South Africa’s Jewish community has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to condemn a recent alleged attempted bombing of a Jewish community center in Cape Town, decrying his silence on the global surge in antisemitism following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last year.

The local Cape Town branch of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), the umbrella group of the country’s Jewish community, released a statement last Friday saying that an “improvised explosive device” had been thrown over the front wall into the community center and “failed to detonate.”

No one was hurt and no damage was caused in the incident. The facility, located in the neighborhood of Gardens, reportedly contains offices for many Jewish community organizations, including a women’s group, a youth movement, and a Jewish newspaper, among others.

Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis confirmed earlier this week that city police were helping the South African Police Service (SAPS) investigate the matter and analyze closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage to find the perpetrator. He added that the case has been handed to South Africa’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, known as the Hawks.

“We have evidence showing the perpetrators committing the act, and all available evidence has been handed over to the authorities,” Cape SAJBD executive director Daniel Bloch told the South African Jewish Report.

However, Hill-Lewis said that law enforcement had not yet determined the nature of the device.

“Should the SAPS investigation confirm that this was an attempted attack on the Jewish Community Center, I know I would speak for all Capetonians in condemning such an attempt in the strongest possible terms,” the mayor said in a statement. “Cape Town is a city of peace-loving people, where differences of faith and opinion are expressed loudly and fully, but always peacefully.”

Amid the investigation, SAJBD national director Wendy Kahn on Thursday shared a statement with The Algemeiner demanding South African President Ramaphosa condemn the alleged bombing attempt, noting he has been silent on the incident for a week.

“This was an act of antisemitism aimed at the Jewish community, whether intended to intimidate or to cause physical harm. It was an illegal act that constitutes a hate crime,” Kahn said. “This incident is concerning not only to South African Jewry, but also to the greater South African society and has garnered much global attention. Arson and bomb attacks against Jewish institutions have become sadly commonplace in other parts of the world, but this is the first time in many years that a Jewish communal facility in South Africa has been targeted.”

The apparent bombing attempt occurred on the same day that arsonists heavily damaged a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, in what both law enforcement and political leaders called an antisemitic attack.

“The Mayor of Cape Town, the SA Police Services, and now the Hawks have approached the situation with the extreme gravity that it deserves.  However, nearly a week later, there has still been no word of condemnation nor any expression of support for South Africa’s Jewish community from President Ramaphosa,” the SAJBD statement continued. “This is not the first time that events that have directly affected the SA Jewish community have been met with silence from the presidency.”

Kahn called Ramaphosa’s silence “all the more perplexing” given how other world leaders have stood with their Jewish communities when they have experienced threats.

“Our own country’s elected president, however, has, in nearly a week, failed to condemn this incident,” the statement concluded. “A year ago, on Dec. 13, the Jewish communal leadership met with the president to express concerns about growing antisemitism that was spiraling in our country, and to call for him to speak out against this hate.  A year later we are again forced to call on our president to speak out against this violent attack clearly aimed at our community.”

The South African Jewish community has repeatedly lambasted Ramaphosa and his ruling African National Congress (ANC) for insufficiently combating antisemitism and being one of the harshest critics of Israel since the Palestinian terrorist group invaded the Jewish state last Oct. 7 and launched the war in Gaza.

For the past year, the South African government has been pursuing its case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza. In late October, South Africa filed the bulk of the relevant material to support its allegations, a move that the SAJBD slammed as a demonstration of “grandstanding” rather than actual concern for those killed in the Middle Eastern conflict.

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.

Then 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, 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.

Ramaphosa’s ANC has also supported a proposal by the City of Johannesburg to rename the street on which the US Consulate is located after notorious Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled, who hijacked a Tel Aviv-bound plane in 1969 and attempted another hijacking, this time of an El Al flight, in 1970.

The government’s ardent opposition to Israel did not help its performance in elections earlier this year, when the ANC lost its majority in parliament for the first time in South Africa’s post-apartheid democratic history. However, it still remained the largest party and retained power at the national level through a coalition.

While Ramaphosa has not commented on last week’s alleged bombing attempt at the Jewish community center in Cape Town, he has continued speaking against Israel. In a message posted to X/Twitter on Thursday, the South African president falsely described the Israeli military campaign against Hamas terrorists as “Israel’s war on the people of Gaza,” comparing it to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The post South African Jews Demand President Condemn Alleged Bombing Attempt at Jewish Center first appeared on Algemeiner.com.