[ April 18, 2024 ]
Photo: Nazi emblems at Jameson hall at CapeTown University today (thanks to Spotlighting for the photos). Last month, members of the student government at South Africa’s Durban University of Technology (DUT) called for the expulsion of all Jewish students from their campus, in a shocking scene eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
How does any Jew or freedom lover see these developments and not fear the future? Especially since the response to this savage hate is to blame the Jew? How does any donor – like Alisa Doctoroff, Carole Zabar, Karen Adler, Edith Everett, the Leichstag Foundation, the Bronfman Foundation, David Hochberg, the Jewish Communal Fund, Edith Everett, Rosenzweig Coopersmith Foundation, Max and Andre Leichtag, Geoffrey Biddle, David Eisner, Leichtag Foundation, the Kathryn Ames Foundation, Jim Joseph Foundation, et al fund BDS genocidal hate?
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“WATCH: Anti-Israel protest in Johannesburg turns ugly,” March 11, 2015
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies has released footage of what it is calling an ‘anti-Semitism’ protest, by members of BDS and COSAS. Watch.
On Sunday 8th March the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg hosted an Israeli expo, which showcases Israeli products such as food, wine and medicine. Members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions group used the opportunity, along with members from the Congress of South African Students, to conclude their Israeli Apartheid Week with a protest against what it calls ‘Israel’s apartheid policies and violations of international law’.
The SAJBD has repeatedly expressed concerns that the BDS, by importing the Middle East conflict into South Africa, is creating a climate that encourages anti-Semitism, while shutting down any possible and rational debate on Israeli – Palestinian issues.
The BDS demonstration, they believe, shows how the dynamics of intimidation are at play. Supporters of Israel trying to attend the SA – Israel exhibition had to be escorted through the crowd by police, while chants of ‘go back to your land’ and ‘we will kill you’ can also be heard.
BDS’ Bram Hanekom (who joined us in studio in January) was present, protesting against the ‘apartheid Israeli expo’.
And this: From Durban to Los Angeles: the BDS movement’s long trail of anti-Semitism
Click photo to download. A Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) protest against Israel in Melbourne, Australia, on June 5, 2010. Credit: Mohamed Ouda via
By Tammi Rossman-Benjamin/JNS.org
Last month, in a breathtaking display of anti-Semitism reminiscent of Nazi Germany, members of the student government at South Africa’s Durban University of Technology (DUT) called for the expulsion of all Jewish students from their campus. The very next day, halfway around the world, the student government at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) engaged in a similar display of anti-Jewish bigotry, nearly denying a highly qualified young woman a position on the student judiciary board after four student representatives brazenly argued that her Jewishness and affiliation with Jewish organizations should make her ineligible for the position.
Besides a shared proclivity for anti-Jewish bigotry, the DUT and UCLA student governments have something else in common: both bodies had previously voted to embrace the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. This is not a coincidence, but rather further evidence of the well-documented relationship between BDS and acts of anti-Semitism, particularly on college campuses. At schools where groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) promote BDS, Jewish students have routinely reported being harassed, physically and verbally assaulted, threatened, vilified, and discriminated against. Jewish students’ property and the property of Jewish student organizations have been defaced, damaged, or destroyed, while Jewish student events have been disrupted and shut down.
The link between BDS and anti-Semitism should come as no surprise to anyone who knows the history of the BDS movement, which ironically emerged at the 2001 U.N.-sponsored World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance—held in Durban, South Africa. Dubbed by former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler as “the tipping point for the coalescence of a new, virulent, globalizing anti-Jewishness,” the Durban conference and its concomitant NGO Forum featured posters displaying Nazi icons, anti-Jewish cartoons, hecklers chanting “Jew, Jew, Jew,” and wide distribution of the virulently anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” forgery. Tom Lantos, the late member of the U.S. Congress and Holocaust survivor, was part of the American delegation to the Durban conference and said the following: “For me, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand, this was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period.”
BDS was spawned in the Durban conference’s fetid swamp of Jew-hatred and brought into the world through the NGO Forum’s Declaration of Principles, a document that not only laid the groundwork for the BDS movement, but also set the stage for today’s broader landscape of global anti-Israel activism. Written in highly politicized language, the Declaration of Principles declared Israel to be “a racist, apartheid state” and accused Israel of “crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing [and] acts of genocide.” According to the declaration, Israel should be punished for its “crimes” by “the launch[ing] of an international anti-Israel movement as implemented against South African Apartheid,” as well as “a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state, which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, and the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military operation and training) between all states and Israel.”
If the BDS movement was born in 2001 at the Durban Conference and NGO Forum, it came of age in 2005 with the Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS, which virtually all subsequent BDS campaigns—including anti-Israel divestment resolutions on U.S. campuses—have acknowledged as their source and guiding light. Although it was signed by more than 100 Palestinian NGOs, the main group behind the Palestinian Civil Society Call and the subsequent Palestinian BDS National Committee, which facilitates coordination of BDS campaigns worldwide, is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine. The council is a coalition of Palestinian political factions founded by Yasser Arafat at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000, for the purpose of opposing Israel and coordinating terror attacks against it. Not surprisingly, many of the council’s organizational members are linked to terrorism against Jews in Israel and worldwide. The council’s chief sponsors and major partners, the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization, were recently indicted in a U.S. federal court for sponsoring terrorism, and at least three other organizations in the council are on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations: Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the PFLP General Command.
Whether they have terrorist affiliations or not, all of the signatories to the 2005 Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS—along with all of the groups that have established BDS campaigns in response to that call, including campus organizations like SJP—are committed to the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state and see BDS as an excellent means to that end. This is reflected in the demands of the Civil Society Call, particularly that Israel end “its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” and permit all Palestinian refugees and their descendants “to return to their homes and properties.” The fulfillment of those demands would require Israel to commit territorial and demographic suicide. It is important to point out that denying Israel’s right to continue as a nation-state in which the Jewish people expresses its right to self-determination is a core element of the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism.
Those who monitor global anti-Semitism agree that the number and intensity of attacks against Jews worldwide are at levels not seen since the Holocaust. Given the BDS movement’s anti-Semitic nature, its clear ties to terrorist organizations committed to the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews, and the anti-Semitic effects of the BDS movement on Jewish students, it is reasonable to ask: Why are BDS campaigns allowed on college campuses at all?
Students on a few campuses have asked the same question and wisely determined that BDS does not belong on their campus. Last month at University of California, Davis, the student government court overturned an anti-Israel divestment resolution that had been approved the month before, on the grounds that the resolution’s lack of focus on student welfare rendered it unconstitutional. At Virginia’s Liberty University, the student government recently passed an amendment to its constitution that prohibits all legislation promoting BDS.
But surprisingly, university administrators have been unwilling to address or even acknowledge the anti-Semitic nature and effects of the virulently anti-Israel BDS campaigns being carried out on their campuses by university-registered and university-funded student groups such as SJP. While university presidents have consistently refused to accede to student government demands that the university administration adopt BDS legislation, not one university leader has identified the BDS campaign as anti-Semitic or held accountable those who purvey BDS on their campus. This is an outrage.
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
Now is the time for university stakeholders—parents, alumni, donors, and taxpayers—to demand that university leaders take a firm public stand against the anti-Semitic BDS movement and commit themselves to ensuring that Jewish students are protected from the scourge of Jew-hatred that is rapidly infecting our campuses.
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin is a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz and cofounder of the AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization that combats campus anti-Semitism.
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18 Comments
9 years ago
“… members of the student government at South Africa’s Durban University of Technology (DUT) called for the expulsion of all Jewish students from their campus.” These muslims must think the whole world owe them something the way they reason worldwide. For no reason whatsoever, other than hatred, Jewish students should be expelled from their campus! Are Muslims the owner of the campus? This doesn’t make sense to me at all. Are there any muslims out there that can help me make sense of this ungodly demand? These muslims have taken their Jihad to South Africa. If all they live for is hatred for the Jews, how will they contribute in any meaningful way to society? Hatred stifles creativity and destroys the hater not the hated. Muslims if you are still following a god that hates, shame on you!! The true God does not hate anyone. All He hates is sin not the sinner. It appears your god hate the sinner and love the sin….that god must be the greatest deceiver!!
9 years ago
Why is everybody acting shocked? For years, South Africa had had an anti-Israel, anti-western, and anti-white government!
9 years ago
Reply to
JohnSmith
Notice that the “Congress of South African Students” also got in on the act. A black communist organization.
9 years ago
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin YHWH protect and give victory to her
9 years ago
As noted in the article this all stems from various Palestinian groups with the “Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine” chief among them. They have successfully gotten onto college campuses all over the West and have hoodwinked college kids into making this into a “social justice” issue. What a crock.
9 years ago
All this brings to mind the publication of the short booklet by the David Horowitz Freedom Center which is entitled THE NAZI ROOT OF PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM AND ISLAMIC JIHAD. Furthermore there is an internet site related to this subject it’s
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com
9 years ago
Reply to
Walter Sieruk
Uh…. you’ve got it backwards. Islam had been around centuries before and influenced Nazism.
9 years ago
Reply to
Walter Sieruk
Hitler several times fantasized that, if the Saracens had not been stopped at the Battle of Tours, Islam would have spread through the European continent—and that would have been a good thing, since “Jewish Christianity” wouldn’t have gone on to poison Europe. Christianity doted on weakness and suffering, while Islam extolled strength, Hitler believed. Himmler in a January 1944 speech called Islam “a practical and attractive religion for soldiers,” with its promise of paradise and beautiful women for brave martyrs after their death. “This is the kind of language a soldier understands,” Himmler gushed.
9 years ago
They are jealous of all Israel’s achievements.
9 years ago
Reply to
Judi
Yes Judi that is the basis for most antisemitism. Can u imagine, little Israel with all its power and innovation!
9 years ago
Funny…this would never have happened under the “white apartheid” regime… Do you people NOW understand why we had SEPARATE DEVELOPMENT? These same people are murdering and butchering our white farmers who are the only ones capable even after 20 years of ‘self determination’…to feed the country… Please google ‘white genocide in South Africa’… If you are Jewish, have a white skin, speak Afrikaans and have an Israeli Passport…you may as well paint a target between your eyes.
9 years ago
Reply to
Mlady_Raka
when people refer to Africa as the black continent they dont necessarily refer to the skin color but rather to the continent of “darkness”. They live like colonies of gorillas just existing because they are incapable of anything else.
9 years ago
Strange that in these protests, and counter protests, ( not strange really ) that it is only on one side that you see faces twisted into and ugly and menacing grimace, the fists clenched, and the whole body language that says I would actually kill those on the other side, brutally, if circumstances and the law allowed it.
Yet that is the side that all the learned studied professors of morality in these universities take in their one sided calls for inclusion and tolerant.
9 years ago
Must we still submit to calling these apes by the politically correct appellation “Black” ? The time is ripe for bombarding these apes with the more-appropriate “N” family of monikers.
9 years ago
I am NOT supporting these actions – as an “abbandoned white South African” this is sad! AND – YES it is sad that these things take place – BUT did the Jews not support the downfall of Afrikaner Nationalism during the previous era?? Did the Jews not support the downfall of the white government since Verwoerd’s era? Think about dearest Helen Suzman and the Liberal Progressive Party politics of those days!! The hate they encouraged against the white Afrikaans people!! This was outrageous!! The Jewish people were respected then by the population in South Africa and were part of the society – but the Jewish people did not support the Afrikaner government ever…!! They would rather support Mandela as the new “saviour”of South Africa than stability under the old “apartheid” laws. Then South Africa went into a spiral of downfall which only South Africans realized and knew. FACTS!! If they (the Jews) did and helped to keep South Africa in civilized hands – the anti-Jewish uproar would probably not happened now. Nobody in South Africa will be able to stand in for the Jews now – because the white people are an oppressed minority – also thanks to what they (the Jews) accomplished with their hate politics during the 60’s – 90’s against the white people of South Africa. So where does justice start – ??
9 years ago
Reply to
Niel Panpoenowich
yes u are supporting bds howbeit tacitly. u think u had the right to suppress and oppress the south african blacks brutally, and the jews rightly did not support ur policy. let africans deal with their own issues and sort their own problems . they never asked whites to come rule over them in their GOD GIVEN LANDS. stop whining cos u no longer get to make the rules. i am pro israel and believe whites and blacks should learn to live peacefully where ever they find themselves without oppression from any side, but i find ur comments odious and typical of a racists rational to enforce the oppression and enslavement of others.
9 years ago
Let me put things in real simple terms for all of you: any country with dark skinned people with the exception of India will be an enemy of Israel. This includes the USA in the near future.
