A day before the third anniversary of 9/11, Cape radio listeners were told that Jews are murderers of babies and children as well as conspirators who want to control the world.
This week the radio station both broadcast and put on its website an apology to the Jewish community, after the Mail & Guardian e-mailed questions to the station about the show.
But a Jewish community leader says the apology is ”not good enough”.
The guest speaker on the Voice of the Cape (VOC) station on September 10 was Sheikh Muhamad Colby. He is a final-year student in theology at the University of Al Azhar in Cairo, Egypt, and was speaking to VOC interviewer Jamiel Wallace about human rights.
During the live broadcast, Colby said he believed the Jews controlled the world — in ways such as economically, politically and via the media — and that they would rise against those who opposed them. He said ”Zionists” had held meetings where they planned to take over the world and that they would eliminate anyone who stood in their way.
”They [the Jews] say: we will carry out any form of destruction and killing and slaughtering and murdering and raping without any mercy whether it is children, mothers, babies — without mercy, old people — against anyone that lifts up any arms against our aims and objectives.”
He also expressed the view that Judaism was no different to Zionism. Zionism is a political movement originally concerned with establishing an independent Jewish state, and now with developing the state of Israel, while Judaism describes the Jewish religion.
Colby said: ”Judaism has taken up a new name — that is Zionism, which the UN [United Nations] declared as a racist movement in 1975.”
Wallace asked Colby on three occasions whether he (Colby) was equating Zionism and Judaism. Each time the sheikh said that he was doing so.
The VOC, whose target audience consists mainly of Muslim listeners on the Cape Flats, said in both its broadcast and website apology that, after it listened to the programme again, it found that ”various strongly worded remarks were made, which is cause for concern, although we did not receive any direct complaints subsequent to the programme, until a query was made by the M&G”.
The station said Wallace, from a lack of experience, had failed to issue a disclaimer or to question the guest in more detail on his stance.
”This could have created the impression that the VOC concurred with this view, which we absolutely do not.”
Yehuda Kay, the national executive director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, told the M&G that he appreciates the VOC’s apology, but the station should have been more sensitive.
”I am actually very upset that they would broadcast such incitement to hatred and violence,” he says. ”The radio station is usually a very moderate voice and we will definitely have a meeting with them. They should never have broadcast a programme like that.”
Colby told the M&G that he was willing to answer questions, but his cellphone was off when the M&G tried to call him at the agreed time, and on the subsequent four attempts.