A Jewish South African Cabinet Minister has caused a furor by
calling on South African Jews to join the Government's
campaign to support "justice for Palestine." Water Affairs
Minister Ronnie Kasrils, a highly respected veteran of the
anti-apartheid struggle, made his remarks in Parliament
during a debate over a report on a multiparty fact-finding
mission to Israel and Palestine which took place in July this
year.
The debate in Parliament took place in a heated atmosphere in
which the antipathy of the great majority of MPs towards
Israel was evident throughout. The ruling African National
Congress, which holds just under two-thirds of the seats in
the 400-member House of Assembly, was closely aligned with
Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization since
the days of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
While trade links between the two countries remain strong,
diplomatic relations fluctuate according to the progress, or
lack of it, made in the peace negotiations and have cooled
considerably since the outbreak of violence last year.
Most opposition parties criticized the report as heavily
biased in favor of the Palestinians and refused to endorse
it. Democratic Alliance spokesperson Dene Smuts said that the
report focused on Israeli actions whilst "omitting any
serious treatment of the lynchings and suicide bombings which
prompt the closures, curfews and restrictions in the first
place."
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies intensively
lobbied all Members of Parliament in the days preceding the
debate, including distributing information packs and a
detailed memorandum outlining its objections to the report.
It strongly criticized the anti-Israel statements being made
by leading members of government and called for the
constitutional provisions outlawing hate speech to be
enforced. The Board later slammed Kasrils' statements,
accusing him of not being properly informed about the history
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of using his Jewish
background to add credibility to the pro-Palestinian stance
of the ANC. Russell Gaddin, National Chairman of the Board,
said that contrary to claims of "excessive force" being
leveled at the Israelis, all Israeli actions had to be seen
either as defensive or as responses to previous attacks by
the Palestinians.
In a letter to MPs, Gaddin said the board protested "in the
strongest possible terms against recent remarks by Foreign
Minister Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma stating that the ANC
regards Israel as a racist state and equating Israeli
policies with apartheid and Nazism."
The letter further states: "The past few months have
witnessed a number of disturbing developments, which have
seriously undermined the confidence of South African Jewry in
the future of the country and of their place within it.
Kasrils' attitude towards his Jewish heritage has been
somewhat ambiguous, despite his being a Communist and self-
proclaimed atheist. When his father died during the 1960s,
for example, he went out of his way to contact the Israeli
Ambassador in Botswana in order to learn how to say
Kaddish. Kasrils was on the run from the South African
security establishment at the time.
Antisemitism Among South African Muslims
While there has been a degree of soul-searching in South
Africa's large Muslim community, the September 11 terror
attacks and their aftermath would seem to have heightened
anti-American and anti-Jewish feeling amongst many of its
members. Verbal attacks on Jews, previously veiled, became
more overt during the period of the World Conference Against
Racism. Fury over the Anglo-American assault on Afghanistan
has further increased the tendency to lash out at Jews. Apart
from the assault of a Jewish doctor in Cape Town by three men
wearing Palestinian scarves, however, these attacks have
fortunately been thus far been confined to verbal assaults in
the media and during protest rallies.
Radical Muslim groups have vowed to recruit volunteers to
fight for the Taliban, despite warnings from the South
African government that this would be illegal. Similar
undertakings were made by Muslim groupings during the Gulf
War.
Radical Muslim groups such as Pagad and Qibla have been under
careful surveillance by the security establishment following
a wave of bombings that took place in Cape Town in the late
1990s. This is believed to be the reason why anger over the
war against the Taliban has not translated into attacks on
local American and Jewish targets, as happened in 1998
following US and U.K. air strikes against Sudan and Iraq.
Local Muslim websites and radio stations are increasingly
propagating the theory that Jews were behind the World Trade
Center attacks, citing as "evidence" the allegation that 4000
Jews did not turn up to work at the WTC on the fateful
day.
Jewish leaders have been careful to make conciliatory noises
to their Muslim counterparts, being among the first to
condemn arson attacks on mosques in Cape Town and Ficksburg
that followed in the wake of the US terror attacks and
sending letters of sympathy, thus far unacknowledged, to the
Muslim Judicial Council.
