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‘There is No Antisemitism Here,’ South African Justice Minister Claims, Despite 631 Percent Increase in Attacks on Jews
Wearing a “Palestine” scarf, South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola is seen at an ANC meeting in Johannesburg. Photo: Reuters/Alet Pretorius
The claim of South Africa’s Justice Minister that there is no antisemitism targeting the country’s Jewish community drew a forthright response from Jewish leaders on Wednesday, who also accused the South African government of “creating an environment that emboldens antisemites.”
In an interview with the BBC’s “Hard Talk” program on Monday, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola flatly denied that antisemitism — which has soared in South Africa in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel and the Israeli government’s military response — was a problem.
When presenter Stephen Sackur quoted South African Jewish leader Howard Sackstein saying that he was “staring at my suitcase contemplating whether it’s time to leave the only home I’ve ever known,” underlining as well his fear that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) government had been “captured by radical Islamists,” Lamola dismissed these concerns outright, going on to attack the “Zionist state.”
“It’s a very unfortunate statement not backed by any facts, it’s a figment of his own imagination,” Lamola said.
Lamola added that the case charging Israel with “genocide” brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa was “not against the Jews as a people, it’s against the Zionist State of Israel,” which was “maiming and killing the Palestinians as a group in Gaza,” he said.
The ICJ’s ruling last week essentially rejected South Africa’s argument, with no immediate order issued to Israel to halt the war, only the demand that assistance must be provided to improve humanitarian conditions and measures taken to prevent acts or incitement against the UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention.
When Sackur pointed out that there had been a precipitous rise in antisemitic attacks in South Africa since Oct. 7, Lamola fired back, “there’s no such…there is no antisemitism in South Africa against the Jewish people.”
A statement from the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) on Wednesday highlighted that between October and December of last year, in the weeks following the Hamas assault, 139 antisemitic incidents were recorded, compared with 19 in the same period of 2022 — an increase of 631 percent.
The statement pointed out that there had also been as “a sharp increase in physical attacks against Jewish persons or property, something which had occurred only rarely in previous years. There were six cases of physical assault, whereas the annual average had been only one in the preceding decade.”
Among the violent incidents recorded were two cases of assault outside a Johannesburg synagogue, an attack on a Johannesburg rabbi, and a Jewish community member being repeatedly struck over the head with a pole at a pro-Hamas rally in Cape Town. Vandalism included damage and desecration to Jewish cemeteries in Pretoria and Durban.
During the incident in Cape Town, the targeted individual was surrounded by dozens of violent protestors who bellowed “Viva Hamas” and “Murderers,” telling him “Hitler did not kill all of you guys, just so that we could all see exactly why he did it.”
South Africa’s Jewish community “has prided itself on the relatively low levels of antisemitism compared to other Jewish Diaspora communities,” the SAJBD remarked. “However our government has created an environment where antisemitism can flourish with Minister Lamola’s comments being an example. We call on Minister Lamola and the ANC Government to stop dismissing antisemitism and to stop creating an environment that emboldens antisemites.”
A report on South African antisemitism submitted by the SAJBD to the US State Department and shared with The Algemeiner described how South African Jews increasingly face opprobrium and hatred in their daily lives.
“A ‘naming and shaming’ process has been adopted, where people are encouraged to shun those characterized as ‘genocidal baby killers’ and the like,” the report noted.
In one of several hateful emails sent to members of the community, a Jewish doctor in Cape Town was virulently abused by a former patient who accused him of financial dishonesty.
“I don’t expect anything from a Jewish c*** like you; it’s true what they say about you Jews, it’s ******* huge noses ***** greedy,” the email ranted. It ended, “my sexy rat-eyed y*d, we are coming for you. Hail [sic] HITLER.”
Lamola’s denial of South Africa’s antisemitism problem followed his assertion last week that the ICJ case brought against Israel meant that Nelson Mandela, the late South African President who led the ANC in its struggle against apartheid, “will be smiling in his grave.”
ANC leaders have repeatedly invoked Mandela in a political campaign against Israel that has intensified over the last decade. However, Mandela was a supporter of the two-state solution, declaring in a 1993 address to the Jewish community, “As a movement we recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism just as we recognize the legitimacy of Zionism as a Jewish nationalism. We insist on the right of the state of Israel to exist within secure borders but with equal vigor support the Palestinian right to national self-determination.”
The post ‘There is No Antisemitism Here,’ South African Justice Minister Claims, Despite 631 Percent Increase in Attacks on Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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To Be Holy Is to Live Morally and Treat Others With Respect
Reading from a Torah scroll in accordance with Sephardi tradition. Photo: Sagie Maoz via Wikimedia Commons.
Chapter 19 of Leviticus, known as Kedoshim, includes a range of laws that concern ethical standards that were relevant back then and today.
It starts with respecting one’s parents and then goes on to talk about the importance of giving charity and helping the poor and the indigent. It also includes such basic ethical rules as don’t steal, don’t deceive, don’t lie, don’t oppress your neighbor, etc. ( Leviticus 19:2-18).
However, interspersed in this collection are ritual laws, and the repeated refrain “Be Holy because I am holy,” “I am your God,” or “ I am your God who took you out of Egypt.”
To the modern skeptical mind, they seem out of place. We are so used to thinking of morality and ethics as being divorced from concepts of God, that these ritual-based commands seem to be irrelevant to many people. Yet the Bible is based upon the principle that humans are fallible, changeable, and unreliable, and are often not the best judges of good and bad. Greek philosophical culture, on the other hand, thought that logic alone could determine what was right or wrong. The Torah established the concept of Divine Authority as a safeguard against overweening human arrogance.
The anthropologist Margaret Mead discovered that there is a universal pattern that explains all this strange connection between morality and ritual. The ancient world was concerned with order. Each culture was regulated in its own way. The Torah, too, is concerned with order, a holistic approach to life that includes the spiritual as well as the physical. It is a template of the complete life, in which one finds room for a way of life that connects with God through ritual and behavior.
In our case, the universal sacrificial system that once dominated our ritual life soon fell away. Instead, we have focused on the laws that make up what is called halacha — how we behave day-to-day and how all our actions should be predicated on forethought, consideration, and a value system.
An ethical system predicated on a ritual one, however irksome, adds a level of spirituality to our daily lives. If religious behavior does not improve one’s morality or behavior towards others, it is failing. Holiness in the Torah means being better — not automatically through birth, but rather what we do, and how we behave.
When we say be holy because God is holy, we’re not describing God. We may disagree as to what is good and what is bad, what is fair and what is not, and whether there is a God and to what extent God controls our lives. But, in the end, we should live a life of consideration and respect for ourselves as well as for the rest of humanity.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
The post To Be Holy Is to Live Morally and Treat Others With Respect first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Macklemore Leads ‘Free Palestine’ Chant After Performing New Anti-Israel Song in New Zealand
Macklemore performs at Alcatraz Milan on May 3, 2023 in Milan, Italy. Photo: Roberto Finizio via Reuters Connect
Macklemore performed his new anti-Israel song live for the first time on Wednesday night during a concert in Wellington, New Zealand, where he also led the sold-out crowd in chanting, “Free, free Palestine.”
The Seattle-based rapper, whose real name is Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, performed Hind’s Hall at his first of two Wellington shows in the TSB Arena.
In the song, which was released a day earlier, the Grammy winner expresses solidarity with anti-Israel activists demonstrating at colleges and universities across the US, criticizes US support for Israel, and denounces the Jewish state’s military actions in its ongoing war against Hamas terrorists controlling the Gaza Strip. The war was launched in response to the deadly Hamas attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Images of the Palestinian flag were projected across the stadium in Wellington as Macklemore performed Hind’s Hall. Later in the concert, the rapper allegedly called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, The Guardian reported. The music video for Hind’s Hall also played on a screen behind the stage while Macklemore rapped the track’s lyrics on Wednesday night.
He told the audience: “I stand here today and every day forward for the rest of my life in solidarity with the people of Palestine, with an open heart, in the belief that our collective liberation is at stake — that we all deserve freedom in this life of ours.”
Macklemore said on Tuesday that all proceeds from Hind’s Hall will be donated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees had 19 of its employees allegedly participate in the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7. UNRWA has also been accused in the past of providing Palestinian schools with textbooks that incite antisemitism, terrorism, and anti-Israel sentiments.
The post Macklemore Leads ‘Free Palestine’ Chant After Performing New Anti-Israel Song in New Zealand first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Miss Israel Gets Threatened by Knife-Wielding Antisemite While Talking to New Yorkers About Israel
Former Miss Israel Noa Cochva talking to New Yorkers about Israel on May 6, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Former Miss Israel Noa Cochva was threatened by an antisemitic woman in New York City this week while trying to have peaceful conversations with locals about Israel.
On Monday, Cochva participated in a social experiment with the organization Facts for Peace in which she walked around Washington Square Park in New York City while holding a sign that read, “I’m an IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldier, ask me anything.” The 25-year-old beauty queen, who represented Israel in the Miss Universe pageant held in Eilat in 2021, was approached by some pro-Israel supporters who hugged her and thanked her for being brave and speaking out in solidarity with the Jewish state. Speaking to an American military officer who stopped to talk with her, Cochva discussed feeling a sense of purpose for serving her country. Cochva served as a combat medic in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
However, she also received a negative response from other New Yorkers, some of whom called her a “war criminal” and said, “This is f—king stupid. You guys should go home.” When one man asked Cochva,”“How do you sleep at night?” she clapped back: “I sleep really well because I know I’m on the right side of history.”
In a video from the social experiment that was shared on Instagram by both Facts for Peace and Cochva, the former beauty pageant queen could be seen talking to a man on camera when a woman crashed their discussion and said, “Sorry to interrupt, I heard there was a Zionist here.” The same woman lunged at Cochva’s team with a knife, cursed at them, and berated the group by calling them “little Zionists.” She also told Cochva’s cameraman, “My daddy owns your little Jewish b—ch daddy.”
When Cochva’s group invited her to have a conversation with the beauty queen, she avoided the opportunity by giving excuses such as, “No, I only care about being seen” and “I only speak ASL [American Sign Language].” When she asked one man in Cochva’s group for some of his water and he said no, she replied, “Oh, you’re a Zionist. I get it.”
Cochva filmed a video after the incident commenting on what took place and the criticism she faced from Israel-haters. While holding back tears, she told the camera, “I was just trying to have peaceful conversations with them. But it’s a whole different experience to witness something like that. We can’t let things like this happen.”
On Wednesday, the Instagram account Jew Hate Database exposed the knife-wielding woman as Ruby Marzovilla, a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio who works as a “professional performing artist” and “transformative mediator,” according to her LinkedIn page.
On March 30, Cochva was attacked with a protest placard during an anti-Israel rally in Times Square and got a black eye as a result.
The post Miss Israel Gets Threatened by Knife-Wielding Antisemite While Talking to New Yorkers About Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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