South African Jews have a long and honorable record of combining support for Israel and commitment to South Africa, the country which gave them shelter – often grudgingly – from the antisemitic plague that bedeviled Europe for centuries and culminated in the Holocaust. The specter of antisemitism lurked in the ranks of white Afrikaner nationalists but remained in the background while the country was unlocking itself from the shackles of its Apartheid ideology, so Jews felt relatively immune as fellow whites.
The majority of SA Jews have generally identified in one way or another, with a liberal, integrationist blueprint for South Africa’s political future and rejoiced when that came to fruition, relatively painlessly, in 1994. By that time there had already been a mass exodus of Jews from South Africa, either to Israel or other safe havens in the Anglophone world. The main motivating factors for this exodus were a combination of moral scruples about supporting the unjust system of Apartheid, fears of a black backlash and the spirit of the Zionist enterprise, always strong in the SA Jewish community.
Once again, the Jewish community escaped the brunt of this prejudice but following the Hamas atrocities of October 7, the ensuing Israel-Gaza war and the worldwide spike in antisemitism, the question has to be asked: how long can this immunity last? The present South African leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, has bought into the classic scapegoat dynamic which has so far focused on Israel, but Israel and the Jews are eternally fused into a single malign entity in the minds of antisemites. Ramaphosa and his followers have further muddied the waters by aligning the government with an ideology of Islamic expansionism and anti-colonialism which aims at the destruction of the state of Israel and the expulsion or worse, of its Jewish population. Under these conditions, the maintenance by the SA Jewish community of dual loyalty is becoming increasingly untenable.
My mind travels back to the history of Germany in the twenties and thirties. A book by Christopher Sykes, ‘Troubled Loyalty’ tells a story, not about Jews, but about the life of one man, Adam von Trott, a ‘good’ German of educated background and aristocratic lineage, who obstinately clung to the belief that the Nazi menace was an aberration. Trott believed that the finest cultural traditions of Germany could be restored and that it was possible to work within the regime (he was in the diplomatic service) while secretly undermining it. He saw the light too late and was eventually executed as one of the conspirators in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.
Unlike the racism of Nazism, which was founded on a mad cult of Aryan racial superiority and the belief that Jews were an intrinsically inferior and evil force, the epidemic of antisemitism now enveloping swathes of Africa and the Middle East stems from a narrative being cultivated by the far Left which propounds the view that Zionism is the product of a white European colonialist enterprise.
Whether they have been pursued by extremists of the Far Left, the Far Right or religious fundamentalists, Jews have, throughout history, served as scapegoats for the woes of societies in crisis. In the past, a mistaken belief in the durability of democracy has been the undoing of many Jewish communities and it would indeed be tragic if the same fate were to befall South African Jewry.
What particularly troubles me is the complacency of some within the SA Jewish community who do not appear to see the writing on the wall. Although Jews are firmly denunciatory of the ANC stance and profuse in their protestations of loyalty to South Africa, they seem unaware of the increasing strain to which adherence to this sort of dual loyalty is subjecting them. With the strident continuation of the boycott and sanctions against Israel and the recent severance of diplomatic ties between Israel and South Africa, the South African government rapidly moved towards an alliance with forces determined to see an end to the existence of Israel as a home for the Jewish people.
Admittedly this is a view from afar. I left South Africa for Britain in 1970 and I have only been back once, when the country was bathed in the rainbow glow of the new Mandela era. However, I am in touch with other Jewish former South Africans, who report a disturbingly blinkered lifestyle within enclaves of comfort surrounded by high walls, barbed wire and security alarms. Behind these protective barriers Jewish religious and cultural life apparently continues unabated.
I know from personal experience how difficult it is to uproot oneself and say goodbye to dear friends and family whom one might never see again but I am increasingly disquieted by the crescendo of rhetoric now being directed at Israel. Our tragic history tells us that hatred of the Jewish people is inextricably linked to hatred of Israel and that it is better to be prepared for the moment when that hatred is translated into action than to continue living in a false paradise.
Dr Harold Behr, a regular contributor to Jewish Affairs, is a retired child psychiatrist and group psychotherapist. He emigrated from South Africa to the UK in 1970.
