Uncategorized
South African Jewish journalist Jeremy Gordin murdered in home burglary at 70
(JTA) — Jeremy Gordin, one of South Africa’s most prominent journalists, wrote repeatedly in recent months about burglaries at his family’s Johannesburg home.
In a weekly column, he expressed dismay at the rampant levels of crime, growing urban decay and regular power outages endured by South Africans as a result of mismanagement and corruption. In one — titled “It is getting dark, too dark to see” after the Bob Dylan lyric — he addressed his two children, both in their twenties.
“I’m not suggesting that you’re going to find yourselves in desperate flight across your own border, that your graveyard may be ploughed up and strewn with garbage. But there comes a time when things are clearly falling apart,” he concluded.
He added, with the allusion to his Jewish identity clear to anyone familiar with Jewish history, “And you, who have your whole lives before you (as they say), need to consider seriously going to live elsewhere. We’ve been doing it for centuries, after all.”
On March 31, Gordin’s worst fears came to pass: He was murdered during a night robbery at his home. He was 70.
South African police described the incident as “a robbery gone wrong” but did not describe the exact cause of death. Seven people were arrested in Johannesburg two weeks later; one was driving a car that had been stolen from Gordin’s residence.
It was a tragic end for Gordin’s 70-year South African story, which, as with so many of his country’s Jews, intersected sharply with both the story of Israel and with the struggle of Black South Africans. As a lifelong journalist, he had at times headed both South Africa’s version of Playboy and its storied working-class Black tabloid, and also ran an initiative that used reporting to prove the innocence of people who were wrongfully imprisoned. He won the country’s annual top journalism prize multiple times.
Gordin was also a friend to many, frequently opening his home in Johannesburg’s Parkview neighborhood to guests. (This reporter was one of them during a stint in Johannesburg for Efe, the Spanish newspaper.)
Gordin was born in Pretoria in 1952, in a Jewish family with Lithuanian and Latvian origins. After a spell in South Vietnam, where his pharmacist father worked for the United States, the family returned to South Africa. Gordin went to high school in Brakpan, a town in the industrial east of the Great Johannesburg emblematic of the country’s white Afrikaner working class to which he often referred in his articles.
Gordin obtained a scholarship to study in Israel and completed a bachelor’s degree while playing rugby at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Back in his country, he did his military service volunteering for the South African Defence Force’s elite 1 Parachute Battalion, then started a prolific career in journalism.
In a breakout moment, he published a book in 1998 based on his conversations with the apartheid government’s death squad leader Eugen de Kock. Then incarcerated, de Kock candidly told Gordin about his deeds, but most importantly about those who had ordered his crimes, for which they were hardly questioned and never tried.
Gordin authored another canonical book of recent South Africa history, his biography of South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma. Published in 2010, a year after Zuma took power, Gordin’s went beyond the usual assumptions about the Zulu former freedom fighter who learned how to read and write as an adult and was often underestimated by South Africa’s intellectual class.
Zuma left office in 2018 after a tenure marked by charges of corruption, cronyism and incompetence. Gordin’s biography has been criticized for being excessively indulgent with its subject, but it remains essential for understanding Zuma’s psychology and the motivations behind his actions.
In the early 1990s, after a period living in San Francisco, Gordin became the launch editor of Playboy South Africa. (He posed nude, with only a magazine as cover, to promote Playboy’s South Africa launch.) In a recent essay, Gordin recounted trying to land a then-unknown Charlize Theron for the magazine’s first cover. Invoking Yiddish terms, Gordin recalled journalists who had passed away, described the actress’s unembarrassed audition, and also managed to explore changing race and class dynamics in South Africa.
(Around this time, his friend Roy Isacowitz wrote in a remembrance published shortly after his death, the pair had successfully gotten a media executive censured for calling them “pushy little Jewboys” — though he said they accepted the description.)
Jeremy Gordin, at right, stands in front of covers of the Sun, the South African tabloid he oversaw for many years. (Courtesy Gordin family)
In 2012 he was named caretaker editor of the Daily Sun, a South African tabloid wildly popular among the Black working class. The paper lost much of its appeal after the death of its founder, larger-than-life Afrikaner media executive Deon du Plessis. Gordin brought back the pride, the punch and many of the readers to the paper. Or, as a headline made for him by his colleagues when he retired said, he “brought rock’n roll back to the Sun.”
The tabloid’s news largely relied on cases of violence, gossip and sex often featuring “tokoloshes,” fantastic creatures of popular African mythology whose encounters with the Sun’s readers were reported nationwide in the first person to its many correspondents. The readership and the paper’s foot soldiers were 100% Black. They collected the stories and sent them to the Johannesburg newsroom, where a group of experienced white male journalists including Gordin translated their texts in the characteristic Daily Sun language.
Gordin’s world couldn’t be further away from the one his newspaper reflected. But as his colleague at the paper Vincent Pienaar wrote after his death, “Not only did he understand the ethos of the publication, he embraced it.”
The tabloid took on serious stories, too. During his tenure as the paper’s editor the Daily Sun broke the story of the death at the hands of police officers of Mozambican immigrant taxi driver Mido Macias. A reader had filmed his gratuitously brutal arrest and sent it to the newspaper. Eight police officers involved in the victim’s death in custody were ultimately sentenced to 15 years in prison.
After leaving the Daily Sun, Gordin took on a role coordinating the Wits Justice Project, a journalism program focused on the plight of innocent or unfairly treated prisoners. In 2011 he helped secure the release of Fusi Mofokeng and Tshokolo Joseph Mokoena, who had served 19 years in prison for a crime they didn’t commit.
Gordin’s many friends say that his sympathy for the underdog was inextricable from the Jewish traditions and attitudes he inherited.
Although not religiously observant, Gordin peppered his articles with Jewish stories and jokes and Yiddish words and expressions. His sense of humor was strongly influenced by his Jewishness, as it was the combination of principle and humorous compassion that defined his personality. He was extremely well-read and voraciously curious, loved to share what he discovered with friends and indulged in sassy but harmless gossip both in private and in his articles.
Sometimes, his Jewish identity and his journalism entwined as when, in 2016, he reported from Johannesburg about the extradition hearing of a Hasidic rabbi, Eliezer Berland, wanted in Israel on rape charges. His final column, published the day before his death, explained, and condemned, the proposed right-wing judicial reforms in Israel.
Rabbi Sa’ar Shaked of the Beit Emanuel Progressive Synagogue in Johannesburg said Gordin as a friend and “wild spirit” who didd’t regularly attend services but was a repeat guest speaker at the synagogue to discuss weekly Torah portions and a variety of aspects of Jewish history and law.
Despite not attending services regularly, Gordin’s role in the community is described as “very active” by Wendy Ovens, a South African health professional in the NGO sector who served with him on the management committee of Beit Emanuel in 2011.
“His knowledge on Judaism and Jewish history was incredible,” Ovens said. She said his Jewish identity fueled his core mission: “He was community-minded and believed in justice and in what was right.”
Gordin is survived by his wife, Deborah Blake, and his children, Jake and Nina.
—
The post South African Jewish journalist Jeremy Gordin murdered in home burglary at 70 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
NATO’s Rutte Praises US, Israeli Military Action Against Iran but Says Alliance Won’t Be Involved
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte attends a press conference at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Nicholson
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday praised US and Israeli military action against Iran, saying it was degrading Tehran’s ability to get its hands on nuclear and ballistic missile capability, but he said NATO itself would not be involved.
“It’s really important what the US is doing here, together with Israel, because it is taking out, degrading the capacity of Iran to get its hands on nuclear capability, the ballistic missile capability,” he told Germany’s ARD television in Brussels.
“There are absolutely no plans whatever for NATO to get dragged into this or being part of it, other than individual allies doing what they can to enable what the Americans are doing together with Israel,” he added.
Rutte’s comments came on the same day that US President Donald Trump said he ordered the attack on Iran to thwart its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, vowing to pursue the war for as long as necessary.
Trump claimed the threat from Iran had been imminent when he made the decision to order the strikes. The attacks have killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sunk Iranian warships, and hit more than 1,000 targets so far.
“This was our last best chance to strike … and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime,” he said at an event in the White House East Room.
Trump added that the US military campaign in Iran was going ahead of schedule, without providing details. He said the campaign had been projected to last four to five weeks but could go longer.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon played down concerns on Monday that the US attack on Iran risked plunging the United States into a new, open-ended conflict in the Middle East, even as officials declined to offer a timeline and cautioned that they expected more US casualties.
In the first Pentagon briefing since the conflict began, US General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters it would take time to achieve US military objectives in Iran.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listed those objectives in primarily military terms, saying the Pentagon sought to destroy Iran’s navy and expansive missile capabilities that could shield any covert attempts by Tehran to later build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies it wants nuclear weapons.
“To the media outlets and political left screaming ‘ENDLESS WARS’ – stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless,” said Hegseth, a former Fox News host and Army veteran who served in Iraq from 2005 to 2006 and deployed to Afghanistan in 2012.
However, Hegseth noted that Trump would not be pinned down by any timeline.
The US and Israeli attacks have triggered a massive Iranian retaliatory response but many of the most dangerous drones and missiles have been intercepted by US military forces and US allies in the region.
Still, some of the attacks succeeded in inflicting US losses. The US military said a fourth US service member died on Monday as a result of injuries in the Iran operations.
Six US service members were also injured on Monday when Kuwaiti air defenses shot down their three F-15 fighter jets by mistake.
“We expect to take additional losses,” Caine told the briefing, adding the United States would work to minimize US losses but “this is major combat operations.”
Hegseth said there were no US troops on the ground but also declined to rule that possibility out.
“We are not going into the exercise of [saying] what we will or will not do,” Hegseth said. “President Trump ensures that our enemies understand we’ll go as far as we need to go to advance American interests.”
“But we’re not dumb about it. You don’t have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay 20 years,” he added.
Uncategorized
Iran Conflict Widens to Lebanon, Kuwait Mistakenly Downs US Jets
Smoke billows after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, Lebanon, March 2, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
The US and Israeli air war against Iran widened on Monday, with no end in sight as Israel attacked Lebanon in response to strikes by Hezbollah and Tehran kept up its missile and drone attacks on Gulf states.
President Donald Trump said a “big wave” of further attacks was imminent, without giving details, and said it was unclear who was in charge in Iran, following the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the weekend.
The attack on Iran has pitched the Gulf into war, thrown global air transport into chaos, and shut down shipping traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices surging.
Underlining the risks, Kuwait mistakenly shot down three American F-15E fighter jets during an Iranian attack, US Central Command said. All six crew members ejected and were safely recovered. Video, filmed at a location verified by Reuters, showed one of the planes spiraling out of the sky, an engine on fire.
For Trump, facing growing discontent at home over bread-and-butter economic issues, the weekend strikes against a foe that had tormented the US and its allies for generations amount to the biggest US foreign policy gamble in decades.
Trump urged Americans to grieve the four US service personnel killed so far. The campaign could pose a major political risk for Trump’s Republican Party in this year’s midterm elections, with only one in four Americans supporting the operation, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll at the weekend.
“WE HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED,’ TRUMP SAYS
Trump said he had ordered the attack to thwart Tehran’s nuclear program and a ballistic missile program that he said was growing rapidly. He said the war could go on past a four-to-five-week projection he made earlier.
“We haven’t even started hitting them hard,” he told CNN in an interview. “The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”
In the first formal Pentagon briefing since the campaign began, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, described a campaign that included hitting more than 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours. He said more forces were still on their way to the region.
“This is not a single overnight operation. The military objectives that CENTCOM and the Joint Force have been tasked with will take some time to achieve, and in some cases will be difficult and gritty work,” Caine said.
Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon and says it was offering to curb its nuclear program at talks when the United States launched an unprovoked assault.
Trump repeated his call to Iranians to rise up and overthrow their leaders.
Within Iran, where residents have jammed highways to flee the bombing, there was uncertainty about the future and emotion ranging from euphoria to apprehension and rage.
Many have openly celebrated the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, who had ruled since 1989 and directed security forces that killed thousands of anti-government protesters at the start of this year.
But the conservative clerical leaders have shown no sign of yielding power. Military experts say that US and Israeli air power, with no armed force on the ground, may not be enough to drive them out. Meanwhile, scores of Iranians have been reported killed in strikes, including several that hit apparent civilian targets.
WAR SPREADS TO LEBANON
In a sign that Iran‘s rulers are still reaching out to the outside world, a senior Iranian security official contacted Reuters to say Iran was defending itself against aggressors and would continue to do so.
A new front in the war opened on Monday when the Lebanese armed terrorist group Hezbollah, one of Tehran’s principal allies in the Middle East, launched missiles and drones toward Israel.
Israel responded with sweeping airstrikes, which it said targeted the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut and struck senior militants. The Lebanese state news agency NNA said an initial tally showed 31 people had been killed and 149 injured.
An Iranian Shahed missile that Cypriot officials said was most likely fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon also hit the British air force base at Akrotiri in Cyprus, the first strike to reach US allies in Europe.
Israel declared Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem a “target for elimination.” Officials said they were not for now considering a ground invasion of Lebanon, whose government on Monday banned military activities by Hezbollah.
As Washington’s allies in the Gulf came under renewed attack from Iranian missiles and drones, black smoke rose above the area around the US embassy in Kuwait. There were loud blasts in Dubai and Samha in the United Arab Emirates, and in the Qatari capital Doha.
Qatar, one of the world’s biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas, halted production, with no prospect of being able to ship safely through the chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz.
Saudi Arabia shut its biggest refinery after drone strikes caused a fire there, one of a number of energy installations that became targets.
European allies, which distanced themselves from Trump’s initial decision to go to war, have since said they could help suppress Iran‘s ability to retaliate.
In an X post on Monday, Ali Larijani, a powerful adviser to Khamenei, said Iran would not negotiate with Trump, who had “delusional ambitions” and was now worried about US casualties.
OIL SUPPLIES INTERRUPTED
The interruption to oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz – where around a fifth of the world’s oil trade skirts the Iranian coast – jolted global economies. Oil prices leapt by double-digit percentages when trade opened on Monday, but later gave up half those gains. Shares fell and the dollar surged.
Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday they had hit three US and British oil tankers in the Gulf and the Strait. Shipping data showed hundreds of vessels including oil and gas tankers dropping anchor in nearby waters.
Global air travel was also heavily disrupted as airstrikes kept major Middle Eastern airports closed.
Uncategorized
The Palestinian Authority Condemns Iran’s Attacks on Arab States — But Not Israel
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian strike, after Iran launched missile barrages following attacks by the US and Israel on Saturday, in Beit Shemesh, Israel, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Other than a few informative reports, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is almost silent about the Israeli-American war with Iran.
So far, the PA has limited itself to condemning Iran’s attacks on other Arab states and requesting “an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers and for a session of the UN Security Council.”
The PA has neither condemned the Israeli-American attack on Iran, nor has it said anything positive about the Iranian missiles launched against Israel:
The State of Palestine strongly condemned the Iranian attacks on several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq, stressing its full rejection of any violation of their sovereignty or aggression against them by any party.
It described the attacks as a blatant violation of the UN Charter and principles of international law…
It also reaffirmed its consistent position against resorting to violence and war, calling for dialogue as the means to resolve disputes … and for adherence to international law to strengthen regional and international peace and security.
President Mahmoud Abbas called for an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers and for a session of the UN Security Council to address the serious challenges facing the region, its countries, and their sovereignty. [emphasis added]
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 28, 2026]
Vice President of the State of Palestine Hussein Al-Sheikh on Saturday reaffirmed Palestine’s rejection and condemnation of the Iranian attacks on several Arab sister states … and conveyed Palestine’s solidarity with the Arab states and support for any measures they deem appropriate in response.
Al-Sheikh stressed that the State of Palestine and its leadership firmly reject any violation of the sovereignty of Arab states or aggression against them by any party, describing the attacks as a blatant violation of the UN Charter and the principles of international law.
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 28, 2026]
Although the PA has not openly applauded the joint US and Israeli attack on Iran, there is reason to believe they silently appreciate the development.
Palestinian Media Watch has exposed that the PA blamed Iran for making Hamas launch the devastating Oct. 7 war to “serve its Iranian masters” and accused Iran of supporting Hamas to “destroy the Palestinian national project,” thereby enabling it to replace the PLO as “the sole representative of the Palestinian people”:
PLO National Council member Muwaffaq Matar: “There is no clearer proof [than Iranian leader Khamenei’s speech] of Hamas’ subordination to this Iranian regime. In this speech there is nothing new for us, because we have already understood how much this regime controls Hamas, has given it its blessing, supported it, and aided it to destroy the Palestinian national project completely, so that it [Hamas] and also its partners who follow Iran will be the artificial alternative to the PLO.”
[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, June 3, 2024]
This claim was reiterated recently by PLO Central Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul:
[Hamas] began to move according to the direction of the wind, based on the Muslim Brotherhood’s principle of taqiyya. Nothing is constant for [Hamas] except to continue serving as a paid pawn in the hands of the enemies, in order to sabotage the national project, dissolve it, incite against the legitimate leadership. [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 18, 2026]
Following the Israeli-American attack, former spokesman of the PA Security Forces Adnan Al-Damiri even mocked both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Iran.
Al-Damiri prophesized that the Iranian people won’t reach for their freedom made possible by Netanyahu (and Trump) but will continue to “support the regime.” Iran’s attack on several neighboring Arab states, many of which host US military bases, was ridiculed by Al-Damiri as “stupidity and malice”:
Posted text: “The Iranian people are not a plaything to accede to [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu, even if it is against the regime. Netanyahu’s appeal to the Iranian people will fail, and the people will set out to support the regime. The war will last a long time to complete the mission of toppling the [Iranian] fundamentalist regime…
Iran, out of stupidity and malice, attacked its [Arab] neighbors who opposed the war. It weakened itself by directly involving its neighbors.
This will open the possibility of ground military activity from the territories of its neighbors and with their participation. The war will last weeks, perhaps months.”
[Former Official Spokesman of the PA Security Forces Adnan Al-Damiri, Facebook page, Feb. 28, 2026]
So far, only the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has openly mourned the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a poster and text calling the Israeli-American attack “a cowardly assassination operation committed by the Zionist and American treachery.”
Note: On June 3, 2024, then Iranian leader Khamenei gave a speech in which he praised Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, stating that:
An army that claimed to be one of the strongest armies in the world has been defeated inside its own land. Who has defeated it? Was it a powerful government? No, it was defeated by Resistance groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. It was defeated by these [groups]. This is what Al-Aqsa Flood did.
He neither mentioned the PA nor the PLO at all but only the “Resistance” and the “Palestinian people.”
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.