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“You Jews do not belong in South Africa”
ANT KATZ
Deputy Minister hurls abuse at Wendy Kahn
It all happened during the SA Zionist Federation’s conference in Sandton on 8 March when protesters yelled: “You think this is Israel, we are going to kill you,” said Jewish Board of Deputies chair Mary Kluk.
RIGHT: Looking up Maude Street to Sandton City where the protesters tried to get through the police and security blockade (see detail in map below) PHOTO: Ant Katz
From the outset, it was clear that the aim of the demonstration, in the protesters own words, was to “shut down Sandton” and ensure “no Zionist conference be held on our soil” said Kluk.
The conference was being held at the Sandton Convention Centre and the BDS-led demonstration had been approved by police and municipal authorities with the specific proviso that the protesters confine themselves to the back of the Convention Centre in Alice Lane, and not use Maude Street in front of the convention centre.
LEFT: SAJBD chair Mary Kluk issued an angry statement
Police and security services set up blockades at the two entrances to Maude Street to ensure the compliance of the protesters.
Situation became hostile
When the protesters failed to get through the police barriers, said Kluk afterwards, “it became apparent that the rally was nothing more than a front to stoke up Jew-hatred in South Africa.”
Kluk issued a statement afterwards in which she made the Board’s position clear: “Sentiments such as: ‘You Jews do not belong in South Africa’ were shouted from the ranks’” she wrote. “As worrying as these displays of anti-Semitism are,” said Kluk, “equally worrying, is that a deputy (cabinet) minister, Obed Bapela, chose to attack the SAJBD, specifically calling out the name of our national director, Wendy Kahn.”
“One would expect a more measured and dignified tone from a government official.” She continued, “it is unbecoming of a deputy minister.”
Furthermore, said Mary Kluk, deputy minister Bapela had “made a libellous allegation and accused a Jewish marshal of assaulting a protester.”
Footage debunked minister’s allegation
A look at the video footage, she said, clearly showed Bapela’s allegation to be “unfounded and malicious.” In fact, said Kluk, the video footage clearly showed that the protester “raised her hand to the marshal, who asked her to remove her hand from his person.”
Despite Bapela’s statement, said an angry Kluk, the Board “will continue engaging government on Israel and local SA issues, as before” and not be intimidated. She said that the tactic of manufacturing incidents which have repeatedly found to have no substance is “a clear modus operandi of the BDS movement.”
They use this tactic whenever they are unsuccessful in disrupting local Jewish functions, she added.
“The SAJBD once again reiterates that it is every SA citizen’s constitutional right to attend events of our choosing without fear of intimidation.”
Google-Earth map of the Sandton Convention Centre – with the points marked “1” representing the police blockades of Maude Street, while “2” is Alice Lane where the demonstration was supposed to take have taken place
Gary Selikow
Mar 17, 2015 at 2:19 pm
‘We can never hold an Israel function without being violently picketed b y these SAVAGES.
How would they fell if we did this to their vile hatefests including t hose by SAJVJP
Im sick of it. ITs no different to Nazi Germany. Im not proudly South African. Ill be proudly South African when we can celebrate our identification and connection with Israeli without being abused by these vile lowlives.
Time to the hypocrites why they don’t condemn Palestinian rockets daily fired at
civilian population centers in Israel, but only scream blue murder when
Israel responds? He does not flinch from pointing out the genocidal
intentions of the Palestinians quoting Arafat who on 1 June 2001, when a
Palestinian homicide bomber murdered 21 Israeli teenagers outside a
beach side disco in Israel,
thundered \”We will not bend or fail until
the blood of every last Jews from the youngest child to the oldest
elder is spilled to redeem our land’
Lets learn from true conscience Pastor John Hagee who stated, in a 2010 speech at Palm
Beach Florida, \”As a free man I take pride in the words ‘I am an
Israeli’. When an international body ignores the world’s genocides,
massacres and racism to attack Israel we must stand together and
proclaim as one body ‘I am an Israeli’. When college professors teach
lies about Israel and students loudly loudly call for Israel’s
destruction we must proclaim ‘I am an Israeli.’\”‘
Choni
Mar 17, 2015 at 3:15 pm
‘Actually Jews do not belong anywhere except in their own God given Land. The fact that millions of Jews have lived in ‘foreign’ lands for the past 2000 years, does not mean that they should continue to do so for the future generations. Only when Jews realise that Israel is their only safe haven after nearly 2000 years of exile they will continue to be persecuted in other countries including S.Africa.
The anti-Semites/anti-Israelites are reminding us of this fact in their usual unpleasant way.
Do we really want our younger generation to continue to live in this type environment as a Jewish minority?
Israel is the only home for the Jewish people.
‘
Bernard
Mar 18, 2015 at 1:54 pm
‘The pics tell it all ! They show the dregs of humanity displaying their attitude and their low class to all who see see them . Yes I did spell dregs correctly !’
Akiva
Mar 18, 2015 at 2:20 pm
‘Wow. No words. Just anger and sadness.’
Vivek Golikeri
Mar 18, 2015 at 4:25 pm
‘As an Indian-American, I fear for the safety of minorities in South Africa which are neither black nor white, but caught in the middle. Jews are visually white but walk in the same shoes as Malays, Indians and Coloreds ( mix-bloods.)
Yes, apartheid was wrong and I am glad it is history. But if extremist groups attempt to stir up the black masses, these must be dealt with. I also support Israel, and hear this. I am a Hindu-American gentile Zionist. I don’t give a damn if some are offended by that statement.’
Myron Robinson
Mar 19, 2015 at 7:08 am
‘I heard Blade Ndzimande on John Robbie on 702 re DA decision in Western Cape re Cape Times non renewal of subscription. Knocking Zille’s decision he said that everybody has the right to shop/buy etc. as they deemed fit without restriction, fear or favour. Bit Hypocritical when he & the SACP are avid supporters of BDS’
nat cheiman
Mar 19, 2015 at 7:46 am
‘Now that Bibi has won, Israel can now start building and planning for the future.
The BDS vermin and their ANC allies (ministers etc) can go to hell. They have lost the battle and the war.
Nobody but their uneducated pals will help them. Christians and Hindus ans all sorts of other religions know and understand that BDS are the Islamists and radicals amidst our society and no one believes a word they say (except Dumbo’s). Israel is a world power. SA is a world class basket case like Zimbabwe. Who the hell cares ? ‘
Joy Moss-Rendell
Mar 19, 2015 at 10:37 am
‘Cry The Beloved country was a book written deeming apartheid ethically and morally wrong. I left South Africa as I did not want my children growing up with immoral values. I also believed that as a Jewess my place and that of my children was in our land of Israel. I still maintain that but I also now cry for my beloved South Africa. There seems to have developed a vacuum in education regarding many of the Africans. They seem to have no knowledge of how many Jews assisted them during the apartheid days and in fact endangered themselves willingly to do so. I know of people who were caught doing it and were in 90 day home isolation. The BDS is a self interested organisation ..only interested in perpetuating themselves for their own financial gain…. the Palestinians are their useful tool. The more that they are shown up for who they are, the better; and the more that Jews are unafraid to show their Jewishness, the stronger you will be. Educate people ..let them understand the error of their ways.’
nat cheiman
Mar 19, 2015 at 10:59 am
‘PS. Obed Baphela and his merry band of muslim followers and halfwit government stooges should openly say \”you jews do not belong in SA.\”. It is Jews like us that employ people like him and also people that are unemployable anywhere else.
Baphela will not say that openly because he is a coward and a rectum. One would have thought that he and his pals learned something about apartheid. But no, he is a jew hater . I wish he crawls up his own tochas one day.’
Ingrid Sternberg
Mar 19, 2015 at 1:11 pm
‘Hashem created different religions, cultures etc.
Therefore, believe it or not, we are also God’s children. You are not punishing us but making him angry. The Moshiach is coming and that will be your day of reckoning.
Is it so hard for you to live in peace amongst the Jewish people?
We have as much right to live in this country, the same as any other religion.
‘
Ingrid Sternberg
Mar 19, 2015 at 1:54 pm
‘FOR THOSE BLACKS WHO PROTESTED AND SAID THEY WANT TO KILL JEWS; HERE IS A PIECE OF HISTORY ABOUT NELSON MANDELA AND THOSE WHO HIRED AND HELPED HIM DURING HIS STUDIES AS A LAWYER.
(IT IS OBVIOUS THAT YOU HAVE NOW TAINTED THE MEMORY OF NELSON MANDELA). HE STOOD BY US AND WAS THE FRIEND OF EVERY RELIGION IN THIS COUNTRY. DO NOT ACCEPT HIS LATE MEMORY WITH RESPECT AND APPRECIATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lazar Sidelsky, the South African-born son of refugees from Lithuania, grew up in the Transvaal highlands and paid his way through Wits by playing violin in a jazz band called Skoenie and his Connecticut Yankees. By the early 1940s, he was partner in one of Johannesburg’s biggest law firms, where he ran a program helping black South Africans get mortgages they were otherwise denied. One day in 1942, an ANC member named Walter Sisulu brought in Nelson Mandela, then 24, whom Sidelsky hired as an articled clerk, enabling Mandela to qualify as an attorney—a radical move for an established firm at the time. “It was a Jewish firm,” Mandela later wrote in his memoir, Long Walk to Freedom, “and in my experience I have found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice.” Mandela worked at Sidelsky’s firm while earning a B.A. by mail order and later while studying law at Wits. In 1952, Sidelsky loaned Mandela seed money to start South Africa’s first black law practice, and when Mandela married his second wife Winnie in 1957, he brought the wedding procession past Sidelsky’s home as a sign of respect. At a kosher lunch in Mandela’s home a few years before Sidelsky’s death in 2002, at 90, the first black president of South Africa still referred to his former mentor as “Boss.”’
mordechai
Mar 20, 2015 at 12:03 am
‘why was my post not uploaded’
Administrator
Mar 20, 2015 at 2:14 am
‘Sorry, Mordechai, I see no reference to your post. There may have been some or other technical glitch. Please re-post your views.’
david
Mar 31, 2015 at 1:07 am
‘In fairness to all of us , with or without Choni’s consent – we belong anywhere we choose to be , and if the Jewhaters don’t like it — to hell with them — no virgins when they die either ‘
david
Mar 31, 2015 at 1:17 am
‘No one could expect a more dignified and measured response from Obed Bapela — He is what he is , and nothing, in my opinion, could ever make him a dignified and measured human being — there are obviously others in cabinet who are not so free with their true feelings.
From whence he comes , should he return with haste.
I wish I could remember the origin of this quote but sadly I cannot ‘