At the beginning of the day, the atmosphere of the ANC’s Pro-Palestine rally was celebratory. Supporters had traveleved from Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, the West Rand, and areas around Tshwane. From ten am, ANC contemporary anthems pumped from the speakers hoisted onto bakkies and hawkers sold sweets, chips and cigarettes. Starting at Prospect Street, where a field adjoins the road, a crowd of thousands amassed amidst a jubilant atmosphere.
Merchandise was on-sale, a mixture of ANC-branded garb and South Africa’s version of Pro-Palestine regalia: kafiyeh scarves, priced at R150, manufactured nowhere near the Middle East but rather in China (proclaimed by their packets). ANC caps priced at R120, a South African Communist Party t-shirt bearing the face of Chris Hani going for R300. The ultimate location for the protest was the Israeli Embassy in Lynnwood, Pretoria.
Those who spoke from the loudhailers harkened back to the history of the Anti-Apartheid struggle and the ANC’s long-standing relationship with the Palestinian Liberal Organisation, with a speaker stating ‘Those who were victims of Hitler are now the oppressors in Palestine. The ANC will not keep quiet. The ANC will have to rise because an injustice is being caused against other human beings’… Phantsi Israel, phantsi’ (Down Israel, Down).
Comparisons between Israelis and Nazis are a standard antisemitic trope, aiming to draw parity between the Nazi atrocities committed against Jews during the Holocaust, and the current day crimes that Jewish Israelis are said to be committing against Palestinians. The whole of Israel is implicated in this discourse, in which the notion of Israeli civilians is non-existent, and all Israelis implicated in the alleged criminal actions of the Israeli Defense Force.
Posters carried by marchers echoed these claims, with one image drawing comparisons between SS troops in the Second World War and an Israeli soldier. In the rhetoric of supreme irony which simultaneously marks Jews as key victims historically and arch aggressors at present, Israelis are alleged to be committing a genocide against the Palestinian people.
A protestor holds a placard comparing an Israeli soldier to a Nazi troop. (Photo: Rebecca Hodes)
Throughout the course of the day, which included many lengthy speeches, not a single mention was made of the militant group Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023. On that day, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel and murdered over 1,200 Israelis, committing atrocities reminiscent of the tactics of ISIS, including burning people alive, raping women, opening fire against attendants at a music festival, taking dozens of hostages, and even beheading some of their victims. It was this attack that has elicited the latest retaliatory actions of the Israeli Defence Force, to attempt to strike back against Hamas’s stronghold in Gaza.
Early on during the protest there was little mention of Hamas, and at least one of the speakers called for a ‘two state solution’ rather than the complete eradication of the Jewish state encompassed in the call that became the day’s rallying cry: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’.
But the militancy and violent intent of the protestors that came to full fruition in the speeches given outside the Israeli embassy was evident from early on in the day, in which protestors waved the flag of Hezbollah, a Jihadi terrorist organisation whose objective it is to destroy the Jewish state and all who live in it. The flag can also be seen being waved in the SABC’s coverage of the protest.
The legitimation and defence of Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza and which was responsible for the casualties on 7 October, ratcheted up as the day continued. As Noah Yuval Harari has written about the events on 7 October 2023:
‘To understand the aims of Hamas, three things should be noted. First, Hamas largely focused its attack on killing and kidnapping civilians rather than soldiers. Second, Hamas terrorists tortured and executed adults, children, and even babies in the most gruesome ways the terrorists could think of. Third, instead of trying to hide the atrocities, Hamas made sure they were publicized, even filming some of the atrocities itself and uploading the shocking videos to social media. This is the very definition of terrorism.’
As Harari’s has pointed out, Hamas’s crimes were the ‘deepest form’ of crimes against humanity’, aiming not just to kill humans but to destroy faith and trust in humanity, and to dehumanise and terrorise all.
The dehumanisation of Israel and its supporters was evident in the t-shirts that protestors wore, and in the signs that they carried. The handwriting on one t-shirt proclaimed: ‘Racist Zionist project. Anti-human’. Another stated: ‘Stand with Palestine. Stand with humanity.’ The implication is that those who support Israel, Zionists, are inhuman. The dehumanisation of Israelis, and particularly the conflation of Jewish civilians and soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force, is one of the key tenets of this discourse.
A protestor's t-shirt proclaims: ‘Racist Zionist Project… Anti-Human. Photo: Rebecca Hodes
Support for Hamas and for terrorism against Israel was amplified by one of the leaders of the Muslim Duhur prayer service, which took place during the protest on an adjacent field. He stated: ‘Hamas is a legitimate organisation. Hamas is defending their people. Hamas is defending their land… [against the] Zionist beasts.’
As the march began to move towards the Israeli embassy in Lynwood, chants of ‘Viva Hamas viva!’, ‘Viva Islamic Jihad viva!’ and ‘Viva al-Qassam viva!’ were taken up by the crowd. Al-Qassam refers to the military wing of Hamas, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which has committed targeted attacks including suicide bombings against Israeli civilians since the early 1990s.
After a march in the sweltering heat, the protestors converged on the Israeli embassy, which closes on Friday afternoons in any event to give staff time to prepare for the Jewish sabbath. During the speeches that follow, delivered from a truck with loudspeakers, much was made of the allegedly ‘cowardly’ actions of the embassy staff for not being present to meet the marchers. The crowd became more agitated, and the party-like atmosphere that suffused the protest earlier in the morning dissipated. In its place was rage.
From the podium, there were chants of ‘Terrorists, terrorists!’, to which the crowd responded, ‘Israeli terrorists!’. Whatever distinction existed between Israel, Zionism and Judaism collapses. Calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and the occupation of the embassy, pro-Palestinian stalwart Firoza Mayet shouted, ‘Comrades, we have been in power for thirty years. Why is the Israeli embassy, the Zionist Jew Federation [sic], the Jewish Board of Deputies on our soil? Why? Why comrades? We are in power. They must be expelled now. Not yesterday. They must be expelled now.’
In an explicit example of antisemitism, the right of Jews to be citizens of South Africa was questioned, their belonging was negated. The Zionist Federation as conflated with the Jewish Board of Deputies, the Jewish community’s elected body of leaders and an umbrella organisation that represents a broad array of South African Jewish organisations, including those secular and those which advocate for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The ambassador of Palestine, Hanan Jarrar, was the next to speak. She states: ‘Together we gather here in front of this Apartheid entity in Pretoria, united against the ongoing tragic Israeli genocidal war on our people, and the seventy-five-year occupation… In this genocidal war… over 15,000 Palestinians have been injured, excluding those from the Israeli bombing of the Al-Alhi Baptist Hospital.’
In fact, the cause of the explosion at the Al-Alhi Baptist Hospital on the 17th of October is highly contested, with Palestinian Islamic Jihad blaming the blast on the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), while the IDF released ground, satellite and thermal images showing that the blast was caused by a malfunctioning rocket fired within Gaza. The blast at the hospital was mentioned by an array of speakers at the protest as evidence of Israeli terrorism, its controversial origins were ignored, and outright blame was assigned to Israel.
ANC Youth League President, Thlologelo Collen Malatji, was the next to speak. Threatening to abandon peaceful protest and rather to ‘stand up and act like the people of Palestine’, Malatji stated:
‘We are here today and we are told that the Ambassador of Israel is not here. Now we are calling upon… President Cyril Ramaphosa to immediately expel them. This embassy here must be removed with immediate effect. If President Ramaphosa does not remove them by Monday, we are coming back on Monday… we are going to occupy this building here… All we do is to protest and walk around.’
Calling for an escalation from the day’s peaceful protest to more direct, violent action, Malatji stated ominously: ‘The days of protesting and walking around must end.’
A protest placard reads, ‘Co-operation with Isr**l is a crime against Humanity’. Israel’s existence as a state is metaphorically erased through the use of asterisks to supplant the word ‘real’. Photo: Rebecca Hodes
The next speaker, a representative of the ANC Women’s League, focused on the members of the South African Police Services who were stationed outside the gates of the Israeli embassy. She stated ‘You are coming to protect us whereas we are not under threat. We are not under threat here. We don’t need to be protected. You are not supposed to be here. You are wasting our resources, you are wasting our tax money to come and be here… We are ready to fight and we are here… We are saying ‘Down to Israel, down’. We support Gaza. Viva Gaza, viva! Away with genocide, away! Away with Israel killers away!’
An unnamed representative from COSATU then shouted from the mike, ‘Run Israel run! Run to the sea, run!... Comrades, we can no longer afford to live with Israel in our borders. They must be chased to the sea!... They don’t like us, we don’t like them. Let them fokof and leave our shores.’
With this statement, the alleged peaceful intent of the protest was exposed as the lie it was, with explicit support for the genocide of the Israeli people. The genteel mask of the ANC’s protest fell, and the threat of violence and expulsion were made palpable.
The ANC’s Palestinian solidarity rally ended, not with entreaties for peace, but with explicit calls for violent, even genocidal reprisals against Israel. As this protest showed, allegations that Israel is an Apartheid state that is committing genocide against the Palestinians have popular purchase among the ANC and its partners within the Tripartite Alliance. When popular protests erupt, careful distinctions between Israelis, Zionists and Jews are just one of the casualties of South Africa’s critical response to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Others are hope and common humanity.
Rebecca Hodes is an Associate Professor in the Department for Anthropology, Archaeology and Development Studies at the University of Pretoria. She writes in her personal capacity.
