Khadija Magardie
The conflict in the Middle East has produced a ripple effect in South Africa. The Jewish community has been brought closer together and Muslims are finding solidarity across racial and religious divides.
The latest Palestinian uprising or intifada has produced a range of strong reactions from South Africa’s Jewish and Muslim communities. Community leaders say the cycle of violence in Israel has radically changed the way locals have responded.
Robyn Horwitz works as an administrator for Israel United Appeal. She says the daily reality of living in Israel “like mothers putting their children on a school bus, not knowing if they will return” has had a profound effect on local Jews, who have stepped up their financial support.
“The community is being brought closer together by what is happening every day we get people calling up, asking what they can do to help, and offering assistance,” says Horwitz.
Community activism, says Horwitz, has also increased: the Oxford Shul in Johannesburg recently held a solidarity meeting, attended by “5 000, whereas in the past there would only have been hundreds”.
Financial contributions continue to pour into the organisation’s coffers.
The show of solidarity, she says, proves that rumours of a “split” in the local community between Jews who condemn the actions of the Sharon government and those who regard the Israeli government’s latest incursions into Palestinian areas as “legitimate self-defence” are exaggerated.
Senior researcher for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies David Saks agrees. He adds that rather than people expressing their disagreement with the Israeli government the number of calls and queries the organisation has received from the public asking what they can do to help has “jumped fairly dramatically” in recent months.
The organisation, which also runs “community security organisations” in preparation for terrorist attacks against local Jews, says the surge in violence in Israel has renewed local beliefs in the tenets of Zionism which espouses the creation of a Jewish homeland in Israel, and the right of Jews worldwide to reside there.
Horwitz’s organisation, which has the primary task of raising funds to resettle Jews from developing countries in Israel, has shifted its campaigns to cater for “relief” fund-raising, in response to community requests for a conduit for financial donations directly to Jews who have been victims of the violence.
Horwitz says the Israeli government does not administer any of the money raised; it is handled by an umbrella NGO, Keren Hayesod, based in Israel.
The Israel United Appeal is raising funds for an armoured ambulance costing $150 000, for Jews in Israel who cannot access emergency medical treatment because of the violence. They are also organising solidarity missions to Israel for local Jews.
“Israel is inevitably our focus, it’s our homeland: what happens there to innocent people affects us,” says Horwitz.
The South African Muslim community has experienced a revolution of its own, says Na’eem Jeenah, president of the South African Muslim Youth Movement and a prominent Palestinian rights activist. Jeenah says the major local impact of the intifada has been the growth in inter-faith solidarity with Palestine, and a marked shift from perceptions that the Palestinian cause is “a Muslim cause”.
The South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, plus NGOs such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum, have taken on the Palestinian cause, says Jeenah. This has had a major effect on the way Muslims themselves see the issue. It has opened the eyes of the predominantly religiously conservative Muslim community in two ways.
Firstly, it has promoted the sharing of information and agendas between organisations like Palestinian and South African landless people’s movements, broadening the scope of how the Palestine issue is no longer seen as a religious, “Muslim versus Jew” cause but one of human rights. This has had “an important impact on Muslim consciousness” in that the barriers created by apartheid, which led many local Muslims to “believe they were living in little Islamic states of their own”, is changing, says Jeenah.
The swell of support in the wake of the intifada has also seen a proliferation of organisations that are raising funds to assist the Palestinians. Local Muslim community radio stations have been inundated with calls from the public wanting to know “what they can do to help”.
Jeenah says the community has been opened up to “new and creative” ways of supporting the Palestinian cause. He recently hosted a talk show with religious leaders to debate the possibilities of declaring Israeli products haraam, religiously forbidden.
But most important is the fact that the community has become more embracing of people from other faiths and cultures, largely owing to the mushrooming of public support for the Palestinian cause. “I think Muslims are realising that for us to be able to win struggles important to us, we must be able to participate in the struggles of others,” says Jeenah.