South Africa’s stance on Palestine opens questions about Apartheid and history

Joseph Dana

New Lines Magazine  /  September 30, 2024

The country’s Jewish community faces a painful confrontation with the past.

South Africa’s decision to take Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the war in Gaza, while widely popular with most South Africans, opened a fierce debate within the country’s small Jewish community. For many Jewish groups in the country, the government’s decision to side against Israel was seen as evidence of bias against Israel — an attitude viewed as synonymous with antisemitism. Yet the ICJ case has also created a rare opportunity for introspection about the historic place of Jews in South Africa, as well as their complex relationship with the apartheid regime that ruled there until the early 1990s.

When South Africa announced its decision to pursue the genocide case against Israel, I received several messages from concerned friends and family around the world. According to some reports, South Africa had become a hotbed of antisemitism, with the trial viewed as evidence of the country’s deep-seated hatred of Jewish people. Some even shared conspiracy theories that the Iranian government was funnelling money to corrupt South African politicians to bring Israel to the ICJ.

Having lived around the world, including roughly a decade in Israel and Palestine, I have always felt exceptionally safe as a Jewish person in South Africa. In fact, I feel much safer here than in my home country, the United States. Despite high crime rates, incidents of violent antisemitism are extremely low in South Africa, according to local and international data.

Despite this, South African Jews have been increasingly vocal about the threat of antisemitism since the Gaza war began in October of 2023. Like many Jewish communities around the world, South African Jews have constructed their identity as Jews with a strong link to the State of Israel and Zionist ideology. As such, they have historically confused legitimate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

This confusion intensified with the ICJ case, pitting the Jewish community against many other South Africans. The conflict over Palestine is now reshaping how many South African Jews view themselves, their place in the country and their relationships with their fellow citizens. It is in this crucible that they are now forced to reconcile their own complex history in South Africa with the reality of a country whose national identity is increasingly built in opposition to a foreign country — Israel — that they hold dear.

The South African Jewish community, which comprises roughly 60,000 people today, traces its lineage almost exclusively to the Lithuanian Jews expelled from Europe before and during the Holocaust. Fleeing a burning Europe across the breadth of the African continent, they arrived in South Africa. Initially, they were greeted with scepticism, but eventually they were welcomed.

They found a country in a state of transformation. There had been a small and thriving Jewish community since the 1800s, with various efforts over the years by Jewish leaders to have their rights protected. For example, the Jewish politician Morris Alexander passed a law reclassifying Yiddish as a European language instead of a Semitic one, which prevented Jewish immigrants from being stopped by the authorities.

While the Jewish community didn’t feel secure in South Africa, as they hadn’t anywhere in the world at this time, they created viable institutions like synagogues and representative organizations. They also established themselves as valuable businesspeople across the country.

Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, waves of Jewish immigrants came to the country from Lithuania. While they weren’t exactly embraced and there were attempts to establish immigration quotas, many Jews found refuge. There were undeniable pockets of support for Nazism among some political parties at the time. However, when the Afrikaner-led National Party took power in 1948, it didn’t elevate these views in the political discourse. Instead, the party focused on creating the apartheid system of minority rule and gaining the full support of all white citizens, including Jews.

As the historian Milton Shain notes, “The National Party, however, had no wish to ignite the flame of antisemitism [in the 1950s], or to undermine its own modus vivendi with the Jewish community, which for two decades had operated, for the most part, with quiet success.” The vocal antisemitism across the political spectrum shifted the party’s focus to the threat of communism and the argument that Jews were agents of global communism. They established themselves as a quiet and obedient part of white society. Their business success continued and, in the 1960s, they were vocal supporters of the relationship between apartheid South Africa and the State of Israel.

Since the fall of apartheid in the early 1990s and the advent of democracy, the Palestinian cause has become a key feature of South Africa’s foreign policy, and its identity as a country that successfully dismantled an unjust form of minority rule.

The government’s position is strongly pro-Palestinian, both in terms of ties with Palestinian political officials and the defense of Palestine in international forums such as the United Nations. South Africa is also highly critical of Israel.

This stance has affected bilateral relations between the two nations. In the last decade, the South African ambassador in Israel was downgraded to a charge d’affaires, and the country’s embassy there is now closed altogether. In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, South Africa’s foreign minister held high-level discussions with senior members of Hamas, a move that was met with condemnation both inside and outside the country.

For the ruling African National Congress party, or ANC, the Palestine issue is not just an ideological cause, but also an important campaign rallying point for Muslim voters around the country, much as Israel is for American Jewish voters. While the leadership is informed by a history of struggle against apartheid, South Africa’s bold moves regarding Palestine in recent years have as much to do with domestic politics and drumming up support for the ailing ANC as they do with noble intentions about supporting Palestinian freedom.

South Africa’s stance on Palestine can also be understood in the context of its other geopolitical alliances. In recent years, Pretoria deepened its partnerships with non-aligned nations such as Brazil, China, Russia and Iran. These moves have angered the United States and become a focal point in how American media outlets cover South Africa. The situation is serious enough that some members of the U.S. Congress have called for a full review of South Africa’s relationship with Washington. If passed, such a measure could trigger a renegotiation of key free trade agreements and have a substantial impact on South Africa’s economy.

As yet, the South African government seems undeterred by these threats. In forging what it sees as a truly independent post-apartheid foreign policy, Palestine appears destined to have a significant role, particularly given the mutual support famously shared between South Africans and Palestinians during their respective struggles.

Though some criticism of Israel’s policies by South Africans has ventured into the murky waters of antisemitism, with outlandish claims that the Jews dominate world politics, it is a far cry from physical violence. Despite that, the Jewish community has persisted in seeing antisemitism as omnipresent in the country and adopting a narrative that any criticism of Israel is itself antisemitic.

Israel has encouraged this perception, too. Despite being inaccurate and making the world less safe for Jews, the Israeli government has conflated its own actions with global Jewry in order to drum up support and silence critics, both internally and externally.

The aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks and the ongoing debate over Israel’s response have presented a deep crisis for South Africa’s Jews. They have revealed the cognitive dissonance that permeates the community over questions of belonging and allegiance. While South African Jews have risen to prominence and helped build the country, there is a deep-seated fear of the current government and the community’s safety.

Among white South Africans more generally, there has also been a long-standing worry that South Africa could follow a similar path to Zimbabwe and fall into economic ruin. For South African Jews, many of whom share this concern, Israel has always been viewed as an exit plan thanks to its Law of Return, which grants them automatic Israeli citizenship.

Indeed, most Jewish institutions in South Africa today are oriented toward Israel. Herzlia, the primary Jewish school in Cape Town, is named after Theodor Herzl, and its motto (“Im Tirtzu”) is based on the famous Zionist line about willing Israel into existence. Walking around the campus, one would think it was in Israel, given the number of Israeli flags and other Zionist paraphernalia.

The school has been the center of controversy, as the hard-left Economic Freedom Fighters political party last year called for it to be deregistered with the government, a move that would cause it to lose funding, for being too “pro-Israel.” Among other issues, the party cited the high number of Herzlia graduates who move to Israel and join the Israeli military. The exact number of Herzlia alumni who do so is unclear, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a highly contentious topic.

The rhetoric reached a boiling point in December, when a speaker at a large pro-Palestine rally in Cape Town targeted Herzlia directly, saying, “We know where the murderers come from — they come from Herzlia, here in Cape Town.” After the rally, the foreign ministry said it would investigate if any citizens were serving in the Israeli military and arrest any that had. These events were used by Jewish authorities as evidence of their threatened status in South Africa.

Yet, despite widespread pro-Israel sentiment among South African Jews, the community and Herzlia in particular, they haven’t been immune to internal dissent.

In 2018, two middle school students faced “disciplinary and educational” consequences for taking a knee in protest during the singing of the Israeli national anthem. According to GroundUp, a South African outlet, the protest led the school’s director of education, Geoff Cohen, to send a message to all parents saying that kneeling during the school’s “formal and prestigious event” was “inappropriate” and “demonstrated deliberate and flagrant disregard for the ethos of the school.” GroundUp reported that Cohen described the students’ actions as “blatant flouting of the School Rules, Herzlia’s Zionist values, and the values of Herzlia’s Menschlichkeit [humanity] pillar.” His comments were remarkable considering the anthem being protested was for a foreign nation and not South Africa.

The identity challenges are not unique to the Jewish community. The events of Oct. 7 in Israel and Palestine have caused deep reflection and soul-searching inside Jewish communities worldwide, including in Israel. In the U.S., generational divisions have come to the forefront as younger Jews find themselves unable to support the Israeli government’s actions against Palestinians as the death toll and destruction rise in Gaza.

This tension shows no sign of abating. Yet the difference in South Africa is that the government is actively resisting Israel in the international arena and proudly supporting the Palestinian cause. Jewish communities in the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia don’t have to face the same sort of internal politics, given their countries’ support for Israel.

The aforementioned Milton Shain, emeritus professor of historical studies at the University of Cape Town, has written extensively about the relationship between the Jewish community and varying power centers in South Africa over the years.

Shain is considered one of the foremost authorities on the Jewish community. In his recent book, “Fascists, Fabricators and Fantasists: Antisemitism in South Africa from 1948 to the Present,” he outlines how antisemitism has shifted over the last several decades, arguing that South African Jews face a new form of antisemitism that is based primarily on anti-Israel or anti-Zionist sentiments.

Shain’s latest work indicates how South African Jews continually look to rewrite their history and relationship with the centers of power. It also highlights how much of their history is omitted in how they retell it today. For the lay observer seeking to understand the true degree of antisemitism, Shain’s book is confusing at best. Throughout the volume, Shain consistently argues that the Jewish community was in a state of constant threat; however, it enjoyed rights and very few limits to participation in various realms of society.

Shain demonstrates how some of the National Party founders of the apartheid system harboured deep antisemitic leanings, while politicians in some other parties at the time were openly supportive of Nazism. He also notes how some of these early politicians sought to link Jews with various communist movements that represented a major danger for the National Party. Yet Shain often backtracks and underlines how few actual incidents of violent antisemitism occurred under the National Party. Yes, there were antisemites and the Jews felt threatened, but nothing came from this racism in terms of limiting Jewish participation in society as full citizens.

Early in the book, Shain writes, “It would be wrong, however, to suggest that there was a widespread consensus on the ‘Jewish question.’ Many individual Jews enjoyed respect at the highest levels and attained prominence in diverse fields, including public life. Few confronted naked antisemitism as opposed to social snobbery. But across the party and language divide, there remained an essentialist understanding of ‘the Jew.’”

When Israel became one of apartheid South Africa’s most important allies in the 1960s, the rhetoric in some corners of society about Jewish influence and excessive control over world affairs didn’t subside, but it was overshadowed by the friendship between Tel Aviv and Pretoria.

Israel’s foreign policy in Africa has a checkered history. In the 1950s, the nascent Israeli state sought to develop political and strategic relationships with several newly independent African nations. This caused concern in apartheid South Africa, where Afrikaner leaders viewed Israel and, by extension, global Jewry, as potential agents of communism throughout the continent. However, Israel soon changed course and established a deep and long-standing relationship with the apartheid regime in Pretoria.

Both countries found common ground in their international isolation — South Africa because of its apartheid regime and Israel due to its conflict with neighbouring Arab states and, after 1967, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This isolation fostered a clandestine alliance that included military, economic and technological cooperation. Israel, with its advanced military technology and expertise, became a crucial supplier of arms and defense systems to South Africa. This collaboration even extended to nuclear technology, with several reports suggesting that the two countries engaged in joint research and development, including the testing of nuclear weapons.

The economic aspects of this partnership were also significant. Israel and South Africa engaged in trade, with Israel providing agricultural technology and South Africa exporting minerals and raw materials to Israel, which were then sold by Israel to avoid sanctions on South Africa, according to reporting by the journalist and historian Sasha Polakow-Suransky in his book, “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa.” At the time, the South African Jewish community would boast that it sent the most money to Israel of any diaspora community per capita in the world. This is astonishing, given the strict exchange control that existed at the time under the apartheid regime. The relationship persisted until the end of apartheid, with the newly empowered ANC government developing a dim view of Israel thereafter.

Palestine’s strongest supporters in South Africa today don’t overlook the participation of Jews in the apartheid system even if the Jewish community would prefer to forget about it. For its part, the Jewish community has highlighted the proportionally large number of Jews in anti-apartheid causes. While this is accurate, many fail to mention how Jews who campaigned against apartheid were themselves ostracized from the community for their activities.

South African Jews experienced apartheid as full white citizens. They had access to all sectors of South African society and participated fully in the maintenance and growth of apartheid South Africa. For Jewish men, this also meant mandatory conscription into the military. While there were some isolated incidents of draft refusal, there was no blanket call from Jewish community leaders to resist taking up arms in defense of the apartheid state.

Military participation is seldom discussed within the South African Jewish community. Since the fall of apartheid, the focus has been solely on the minority of Jews who resisted the regime, while little discussion is given to the majority who took up arms in defense of the regime. Indeed, if you look at the Wikipedia page for South African Jews, there is a long section about the Jews who fought against apartheid and no mention of military conscription.

When I speak with Jewish men who served, they often don’t even think of their service as “picking up arms in defense of the country.” They prefer to focus on the fact that they had “no choice” but to comply with the draft. It’s this sort of cognitive dissonance that presents such a challenge to the identity and belonging questions for the community.

Instead of confronting these painful memories and going through the process of reconciliation that other white communities have undergone since 1994, the Jewish community has turned its focus intently on Israel and left these questions to linger in the shadows of the past.

When I ask older South African Jews about their experience during apartheid, many are quick to say that they were kept in the dark about what was really happening in the country. They claim they didn’t fully see the horrors of the system. Yet, when I ask these same people if Israel is an apartheid state, they say absolutely not, asserting their firsthand experience with apartheid South Africa.

Muslim communities, especially in Cape Town, haven’t forgotten this history. They understand how Jewish people were classified as “white” under apartheid’s racial laws and thus enjoyed full rights in society. They have seen how Jewish property developers have used those rights to purchase large amounts of land, some of which they were removed from, in Cape Town and other major cities. This history continues today in a different form.

Recently, a property company owned by Jewish people bought land in one of the last Muslim quarters of downtown Cape Town called Bo-Kaap. The area’s residents were against the move for fear of gentrification, and they protested, with some donning Palestinian headscarves and carrying Palestinian flags. It was as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had become the vehicle for a local issue about gentrification and social politics.

In navigating the complexities of identity and allegiance, the South African Jewish community faces a unique challenge. The community has enjoyed safety and prosperity in a nation with a storied history of overcoming oppression and injustice. Yet its deep-rooted connection to Israel and its policies creates friction within South Africa’s pro-Palestinian political landscape — one that shows no signs of changing.

This duality is forcing South African Jews to reconcile their cultural and historical ties to Israel with their place in a country that actively challenges Israeli policies on the global stage. From schooling to the active embrace of immigration to Israel, South African Jewish identity is overwhelmingly fixated on the State of Israel and Zionism. As such, the country’s decision to pursue Israel at the ICJ has deepened a crisis of identity for the community.

As global dynamics continue to shift, South African Jews find themselves at an impasse. The community’s future hinges on its ability to engage in open dialogue about the nature of antisemitism, the legitimacy of criticizing Israeli actions and the broader geopolitical context that they find themselves in within Africa.

By fostering a more nuanced understanding of their identity and addressing the broader narratives that shape their worldview, the Jewish community in South Africa could help bridge divides and contribute to a more inclusive discourse about Israel in the Global South.

But such a transformation will require an unflinching assessment of the realities of the conflict in Israel-Palestine today, as well as a hard look at their own history in the country, which largely saw them act in concert with the apartheid regime, rather than as its opponents.

Joseph Dana is a Cape Town-based writer with two decades of experience across the Middle East and Africa