As in the last 25 years of democracy South Africa’s Jewish community had nothing to fear and had no enemies. What they will find – however – are enemies of discrimination enemies of human rights atrocities and enemies of violence. As long as Palestinian people are not free South Africa’s Jewry will not be free writes Jessie Duarte – the Deputy Secretary-General of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress.
The condemnation of the human rights atrocities perpetrated by the apartheid Israeli regime is not a condemnation of all Jewish people. Far from it. In fact the ANC believes that just as white people needed liberation from the chains of apartheid so too Israelis need liberation from the atrocities perpetrated by the apartheid state of Israel. The ANC will never hold all Jews responsible nor even condemn them for the atrocities of Israel just as it never held white people as a group responsible for the atrocities of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
It is therefore disingenuous and somewhat dangerous for the national vice-president of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies firstly to single out a leader of the ANC as if Lindiwe Sisulu was not simply implementing and promoting ANC policy and secondly to thereby suggest that the ANC is anti-Semitic because it condemns the atrocious abuses of human rights in the Occupied Territories and the crimes perpetrated against Palestinians globally.
It is questionable for the SAJBD to speak on behalf of South Africa’s Jewry as if there are not Jews who do not currently support the State of Israel and even worst to suggest that they are lesser Jews because they do not support Israel.
