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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.
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The New Normal for Jewish Students: Security Checks and Police Presence
Cornwall House at King’s College London. Photo: C. G. P. Grey.
In February 2026, a university screening at King’s College London required an astonishing level of security: 30 police officers and 15 professional security personnel for 20 students and five members of the university’s staff.
The reason? A 47-minute film of raw footage from the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack was screened, showing what actually happened that day.
An earlier attempt by the local student Israel Society to hold the screening had been abandoned entirely because the university didn’t grant permission on security grounds.
Outside of the event, protesters from the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter chanted “Get the Zios off campus.”
Jewish students must operate behind visible layers of protection simply to gather, pray, eat, or learn together. Activities that were once routine campus activities now demand the same level of protection more commonly associated with high-profile political events, raising serious questions about what the campus “normal” has become.
As someone who has experienced this situation firsthand, the heavy use of security is not symbolic. It reflects real, credible threats of disruption and intimidation that have already forced events to be cancelled.
Jewish students now require visible police protection for activities that every other group takes for granted — a film screening, a cultural night, a Shabbat dinner. This is not discomfort; it is unequal access to campus life. The activism that claims to defend the vulnerable has instead made Jewish students the ones who need defending.
The reason stories like these keep happening is clear and uncomfortable: Anti-Zionism has increasingly become the dominant expression of discrimination and bigotry against Jews on campus. What commonly presents itself as “political criticism of Israel” quickly turns into intimidation, harassment, and exclusion regardless of any individual Zionist-identified individual’s views.
Universities that continue to outsource safety to police cordons while wringing their hands about “tensions” are simply managing symptoms. They are not addressing the root cause.
Chants that single out “Zios,” accusations of collective guilt, and the assumption that any Jewish event is somehow provocative have turned Jewish identity into a liability. This is not abstract theory. Jewish students report being chased, threatened, verbally abused, and physically targeted simply for being visibly Jewish or Israeli. Many now hide Stars of David, stop speaking Hebrew in public, or avoid Jewish spaces altogether to stay safe.
And what happened at my school is happening to students all over the UK. The Union of Jewish Students’ March 2026 national polling of 1,000 students found that nearly a quarter had witnessed behavior specifically targeting Jewish students for their religion or ethnicity. The poll also found that 77% of those who see Israel-Palestine protests regularly witnessed slogans or chants directly justifying the October 7 attack.
The pattern is consistent: hostility that begins with Israel is commonly expressed through hostility toward the nearest Jews who don’t actively identify as anti-Zionist, and those who attempt to humanise the Jews of Israel. The political rhetoric saying “it’s only about Israel” is just a disguise.
This situation is bad for Jewish students, but it is also corrosive for universities themselves. When institutions must essentially militarize everyday student activity to keep one minority safe, they have already failed their basic duty to provide an equal learning environment.
Free speech is not the issue here. Protest and legitimate criticism of any government must be protected. However, what should not be protected is the right to harass, intimidate, or exclude Jewish students under the guise of activism. Distinguishing between the two is a key element of the widely accepted IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.
Universities know what needs to be done. Our leaders have been telling them for years. First, enforce existing codes of conduct without hesitation whenever harassment or intimidation occurs, without selective blindness or “context” excuses that only apply to Jews.
Second, apply free speech rules equally. Disruption that prevents Jewish students from accessing events or education is not protected speech; it is a violation of rights.
Third, publicly rebuke the notion that pro-Israel events are inherently provocative. A Shabbat dinner is not a political statement. A screening of actual footage is not a provocation.
These activists will wrongly argue that enforcing such policies amounts to censorship. But in Western civilization, nobody is free to do whatever they want, regardless of their effect on others. They are free to voice their opposition, but not to impose it on others.
Curtailing this behavior is the minimum requirement for any university campus and a healthy community.
A “fortified” campus is not a solution — it is an admission of failure. Until universities confront the reality that anti-Zionism produces the same result as antisemitism, Jewish students will continue to need physical protection to live normal student lives.
The question is no longer whether this climate exists; it’s whether university leadership — including at King’s College — has the courage to act on it.
Alena Rakitina is a student of the University of Exeter and a CAMERA on Campus 2025-2026 Fellow. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.
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Rahm Emanuel’s Call to Treat Israel ‘Like Every Other Ally’ Gets History Wrong
Rahm Emanuel speaks during a media interview with podcast host Megyn Kelly. Photo: Screenshot
Rahm Emanuel’s recent declaration that Israel should henceforth be treated “like every other ally” was not serious strategic analysis. It was the sound of a longtime Democratic operative adjusting himself to the increasingly radicalized gravitational pull of his party’s anti-Israel wing.
The same political ecosystem now mainstreaming figures like Hasan Piker — a man who declared that “America deserved 9/11” and routinely traffics in hateful anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda to millions — is steadily dragging Democratic rhetoric on Israel into territory that would have been politically radioactive even a decade ago.
Like others making similar arguments, Emanuel’s slogan collapses under even minimal historical scrutiny.
When looking at the evidence, it’s clear that Israel is already treated unlike many American allies.
First, some allies, like NATO members, are entitled to American military protection and defense if they are attacked. When Israel fights wars, Israelis fight them. That distinction matters enormously. Yet people like Rahm speak as though Israel is uniquely coddled rather than uniquely self-reliant.
Emanuel — who somehow served as ambassador to Japan while apparently learning little from the experience about how American alliances actually work — recently stated that the US should stop “subsidizing” Israel’s military and stop providing “financial aid” through the Memorandum of Understanding framework, and that Israel should instead simply “buy what they want” like every other ally.
The aid framework Rahm now caricatures as “subsidies” and “financial aid” was never an act of American charity. It emerged from strategic bargains and overlapping interests that benefited Washington enormously.
A major turning point in that strategic bargain came in the 1980s with Israel’s Lavi fighter project — an ambitious domestically developed fighter program that many in Washington feared could become a genuine export competitor to the F-16.
American pressure to terminate the program was immense because, contrary to today’s woke-right and far-left parody of the alliance, Washington was not interested in an Israeli aerospace rival competing with American defense giants globally.
Under that pressure, Israel closed the program.
The result was deeper Israeli integration into American military platforms and supply chains — strengthening American aerospace dominance while locking Israel more tightly into the American defense ecosystem.
In other words, the architecture Rahm now dismisses as though it were unilateral charity did not emerge because Washington was engaged in philanthropy for Jews. It emerged because American policymakers concluded that the arrangement benefited the United States strategically, militarily, technologically, and industrially.
Almost all US military assistance to Israel is effectively spent in America on American systems built by American workers in American factories. Meanwhile, Israel became one of the most battle-tested laboratories for American military doctrine and technology anywhere in the world — missile defense, cyber operations, tunnel warfare, counterterrorism, intelligence integration, and urban combat.
American defense officials do not maintain these relationships because they are sentimental Zionists at the Pentagon. They maintain them because Israel provides enormous strategic value to the United States.
But the most absurd part of Emanuel’s slogan remains the slogan itself.
Because when Rahm says Israel should be treated “like every other ally,” he ignores the fact that Israel receives less benefits than many “other allies.”
Japan gets treaty guarantees. South Korea gets treaty guarantees and American troops on its front line – the DMZ. NATO states get the full weight of American deterrence and outsized military spending – compared to all other NATO countries, as the US accounts for roughly 70% of all NATO defense expenditures.
The Gulf monarchies host sprawling American military infrastructure protecting regimes that likely would not survive long without it.
Israel often gets lectures about “restraint” while fighting enemies openly committed to its destruction.
Israel gets told that the world’s only Jewish state — smaller than New Jersey and surrounded for decades by forces openly calling for its annihilation — should somehow behave like Holland while confronting enemies that behave more like ISIS with better public relations.
And through all of this, Israelis themselves still do the fighting.
That is the part the “subsidy” rhetoric always conceals.
When Hezbollah launches rockets into northern Israel, American Marines do not fight in southern Lebanon. When Hamas massacres Israeli civilians, American reservists are not mobilized into Gaza. When Iran openly threatens both the United States and Israel, American parents are not preparing their children for compulsory military service. Israelis are. That is not “special treatment.”
That’s why Emanuel’s rhetoric sounds less like strategy and more like ideological adaptation – the repositioning of a Democratic politician trying to survive a party increasingly shaped by activists who understand the Middle East primarily through slogans, intersectional dogma, and social media propaganda rather than military history or strategic reality.
For decades, American policymakers understood that Israel represented something uniquely valuable to the United States — a stable, democratic, technologically advanced regional power willing to fight its own wars without demanding or requiring American soldiers to die for it. Now figures like Rahm Emanuel speak as though this arrangement was some kind of American charity or a bad deal.
But it’s not — it’s a strategic partnership, and one squarely in America’s interest.
That consensus, however, is increasingly being subordinated to internal party pressures. The Democratic establishment’s attempts to placate the anti-Israel activist left will likely work about as well as it worked for Biden and Harris in 2024 — never anti-Israel enough to satisfy the far-left and Islamist activist ecosystem, but anti-Israel enough to alienate moderates, independents, and pro-American voters.
The party will soon likely decide if it should become outright hostile to voters — but history rarely rewards political classes that mistake ideological fashion for strategic wisdom. Rahm Emanuel should know that by now.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Sheila Reich, beloved LA Yiddish teacher, has died
שיינדל „שילאַ“ רײַך, אַ פּאָפּולערע לאַנגיאָריקע ייִדיש־לערערין אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס, איז לעצטנס אַוועק אין דער אייביקייט. זי איז געווען 80 יאָר אַלט.
איך האָב געקענט שילאַן במשך פֿון מער װי אַ פֿערטל יאָרהונדערט אָבער בײַ מיר האָט זי געהייסן בלויז שיינדל. ערשט הײַיאָר, אויף איר 80סטן געבורירן־טאָג האָב איך אױסגעפֿונען אַז בײַ אַלע אַנדערע האָט זי געהײסן „שילאַ“.
יאָרן לאַנג איז שײנדל געװען אַ ייִדיש־לערערין אין פֿאַרשידענע אינסטיטוציעס איבער לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס. איך אַלײַן בין קיין מאָל נישט געווען בײַ איר אין קלאַס אָבער מײַן װײַב טעמע האָט זיך יאָרן לאַנג געלערנט בײַ איר. אַלס לערערין איז שײנדל געװען אויסערגעוויינטלעך. אין אַ טיפּישן קלאַס זענען די סטודענטן געווען אױף פֿאַרשידענע ניװאָען, פֿון אַבסאָלוטע אָנהײבער ביז אַװאַנסירט. דאָך האָט זי זיך אָפּגעגעבן מיט יעדן אײנעם באַזונדער. ווי אַ רעזולטאַט האָט די ייִדיש־קענטעניש בײַ יעדן סטודענט זיך פֿאַרבעסערט.
װי איך אַלײן, און ווי אַ סך פֿון אירע סטודענטן, איז שיינדל געװען אַ קינד פֿון דער שארית־הפּליטה. זינט די קינדעריאָרן האָבן מיר בײדע גערעדט ייִדיש מיט אונדזערע טאַטע־מאַמע. (זי האָט אויך גערעדט ייִדיש מיט איר זון, אַבֿי.) פֿאַקטיש איז ייִדיש פֿאַר אונדז בײדן געװען די ערשטע שפּראַך. אַן אונטערשייד פֿון צען יאָר צווישן אונדז, איז שיינדל אין מײַנע אױגן געװען די עלטערע שװעסטער װאָס איך האָב נישט געהאַט. אין אונדזערע פֿיל שמועסן האָבן מיר גערעדט אױף מאַמע־לשון. חס־וחלילה מיר זאָלן רעדן אױף דער גױישער שפּראַך! אַזױ װי איך, האָט זי געקענט צענדליקער, אױב נישט הונדערטער יִידישע אױסדרוקן, שפּריכװערטער און חכמות. מיר האָבן אָפֿט זיך געטיילט מיט די אויסדרוקן און תּמיד הנאה געהאַט ווען מיר האָבן זיך דערוווּסט אַ נײַ ווערטל.
יאָרן לאַנג איז שײנדל אויך געװען אַ מיטגליד פֿון אונדזער לײענקרײַז אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס. טראָץ דעם װאָס זי איז געװען אַ ייִדיש־לערערין האָט זי זיך קיין מאָל נישט געהאַלטן העכער פֿון אונדז. . אָט זענען עטלעכע:
„זומער און װינטער ליגט אים אין מױל“ — אַ פּאַטאַלאָגישער ליגנער. דער ליגן בלײַבט אין זײַן מױל אַ גאַנץ יאָר.
„עס גײט מיר אן אַזױ ווי דער פֿאַריאָריקער שנײ.“
„איך האָב נישט אַפֿילו קײַן כּוח צו חלשן.“
„קושװאָך“ — „האָנימון“. איז דאָס נישט חנעװדיק?
שײנדל איז געװען אַן אשת־חיל, מיט אַ פֿינקל אין אױג. איך, צוזאַמען מיט די מיטגלידער פֿון אונדזער לײענקרײַז און די אָנצאָליקע סטודענטן במשך פֿון די יאָרן, װעלן שטאַרק בענקען נאָך איר. כּבֿוד איר אָנדענק!
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