WeeklySA_AdminIDEOLOGY: Views expressed by the official voice of South African Jewry are out of step with many Jews who are horrified by Israel’s actions in Gaza, says the author this article…
By Nathan Geffen
Holocaust and genocide: the ideological battle over these two words is at the heart of the Gaza crisis.
Two responses to a picket at the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre are worth noting. One, by the director Jakub Nowakowski, is published on GroundUp. His words are carefully considered.
To my mind his view is not entirely defensible, but at least it shows openness to the possibility that genocide is being committed in Gaza. The same cannot be said of the response of Daniel Bloch, Executive Director of the Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape SAJBD). He wrote:
“As the representative body of the Jewish community in the Western Cape, the Cape SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) categorically rejects the false and inflammatory accusation of genocide being levelled against the State of Israel.”
The SAJBD is supposed to be an advocacy organisation for the civil liberties of Jews in South Africa. Yet, it consistently conflates this role with unequivocal support for Zionism and the Israeli state. A few things need to be said about its stance.
Lots of South African Jews have spoken out against Israel’s violence against Palestinians. South African Jews signed a petition in response to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2009. More signed in 2014 in response to Operation Protective Edge, and even more in 2023 in response to Israel’s disproportionate response to the Hamas-led 7 October massacre. These petitions included the names of leaders in South African society.
Moreover, South African Jews for a Free Palestine has been at the forefront of the protests against the Gaza war.
SAJBD’s unflinching support for Israel, and its failure to recognise the war crimes that Israel has committed, is out of step with many Jews and leaves us unrepresented by the organisation claiming to be the official voice of South African Jewry.
Bloch writes that the claim of genocide in Gaza is “both legally and morally unfounded”. He says: “To date, the International Court of Justice – the highest judicial authority globally, has made no ruling declaring that genocide is taking place.”
It is true that what constitutes genocide is disputed. It is seldom that there is an official international finding of genocide, even when there is wide consensus that one has taken place. (And to the extent that official findings are made, they generally occur after the event.) The International Court of Justice has, for example, not ruled, or been asked to rule, on whether a genocide took place in Darfur. Yet, in 2021, the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre, rightly, hosted an exhibition about the Darfur genocide.
Perusing the committee members of the Cape SAJBD, none appear to have the expertise to pronounce so confidently on the question of genocide in Gaza. But these organisations do: Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, B’tselem, Médecins Sans Frontières and a UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Two of these are Israeli, with mostly Jewish members. All have found that Israel is committing genocide.
Besides the more than 60 000 recorded violent deaths since 7 October, many thousands of people are unaccounted for, many others have died because of a breakdown in health services, and an increasing number are dying of malnutrition.
But this doesn’t come close to capturing the horror. Tens of thousands have been maimed, about nine in 10 Gazans have been displaced, and for nearly two years, Gazans have experienced relentless bombing, shooting, death, injury and destruction all around them. They’ve also endured endless threats of extermination and ethnic cleansing – from Israeli leaders (here’s a small sample from only October 2023) as well as the American president. Normal life is impossible. (See The Guardian’s footage of Gaza before and after Israeli bombing.)
Israel’s extreme violence has not helped release the hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October. Their families have accused Netanyahu of “leading Israel and the kidnapped to doom”.
The murder of six-million Jews by the Nazis in World War II, known as the Holocaust, was one of the worst crimes in history. Holocaust centres in many cities, including Cape Town, commemorate it. To over-simplify a bit, there are broadly two major conflicting views of the Holocaust.
One sees it as a universal lesson for all humanity, about how even a technologically advanced country like Germany – a scientific and cultural leader – could commit such heinous deeds at such a huge scale. Given the right circumstances, any group can perpetuate genocide, and any group can be a victim of it.
To reduce the occurrence of genocides, ethnic cleansing and war crimes, we need human rights across the planet with institutions to enforce it. From this came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and the salience of human rights discourse that spread across the planet. The Genocide Convention is enforced by the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court, established in 2002, is also part of this tradition.
The other view was that the scale of the Holocaust made it a uniquely Jewish experience, and that the only answer to it was Jewish nationalism. Despite the cultural achievements of Jews in Eastern Europe, expressed through Yiddish literature, music and art, Zionists saw Jews as having been weak. Now they must be strong, militarily dominant in a Jewish homeland.
The native inhabitants of Palestine have suffered the terrible consequences of this view – even predating the Holocaust, with the rise of political Zionism in the late 1800s.
Now they too are suffering a genocide. Some of those perpetrating genocide in Gaza are the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and family members of its victims.
The irony is awful. – GroundUp
* Nathan Geffen is the editor of GroundUp, on whose platform this article was first published
Comment
LET THE TRUTH PREVAIL
While this might not be good news for US President Donald Trump as it was even further proof disputing the lies that had been peddled about the so-called genocide against whites in this country, the fact is that five white men appeared in separate high courts in South Africa this month on charges of the most brutal murders of poor and innocent Black people.
The victims included two women – Maria Makgato (45) and Lucia Ndlovu (34) who were shot and killed while scavenging for food on a farm in Limpopo in August last year. Their bodies were thrown to the pigs to devour.
Three suspects – farm owner, Zackariah Olivier (60), Rudolph de Wet (20), farm supervisor and William Musora (51), a Zimbabwean national appeared in the Polokwane High Court again this week for this bizarre murder. De Wet, who has admitted his involvement in the crime and has since turned State witness, has, through his lawyer, confessed that he was forced to throw the bodies of the two women into the pigsty.
According to his lawyer, he was under duress. His version of events so far, about what allegedly happened at the Onverwaght farm near Sebayeng outside Polokwane that fateful day, led to the State withdrawing charges against him this week as the State was obviously going to rely on his testimony to help convict the other two suspects for this vicious crime.
The suspects appeared a week after three other white men appeared in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria for allegedly battering a farm worker to death for simply asking for water. The three, Jaco Kemp, Louis Coetzee and Gert van der Westhuizen , pointed fingers at each other in court for the grisly murder of Dumisani Phakathi.
The State alleges that they bound Phakathi’s hands and ankles with a ropeand brutally assaulted him. He was also apparently strangled according to a post-mortem report. The three men have pleaded not guilty.
These gory incidents were relived at a time when the US President was busy unleashing punitive measures against this country based on false claims. The latest measures included the 30 percent tariffs on exports to the US that came into effect this week. There are also threats to impose sanctions against certain members of the African National Congress.
The South African government cannot be punished for their efforts to address the injustices of the past apartheid regime which treated Black people as sojourners in their own country. South Africa, as a sovereign country, must be allowed to determine its own destiny without outside interference.
ANC secretary- general, Fikile Mbalula reminded us not to beg imperialists to subvert our sovereignty. We should also not forsake the country which we fought for its liberation. Indeed.
While we encourage efforts by our government to continue discussions with the USA to normalize trade relations, we also hope that the powers that be in the US, will reverse their punitive actions and – based on the latest facts – allow the spirit of goodwill to prevail between both countries.
