Johannesburg pro-Israel event draws threats

Protesters who included a government official shouted anti-Israel epithets and threats outside a pro-Israel event in suburban Johannesburg.

“You think this is Israel, we are going to kill you,” protesters from the Israeli Apartheid Week and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement shouted outside the Zionist Federation South Africa-Israel Expo in Sandton on Sunday. Others shouted, “You Jews do not belong in South Africa” and “No Zionist conference to be held on our soil.”

Among the protesters was government deputy minister Obed Bapela.

The protest had been advertised via Facebook on a page called Israeli Apartheid Week Protest (Sandton).

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies said in a statement that it is “every South African citizen’s constitutional right to attend events of our choosing without fear of intimidation.”

Last week, an address by Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid at the University of Johannesburg, organized by the South Africa Union of Jewish Students, was forced to end early due to BDS protesters, according to the Board of Deputies.