SA’s ‘Zionist problem’ an ominous portent

Not since the 1930s have Jews in South Africa felt as uncomfortable as they do today.

That South Africa had a “Zionist problem” was made patently obvious when young David Teeger had to relinquish his captaincy of the South African Under-19 cricket team shortly after he publicly lauded the Israel Defense Forces in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Hamas assault. Teeger could captain the team as a Jew, but not as a Zionist.

A few years earlier, African National Congress Secretary General Gwede Mantashe – seemingly forgetting that the United Nations had created the Jewish state, described Israel as a state founded on the basis of apartheid which, according to international law and several UN conventions, is a crime against humanity.

These are ominous portents.

It is common knowledge that South African Jews are overwhelmingly Zionist. Zionism for them is a “civil religion” and the Jewish state is sacrosanct. But Zionism is now under assault. It’s associated with exclusivism, expansionism, and oppression. The term has been mangled. “Settler colonialism”; “white supremacy”; and “apartheid” are bandied about. Few today acknowledge historic ties between Jews and the “land of Israel”. Israel has become “the Jew” writ large – a locus of global evil.

Zionism as an ideology of liberation and rebirth – an escape from oppression, marginalisation, and persecution – has been forgotten. Its enemies diligently work at delegitimisation.

In South Africa this is driven by human rights-oriented elites – both black and white, Christian and Muslim – who wish for the destruction of the Jewish state, a wish that preceded 7 October.

Gaza has fuelled hatred. The optics are horrific. Talk shows and media columns are cluttered with simplistic critiques and claptrap. Yet it’s notable that despite generalised hostility towards Israel, protest marches are dominated by Muslims. However, this isn’t the case in England, France, Germany, and Australia.

Why?

Perhaps it has something to do with the unequivocal support for the Palestinians on the part of the South African government and even public support for Hamas. “From the river to the sea” has been chanted by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Keffiyehs around the necks of senior politicians at official events are commonplace.

None of this should come as a surprise. “Progressive” intellectuals, radical Muslims, and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions activists have been at the forefront of anti-Zionism for decades. Jews see this as a new form of antisemitism – the latest iteration of the “longest hatred”. Antisemitism, they argue, is eternal; and anti-Zionism a hygienic form of Jew-hatred.

Anti-Zionists deny this. It’s true that anti-Zionism cannot axiomatically be equated with antisemitism, but it’s also true that some anti-Zionists are motivated by Jew-hatred. One recalls the words of prominent intellectual Farid Esack when asked if Jews would be accepted by the Muslim community if they renounced all recognition and support for Israel. “Nothing that the Jews do will be enough for Muslims,” he answered.

South Africans aren’t immune to antisemitism.

· Think of Holocaust denial that surfaces from many quarters;

· Think of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that is also affirmed from time to time;

· Think of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001 that descended into an antisemitic hate fest;

· Think of South Africa’s former deputy foreign minister, Fatima Hajaig, telling an audience that the United States and most Western countries were “in the hands of Jewish money and when Jewish money controls … you can expect anything”;

· Think of Tony Ehrenreich, a trade unionist and a senior ANC politician in the Western Cape, calling on Jewish leaders supporting Zionism to leave the country;

· Think of “Keep Calm and Kill the Jews” posted at one time on the ANC Youth League website.

And the list goes on.

Anti-Zionists claim that Jews play the antisemitic card in order to justify their claims on Palestinian land and to suffocate legitimate debate. Here, they echo those European commentators who, in the late nineteenth century, accused Jews of sounding antisemitic alarm bells to resist assimilation and bind the community.

The divide in South Africa is deep.

Not since the 1930s – a time of fanatical ‘Shirtist’ antisemitism and burgeoning volkisch Afrikaner nationalism – have Jews felt as uncomfortable as they do today in the country of their birth. They cannot understand why a country that celebrates cultural diversity – enshrined in the Constitution – is unable to entertain space for a minority that overwhelmingly, albeit not uncritically, shares the Zionist dream. An important dimension of Jewish identity is thereby fundamentally challenged.

Can the friction be contained, and the heat reduced?

If anti-Zionism is simply a new iteration of “the longest hatred”, this is unlikely. But, if it’s a product of an “occupation” that has lasted too long, it is possible that moves towards a two-state solution will help. But will Islamists and leftist “progressives” relinquish the dream of destroying the “Jewish state”? Will “greater Israelists” relinquish their dreams?

These are open questions.

Can Zionists recover lost ground in the propaganda battle?

For a start, they need to remind South Africans of the words of Nelson Mandela when addressing the 37th Congress of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies in 1993.

“As a movement, we recognise the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism just as we recognise the legitimacy of Zionism as a Jewish nationalism. We insist on the right of the state of Israel to exist within secure borders, but with equal vigour support the Palestinian right to national self-determination.”

Engagement is better than silence. The reestablishment of normal ties between Israel and South Africa is imperative. Ambassadorial relations must resume.

Zionism will, of course, continue to be challenged, and intellectuals won’t stop engaging with the

past. This is unavoidable. When all is said and done, however, the Jewish state belongs to the family of nations. It’s not perfect. No nation is. Historian Walter Laqueur put this succinctly in the 1970s, saying, “Zionism, no doubt, can be subject to trenchant criticism from different points of view. But as a national movement and a weltanschauung [philosophy], its validity can neither be proved nor refuted; it is as legitimate, or illegitimate, as other national movements or nations. And as far as antisemitism is concerned, Zionism has a strong case; its analysis has been more fully confirmed by recent history than the predictions of its critics.”

· Milton Shain is Emeritus Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town.