The world changed on 7 October. At least it did for me. The images that came out of Israel, following Hamas’ brutal and barbaric attack on innocent civilians, evoked memories of the stories that my grandparents talked about, from their homelands of Germany and Eastern Europe. My grandmother, who hailed from Lithuania, would ruefully shake her head, and say, “they imbibe antisemitism from their mother’s milk”. That was her lived experience, but it has never been mine. I struggled to relate to her comments.
Growing up in South Africa I have seldom experienced Jew-hatred. If anything, the opposite is true. I am often struck by the respect and interest fellow citizens have shown in my religion. Specifically, since 7 October, I have been particularly grateful for the outpouring of supportive messages I received from so many.
Yet, the images that came out of 7 October and the subsequent horrific testimonies of what took place, shook me to my core. It was reminiscent of every account of what my forebears themselves experienced: pogroms, torture, humiliation, rape, cruelty, the killing of babies and the burning of bodies.
Furthermore, the images in my head, from what my grandparents shared of their world, seems to be playing themselves out right here and now in South Africa.
For starters, the constant mass marches against Jews. Packaged as events that support Palestinian people, Rebeca Hodes, in her outstanding first-hand account of one of the ANC marches held in support of Hamas, described it as “a Jew-baiting jamboree”:
In her words, “… the alleged peaceful intent of the protest was exposed as the lie it was, with explicit support for the genocide of the Israeli people. The genteel mask of the ANC’s protest fell, and the threat of violence and expulsion were made palpable. The ANC’s Palestinian solidarity rally ended, not with entreaties for peace, but with explicit calls for violent, even genocidal reprisals against Israel. ... When popular protests erupt, careful distinctions between Israelis, Zionists and Jews are just one of the casualties of South Africa’s critical response to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Others are hope and common humanity.”