I note with wonder and some distaste the continuing "Israel Apartheid" agitation on many South African university campuses. Not that I don't think that Israel isn't eminently criticizable for the encroachment of its settlements into Palestinian land and, doubtless, for much else besides in the way that any state backed into the sort of corner that Israel is, is likely to be. One of the most impressive things about Israel is that there is no shortage of such criticism by Israeli intellectuals within Israel, which says something for freedom of expression there which cannot be said of just about any other Middle Eastern country.
However, I am not interested in either attacking or defending Israel. What I am deeply interested in is the way in which anti-Israeli sentiment on our campuses so easily shades into outright anti-semitism. There is no dodging this. During the recent disturbances at Wits over musical performances by Israeli performers there were anti-semitic songs sung, chants of "Kill the Jew !" and so forth. This is very, very ugly and disgraceful stuff.
It is also amazing to someone who knew South African universities under apartheid. When I was a student in Durban it was extremely noticeable that virtually without exception, the sprinkling of Jews on our campus were all anti-apartheid. Some were Progs, some Liberals, some Communists. (I note somewhat wryly that several of the student Communists I knew then live happily in Israel today.) This was true at faculty level too - professors like Hansi Pollak and Leo Kuper were outspokenly anti-apartheid.
But the Durban campus was notoriously conservative and lefties like myself on the SRC had a hard time faced with the solid bloc of Engineering reactionaries - in Maritzburg a role played by the Agrics. When we went to NUSAS congresses - and NUSAS was then the most anti-apartheid organization operating openly in the country - it was even more striking how prominent Jewish liberals and lefties were at UCT and Wits.
We could not but recognise that the Wits and UCT campuses were not only more academically distinguished than ours in Durban but also more lively and more liberal. We used to debate why this was and pretty quickly came up with the explanation that "Durban just doesn't have enough Jews". Whether one was looking at student leaders like Hugh Kowarsky, Adrian Leftwich or Roger Jowell, or at faculty level where Wits had Julius Lewin and UCT had Jack Simons, it was simply obvious that this was the missing ingredient.
Moreover, it went further than that. Both UCT and Wits were substantially better endowed than the University of Natal, which always got by on a shoestring. And here again, the big difference was that the Jewish communities of Johannesburg and Cape Town were much bigger than Durban's, and they were strongly philanthropic - they gave and gave to their local universities, endowing chairs, scholarships and bursaries.