Dishonest campaign by UCT boycott lobby
1i September 2019
In a thoroughly duplicitous and misleading statement issued on Friday, a small Jewish fringe group sought to create the impression that support for an academic boycott against Israel is a view that enjoys significant support in the South African Jewish community. They were commenting ahead of a UCT Senate meeting where a boycott of Israeli Universities was to be discussed.
Comprising a mere 65 signatories, the group disingenuously claimed that, “SA Jews support the academic boycott of Israeli Universities”. The reality is that a petition by the SA Zionist Federation opposing the boycott has to date garnered just under 65 000 signatures. Previous studies by UCT’s Kaplan Institute into SA Jewry found that close to 90% of respondents expressed strong or moderate support for Israel with only 1% expressing negative feelings. The signatories thus clearly constitute a tiny fringe group, despite their deceitfully trying to exaggerate their significance.
The SA Jewish Board of Deputies, which for 116 years has been the democratically elected representative body of SA Jewry, has consistently condemned the boycott as an affront to academic freedom as well as being problematic in terms of singling out the world’s only Jewish State, including in a letter sent to the Senate, yesterday (https://www.sajbd.org/uploads/SAJBD-letter-for-UCT-Senate-members.pdf)
This petition was one example of a misleading and dishonest campaign waged by an increasingly desperate Palestinian Solidarity Forum.