leaders can learn from Israel for the good of a future South Africa,” said SAFI’s national spokesperson, Bafana Modise. “It’s further supported by the fact that the ANC’s [African National Congress’s] foreign policy decisions don’t represent the will or the interests of the South African people.”

On 15 May, Christie was surrounded and verbally abused when her own colleagues, MPs Shameenah Salie, Fasiha Hassan, and Carl Niehaus, pointed her out to extremists who had gathered outside Parliament to mark the so-called Nakba Day. The crowd held up “Wanted” posters targeting MPs who had recently visited Israel, so when Salie, Hassan, and Niehaus spotted Christie, they gave the hate-filled horde the perfect opportunity to descend on an innocent woman.

“They set the mob on me,” Christie says. The three MPs will be formally reprimanded in Parliament for “unparliamentary behaviour”. However, that can’t turn back the clock on what Christie was subjected to – verbal abuse, threats, insults, unsolicited filming, and posting of the incident on social media.

Parliamentary security was caught off guard and didn’t act as Christie was surrounded. When she stopped to answer questions patiently and offered to meet face-to-face to discuss the issue further, the extremists ignored her, aiming to intimidate her without debate.

Both Powell and Christie say they are undeterred by the attacks, and haven’t let it affect their dedication to South Africa.

The ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have called for the trip to Israel to be investigated. Language directed at the MPs who went to Israel has become increasingly threatening. On Facebook, EFF MP Nazier Paulsen said that South Africans should “remember their faces. You must not let our Palestinian brothers die in vain. An eye for an eye …”

He also wrote that his “proudest moment” was when he refused to shake the hand of an MP who went to Israel. “I said [to them], ‘I won’t allow you to curse me and ruin my life.’ The vark [pig] shook the hand of [Israeli president Isaac] Herzog with that same hand.” He described the MPs as “cursed” and “scum”, and said that South Africans shouldn’t associate with them in any way.

SAFI Chief Executive Daniel Yakcobi, says, “The more people bully these MPs, the clearer it becomes that pro-Palestinian organisations aren’t ‘pro-Palestine’ but are purely against Israel.”

Finding real solutions to the conflict, Yakcobi says, “requires courage to engage in dialogue with mutual respect and understanding”, and “SAFI will not be intimidated and threatened. The people of South Africa have the right to freedom of movement, association, speech, and opinion. MPs who visited the region have intelligent, open minds, and stand for liberal, open, and democratic societies. Only where there’s freedom to think, act, and believe, is there true prosperity.”

South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) spokesperson Rolene Marks says the SAZF condemns the “systematic targeting of MPs” who went to Israel. “The public intimidation of MP Katherine Christie exemplifies a disturbing pattern of harassment aimed solely at those engaging with Israel, a blatant double standard not applied to parliamentarians visiting other nations.”

This “discriminatory campaign, fuelled by Paulsen’s antisemitic rhetoric and the EFF’s baseless investigations” represents a “desperate attempt to abnormalise relations with Israel while normalising antisemitism in public discourse”, Marks says, pointing out that the lack of condemnation of these incidents “only emboldens extremists, who prioritise intimidation over democratic principles”.

Marks says South Africa’s democracy cannot thrive when “selective harassment dictates foreign engagement or when antisemitism masquerades as political activism. Such targeted intimidation undermines our constitutional values and surrenders public discourse to those who choose extremism over understanding.”

Christie said the extremists tried to make her feel that she didn’t belong in South Africa and that she supported “apartheid”, even as her colleague and friend who is Zulu, DA MP S’bongiseni Vilakazi, walked beside her and held her hand as the mob surrounded them.

As she was being harangued, Christie strongly urged the extremists to visit Israel to see the situation for themselves.

Says Milner, “The persistent harassment of South African MPs who visited Israel represents a key aspect of the concerted campaign by anti-Israel groups to delegitimise the Jewish state as the only destination that may never be visited. These MPs exercised their legal right as South African citizens to visit Israel, and their participation in the trip violated no parliamentary regulations.”

By relentlessly intimidating and attacking these individuals, sometimes violently, “these anti-Israel groups are attempting to instil fear in anyone who dares deviate from their narrow ideological bent”, Milner says. “Such actions are not only undemocratic and un-South African, in some instances they are also illegal. Unfortunately, this type of behaviour has come to define the tactics of this movement.”

Christie says the conduct of her three colleagues and the behaviour of the crowd was unacceptable in a country governed by a Constitution guaranteeing freedom of movement, association, and expression.

However, she believes the loud and intimidating extremists are a tiny minority of South Africans, and that they don’t have the power to destroy South Africa’s social fabric, no matter how toxic and threatening their language.

“There will be a tipping point when the quiet, rational, sensible voices of the many will overcome, and when conversations between tolerant, open-minded, understanding, and empathetic individuals will prevail,” she says.

To the Jewish community of South Africa, she says, “You aren’t alone. You are represented by MPs who care equally for all South Africans, of every creed and cultural origin.”