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Jewish teens in South Africa, where crime and Israel criticism are sky-high, see little future at home
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — When she was in sixth grade, Kiara Cohen decided she was going to leave South Africa.
At a Shabbat gathering held by the youth organization Bnei Akiva in Kempton Park, Johannesburg, she was on the way to fill her water bottle when a few adults on the other side of the fence from her campgrounds told her they were going to assault and kill her and her friends because she was Jewish. The scared 12-year-old decided on the spot that she wanted to live somewhere where antisemitism wasn’t tolerated.
Now 16, Cohen still has her marks set on leaving South Africa after university — a move that would make her typical of her country’s Jews. Since 1970, the number of Jews in South Africa, home to the continent’s largest Jewish population, fell by 60%, to 50,000, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Many of those who depart head to Israel, where anyone who is Jewish may immigrate. In 2021, a full 1% of Jewish South Africans moved to Israel — the highest aliyah rate in South Africa’s history.
And that was before the current Israel-Hamas war, in which South African leaders have been taken an aggressive anti-Israel stance. The country has brought genocide charges against Israel in the International Court of Justice and threatened to prosecute South Africans who serve in the Israel Defense Forces. It has also welcomed a Hamas leader for an official visit since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
“The main antisemitism I feel that makes me want to leave this country is the government,” said Danni Hellman, 16, of Johannesburg. “They are anti-Israel and not exactly fond of Jews. I know every country in the world has its problems but when the hate comes from inside the people who are in power it is not exactly easy to want to stay.”
JTA interviewed 20 Jewish high school students from Johannesburg about their future plans. Eighty percent said they are planning to leave South Africa. More than half of them, 55%, said they are leaving after they graduate from high school. Another quarter said they would head for the border after graduating from college.
While some, like Hellman, said the country’s stance toward Israel is contributing to their thinking, most cited more pragmatic concerns: a lack of opportunities for their future and a desire to escape South Africa’s high crime rate. Overwhelmingly, they felt safety concerns about being Jews in South Africa.
“As a young Jew I am planning to leave South Africa due to the antisemitism and due to the social, political and economic circumstances in the country,’’ said Eitan Klein, 16. Last February, while gaming online, Klein was called an antisemitic slur by a South African Palestinian supporter. He said he wants to avoid experiencing that kind of harassment in person by making aliyah and joining the IDF after graduating high school — no matter what the war situation is in Israel.
The Jewish community in South Africa dates to the 19th century, with the immigration of a small number of Jews from Great Britain. Diamond- and gold-mining drew a significant number of Jews in the late 1800s, especially from Eastern Europe, changing the South African Jewish community and forming a strong connection to Zionism. As the 20th century began, Eastern European Jewish immigration continued, and as World War II approached, there were slightly more than 90,000 Jewish people in the country.
During the Holocaust, South Africa implemented an immigration quota that banned Eastern European Jews from entering the country. Despite the ban, 3,615 German Jews came to South Africa. The community kept growing and hit its highest point at 118,200 in 1970. The numbers started going down after 1970, according to South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
The current exodus follows the demise of apartheid in the early 1990s, which while ending years of fiercely racist discrimination against the country’s Black population also ushered in a period of rising crime and economic uncertainty. As many as 1 million white South Africans emigrated between 1995 and 2005; currently whites make up about 4.5 million of a total population of about 57 million.
Several of the teens interviewed said they saw a lack of opportunity in South Africa for future generations. Over 50% of the population lives in poverty and nearly 19% lives in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank. South Africa is also struggling with an extremely high unemployment rate of 33%, daily power cuts, extensive corruption in public entities and high crime rates. Last year, a prominent Jewish South African journalist was murdered in a home invasion — shortly after writing in a column that he thought his young adult children should abandon their country and move abroad.
“It is common knowledge that young Jews are leaving South Africa,” said Rabbi Mendel Rabinowitz of Johannesburg’s based Victory Park synagogue. He said he understood why most young Jews would rather study overseas and use those qualifications to get a job elsewhere, rather than deal with the high unemployment in South Africa.
“The reality is that it’s easier to get into some of the overseas universities than it is to get into South African universities,” he said.
The teens also say vociferous opposition to Israel is palpable in their daily lives. The country’s Israel boycott campaign rebranded as “Africa 4 Palestine” campaign in 2020 and promotes the idea on billboards around the country that Israelis stole Palestinian land. And last year, Aishah Cassiem, a South African politician and member of the provincial legislature, said that Herzlia, the local Jewish school in Cape Town, should be deregistered because a quarter of the school’s graduated students made aliyah and joined the IDF.
She compared the school to the “apartheid state of Israel” during a debate in Parliament.
Herzlia High School in Cape Town, South Africa. In June, a South African politician called for the school to be deregistered over the fact that nearly a quarter of the school’s graduating students move to Israel and join the military. (United Herzlia Schools)
“You can’t just attack one school for making aliyah and joining the IDF,” said Johannesburg teen Tali Bloch, in response to Cassiem’s remarks. “Jews all over the world do this and if this is the reason this school should be deregistered then it’s disgusting and makes me feel irritated and beyond furious.”
Bloch, 16, wants to move to London after high school. “I feel connected to Judaism here in South Africa but I don’t see the county as a place where I want to raise my kids. I just don’t see a future here.”
Not all Johannesburg teens want to leave. “I love my South Africa heritage and definitely think of this country as my home,” said Sam Bonner, 17. “I wouldn’t leave unless I absolutely had to.”
Bonner is active in the Zionist youth group Habonim Dror. “I found my connection to Judaism through youth groups. I found Habonim Dror, and my connection to Judaism only grew stronger,” said Bonner.
Brent Levine, 17, of Johannesburg is also passionate about being Jewish, but says he can’t fully embrace his Judaism while in South Africa because he hasn’t found a group of people with whom he feels comfortable expressing this aspect of himself.
“I’m moving to Israel after I matriculate because it is easier for me as a young Jewish man to fulfill the quest of finding myself spiritually as a Jew,’’ he said.
Levine, a volunteer for Medi Response ambulance service, a medical group in Johannesburg, said his plans haven’t changed with the current situation in Israel, where Israel is seeking to eliminate Hamas after the deadly attacks of Oct. 7. “If I had the opportunity to go to Israel to help fight the war I would,” said Levine.
And for many teens, the pressing issues of the moment pale in comparison to their longer-term concerns.
“This country is questionable at best,” said Hellman, who plans to pursue an acting career in London or Amsterdam after graduating from high school. “If I want kids, I don’t want them to grow up here and I want them to have better opportunities.”
JTA fellow (Fall 2022) Ella Bilu provided reporting and editing assistance on this piece
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The post Jewish teens in South Africa, where crime and Israel criticism are sky-high, see little future at home appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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As Gaza War Continues, Hamas Calls for Global Protests While Israel Marks Breakthroughs in Medical Innovation
A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.
The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.
On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”
“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.
The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”
Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.
In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”
Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.
Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.
Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”
Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.
In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.
Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.
“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.
In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.
Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.
Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.
However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.
This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.
Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.
The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.
The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.
“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”
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Netherlands to Push EU to Suspend Israel Trade Deal but Won’t Recognize Palestinian State ‘At This Time’
Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect
The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.
On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.
This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.
According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.
While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.
In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.
“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.
“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.
This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.
The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.
For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.
Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.
Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”
“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”
Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.
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Graduate Student Unions Promoting Antisemitism, Reform Group Says
Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.
“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”
NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.
“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.