Which Genocide?

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (Imam Hassan al-Banna – Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood).

The Hamas Charter traces its ideological roots to well before the establishment of Israel and indeed to the Muslim Brotherhood established in 1928. Hamas sees itself as part of a “chain of the struggle” against not only the State of Israel but also Jews (who they term “Zionists”) who lived there before it became Israel in 1948.

Observers of South African Jewish activists witnessed a strange spectacle last week when, speaking via Zoom, Israeli law professor Sigall Horovitz presented a scholarly talk to the Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI) on the genocide charges brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Strange, that in the wake of the Hamas 7 October 2023 massacre, itself a long-planned attempted genocide by Hamas against the people of Israel, was not the question. Nor was the concern about the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza at civilian cities in Israel or the hundreds of unarmed civilians, men women and small children dragged into Gaza as hostages. Some are still in captivity after more than 500 days.  Nor was the ANC’s support for Hamas on the global stage in the ICJ worthy of scrutiny and debate.

“This is the second in our mini-series on the difficult question of whether Israeli actions in Gaza in response to the terrible events of Oct 7^th amounts to a genocide,” said JDI host Anton Harber, to audiences at the Kaplan Centre at the University of Cape Town, the Holocaust and Genocide Centre in Johannesburg and via Zoom.

JDI was started in Cape Town in 2017 to create a home on the left side of the communal table for South African Jews committed to a two-state solution, espousing Israel as the occupier of Palestinian lands, and engaged in social development domestically. Largely unnoticed and irrelevant, JDI has recently revived itself nationally, the core being the Mail and Guardian veterans Harber and his fellow former editor Irwin Manoim. Few prominent public figures were attracted, save perhaps for Max Price former Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, associated with the struggle against apartheid in the 1980s and ’90s.

In a rapidly shrinking Jewish community where members prioritise religious practice, education, welfare and charity against the backdrop of general economic and political challenges, JDI has failed to prove its relevance with less than forty people present at the Horovitz lecture, including audiences in Cape Town, Johannesburg and online.

JDI has increasingly provided a home to supporters of the militant and explicitly anti-Zionist South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) which has successfully given succour to the South African government’s unashamed support for Hamas and delegitimization of Israel on the global stage. Without the Jewish façade provided by SAJFP, the ANC. DIRCO, the Minister of Justice and the office of the President would not have been able to assert the distinction they make between their anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

South African Jews are not fooled: SAJFP pretends to be a legitimate Jewish voice flying the flag of human rights, freedom, anti-colonialism and oppression.  Beneath this thin veneer lies a marginal group of radical self-hating Jews profoundly lacking in any meaningful contributions within Jewish religious practice, charity and community work.

Among the multiple “pro-peace, pro-democracy and pro-civil society” international organizations with whom JDI is affiliated is the Israeli anti-occupation human rights NGO B’Tselem which has collaborated with Palestinian NGO Al-Haq who is a leader in anti-Israel lawfare and BDS campaigns.

Al-Haq’s General Director Shawan Jabarin has been linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defence declared Al-Haq a terror organization because it is part of a network of organizations that operates on behalf of the PFLP.

Jabarin should be known to South Africans – he appeared in January 2024 at the The Hague with the South African legal team, revealing the involvement of Al Haq (and indirectly the PFLP in South Africa’s lawfare against the Jewish State decades ago. Jabarin was an integral part of South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel celebrated by Hodgson and Le Roith of SAJFP on the steps of the Cape Town High Court at that time.

Under the banner of a legitimate left-leaning Jewish communal organization, it succeeds in ushering the PFLP and its agenda through the door. Most of JDI members, intellectuals and highly educated people undoubtedly, may at best be blithely unaware or at worst indifferent to the useful idiot role they are filling for Islamist and Palestinian terrorists and their unholy association with DIRCO, President Ramaphosa and other organs of state.

At the outset of the event, Harber, a former  adjunct professor of journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand  and the executive director of the Campaign for Free Expression (CFE) a non-profit organization promoting “the right to free expression for ALL, and enabling EVERYONE to exercise this right in full, whether it be by speaking out, by protesting, by revealing information, by blowing the whistle on wrong-doing, by arguing, debating, writing, painting, composing or just by shouting out an opinion”. Rousing sentiments but shallow rhetoric shown by the inappropriate application of the Chatham House rules at the meeting.  JDI’s housekeeping rules were pronounced by Harber in his position as chair: “JDI hosts these gatherings in the interests of encouraging informed and open debate about relevant events in Israel Palestine. Our aim is to create a safe space to allow our community to discuss difficult and highly contested issues.” He insisted that they follow Chatham House rules. “In other words, nothing said tonight can be attributed to any persons. In other words, it’s all anonymous, there can be no recordings…” he said.   An Orwellian parody of open and transparent discourse.

Harber revealed the discussion was intended to be less legal and more polemical. “The question ‘is this genocide?’ isn’t just semantics. It’s an important question about how we see ourselves, Israel, Zionism, and our place in the world,” he said.

“We are deeply concerned that many of our communal institutions are deliberately avoiding or even suppressing these difficult questions, as we see recently in the Jewish Report and the Jewish Literary Festival in Cape Town,” said Harber.  Notably it was Harber who penned an article “The Chief Rabbi who lost his soul” which the SA Jewish Report (SAJR) refused to publish. The Media Review Network the Islamist pro Hamas publication created a headline referring to Harber’s article “The SAJR and the Rabbi that Supports the Genocide against Palestinians”.    Harber’s   reckless, unfounded and unfair comment paved the way for this malicious defamation.

He also assailed the decision of the organizers of the Jewish Literary festival to exclude from the event, the South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) activist Megan Choritz. Not a literary luminary by any means, Choritz  had no vital role in the event and her exclusion cannot be equated with suppression of free speech. Freedom of association still remains in South Africa.

Harber’s specific target was the South African Jewish community leadership rather than factual truth and legal accuracy; his concern was more about personal angst rather than the existential realities of the conflict. “As JDI, we are giving a platform to a range of views on this issue, for the sake of informing ourselves and stimulating debate within the Jewish community. … But fundamental to JDI is the view that we need to confront and deal with these issues. We need to ensure we in our community are fully informed so that we can speak out when we see something we feel is wrong,” he said.  A range of views was certainly not forthcoming.

Horovitz’s matter-of-fact account showed the significant challenges faced in overcoming the legal hurdles of genocidal intent in South Africa’s poorly conceived case if it were to succeed.  This sober and realistic analysis frustrated and disappointed key SAJFP activists in the audience. Operating under JDI’s recently imposed and inappropriate housekeeping rules – the imposition of the Chatham House Rules allowing sharing information and ideas but anonymously and without identifying attribution – one SAJFP activist after another, in Cape Town and Johannesburg, expressed their dissatisfaction with the legal facts.

Not uncharacteristically, first off was staunch South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) activist Anthony Fish Hodgson. For Hodgson, the issue is as straightforward as a litany of horrible events: the events happened, therefore Israel is guilty of genocide.

Horovitz had a more nuanced analysis. “The point of departure is that we are all on the same page with knowledge of material events in Gaza. [I]n the beginning of my talk I mentioned there has been great destruction …. there is quite a consensus that there is massive destruction, massive killing and very, very, very deep humanitarian crisis. I don’t think Israel is negating that or denying that” she said, taking that as her starting point. But, she said, “The debate is around intent…  I was … paint[ing] a picture of how complicated it is to prove genocide because of intent,” Horovitz replied.

Hodgson was soon followed by his SAJFP colleague Caitlin le Roith, senior law lecturer at the University of Cape Town.   “I think if we are to interrogate the intent requirement, I mean you know probably as well as I know that Israel also has a common law system, that dolus eventualis is a form of intent, foreseeable intent, eventual intent,” she said to Horovitz. “If you foresee that your conduct is going to cause harm of a particular kind and you proceed nevertheless, that does satisfy some version of intent,” she argued.

Horovitz wasn’t inclined to having a law lecture from Ms Le Roith: “But for genocide you need dolus specialis. Genocide needs a specific intent to destroy the group…  So there needs to be intent to destroy the group as such in whole or in part,” she rebutted Ms Le Roith.  There was indeed intent to commit genocide, said Horovitz – on the part of Hamas.  The genie was now out of the bottle. An online question was read out by Harber: “How does this conversation … relate to Hamas as a non-state player using Palestinian civilian shields and holding Israelis hostage? …. What happens to this conversation when it includes Hamas as a protagonist?” Harber read.   Horovitz in her analysis of Hamas actions on October 7^th, said that these qualify as genocide and “intent is much more pronounced”.   Not the kind of inconvenient fact that the activists at the meeting had expected to hear.  Le Roith who had advocated genocide by 8 January 2024, made it clear that nothing was going to change her opinion. “So, I think my disappointment is that I wish there was a bit more engagement with those facts, the inconvenient facts, the facts that really do bring this on the same level as other genocides in the past” she said.   Conveniently, no mention was made of the international military group of experts who had been in Gaza investigating the war and who submitted their report to the International Criminal Court. No evidence of genocide was found.

Disappointed attendee medical doctor, and militant anti-Zionist Shereen Usdin  unsagely added that it was a textbook case of genocide.  Usdin has long been in the business of bringing legal charges against Israel. In 2009, together with militant anti-Zionist Muslim theologian Farid Esack, she filed war crimes charges against South African-born Israeli Lt Col David Benjamin who was visiting South Africa to attend that year’s Limmud Jewish cultural festival. Usdin said. “[W]e watch what is happening in Gaza in the name of Jewish people and in the name of protecting Jewish people. It’s hard not to feel very ashamed,” she told the JDI meeting.  She expressed no empathy with the ongoing plight of the hostages nor the obligation of Hamas to release them.

President Trump’s declaration that white Afrikaners are being racially discriminated against and oppressed, opening an invitation to them to resettle in the USA has caused concern and controversy. President Ramaphosa and ANC leaders have denied that Afrikaners have suffered human rights abuses and that this view lacks factual substance and is a result of misinformation.  The JDI supporters who feel something is wrong and are being swept by a sense of shame as Jews should pause to reflect that perhaps they too are misinformed and wilfully so as the evidence clearly points to the real genocide enterprise being uniquely by Hamas.