Board of Deputies conflates Judaism and Zionism

South African Jews for a Free Palestine picket outside the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre on 31 July. Photo: Matthew Hirsch

Holocaust and genocide: the ideological battle over these two words is at the heart of the Gaza crisis.

Two responses to a picket at the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre are worth noting. One, by the director Jakub Nowakowski, is published on GroundUp. His words are carefully considered. To my mind his view is not entirely defensible, but at least it shows openness to the possibility that genocide is being committed in Gaza.

The same cannot be said of the response of Daniel Bloch, Executive Director of the Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape SAJBD). He wrote:

“As the representative body of the Jewish community in the Western Cape, the Cape SAJBD categorically rejects the false and inflammatory accusation of genocide being levelled against the State of Israel.”

Here is Bloch’s statement in full:

The SAJBD is supposed to be an advocacy organisation for the civil liberties of Jews in South Africa. Yet it consistently conflates this role with unequivocal support for Zionism and the Israeli state. A few things need to be said about its stance.

Many Jews do not support SAJBD position

Lots of South African Jews have spoken out against Israel’s violence against Palestinians. South African Jews signed a petition in response to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2009. More signed in 2014 in response to Operation Protective Edge, and even more in 2023 in response to Israel’s disproportionate response to the Hamas-led 7 October massacre. These petitions included the names of leaders in South African society.

Moreover, South African Jews for a Free Palestine has been at the forefront of the protests against the Gaza war.

SAJBD’s unflinching support for Israel, and its failure to recognise the war crimes that Israel has committed, is out of step with many Jews and leaves us unrepresented by the organisation claiming to be the official voice of South African Jewry.

Uninformed response to genocide

Bloch writes that the claim of genocide in Gaza is “both legally and morally unfounded”. He says: “To date, the International Court of Justice – the highest judicial authority globally, has made no ruling declaring that genocide is taking place.”

It is true that what constitutes genocide is disputed. It is seldom that there is an official international finding of genocide, even when there is wide consensus that one has taken place. (And to the extent that official findings are made, they generally occur after the event.) The International Court of Justice has, for example, not ruled, or been asked to rule, on whether a genocide took place in Darfur. Yet in 2021 the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre, rightly, hosted an exhibition about the Darfur genocide.

Perusing the committee members of the Cape SAJBD, none appear to have the expertise to pronounce so confidently on the question of genocide in Gaza. But these organisations do: Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, B’tselem, Médecins Sans Frontières and a UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Two of these are Israeli, with mostly Jewish members. All have found that Israel is committing genocide.

Besides the more than 60,000 recorded violent deaths since 7 October, many thousands of people are unaccounted for, many others have died because of a breakdown in health services, and an increasing number are dying of malnutrition.

But this doesn’t come close to capturing the horror. Tens of thousands have been maimed, about nine in ten Gazans have been displaced, and for nearly two years, Gazans have experienced relentless bombing, shooting, death, injury and destruction all around them. They’ve also endured endless threats of extermination and ethnic cleansing – from Israeli leaders (here’s a small sample from only October 2023) as well as the American president. Normal life is impossible. (See The Guardian’s footage of Gaza before and after Israeli bombing.)

Israel’s extreme violence has not helped release the hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October. Their families have accused Netanyahu of “leading Israel and the kidnapped to doom”.

Two ways to remember the Holocaust

The murder of six-million Jews by the Nazis in World War II, known as the Holocaust, was one of the worst crimes in history. Holocaust centres in many cities, including Cape Town, commemorate it.

To over-simplify a bit, there are broadly two major conflicting views of the Holocaust.

One sees it as a universal lesson for all humanity, about how even a technologically advanced country like Germany – a scientific and cultural leader – could commit such heinous deeds at such a huge scale. Given the right circumstances, any group can perpetuate genocide, and any group can be a victim of it. To reduce the occurrence of genocides, ethnic cleansing and war crimes, we need human rights across the planet with institutions to enforce it. From this came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and the salience of human rights discourse that spread across the planet. The Genocide Convention is enforced by the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court, established in 2002, is also part of this tradition.

The other view was that the scale of the Holocaust made it a uniquely Jewish experience, and that the only answer to it was Jewish nationalism. Despite the cultural achievements of Jews in Eastern Europe, expressed through Yiddish literature, music and art, Zionists saw Jews as having been weak. Now they must be strong, militarily dominant in a Jewish homeland. The native inhabitants of Palestine have suffered the terrible consequences of this view – even predating the Holocaust, with the rise of political Zionism in the late 1800s. Now they too are suffering a genocide. Some of those perpetrating genocide in Gaza are the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and family members of its victims. The irony is awful.

See also:

• South Africa and Israel chose different paths (originally published in Vrye Weekblad)
• Israel: Double-standards, myths and facts (originally published in Vrye Weekblad)

The author is GroundUp’s editor.

Support independent journalism
Donate using Payfast