Mandela's Jewish Comrades / Haaretz 30.7.13

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Wha t Net any ahu shoul d lear n from t he fall

of apartheid

By Ilan Baruch | Jul. 10, 2013 | 11:08 PM | 5

Mandela's Jewish comradesAll five of the white defendants at the infamous Rivonia trials were Jewish. 50 years on fromthe police raids that led to the trials, what motivated both these Jewish anti-apartheidactivists, disowned by South Africa's Jewish community?

By Roy Isacowitz | Jul. 30, 2013 | 6:11 PM | 2

0 TweetTweet 50

Former South African President Nelson Mandela wa v ing to the m edia as he arr iv es outside 10 Downing

Street, in central London, August 28, 2007. Photo by AFP

The predominance of Jews among the older generation of white anti-

apartheid activists is unmistakable. As my father once put it, there was a

minyan for every political discussion in Pretoria Central Prison after the

imposition of martial law in 1960 - though never for the purpose of

prayer, as far as I know. Most of the o ld-timers were comfortable in their

Jewishness, but their rituals had a lot more to do with Marx than with theAlmighty.

That Jewish asymmetry was on display this past week as South Africa

marked the 50th anniversary of the 1963 police raid on Lilisleaf Farm,

near Johannesburg, which served at the time as the headquarters of

Umkonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the underground African National

Congress. It doesnt take much perspicuity to notice that all five of the

white defendants in the subsequent trial were Jewish. (Another two Jews

one of whom, Arthur Goldreich, lived in Israel until his death in 2011 -

escaped from detention before the trial.) Similarly, fully half the white

defendants in the earlier Treason Trial (1956) were Jewish, as was the lead

counsel.

The head count of white opponents of apartheid readslike a census list from one of the old shtetls in

Lithuania (from where most South African Jews

originated): Joe Slovo, Harold Wolpe, Ruth First,Albie

Sachs, Ronald Segal, Dennis Goldberg, Rusty

Bernstein, Solly Sachs, Helen Suzman, Ray Alexander,

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Mandelas Mideast message: Choose

negotiat ions, not t he bat tlefield

By Heribert Adam | Jul. 8, 2013 | 2:38 PM | 3

Wha t Isra el wont learn from Man delas

legacy

By Roy Isacowitz | Jun. 12, 2013 | 1:36 PM | 49

Arth ur Chaskalson, Jewish a nt i-a part heid

hero, dies at a ge 81

By Jeremy Gordin | Dec. 11, 2012 | 9:19 AM | 6

A deafening silenceBy Benjamin Pogrund | Dec. 26, 2003 | 12:00 AM

Ronnie Kasrils, Raymond Suttner, Ray Simons, Wolfie

Kodish and many others. Some, like Ruth First, paid

with their lives. Others were permanently disabled

(Albie Sachs) or spent years in jail. Several, including

Slovo, Kasrils and Albie Sachs, went on to fill senior

positions in post-apartheid South African

governments.

It is not only we hy per-sensitive Jews who pay

attention to the Jewish hue of the white opposition.

The apartheid regime also took note and made hay of it

regularly. And Nelson Mandela (whose first employer,

at a time when few companies would employ blacks,

was my neighbor Lazar Sidelsky) remarked on it in his autobiography,

Long Walk to Freedom, when he wrote: I have found Jews to be more

broadminded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps

because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice.

That was certainly true of the Jews Mandela encountered during the

struggle against apartheid, but it did not apply to the South African Jewish

community as a whole. Nor does a legacy of prejudice adequately explain

the heroism of the minority though it may well account for the apathy

and quiescence of the majority.

The fact is that all South African Jews benefited from apartheid and themajority tacitly supported it (while voting, in the main, against Afrikaner

nationalism.) The South Afric an Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBOD),

which remains the representative body of South African Jewry to this day,

was resolute in its refusal to condemn apartheid and it did nothing to

support the families of community members who had been banned, jailed

or exiled. The Boards first explicit condemnation of apartheid came in

1985, when South African racism was already on its last legs.

Its not diffic ult to understand the stance of the SA JBOD, which accurately

expressed the attitude of the community as a whole (excluding, of course,

the many anti-apartheid activists.) By the early 1960s (the bulk of the

Lithuanian immigration predated the Holocaust by several decades), most

South African Jews were prosperous but insecure; the memories of the

overt anti-Semitism that had characterized A frikaner nationalism in theThirties and much of the Forties were still v ivid. At the same time, the

community was passionately pro-Zionist (perhaps the most Zionist Jewish

community in the diaspora), which both distanced the Jews f rom South

African politics (their emotional involvement being with Israel) and

inclined them favorably towards the regime when South Africa and Israel

forged their military partnership in the Seventies.

Thus, the attitude of the SAJBOD and much of the community was

determined by three, interwoven factors: The economic success of the

Jewish community in South Africa, the fear of anti-Semitism and the

influence of Zionism. The Board saw its role as doing what was good for

the Jews and, for much of the 20th century, apartheid was good for the

Jews. Not for all of them, of course the Board was able to avert its

collectiv e eyes from those in jail, in exile or underground but for most.

The example of the South African Jewish community does not support

Mandelas assumption that being victims of prejudice in the past creates

antibodies to prejudice in general. If anything, the opposite is true as we

know well from our Israeli experience. Victimhood can just as easily

desensitize as sensitize. The fear of reawakening the demons of the past

can create its own horrors. At the very least, it can and does lead to a

moral blindness. The South African Jewish community was prosperous

but morally bankrupt.

Those members of the community who fought against apartheid swam

against the stream. They were motivated more by ideology (communism,

socialism and Bundism) than they were by a legacy of prejudice andsuffering. By the 1 930s, Jewish laborers and artisans occupied leadership

positions in the burgeoning South African trade union movement and the

majority of the Jewish males who went on to oppose apartheid had joined

the all-volunteer South African army to fight against fascism in World

War II. My father, Jock Isacowitz, got his political toes wet as one of the

founders of the Springbok Legion, an ex-servicemens organization that

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fought for the rights of all former soldiers, irrespective of race.

The Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), was strongly rooted in late 19th

century Lithuania and its ideological offshoots, primarily socialism and

Zionism, were imported ready -made into South Africa by the immigrants.

These ideologies flourished in the African soil, resulting in a strong cadre

of dedicated socialists, on the one hand, and a dynamic Zionist movement

on the other. My father was one of the few who managed to combine the

two. Arthur Goldreich, who fought with the Palmach in 1948 before

returning to South Africa and joining the armed underground (he was the

offic ial lessee of Liliesleaf Farm) was another. But most of their colleagues

regarded Zionism as a colonial enterprise. How sad that Israel should be

following the blinkered and indifferent example of the South African

Jewish community and proving their critics right.

Roy Isacowitz is a writer and marketer living in Tel Aviv. He spent many

years working for the Israeli and foreign media.

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