South Africa’s Jewish community has lambasted a proposal by the City of Johannesburg to rename the street on which the US Consulate is located after notorious Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled.

“This bizarre move to change the name of Sandton Drive is nothing more than political theatrics for the ANC [South Africa’s ruling African National Congress] and their cohorts in the City of Johannesburg,” Wendy Kahn, national director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), told The Algemeiner.

The decision “is designed to hurt fellow South African citizens at a time when social cohesion and goodwill should be part of the agenda of this city,” Kahn said. “The name Sandton Drive is not offensive to anyone. Yet, they want to replace it with the name of someone who, together with her organization, the PFLP, are synonymous with hijacking of planes and killing Jews in cold blood. Clearly this is offensive to more than one constituency in Johannesburg.”

Khaled — a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization — hijacked a Tel Aviv-bound plane in 1969 and attempted another hijacking, this time of an El Al flight, in 1970. Khaled was arrested in London, where the El Al pilot diverted the plane, and later released in exchange for hostages from another hijacking.

Beyond hijackings, PFLP has also been involved in suicide bombings, shootings, and assassinations.

The proposal to rename Sandton Drive as Leila Khaled Drive was initially adopted by the City Council in Johannesburg in 2018. Then-City Council member Thapelo Amad proposed the motion. According to the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF), Amad on Oct. 7 of last year posted online: “We stand with Hamas, Hamas stands with us, together we are Palestine and Palestine will be free. With our souls, with our blood, we will conquer Al Aqsa.”

In recent weeks, the name change has been considered once again, with the government in Johannesburg preparing to act on the proposal. The measure, which was supported by the ANC in 2018, is open for public comment until Friday.

“Their intention can only be interpreted as wanting to cause hurt and division,” Kahn told The Algemeiner. “The intention of renaming a street should be around honoring a South African who had made a contribution to the city or even the country. Had they done, so, we would have no problem. Yet, the choice of Leila Khaled is contemptible, and goes against the purpose of renaming any street.”

Sandton Drive is a major road in Johannesburg, and Sandton, the neighborhood in which the street is located, is home to many of South Africa’s 50,000 Jews and at least four synagogues, among other Jewish institutions.

“The SAJBD is objecting to this outrageous proposition as it flouts both the Johannesburg policy on the naming of streets and is designed to divide our city,” Kahn said, arguing that the “narrow-minded” decision is unnecessarily divisive at a time when the city “needs investment and a boost to its economy.”

The SAZF has also lodged a protest with the South African government, expressing similar concerns.

“Renaming Sandton Drive after a failed terrorist with ties to a globally recognized terrorist organization not only sows division among residents but also contradicts the city’s renaming policy. It potentially burdens businesses with address changes and undermines confidence in the city,” SAZF spokesperson Rolene Marks said in a statement. “This change appears deliberately provocative towards the US Consulate located on Sandton Drive, potentially discouraging American investment in Johannesburg. It’s particularly concerning given that the US government has officially designated the PFLP as a terrorist organization.”

The backlash over the City of Johannesburg’s proposal came as the South African Jewish community continued to oppose the national government’s approach to Israel.

South Africa’s ANC government has been one of the harshest critics of the Jewish state since Oct. 7 of last year, when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists launched the ongoing war in Gaza with their invasion of and massacre across southern Israeli communities.

South Africa temporarily withdrew its diplomats from Israel and shuttered its embassy in Tel Aviv shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom, saying that the Pretoria government was “extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians” in Gaza.

In December, South Africa hosted two Hamas officials who attended a government-sponsored conference in solidarity with the Palestinians. One of the officials had been sanctioned by the US government for his role with the terrorist organization.

In May, members of South Africa’s Jewish community protested Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor’s call for students and university leaders to intensify the anti-Israel demonstrations that have engulfed college campuses across the US.

Later that month, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led the crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

In January, the South African government failed in its bid to argue before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel’s defensive war in Gaza constituted a “genocide.” However, the top UN court in May ordered Israel to halt its military operations against Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The emergency ruling was part of South Africa’s ongoing case at the ICJ.

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