It's Almost Supernatural

Closing date to register for 'special vote' in 2009 elections

Tomorrow, 27th February 2009, is the final day that South African citizens abroad who qualify for the ‘Special Vote’ can register to vote. Although various issues, linked to the right of citizens living abroad and the date for overseas voting, are still under consideration, we urge South Africans overseas to register to vote in case they become eligible. Please send this information to friends and family living outside of the country.

For more information, and to download the forms, please see the IEC website http://www.elections.org.za/Voting_SpecialVoting.asp

COSATU spokesperson calls on Jews to leave SA

Over the past couple of weeks there has been some disturbing correspondence between Cosatu’s International Relations secretary, Bonagini Masuku, and a number of the pro-Israel blogging community.

The correspondence was triggered by a comment placed by Bongani on this blog. The comment read:

Hi guys, Bongani says hi to you all as we struggle to liberate Palestine from the racists, fascists and zionists who belong to the era of their Friend Hitler! We must not apologise, every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our broathers (sic) and sisters in Palestine. We must target them, expose them and doo allthat (sic) is needed to subject them to pereptual suffering until they withdraw from the land of others and stop their savage attacks on human dignity. Every Palestinian who suffers is a direct attck (sic) on all of us!

Following the posting of this comment Anthony Posner e-mailed Bongani in an attempt to understand the man behind this juvenile bigotry. Bongani replied that his comment was not much worse than a previous comment left on this blog by a racist Zionist. The comment in question was undoubtedly racist. It was posted just before Shabbat came in and was left on the blog until after Shabbat. That Saturday night, once I saw the offensive comment, I removed it. Before I had the chance to remove the comment, however, Mohammed Desai from Wits PSC emailed the comment to a PSC mailing group, of which Bongani was a member, and portrayed it as the standard racism emanating from Zionist blogs.

By the time Bongani found this blog, the racist comment had already been removed. Yet he still posted the above threatening comment. Desai’s circulation of the racist comment may have piqued Bongani’s interest, but it in no way helped formulate his opinion. Subsequent correspondence has revealed him for the unrepentantly blinkered and outrageously arrogant bigot that he is.

Since Bongani has repeatedly emailed his noxious opinions to us, I have decided to make it all public. The link at the bottom of this post will allow you to read all of the correspondence with Bongani that I have been involved in. Out of respect for the privacy of others, I have only included mine and Bongani's emails. Initially, I thought there was a certain soulful naiveté to Bongani, I even considered that he may be worth engaging on some (low intellectual) level. I later changed my mind. You can draw your own conclusions.

By the end of the correspondence Bongani was calling for the removal of almost all Jews from South Africa. As the International Relations secretary of Cosatu, which is a member of the ruling ANC's tripartite alliance, these views should concern us all. Bongani writes:

In fact, all the people who deny that occupation is wrong must be encouraged to leave South Africa before they infect our society with much more racism.

He followed this up by saying, in his enthusiastic verbage, that "no pro-Israel Jews should ever consider South Africa to be their home (sic)". These are surely views that need to be challenged in the mainstream media and perhaps at the South African Human Rights Commission.

Finally, the racist comment posted on IAS was as disgusting as anything Bongani said. This savage racism is not welcome here. I guess it’s the downside to having an open forum. Despite this type of abus of our comments, we continue to see the value in open, and often unmoderated, forums where important issues can be debated.

Also, credit to Anthony Posner, whose engaging wit resulted in Bongani falling further and further down his very own twisted hole.

Click here to read the correspondence with Bongani - comments (1)

Update

Ben Cohen from Z-Word, copied in on almost all of the correspondence, has weighed in with some great analysis. Get it here: Cosatu, Antisemitism, and my Inbox

Also see this roundup of the current turbulent situation written by Alana Pugh-Jones and published on Divaid Hirsch's brilliant Engage Online: Hostility to Israel and antisemitism

South Africa’s appalling behavior at the UN continues …

Over the years, I have devoted much ink to exposing South Africa’s pro totalitarian behavior at the UN. Although human rights have often been declared by the ANC to be a cornerstone of their foreign policy, their representatives hardly ever miss an opportunity to side with dictators and tyrants against the free world. Sadly last week’s preparatory meeting for the infamous UN Durban 2 review conference on racism was not an exception. This time it was the issue of gay rights.

UN Watch, the best source for information for all things related to the United Nations but in particular the Durban 2 preparatory proceedings, is reporting that discrimination based on sexual orientation has been removed from the upcoming conference daft declaration with the support of South Africa. The original proposal by Western states in the draft text (par. 69) was to condemn ‘all forms of discrimination and all other human rights violations based on sexual orientation.’ Not so controversial, one would think, for a conference ostensibly about discrimination and intolerance, as UNWATCH puts it.

The Czech Republic on behalf of the E.U., with the support of New Zealand, the United States, Colombia, Chili on behalf of the South American states, the Netherlands, Argentina and a few others, took the floor in support. But they were in the minority. Realising this and seeking a compromise solution the United Kingdom proposed to water down the language as follows: “Recognizes that experiences of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance are aggravated and intersect with discrimination on grounds including sexual orientation and gender identity, and condemns all forms of discrimination and all other human rights violations based on these grounds.”

The inclusion of the words “discrimination on grounds including sexual orientation” however still made the paragraph unadoptable and unacceptable for the majority of member states at the U.N. These included South Africa on behalf of the African Group, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Botswana, Iran, Algeria, and Syria.

The South African representative argued: ‘Sexual orientation and discrimination. . . goes beyond the framework of the (2001) Durban Declaration.’ According to our section 9(3) of our much praised constitution grounds for discrimination include ‘ race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth’. How can the South African government support an international process that would seek to limit the scope of our bill of rights? Not only is it a moral disgrace but it is extremely worrying development for our democracy. It calls into question the ANC’s continued commitment to our constitutional order.

That the South African government in the build up to Durban 2 has consistently broken its promise to the Jewish community and gone along with the singling out of Israel and only Israel as part of this global ‘anti-racism’ process does not surprise me. I have come to expect that from a government whose deputy foreign minister engages in classic anti-Jewish libels. But for South Africa one of the most liberal societies in the world on issues of gay rights to side with countries like Iran and Egypt is absurd. Civil society stood by the Jewish community when Fatima Hajaig made her anti-Semitic comments. I think we have an obligation to stand by the gay community in this situation. No matter what our personal positions we should rally with the rest of civil society to force the government to recommit to the values enshrined in our constitution and pull out of this Orwellian circus that is Durban 2.

Problems with posting comments

Dear readers,

I have noticed that there has been an increasing number of complaints about comments being blocked on this blog. It is not our policy to censor comments except in special circumstances where we believe they are outrightly racist, or invite charges of personal defamation.

That said, the recent spate of blocked comments has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with the endless fight against comment spam. This blog takes measures against comment spam which unfortunately will prevent some of your comments from going through. We receive over 50 spam comments each day. It's simply not feasible for me to turn the spam-blocker off and sift through every comment to remove the spam. It's also not feasible for me to sift through the spam each day and identify the real comments. Leaving the spam would unquestionably ruin the comment sections altogether, so this is the best of available imperfect solutions at hand.

I'll consider testing a captcha system which will require you to capture a series of letters displayed on the screen to prove you are human. I just need to find the time. In the meantime, some tips on ensuring that your comments do not look like spam:

• Excessively long comments are often automatically marked as spam. Try splitting these comments into several smaller ones. 
• Either don't use an email address or use a real email address. The only people that see the email are us - and we don't display it.
• Avoid expletives.
• Avoid too many hyperlinks in your comment. Most spam comments are filled with hyperlinks to attract readers to their fake websites.

Feel free to contact me at the email address displayed on this blog if you are having problems. I can ussually find your comments in the spam library and easily publish it from there.

We apologise for the frustration and aggravation this may have caused you.

Waltz with Bashir Not Israel’s Last Tango

Last night I went (perhaps mistakenly) with a very Left Wing Zionist friend to see the Oscar nominated Israeli movie Waltz with Bashir. It is a disturbing personal account of the director, Ari Folman’s, attempt 20 years later, to piece together what had happened to him during the 1982 Lebanon war.

The distinguishing feature of the film is its use of animation. The story plays out through comic book type images of people Folman serviced with during the war. I found the movie to be as one dimensional as the pictures on the scene. No attempt is made to examine in depth any aspect of the actual conflict. No questions are posed about why Israel is there and who they are fighting. There is no allusion even to the terrible internal rifts that the war created back home. Or even an acknowledgement of how so little has changed in the region now 20 years on. Little sympathy is shown for the young Israelis soldiers that gave their lives in that conflict and even less for the Palestinian and Lebanese victims. It is just a shallow and self-centered quest by Folman to remember the details of his tour of duty, details he purposefully had blocked out.

I have to say that all in all it was a fairly accurate depiction of what happened during the war. The Sabra Shatila massacres obviously loom large. But care is taken to show and explain that it was ultimately the Christian Falangist militia and not the IDF that did the actual killing. Of course given the horrific scenes of murder and destruction, one cannot but ask if Israel could not have done more to stop the killings. Sadly the characters don’t really help us grabble much with this issue.

I came away from this very average film with Golda Meir’s famous words “we can forgive the Arab’s for killing our children but we cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children” ringing in my mind. We often forget the terrible psychological cost the 2 asymmetrical wars and 2 intifadas since Lebanon have caused for those who took part. We are quick to see the risks that a peace agreement poses (rockets being fired on Israel from the West Bank for example) but all too often fail to take into account the risks posed by the status quo.

I left the movie house angry not at Israel, its soldiers or its filmmakers but her enemies. Those like Hamas and Hezbollah who continue to force the Jewish state to live by the sword. Those who shoot from schools and apartment blocks, place Israeli soldiers in the cruel position of having to kill innocent civilians to save the lives of their own troops and citizens.

My Leftwing friend felt completely differently. He too was angry, but first with Menachim Began, then with Arik Sharon, then every Israeli government minus Rabin’s during the Oslo years came in for attack. “Why have we continued to fight these immoral wars? Did we not see the horrors of Lebanon?”, he shouted. “If only Israel would push harder for peace we would not need to live like this”. I shot back that the Left lived in a dream world where peace could be a unilateral act. All the wishing in the world could not turn the Palestinians into Norwegians or Danes. They need to want peace and be willing to make the concessions necessary for peace, just as Israel has.

Sadly, Waltz with Bashir will not be the last film made about the impact of Israel’s wars on its own soldiers. An honest reading of the situation in the region tends to indicate that there are more Lebanons and more Gazas to come. Not because Israel, now under a right wing government, will seek out bloodshed and conflict (as my friend may believe) but because Israel’s enemies still have not learnt as Golda Meir also said “to love their children more than they hate us”.

The mysterious case of the missing Broederbond conspiracy

The Media Review Network’s (MRN) Iqbal Jassat yesterday authored an article dismissing claims made by David Saks that the MRN had once showcased an unrepentantly anti-Semitic article on their website about a Jewish Broederbond conspiracy "which had ruled South Africa for the past 50 years and continues to dominate the power structures of our country."

This was but one of a number of items of evidence which Saks used to dispel claims made by MRN fangirl Virginia Tilley, who said that the MRN and Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) have a noble track record in campaigning against Israeli human rights abuses and that they high-mindedly insist on distinguishing between anti-Zionism and anti-racism.

Jassat responded to Saks’ accusations by simply denying them. Here’s his article entitled “Hajaig spat takes new turn as anti-semitism debates continue in the wake of new questions about Israel's future”. Jassat writes:

To support his knee-jerk response in the form of "evidence", Saks cited a document entitled "The Jewish-Broederbond Syndicate" as having featured on MRN’s website. Again – as in the case of Fatima Hajaig – Saks deliberately finds it expedient to not only isolate any context but to intentionally conflate issues in keeping with his objective to slanderously demonise MRN as anti-semitic. Since I have no recollection of any such article published on MRN’s website, my quick google search elicited 10 results – none of them listing Media Review Network as host. In any event, it may have featured alongside thousands of articles – many of them construed by the SAJBD as anti-semitic given that authors and journalists like Mathatha Tsedu, Anthony Holiday, Tim Modise, Barney Pityana and Virginia Tilley amongst others have been cited in annual "anti-semitism reports" compiled by Saks for the Stephen Roth Institute in Israel.

Ok, so Jassat is partly right. A search for ‘Jewish Broederbond Syndicate” does not implicate the MRN. But that’s a normal search on the content on his website today, which he knows doesn’t currently contain the offensive article. I remember that the article disappeared, quite suddenly, some time ago. I think I was one of a number of individuals that contacted Talk Radio 702 after they interviewed the MRN, and asked them to read some of the views that the MRN espoused, including the conspiracy of a Jewish syndicate that was and still is, in complete control of South Africa. The MRN probably caught wind of this “why don’t you read what they want others to read” tactic, and removed some of their favourite articles.

Jassat will be surprised to know that it's actually very difficult to remove something from the Internet. Before I get to this, one more point. Jassat realises that they once showboated this anti-Semitic article, and he therefore dimly couches his denial in protective language, saying that they never “hosted” the article. In this non-legal context, that’s irrelevant. What matters here, is that the association with the articles implicates the MRN's shared conspiratorial worldview.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine allows us to view cached pages of websites as they were years ago. I used the Wayback Machine to see if I could find this notorious article, and find it I did.

It’s important to realise that this isn’t just one of thousands of articles that the MRN links to, as Jassat claims. For years it was linked to in their section called ‘publications’ - one of, on average, 12 (not thousands!) links for the years when it was featured. There can be no doubt that they fully endorsed the views in this article and aimed to distribute it as widely as possible, even if they never “hosted” it.

The archive shows that two articles in particular, one on the Jewish Broederbond Syndicate and the other on Holocaust denial were prominently displayed from at least 2001 to 2005. The screenshot below is for the year 2001.

The text at the top reads: The Publications section contains some of the publications written by the Media Review Network. Please check back often as new information is constantly added to the section.

The first highlighted article reads: The "Holocaust" - 120 questions and answers.
The second highlighted article reads: The Jewish Broederbond Syndicate.

Here are the links for your perusal: 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005 (Once the pages open, look for "publications" on the left and then you will find the list of articles.)

Later in his response, Jassat says that the issue with the Jewish Broederbond article was originally blamed on some “unnamed South African Islamic website”. He then says that this website bears no resemblance to the MRN.

But in the archive links, on average 8 of the 12 or so links are directly from the website (www.islam.co.za) that actually hosted the articles in question. This makes it very difficult for Jassat to state that there was no connection between the MRN and the website.

The MRN should have the courage of their convictions and repost the links to these foul articles that attack Jews as Jews. I'm sure they will still be able to rely on the likes of Virginia Tilley for defence and legitimisation.

My Way or the High Way for SA Jewish Community

Doron Isaacs, the organiser of the controversial South African ‘Human Rights’ Delegation to Israel, has written a passionate op-ed in this week’s South African Jewish Report (SAJR) imploring the community to adopt a more critical posture towards Israel in order to avert rising anti-Semitism. Although he condemns the mainstream Jewish leadership for not being nuanced enough, his approach is strikingly simplistic. He presents South African Jewry with a black or white, good or evil binary choice of what he calls the high or low road. Doron talks of Jewish unity but the self-righteousness that oozes from the piece makes it clear that this can only be achieved on his terms. Sticking to the road metaphor, my way or the high way would have been a far more accurate title.

The crux of Doron’s argument is that the Jewish community’s unwavering public support for Israel is augmenting anti-Jewish feelings among civil society in South Africa. Furthermore, he argues that our failure to publicly condemn Israel’s ‘discrimination against Palestinians’ weakens the credibility of our institutions in the fight against anti-Semitism. Thus, following this Orwellian logic, the only way for this community to be ‘saved’ is for it to publically denounce Zionism’s excesses. For that very reason, faced with the tsunami of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate in South Africa at the height of the Gaza war, he launched a petition condemning the community for its pro-Israel stance.

Although Doron thinks of himself as rather progressive, his solutions are nothing new. Various appeasement policies such as assimilation and even outright conversion have over the centuries been touted and adopted by many well meaning Jews as the solution to rising anti-Semitism. Even Theodore Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism, flirted with the idea of a mass Jewish conversion to Christianity or socialism to solve the Jewish question. But the extermination of 6 million of Europe’s Jews (many of whom were also fiercely progressive) has exposed the futility, if not the danger, of such a response. We have learnt at great human cost that appeasing anti-Semites in the long run does not secure our safety.

If there is to be a prosperous future for Jews in South Africa, it will not be brought about by accepting the immoral deal that is being imposed upon us. Rather we need to publicly expose and denounce those who would place us in such a position. Jonathan Freedland, the not exactly pro-Israel journalist from the not exactly pro-Israel Guardian newspaper, has recently written a brilliant piece, entitled “Sowing anti-Semitism”, challenging the hypocrisy of those who seek to force local Jewish communities into condemning the actions of Israel. As he points out ‘liberals rightly recoil from the pressure on Muslims to denounce jihadism or even Islamism. Yet they make the same demand when they suggest Jews are okay unless they are Zionists. The effect is to make Jews' place in society contingent on their distance from their fellow Jews, in this case, Israelis’.

There are some in this community who have questioned Doron’s motives for his campaign against Israel and now local Zionists. Some have privately argued to me that he is trying to use this issue to curry political favor within the ruling party. Others have argued that it is just for his own ego. I do not buy this. I believe Doron’s intentions are genuinely well meaning both for both Jews and Palestinians. What I object to are his tactics.

Does this mean I support oppressing all criticism of Israel or the local Jewish community? Of course not. Individuals have the right to condemn whatever actions they may find reprehensible. I myself have publicly disagreed with the past behavior of both the South African Jewish Board and the government of the Jewish state. But the difference is that I do not try impose my opinion on the rest of the community with threats that if they don’t follow my approach they will suffer increased anti-Semitism. I believe and have argued strongly on many occasions for a broad synagogue approach to unity in this community where all Jews no matter what their religiosity or political persuasion are made to feel welcome. But that requires a tolerance that Doron seems to lack. He needs to understand that his positions on Israel are not more valid than those of the more Zionist members of our community. Just because his 300 odd co-signatures happen to be artist, judges, writers and academics does not give their voices disproportional weight, or their argument automatic moral superiority.

Publically demonising the 70 000 odd other Jews who did not sign the petition as bad, racist and illiberal is not the way to secure the future of South African Jewry. Frog marching this community down high or low roads will not solve our problems. What we really need is to try build bridges of understanding to each other.

The Smoking Socks Award: CSO compared to Jewish Kapos

The scratching pens of deranged Israel-haters have been so hard at work over the past few weeks that I haven’t had the stomach to look through the list and select the worst of the worst. Last week, however, a prime candidate for a Smoking Socks Award surfaced from the Jewish Report.

I don’t really care for the concerns of individuals when they invoke the Nazi comparisons, and this is what one Jewish letter writer did when he described the Jewish communal security organisation (CSO) as a bunch of Kapos. It’s an extremely inflammatory comparison and one that precludes the letter writer from having his views taken seriously. For readers that might not know what the term Kapo means, it was used to refer to Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust, who were forced to carry out the will of the Nazi camp commandants and guards.

Here's an excerpt from the letter entitled, Taking a dim view of the CSO presence at the PSC rally

I was at the protest and could not believe the way the CSO security personnel were manhandling some of the Jewish people who were there. The Jewish activists, who came there that day, did not arrive at the scene desiring CSO protection. There were several Jewish men who wanted to challenge these inciting, racist, Jew-hating, antagonising protesters. Both Jewish camps (the bystanders and the activists) did not want, nor desire protection from the CSO whose post-adolescent pre-mortgage paying members behaved like Jewish Kapos from the Second World War. These Jewish Kapos from the CSO, who have no jurisdiction over a public road, prevented several Jews from confronting the Muslim and other demonstrators that day. The consequence was that the CSO inadvertently protected these sworn enemies of the Jews. Deterrence lost. Wake up! They forfeited their right to freedom of speech and assembly years ago when their speech, actions and ideology became both hateful and dangerous to their fellow south-Africans.

We, correctly, reacted with disgust when COSATU and the PSC marched into our neighbourhood with a swastika implying that we are as bad as the Nazis were. We should react with the same contempt when fellow Jews belittle the suffering endured during the Holocaust with similar comparisons.

Israel: A divided house

Our coverage of the Israeli elections this year has been relatively mute. With the war with Hamas and its fall out for Jews worldwide, we have had plenty other stuff to write about. Even so the race has been anything but inspiring. We have in previous years come out strongly in support of Kadima. Their political platform is still probably closest to our position but their performance under Prime Minister Olmert has been dismal. Thus it was hard to get excited about them continuing to run the country. My only real preference was for a strong national unity government that could make the difficult but necessary decision to address the many challenges facing the Jewish state from a nuclear Iran, to peace with the Palestinians to the financial crisis.

If I had been forced to bet, like most, I guess I would have put my money on Netanyahu to be Prime Minister. For months he has been the clear favorite in the polls. I do confess that I did check out the odds on the political gambling site www.intrade.com but after being badly burned on North Carolina in the American election last year decided to hold onto my money. I good decision I guess seeing that the exit polls and with most of the vote count in Kadima is surprisingly leading Likud by 1 seat. Tzipi Livni’s odds to be the next prime minister have sky rocketed (they were at 15% on Monday; they are now at 45%). Anything is possible in Israeli politics but if you look closely at the numbers it’s hard to see how she can put together a stable government.

Netanyahu is no fool. He knows that if she fails (which is likely) he will be Prime Minister and thus will not join as a junior partner. That leaves Labour and Lieberman. But their combined total with Kadima would come to only 56 seats. Livni and Shas have made it clear that neither would want to work together. Shas would also have a hard time sitting in a government with Yisrael Beiteinu. Meretz has also ruled out sharing power with them. So that leaves the non-Zionist religious party United Torah Judaism (UTJ) or the Arab/non-Zionist parties. In the current political climate the latter are a non starter. So the only real chance Livni has is the 5 mandates of UTJ which would bring her total to a flimsy 61. Perhaps with enough money for their yeshiva programs and with promises of increasing the child support grant, she may be able to buy them off. But could Lieberman, a champion of the anti-religious, accept such a thing? I doubt it. This outcome, if even feasible, would produce a very unstable equilibrium in Israeli politics.

Of course the other alternative is that Netanyahu is tasked with forming the new government. Kadima, realising that their hopes rest on his failure, would be crazy to join. Without Kadima, he does have a right wing/religious coalition of 65 mandates. But once again the ability of Yisrael Beiteinu to sit in a government with Shas and UTJ is questionable. Labour, instead of Yisrael Beiteinu is then his only alternative. Only if Barak is seen to be keeping Lieberman out could he possibly prop up such a right wing religious government. Even then with only 63 odd mandates, this government would be a prisoner of instability and inaction.

Israel is a house divided and it’s a political disaster for the country. We have achieved the worst possible result. The only way out is what for the 2 major political parties (Likud and Kadima) to put their personal interests aside and work for the good of the country. This will require a national unity government with the sharing of power. A rotating Prime Ministership, as was the case in the 1980s with Peres and Shamir, is the only option. It will take real leadership on the part of both Livni and Netanyahu. I hope that they have it. We are going to need both of them if Israel is to become whole again and function.

Here’s an interesting table showing the difference in mandates between 2006 and 2009. Interestingly, the left and center combined have lost a total of 16 seats and the right, led by resurgence in the Likud, have gained 15. Arab parties gained one.

Guest Blog: Just a jump to the left but step to the right?

As I mentioned earlier this week, we had a correspondent at Beyachad who promised a write-up on the perspective from within the confines of the Jewish communal center. I think this post wraps up our coverage of the march.

It had been a quiet Friday. I had been sent an SMS the day before saying that no COSATU march would take place because it had been declared illegal. The previous SMS asking the community to rally was to be ignored. Suddenly several messages began arriving. COSATU don't care about laws, they are coming, and soon, park at Genesis (a nearby shopping centre) and you will be transported to Beyachad for the counter protest. This was a mere three hours before the arrival of the COSATU hordes. Small passenger vehicles were to be the transport. They were staffed by young volunteers from the youth movements. They ferried protesters back and forth across the one kilometre strip separating the two centres. Arriving at Beyachad we were met with the excitement, but not the tension, that normally occurs during a protest. After all this protest was to be inside Beyachad, that way it was legal while the one on the outside was not. I felt pretty safe, this thanks the concrete barrier, barbed wire fence and steel doors at the entrance. The heavy CSO/police presence in the surrounding suburbs also helped.

The action centred on the inside parking lot of the building. Now devoid of cars there stood a small stage and a large sound system. Behind it stood a row of promotion boards of the community organistations that were represented. Below the stage stood a large A1 poster of Dr Martin Luther King Jnr. Underneath were the words "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews". Apparently this grammatical subtlety was missed by our deputy minister on xenophobia promotion a couple of weeks earlier. As it would later by the crowd that descended onto the center. People moved from place to place. They belonged to the organisers of the counter protest. The various uniforms told you who they were, CSO, youth movements, SAUJS, the Board, the Fed and other communal organisations. For 2pm on a Friday afternoon the crowd was pretty varied. The two hundred or so that were able to make it were comprised mainly of youth. There were also working people, a few soccer moms, various leadership, Beyachad staff, some older members of the community and even a Holocaust survivor. That is to say, quite a nice spread. Certainly more would have made it had not the arrival of COSATU stopped the ferrying process.

A call over the sound system urged the crowd to the podium. On top of it stood Avram Krengel, head of the Zionist Federation, the alleged target of the protest. His speech centered on the fact that we are proud to be South African, a band in the rainbow. At the same time we should not and would not abandon our support for the state of Israel. In the middle of his speech came chants from over the wall, COSATU had arrived. We responded with the cry "Am Yisrael Chai". South African and Israeli flags waved in the wind and posters condemning the Hamas missile attacks were hoisted high into the air. Eventually the chants died away, we found out later that the police had pushed the mob back. Then came a speech by the Chief Rabbi, decrying COSATU's opposition to an island of workers rights in a sea of black oily exploitation. After him was Zev Krengal, head of the Jewish Board of Deputies reminding us that we are older than COSATU and would not be intimidated. Then suddenly, as fast as it had started, the protest ended. We were told our shuttles were ready and we could take them back to Genisis. People began leaving Beyachad to get ready for Shabbos.

What happened on street outside I don’t know. I couldn't see what was happening. From what I heard there were between two and three buses that arrived at different times. When the protesters got to Beyachad they were pushed away. Fulfilling their mandate of only going after Zionist buildings not Jewish ones they went to protest outside the Sydenham Shul. There Ronnie Kasrils, in his first visit in years, joined the chants and yells alongside swastika laden banners and burning Israeli flags.

The illegality of the march made a counter march very difficult. However the question needs to be asked whether the Jewish community would have been willing or able to take on COSATU in the streets? Better still could we have a marched on COSATU house and made it count? Clearly COSATU believed it could intimidate the faceless Zionists after they dared to question the racism of their bigot-in-chief Deputy Foreign Minister Fatima Hajaig. Clearly it hasn't worked, but I don't know if COSATU understands that.

The attempted siege on Beyachad pales into insignificance when we remember real sieges that our nation has faced in times gone by. Apart from the fact that the authorities should have arrested the protesters on sight, the march was well handled. No one was injured and there was no destruction of property. However if we want stop the threat of the gulag, even if it is empty, then we may have to get our toy-toying shoes out the closet.

Previously at IAS

• COSATU, PSC march against Jewish community
• COSATU supports Jewish boycott
• COSATU and PSC march - Photo album
• A message for us from COSATU