An Open Response to the UCT Council “Statement on the crisis in Gaza” From Trevor Norwitz
For over two decades, I have chaired the Board of the University of Cape Town Fund, the American alumni and fundraising arm of the University of Cape Town (UCT), where I took my first degree.
UCT is the highest rated educational institution on the African continent. UCT students are called “Ikeys,” a nickname coined a century ago by their Afrikaner rivals at Stellenbosch alluding to UCT’s sizable Jewish minority and faculty presence. Although intended as an anti- Semitic jibe, the moniker was proudly adopted. In recent years the memory of that legacy has faded, along with the Jewish representation on campus.
Over the past 20 years, I have often been berated by other alumni for championing an institution that they said had become so hopelessly biased against Israel and even anti-Semitic, that it was not worth supporting. I have disagreed.
It is certainly true that UCT’s recent record regarding Israel has not been wonderful. Every few years, the student union passes BDS resolutions and urges the university to cut all ties with Israeli institutions. In the past few weeks alone there have been statements unhinged from reality or morality by the university’s Health Sciences Students Council and some members of the Law Faculty and Senate. But these sentiments, I responded, stem from ignorance and misinformation, herd-mentality, and an understandable identification (due to political alliances, Israeli overreach, or just a natural sympathy for the underdog) with legitimate Palestinian aspirations.
In any case, I noted, the grown-ups running the university – the Council – have consistently rejected BDS efforts. The best approach for one who cares about these issues, I have argued, is to stay engaged and supportive, and to provide accurate information and a balanced perspective, rather than just ceding the field to the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic horde.
But the Council’s recent “Statement on the crisis in Gaza” changed all that. I can no longer in good conscience be associated with UCT and am questioning whether it is worth remaining engaged at all.
The Council statement, while varnished with a thin veneer of impartiality, reflects an institution which has lost its moral bearings, even its regard for the truth, which should be sacred to any institution of higher learning.
The suffering of innocents in Gaza is terrible and tragic but it is the terrorist organization Hamas and not Israel that is overwhelmingly to blame for that suffering. And, as I have been writing for years, that blame is shared by those – now joined by the UCT Council – who irresponsibly, even if unwittingly, give Hamas so much support and encouragement, rather than insisting that they be held accountable for their heinous crimes.
The Council statement does at least condemn the “deliberate attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians.” However this condemnation (to the extent the Council does believe it was “obligated to speak out on … egregious violations of human rights” although in reality it almost never does) was two months late and half-hearted.
After referring to South Africa’s own “history of settler colonialism, apartheid and state violence” (insinuating that Israel is guilty of the same), the critique of Hamas was introduced with “even a struggle for freedom must be waged within an ethical and moral framework,” as though Hamas is struggling for freedom rather than to eliminate Israel and eradicate its Jewish population. But at least it was a condemnation. October 7 was the most gruesome, savage and sadistic terrorist attack in modern history. And yet so many who claim to occupy the moral high ground cannot bring themselves to simply condemn it.
Having offered its perfunctory condemnation of Hamas, the Council statement goes on to launch into what can best be described as a modern-day medieval-style blood libel. It accuses the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) of, among other things, deliberately attacking civilians and engaging in a “war on children” (an inaccurately attributed phrase but one with great resonance in the history of anti-Semitic blood libels).
It regurgitates Hamas-provided statistics (that even the most biased news agencies know they need to qualify as such because, if history is a guide, they will likely be exposed in due course as flagrant lies). Speaking of debunked lies, the statement goes on to accuse the IDF of war crimes such as “the deliberate destruction of hospitals” and does not even mention the perfidious war crime Hamas employs as its core strategy of weaponizing hospitals, mosques, schools and other civilian infrastructure both for their utility as human shields and for their public relations value when Israel is excoriated for its actions against such tactics.
In essence, the Council statement, while speciously “even-handed,” draws (at best) a moral equivalence between Hamas and the State of Israel. It equates a genocidal terrorist death cult’s deliberate planned attacks against civilians – including mass rape, torture, beheadings, genital mutilation, immolation, firing thousands of rockets at towns, and kidnapping hundreds (including babies and geriatrics) – with a sovereign nation’s attempts to end those attacks on its people.
My heart sank when I read the Council statement. How could an institution that I have loved and to which I have volunteered so much of my time for so long be incapable of making such basic moral distinctions, or have such a blind spot when it comes to the children of Israel? And how poorly must the members of Council misunderstand the situation if they think castigating Israel for defeating Hamas will help the Palestinian people in the long run?
It goes without saying that I cannot continue to support or be associated with such an institution. This is my noisy resignation from the Chairmanship and the Board of the UCT Fund after over 20 years. I remain open to engaging with UCT if the good people there, including on the Council, see the folly of their statement and are willing to withdraw or revise it appropriately.
UCT is hardly alone in its confusion. Who could have imagined the presidents of three of America’s top universities refusing to say that calls for genocide of Jewish people would violate their campus policies? The difference is that this was not just some Freudian slip or some radical student diatribe, but a considered public statement by the governing body of the university. Of all the universities that have made official statements on the war between Israel and Hamas, none I have seen has been as injudicious and tendentious as that put out by my own university.
To my fellow UCT alumni, especially those who care about Israel’s right to exist and live in peace, I say: please do not permanently give up on our alma mater. UCT is a vital and vibrant institution and if it has lost its way in these terrible times, I am confident it will find its way back.
I would also like to make a plea to our non-Jewish friends not to be silent in the face of the tidal wave of anti-Semitism that has followed Hamas’ unprovoked and barbaric October 7 attack. The volcano of hate erupted even before the IDF started responding: crowds in Sydney screaming “Gas the Jews” and massive demonstrations in London and New York calling to “Globalize the Intifada” (translation: kill Jews everywhere). I would never have imagined that another Holocaust was possible in the United States, in my lifetime at least. Now I know it could be just one bad leader away.
The situation in South Africa is even worse, with overt threats being made against Jewish day schools and prayer vigils for kidnapped hostages being assailed by armed thugs. In addition to dispelling any illusions that peace may be possible with Hamas, October 7 has underscored for anyone who may have harbored doubts why Israel’s survival and security is an imperative for the Jewish people. While this often comes as a surprise, the Jewish people are a tiny minority comprising less than one quarter of one percent of the world’s population. We need vocal allies to stand with us in the battle against anti-Semitism in all its forms.
Aeschylus, often called the Father of Tragedy, said: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” He could not have imagined the X/Twitter- and TikTok-powered weaponization of lies and propaganda as a technique of delegitimation, demonization and war. Universities have to be the bulwarks of truth, not disseminators of lies. UCT has to do better.
