OWN CORRESPONDENT
“How is it that we have a community that has gone from the most activist to the most passive of observers?” he asked.
Going down the path of history, he recalled that when the security police raided Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia to arrest the leadership of Umkhonto we Sizwe, it was the home of Arthur Goldreich “and the arrest sheet read like a shul minyan: Goldberg, Goldreich, Wolpe, Bernstein…
“When the roll-call of heroes of the Struggle is read, it includes names like Joe Slovo and Ruth First.”
The history of the trade union movement in South Africa is replete with names such as Solly Sacks father of Justice Albie Sacks.
When the ANC claimed responsibility in the 1960s for the sabotage of power lines and infrastructure, it was “a bunch of Jews” under the auspices of the African Resistance Movement and when John Harris exploded his bomb in Johannesburg’s Park Station, the explosives had been given to him by the head of Betar South Africa.
“Wherever you look in the history of activism in this country, you see Jews – you see Helen Suzman and you see Harry Schwarz who loomed large… It was Isie Maisels, chairman of the SAJBD who remained a stalwart of the Mandela defence team.
“When Mandela wanted to give assurances to the Jewish community upon his release from jail and after he had hugged Yasser Arafat, he called Helen Suzman and Isie Maisels to his hospital bed where he was recovering from eye surgery to pass on his commitment to us, his fellow countrymen.”
When the Constitutional Court was formed, its first chief justice was Arthur Chaskalson, with other prominent Jews on it being Richard Goldstone and Albie Sacks. “Today there is none of our tribe on the court in a legal profession still disproportionately represented by Jews.”
Where have they all gone? Sackstein asks rhetorically. Why is the political establishment almost Judenfrei?
“Today there is not a single Jews in parliament in the ANC camp – the first time in 20 years. There is no Andrew Feinstein, or Ben Turok or Joe Slovo or even Ronnie Kasrils.”
Within the opposition DA “we do have two and maybe two and a half Jews – Michael Bagraim, Darren Bergman and the newly discovered Glynnis Breytenbach”.
Why have Jews abandoned politics? “And of those Jews who remain active within the NGO world or the political world, why do they have such a strained relationship to our community? Why do they feel so alienated, why do they feel so pushed away and why do they continually try to wreak revenge against us by expressing views against our community and Israel which are often radically biased and potentially designed only to try to build their credibility within the broad left of the NGO world?
Sackstein wanted to know why “those Jews who remain active in our community, why is it that they often remain only active in Jewish affairs and Israeli affairs, but avoid the rest of South Africa with our myriad problems”?
Today, he said, politics had become “a money grabbing orgy of corruption, self aggrandisement and kleptocracy – who wants to be part of that”?
And also in South Africa we live in two worlds. “For many of us government is now irrelevant; we have succeeded in making government irrelevant in our lives and we reluctantly pay our taxes, expecting them to get misspent and stolen and we get on with our lives oblivious to the decay around us.
“We think we are activists; And we gather over Shabbos dinner – we fight, we debate, we think we’ve done something when we sign an online petition or when we post a message to our friends and family on Facebook or we forward an e-mail.
“We comfort ourselves and think we are activists but we are slacktavists!”
The Jewish community paid a price for its lack of involvement:
- When the ANC compares Israel to Nazis
- When ANC party workers proclaim Hitler to be right
- When (ANC General Secretary) Gwede Mantashe proclaims the illegitimacy of the right of Israel to exist
- When Tony Ehrenreich of the ANC in the Western Cape calls for Jews to be expelled from South Africa
“We pay a heavy price for our isolation. We have a choice: We can sit quietly here in a room and accept the rise of bigoted racism or we can stand up.”
Sackstein emphasised: “Don’t choose survival, don’t choose existence, don’t chose complacency. Choose life. Stand up, engage with your community. Be counted. Choose life!”
