Cape hate fest calls for ‘death to Zionists’

Antizionist hate was on full display at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town on Saturday, 16 May, at a Nakba Day festival. 

At what was billed as a family outing, attendees proudly held posters saying “Death to Israel, death to Zionists”, including bloodied handprints, “Glory to the martyrs, long live the resistance”, “Globalise the intifada”, “F**k Israel”, and “Cape Town is not Tel Aviv”, with an image of South Africans persecuting an Israeli soldier. Other posters depicted the Hamas symbol of the inverted red triangle. 

Executive Director of the Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape SAJBD) Daniel Bloch says his organisation is deeply troubled by the rhetoric, symbolism, and messaging at the gathering. While attendance at such events appears increasingly confined to a narrow echo chamber, “the seriousness of the language and imagery on display should not be underestimated”. 

It is “consistent with what has become commonplace at these rallies: disinformation, incendiary rhetoric and offensive language, including terms such as ‘ZioNazis’, alongside coded messaging that deepens division,” says Bloch. 

Equally troubling is the “normalisation of hostility in an environment where children are present”. 

Although attendance at the event ‒ hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and affiliated groups to commemorate the displacement of Palestinians in 1948 ‒ was low, the levels of incitement were sky high. 

Participants held “Wanted” posters targeting South African Jews, and posters defaming retailer Cape Union Mart and its executive chairperson, Philip Krawitz. This is while a case responding to this defamation is before the Western Cape High Court. 

Other posters bore images praising leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. One sign openly celebrated the 7 October massacre, while another poster depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holding a knife over an unconscious child. 

In January, the PSC and its supporters protested outside an event at the Castle because the organiser was born in Israel. At the time, they said the Castle was a “sacred” historic site that should not host celebratory events. However, the Nakba Day event featured signs on the Castle walls, a band, a drumming workshop, kite flying, and a parade of motorbikes. 

Addressing attendees, the PSC’s Martin Jansen referred to South Africans who have made aliya and served in the Israeli army as “young ZioNazis”, comparing them to the Thulsie twins, who were convicted of terrorism in South Africa. 

He said, “We have a real problem in this country, with the Zionists, US imperialism, and the Government of National Unity that is serving their interests.” 

The Cape Union Mart case is “bankrupting the PSC,” said Jansen. He asked people to “mobilise and have a mass presence at that court, and to put pressure on the judges”. 

Bloch says the Cape SAJBD is also concerned by the repeated slogan “Sea Point is not Tel Aviv”, now expanded to “Cape Town is not Tel Aviv”, displayed prominently at the Nakba Day event. Such messaging carries “insinuations of illegitimate influence and collective suspicion, echoing long-standing antisemitic tropes relating to Jewish power, manipulation, and divided loyalties,” he says. 

The Cape SAJBD regards with seriousness the defamation of members of the Jewish community. “We will continue to monitor developments closely,” says Bloch. “When rhetoric or conduct crosses the threshold of South African law ‒ including hate speech, unlawful incitement, intimidation, or defamation ‒ we will not hesitate to pursue legal remedies.” 

The Executive Director of the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) Cape Council, Joshua Schewitz, says that for a movement that so frequently accuses Israel and its supporters of oppression, extremism, and violence, “what was visible throughout this event was a striking inversion: eliminationist language, hostility, glorification of terrorism, and imagery that reflects the very impulses they so often project onto others”. 

Perhaps “most disturbing” was the involvement of children in an environment in which “hostility and militancy were normalised.” 

As at previous antizionist events in Cape Town, children were dressed up and held imitation guns. They were encouraged to hold hateful posters and take part in activities. A teenager held a poster with an inverted red triangle and the words “You can’t hide, we are coming for you”. A child painted an image of a terrorist in a keffiyeh. A third child wrote a letter to a Palestinian child saying, “The idiots of Israel will be taken down.” 

Schewitz says posters praising Hezbollah and the Houthis – groups that keep Lebanon and Yemen trapped in instability – sat alongside images celebrating figures of the Islamic Republic of Iran, “a regime notorious for brutal repression and the violent suppression of women and protesters, and which is, quite literally, executing people right now”. 

That such figures are elevated at a South African gathering “should trouble anyone committed to this country’s democratic values” he says. 

The SAZF firmly believes that the rhetoric on display “does not reflect the views of most South Africans or its constitutional values”, which are rooted in “dignity, coexistence, and democratic engagement, not the celebration of armed movements and authoritarian regimes”. 

Against the backdrop of the release of the report by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, and in a country where gender-based violence is an epidemic, the glorification of Hamas is morally indefensible says Schewitz. 

The American founder of the Movement Against Antizionism, Adam Louis-Klein, told the SA Jewish Report that the goal of these events is “not to support Palestinians, but to propagate antizionist hate and libels. Accusations of ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ are used as forms of projection to mark Israel for annihilation.” 

He emphasises that “antizionism is a hate movement”, which subjects both Palestinians and Israelis to “endless wars, organised around the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Israelis, a protected national group”. 

Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida, Norman JW Goda, has written extensively about why Israel’s war in Gaza is not a genocide. Now, he says that “the glorification of terror leaders, all of whom spent their lifetimes obsessed with the destruction of the Jews, makes this event explicitly antisemitic”. 

Pre-eminent Holocaust scholar Dr Michael Berenbaum says it “should be clear why ‘Death to Israel’ is rightfully regarded as antisemitic.” This is because a plurality of Jews have decided to build their future in Israel. “Opposition to Israel is opposition to the choice Jews have made regarding their personal and Jewish future.” 

Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Cape Town and antisemitism expert Milton Shain says “it has become increasingly evident that antizionism is a ‘hygienic’ form of Jew-hatred. Legitimate protest for Palestinian statehood often crosses the line into blatant antisemitism.” 

This Nakba event “certainly raises questions”, he says. “Terror appears to have been celebrated, while calls for the elimination of Israel ‒ a legitimate member of the family of nations ‒ were loud and clear. In crude and ahistorical caricatures of Zionism, the door to hate, and even harm, is opened.”