Board flags surge in anti-Semitism

The Cape Town SA Jewish Board of Deputies has approached the Equality Court alleging that a string of Instagram posts, including one that depicted a Star of David being thrown into a rubbish bin, amounted to anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist hate speech. The board’s Daniel Bloch said there had been an ‘unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism’ in the Western Cape in the past year. He told the Sunday Times the increase in ‘anti-Jewish attacks’ in the last 13 months was ‘well in excess of 300%’. However, Usuf Chikte of the Cape-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), said it was ‘sceptical’ about these numbers as the board ‘deliberately doesn’t make a clear distinction between Zionism and Judaism when it assesses anti-Semitism’. The case in the Cape Town Equality Court is against Mariam Jakoet-Harris, over 10 Instagram posts to her approximately 36 000 followers. Two posts relate to boycotts of businesses – one posted after Jakoet-Harris had done ‘due diligence’, saying the business owner ‘is open about who she supports’. The other called on people participating in a global boycott to stay off social media that day because ‘Instagram chief’ Adam Mosseri is ‘Jewish-Israeli’ and ‘Facebook chief’ Mark Zuckerberg is ‘Jewish’.