South African Jews Forcibly Removed While Protesting Minister’s Call to Intensify Pro-Hamas Campus Protests

South Africa’s Jewish community on Friday protested Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor’s recent call for students and university leaders to intensify the anti-Israel demonstrations that have engulfed college campuses across the US, chanting “no space for Jew hate” as they were forcibly removed despite demonstrating peacefully.

Members of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and South African Union of Jewish Students (SAUJS) gathered at the entrance of the Sandton Convention Center, a major venue for hosting events in South Africa, to protest what they described as an incitement to violence and antisemitism by a senior government official.

The Jewish activists were met with verbal and even physical abuse, with some people attending a conference at the center pointing and shouting “Zionist” at them in an accusatory tone.. In one case, someone physically pulled a poster out of a protester’s hands, spat in her face, and told her to “f—k off,” according to the SAJBD.

The police ended up physically relocating the protesters from outside the entrance of the convention center as they shouted, “No space for Jew hate.”

The SAJBD noted that the peaceful demonstration was solely meant to raise awareness about the threat to the safety of Jewish students on university campuses and was limited to 15 people, thereby within in the legal parameters for a public gathering.

The protest was in response to comments that Pandor made while delivering a lecture at the University of Johannesburg on Wednesday.

Titling her lecture “The Responsibility of the Academy in a Time of Genocide,” Pandor urged greater university and student activism and boycotts against Israel for what she called its “scholasticide” and “systemic obliteration of education” in Gaza.

Pandor accused Israel of deliberately targeting schools and libraries during its military campaign in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave ruled by the Hamas terror group.

Hamas launched the ongoing conflict with its Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel and massacre of civilians, leading the Israeli military to launch a campaign aimed at destroying the terror organization and freeing the hostages kidnapped during its onslaught. Pandor did not mention that Hamas terrorists embed themselves within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeer civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

During her speech, Pandor encouraged those in attendance to become anti-Israel activists.

“My expectation is after our talk you will become activists,” she said. “As educators, advocates, activists, civil society and state structures, we should all play a role in the global struggle in search of truth and justice.”

She added, “It is our collective responsibility to raise our voices in solidarity with the people of Palestine who are fighting for their survival in the midst of the genocidal campaign being waged against them.”

Pandor then turned to the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations that have erupted across university campuses over the past month, calling on South Africa to do more in support of the movement.

“We are also buoyed by the growing mobilization on college campuses across the world in support of the just cause for freedom and justice of the people of Palestine,” she said. “We hope that this unprecedented activism by students in the US will also spur greater activism among student movements here in South Africa, and spur more vocal support from our university administrators, some of whom have remained silent.”

For over three weeks, university students have been amassing in the hundreds at a growing number of schools, taking over sections of campus by setting up “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” and refusing to leave unless administrators condemn and boycott Israel. Footage of the protests has shown demonstrators chanting in support of Hamas, calling for the destruction of Israel, and even threatening to harm members of the Jewish community on campus. In many cases, activists have also lambasted the US and Western civilization more broadly.

The protests initially erupted across the US but have since spread to university campuses around the world, primarily in the West.

In a statement shared with The Algemeiner, SAJBD national director Wendy Kahn lambasted Pandor’s comments.

“We were horrified that Minister Pandor at a lecture at the University of Johannesburg called to import the violence and antisemitism that is plaguing university campuses in the United States to our local campuses in South Africa. What an irresponsible call,” said Kahn, who noted that Pandor’s remarks came as students were preparing for their final examinations.

“Can you imagine if this starts to incite violence and intimidation on our own campuses in our country?” she continued. “We should do everything to make sure the education of our students continues and is not compromised in any way. This would compromise not only Jewish students who will experience the antisemitism but all the students at our universities where there will be a stand-still to education.”

The SAJBD called on Pandor to retract her remarks encouraging campus demonstrations against Israel, arguing that such rhetoric risked being especially dangerous just three weeks out from South Africa’s general elections.

“This is unacceptable,” Kahn concluded. “We call on you to stop this kind of incitement. It doesn’t belong in South Africa.”

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has been one of the harshest critics of Israel since Oct. 7.

South Africa temporarily withdrew its diplomats from Israel and shuttered its embassy in Tel Aviv shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom, saying that the Pretoria government was “extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians” in Gaza.

In December, South Africa hosted two Hamas officials who attended a government-sponsored conference in solidarity with the Palestinians. One of the officials had been sanctioned by the US government for his role with the terrorist organization.

Earlier this year, the South African government failed in its bid to argue before the International Court of Justice that Israel’s defensive war in Gaza constituted a “genocide.”

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