Don’t let hatred hide behind Israel

There are moments when silence feels like complicity. This is one of them. 

We have watched, with growing anger and sadness, as a small but politically connected element of South Africa has reached for the easiest scapegoat when confronted with its own failures. This time, the target is Israel. But let’s not pretend we don’t know how this works. Too often, when people say “Israel”, what they really mean is “the Jews”. 

We are in the middle of a shameful xenophobia crisis. Foreign nationals have been threatened, intimidated, humiliated, and made unsafe in a country that should know better than most what it means to be excluded and blamed. This is a South African crisis, rooted in poverty, fear, unemployment, poor policing, broken service delivery, political failure, and the cynical habit of turning vulnerable people into villains. 

And while people are busy blaming Israel, or hinting darkly about outside forces, the real crisis is staring us in the face. South Africa lost 80 000 formal non-agricultural jobs in the first quarter of this year (see story on page 10), according to Statistics South Africa, with total employment falling from 10.548 million in December last year to 10.468 million in March. The official unemployment rate has risen to 32.7%. That is not an Israeli problem. That is a South African emergency. 

And yet, instead of confronting that truth, which is joblessness, desperation, failed governance, and the anger they produce, some would rather point at Israel. That is why Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi’s public insinuation that Israel may somehow be involved in South Africa’s xenophobic unrest is so irresponsible. She didn’t have to spell it out. The insinuation was strong enough to find its way onto a Sunday Times poster across the country. That is how quickly a whisper becomes a headline, and a headline becomes serious suspicion and proofless blame. 

A minister responsible for justice should know better. If there is evidence, show it. Let the whole country know. Let it be tested. But if there isn’t, then don’t latch onto a tenuous conspiracy theory and give it respectability. Don’t light a match in a room already thick with fumes. 

Because we know where this goes. We have seen it globally and felt it locally. Antisemitism today doesn’t always announce itself with old slogans and crude caricatures. Sometimes it arrives dressed as political outrage, borrows the language of justice, hides behind anti-Israel rhetoric, and then turns on Jews in their schools, shuls, workplaces, universities, and public lives. 

Look for a moment at Jack Bloom (see story on page 4). For decades, he has been known not for grandstanding, but for doing the work. He has held people accountable, served with commitment, and built a reputation of diligence. He hasn’t made Israel his platform or Jewishness his political calling card. Yet now that he is a deputy minister, some appear more interested in his Jewishness than his record. 

That should worry every South African, not only Jews. When identity becomes the accusation, facts, service, and integrity become irrelevant. A person is reduced to a label, and that label is used as a weapon. 

And yes, in this climate, we have to ask difficult questions. When John Steenhuisen goes after Tony Leon, is it simply political conflict, or is there something in the air that makes attacks on Jewish public figures easier to stomach? I won’t claim antisemitism as there is nothing in the attack on Leon to suggest that. However, the timing of the Leon attack is odd with all the rest of this going on, and one has to consider if there are any patterns forming in front of us? 

This is not a plea for Jews. It is a plea for moral consistency. It is wrong to attack people because they are foreign, black, white, Jewish, Muslim, or anything else. It is also wrong to smear Yusuf Cassim, the new deputy minister of higher education, as an Islamist simply because he is visibly Muslim. That, too, is prejudice, and it must be acknowledged. 

If we claim to believe in dignity, it cannot be selective. We cannot condemn xenophobia while excusing antisemitism, condemn antisemitism while excusing Islamophobia, or condemn racism when aimed at us but stay silent when it is aimed at someone else. That isn’t principle. That is convenience. 

I know there will be those who say Jews are being too sensitive, that criticism of Israel is not antisemitism. Of course criticism of Israel is not automatically antisemitism. Israelis criticise Israel every day. Jews argue about Israel all the time. But there is a line. And when Israel is blamed, without evidence, for South Africa’s own xenophobic violence, that line has been crossed. 

When Jews in South Africa are made to feel that they must answer for Israel before they are seen as South Africans, that line has been crossed. When public servants are judged not by their work but by their Jewishness, that line has been crossed. When conspiracy theories are given oxygen by people in power, that line has been crossed. 

And we cannot pretend words from leaders are harmless. In South Africa, anger travels fast. A careless phrase becomes a poster. A poster becomes a WhatsApp message. A WhatsApp message becomes suspicion at a school gate, in a workplace, outside a shul, at a shop, or in a queue. Leaders don’t get to flirt with dangerous ideas and then act surprised when others take them seriously. 

We know what scapegoating does. It turns pain into anger and anger into blame. It makes foreign nationals unsafe. It makes Jews unsafe. It makes Muslims unsafe. It corrodes the society we say we are trying to build. 

So let’s be honest enough to say what this is. Blaming Israel for South Africa’s xenophobia without evidence is not justice. It is not activism. It is not standing with migrants. It is scapegoating. And when that scapegoating is allowed to settle on Jews, it is antisemitism. 

We South Africans have to be better than this. We have to refuse the easy hatred of foreigners, the old hatred of Jews, the lazy suspicion of Muslims, and the politics that tells us our problems can be solved by blaming the “other”. 

This is not only a Jewish issue. It is a South African issue. It is about whether we still believe what we say we believe: that every person has dignity, that every citizen belongs, that every minority deserves protection, and that truth matters more than slogans. If we mean that, then we must say, loudly and without apology: no more scapegoats, no more innuendo, no more hatred hiding behind Israel.