From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
South African Jews ‘revolted’ by president’s ‘from the river to the sea’ chant
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” during a speech, prompting criticism by his country’s Jews for allegedly calling to “exterminate Jews from their homeland.”
The criticism by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies follows the president’s apparently unscripted use of the controversial slogan at a rally in Soweto.
Referencing the River Jordan and Mediterranean, the slogan is understood by many to mean a rejection of Israel’s right to exist and a declaration that the only way for a Palestinian state to be free is to take over the territory of the Jewish one. Advocates of the slogan deny this, with some claiming it is merely an endorsement of the two-state solution.
The Jewish group’s statement is unusually harshly worded, expressing its “revulsion” at Ramaphosa’s words.
The slogan “is widely regarded as a call to genocide of the Jewish people,” the Board notes in a statement. “The slogan and its call for the destruction of the Jewish State has its origin in the Hamas Charter, with its goal to see Israel as `Judenfrei’ or Jew free,” SAJB writes.
“The chanting of this slogan by a head of state of a government that recurrently tries to express their commitment to a `Two State Solution’ as their policy on Israel and Palestine is hypocritical to the full,” they add.
South Africa is an initiator of the legal action against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Ramaphosa is on record as accusing Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” in Gaza.
