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Jews in Today’s South Africa Feel Embattled
By HENRY SREBRNIK Since the Gaza war began last year, South African Jews feel like they are cats on a hot tin roof.
While South African Jews have risen to prominence and helped build the country, there is a deep-seated fear of the current government and for the community’s safety, because for the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the Palestine issue is a deeply felt ideological cause.
South African public opinion is vehemently pro-Palestinian. This was already the case before the current war, and since then, tensions have only increased. In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, South Africa’s International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor held high-level discussions with senior members of Hamas, a move that was met with criticism.
South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein condemned the government at a pro-Israel rally. After Pandor’s diplomatic outreach to Hamas, Goldstein changed the Prayer for the Republic of South Africa, said regularly at congregations across the country, from asking God to protect “the president and the deputy president all members of the government,” to asking for protection for “all the people of this country,” a measure, he wrote in a letter to South African rabbis, that was taken in “extreme situations, for government violations of morality so grotesque they undermine the integrity of praying.”
To the estimated 60,000 South African Jews, their government appears to have shown little empathy for the Jewish victims of terror. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), the umbrella organization that represents the country’s Jewish community, has noted a sharp increase in antisemitism.
Since then, the South African government, with broad popular support, has accused Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). For many Jewish groups in the country, the decision to side against Israel was seen as evidence of antisemitism.
Now, the city of Johannesburg plans to rename the road on which the American consulate is located after Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. It was proposed by a former mayor, Thapelo Amad. Sandton Drive, its current name, is a central artery in Johannesburg, and Sandton, the neighbourhood in which the road is located, is home to many of South Africa’s Jews. The area is also home to at least four synagogues among other Jewish institutions.
Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who is now 80 years old, gained infamy in 1969 when she was part of a group who hijacked a Trans World Airlines flight on a journey from Rome to Tel Aviv, Israel. She became known as the first woman to hijack a plane.
“We stand with Hamas, Hamas stands with us, together we are Palestine and Palestine will be free,” Amad posted online. “With our souls, with our blood, we will conquer Al Aqsa.”
All of this is now reshaping how many South African Jews view themselves, their place in the country and their relationships with their fellow citizens. It is in this crucible that they are now forced to reconcile their own complex history in South Africa with the reality of a country whose national identity is increasingly built in opposition to a foreign country, Israel, that they hold dear.
Indeed, most Jewish institutions in South Africa today are oriented toward Israel. Herzlia, the primary Jewish school in Cape Town, is named after Theodor Herzl, and its motto (“Im Tirtzu”) is based on the famous Zionist line about willing Israel into existence.
The school has been the center of controversy, as the hard-left Economic Freedom Fighters political party last year called for it to be deregistered with the government, a move that would cause it to lose funding, for being too “pro-Israel.” Among other issues, the party cited the high number of Herzlia graduates who move to Israel and join the Israeli military. The exact number of Herzlia alumni who do so is unclear, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a highly contentious topic.
The rhetoric reached a boiling point last December, when a speaker at a large pro-Palestine rally in Cape Town targeted Herzlia directly, saying, “We know where the murderers come from — they come from Herzlia, here in Cape Town.” After the rally, the foreign ministry said it would investigate if any citizens were serving in the Israeli military and arrest any that had. These events were used by Jewish authorities as evidence of their threatened status in South Africa.
The South African Jewish community traces its lineage almost exclusively to the Lithuanian Jews who fled Europe before and during the Holocaust. They arrived in a country where they were greeted with skepticism. There were undeniable pockets of support for Nazism among some political parties at the time.
When the Afrikaner-led National Party took power in 1948, however, it didn’t elevate these views into the political discourse. Instead, the party focused on creating the apartheid system of minority rule and gaining the full support of all white citizens, including Jews.
Jews were significantly over-represented in the struggle against apartheid, with many in the ANC, but most lived with it. Not until 1985 did Jewish community leaders condemn it outright. As Cyril Harris, chief rabbi from 1987 to 2004, later told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “The Jewish community benefited from apartheid and an apology must be given.”
Many South African Jews today, though, fear that the country may fall into economic ruin. Israel has always been viewed as an exit plan thanks to its Law of Return, which grants them automatic Israeli citizenship.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
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Russian Teen Assaulted Over Israeli Flag Photo as Antisemitism Concerns Mount, Amid Calls for Jews to Leave Country
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, former chief rabbi of Moscow and current president of the Conference of European Rabbis, on June 24, 2024. Photo: IMAGO/epd via Reuters Connect
A 15-year-old student at a school in Russia was brutally assaulted by classmates after posting a photo featuring an Israeli flag on social media, Russian media reported, leaving him with a serious eye fracture from an incident that has drawn public outrage and is now under criminal investigation.
Earlier this month, a high school student in St. Petersburg, a major city in northwestern Russia, was physically attacked by two classmates after changing his social media profile photo to one featuring an Israeli flag, according to a report by local News Channel 78 on Sunday.
One of the attackers allegedly harassed the boy over his profile picture, demanding that he remove it and apologize.
After a verbal confrontation in which the attacker threatened the boy and hurled insults, including references to the Holocaust, he allegedly demanded that the victim meet him in the bathroom to continue the discussion.
When the two boys met there, the assailant reportedly demanded that he apologize on his knees. The victim refused but said he was willing to apologize without being humiliated.
The attacker then struck him repeatedly in the face while another boy blocked the bathroom exit.
The victim had to be hospitalized after suffering a fracture to the eye socket and underwent surgery under general anesthesia to remove bone fragments.
After spending more than a week in the hospital, he is now receiving outpatient care, and his family is coordinating with school administrators on a transition to home-based schooling as recommended by his doctors.
The boy’s mother reported the assault to the police, prompting local authorities to open a criminal investigation for assault and battery.
This incident came after Pinchas Goldschmidt, who served as Moscow’s chief rabbi from 1993 to 2022, recently urged Jews to leave Russia and consider immigrating to Israel, citing a growing hostile climate and rising antisemitic attacks targeting the local Jewish community.
“I have long urged Russia’s Jews to consider aliyah, the return to Israel. The post-Soviet renaissance was extraordinary, but illusions of permanence ignore history,” Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, wrote in an op-ed for The Jerusalem Post earlier this month.
“Now, more than ever, Russia’s Jews should heed the call to leave. Israel offers not just refuge but a homeland where Jewish life is sovereign, not contingent on geopolitical whims,” he continued.
Although the number of Jews leaving Russia has declined, the country still accounted for the largest number of immigrants to Israel in 2025, with roughly 8,300 arrivals, according to data released Monday by Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry.
This figure marked a nearly 60 percent drop from 19,500 last year and a small fraction of the 74,000 who immigrated in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Israel suspends operations of multiple humanitarian organizations in Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders
The Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs is halting the operations of more than three dozen humanitarian groups in Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders.
The ministry announced on Tuesday that the affected organizations failed to meet its new requirements for non-governmental organizations providing humanitarian aid in Gaza, which were posted online in November. The requirements included providing a full list of its Palestinian employees.
“We emphasize that the registration process is intended to prevent the exploitation of aid by Hamas, which in the past operated under the cover of certain international aid organizations, knowingly or unknowingly,” wrote the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which oversees aid in Gaza, in a post on X.
The ministry said that 37 of the NGOs working in Gaza did not have their permits renewed for the coming year, according to the Associated Press.
Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, posted a link to a Ynet article about the suspensions on X Tuesday, writing, “An ongoing scandal ignored by UN & European enablers shows why @Israel has to decertify some of the NGOs who have terrorists on their payroll.”
The suspensions, which will begin on Jan. 1, come as President Donald Trump has put pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to usher the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel into its second phase, which would include the reconstruction of Gaza.
Speaking beside Netanyahu at a press conference Monday, Trump said that he believed reconstruction efforts in the enclave were “going to begin pretty soon,” adding that work to improve sanitary conditions had already begun.
But aid groups in Gaza have said that Israel has continued to block aid from entering the enclave as storms and flooding have battered the region’s residents in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders warned in a blog post that Israel’s new registration guidelines “risk leaving hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza without lifesaving healthcare in 2026.” The United Nations’ Humanitarian Country Team also lambasted the requirements, writing that aid groups had warned they were “vague, politicised and impossible to meet without breaching humanitarian principles.”
But COGAT minimized the impact of the suspensions in its post, writing that “the implementation of the government decision will not result in any future harm to the volume of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip.” It said that the combined contributions of the groups affected amounted to 1% of the total aid volume in Gaza.
In June 2024, Israel accused Doctors Without Borders, which is also known by its French acronym MSF, of employing a Hamas operative. In response, MSF said it was “deeply concerned by these allegations and is taking them very seriously.”
“MSF chose not to cooperate with the registration process and refused to provide Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs with a list of its employees, as required by a government decision,” the post continued.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel suspends operations of multiple humanitarian organizations in Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders appeared first on The Forward.
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US Defends Israel’s Right to Recognize Somaliland, Likens Move to Palestinian State Recognition
A demonstrator holds an image depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Somalis attend a demonstration after Israel became the first country to formally recognize the self-declared Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state, a decision that could reshape regional dynamics and test Somalia’s longstanding opposition to secession, in Hodan district of Mogadishu, Somalia, Dec. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Feisal Omar
The United States has defended Israel’s decision to recognize the self-declared Republic of Somaliland amid international backlash, comparing the move to the recognition of a Palestinian state by numerous countries.
“Israel has the same right to conduct diplomatic relations as any other sovereign state,” Tammy Bruce, deputy US ambassador to the United Nations, said during an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Monday.
Bruce’s comments came in response to widespread criticism of Israel’s formal recognition of the breakaway territory of Somaliland. Several Arab, Islamic, and African countries, organizations, and entities publicly rejected the move, as did other nations such as China. The European Union also opposed the decision, saying it “reaffirms the importance of respecting the unity, the sovereignty, and the territorial integrity” of Somalia.
US President Donald Trump has said he opposes recognition of Somaliland, and Bruce added on Monday that Washington had no announcement or change in American policy regarding the self-declared country. However, Bruce chided other nations for recently welcoming recognition of a “nonexistent Palestinian state” against Israel’s wishes while condemning Israel for its latest diplomatic move, calling out what she described as a “double standard” against the Jewish state.
“Earlier this year, several countries, including members of this council, made the unilateral decision to recognize a nonexistent Palestinian state. And yet, no emergency meeting was called to express this council’s outrage,” she noted.
Many Western countries — including France, the UK, Australia, and Canada — recognized a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September, a move Israeli and US officials criticized as “rewarding terrorism.” Hamas praised the decision, even describing recognition as “the fruits of Oct. 7,” citing the Palestinian terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as the reason for increasing Western support.
“This council’s persistent double standards and misdirection of focus distract from its mission of maintaining international peace and security,” Bruce said.
However, Slovenian Ambassador Samuel Zbogar, whose country has recognized Palestinian statehood, rejected Washington’s comparison.
“Palestine is not part of any state. It is illegally occupied territory, as declared by the International Court of Justice, among others,” Zbogar said, describing Somaliland as “part of a UN member state” and arguing that “recognizing it goes against” the UN Charter.
Israel on Friday became the first country to officially recognize the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state.
Somaliland is an unrecognized state in the Horn of Africa, situated on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the east.
“The State of Israel plans to immediately expand its relations with the Republic of Somaliland through extensive cooperation in the fields of agriculture, health, technology, and economy,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote in a post on X.
Although no other country has formally recognized Somaliland, several — including the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Kenya, and Taiwan — have maintained liaison offices, allowing them to engage diplomatically and conduct trade and consular activities without full formal recognition.
“It is not a hostile step toward Somalia, nor does it preclude future dialogue between the parties. Recognition is not an act of defiance. It is an opportunity,” Israel’s Deputy UN Ambassador Jonathan Miller told the UN Security Council on Monday.
According to experts, the growing Israel-Somaliland partnership could be a “game changer” for Israel, boosting the Jewish state’s ability to counter the Yemen-based Houthi terrorist group while offering strategic and geographic advantages amid shifting regional power dynamics.
Unlike most other states in the region, Somaliland has relative security, regular elections, and a degree of political stability — qualities that make it a valuable partner for international allies and a key player in regional cooperation.
Last month, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a prominent Israeli think tank, released a new report arguing that Somaliland’s strategic position along the Red Sea, its closeness to Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen, and its willingness to work with pro-Western states make it a key ally for Israel, benefiting both sides amid rising regional volatility.
“Somaliland’s significance lies in its geostrategic location and in its willingness — as a stable, moderate, and reliable state in a volatile region — to work closely with Western countries,” the INSS report said.
“Somaliland’s territory could serve as a forward base for multiple missions: intelligence monitoring of the Houthis and their armament efforts; logistical support for Yemen’s legitimate government in its war against them; and a platform for direct operations against the Houthis,” it continued.