"Shoot the Jew" chant condemned by SAJBD
What was supposed to have been a silent demonstration against a concert by an Israeli jazz quartet at Wits University last Wednesday turned ugly when some of the protestors chanteddubula e juda - ‘Shoot the Jew' - outside the venue. The protest was organised by BDS-South Africa, an organisation that campaigns for a boycott of anything to do with Israel, whether in the cultural, academic, economic or any other sphere.
Rather than condemning this incitement to violence against South African Jews and distancing his organisation from those calls Muhammed Desai, Coordinator of BDS-SA, has sought to justify it. As quoted by the Wits Vuvuzela, he said, "Just like you would say kill the Boer at funeral during the eighties it wasn't about killing white people, it was used as a way of identifying with the apartheid regime". Desai further commented, "The whole idea anti-Semitism is blown out of proportion".
The SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) deplores this blatant incitement to racist violence against the South African Jewish community. It further finds it deeply shocking that that BDS-SA, an organisation that purports to stand up for human rights, refuses to acknowledge that it is doing anything wrong by propagating it.
SAJBD National Chairman Mary Kluk believed that by allowing its members to make such hateful and dangerous statements and subsequently defending them for doing so, BDS-SA had revealed its true colours.
"What this incident unmistakeably shows is that BDS-SA's real agenda is not to stand up for the Palestinian cause but to incite hatred, and possibly even violence, against Jewish South Africans" she said, "South Africa, in view of its own tragic past of bigotry, racism and violence, simply cannot tolerate this kind of hateful, inflammatory rhetoric, whether aimed at the Jewish community or against any other sector of South African society".
Kluk also remarked on how distressing it was that the calls for violence against the Jewish community had taken place at Wits, an institution that had throughout its existence upheld the values of tolerance, understanding, respect for diversity and academic freedom. She praised the Wits leadership for standing firm in the face of threats and intimidation by anti-Israel activists to cancel the concert and for ensuring that all the security arrangements were in place to allow it to go ahead without being disrupted. The only sad thing, she said, was that it had been necessary for such extensive security measures to have been required at all.
The SAJBD is following up the incident and will be taking appropriate action.
Statement issued by Wendy Kahn, National Director: SAJBD, August 2 2013
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
