Ramaphosa assures Jewish community Pretoria won’t sever ties with Israel, but condemns Gaza ‘genocide’

Jewish community leaders have said that President Ramaphosa has reassured them that Pretoria does not intend severing diplomatic ties with Israel. 

In a meeting with the community leaders, Ramaphosa also denounced anti-Semitic behaviour towards Jewish people in South Africa — “including the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses” — as well as Islamophobia. He also condemned Hamas for its attack on Israel on 7 October and demanded it return the Israeli hostages it took in that attack and is still holding.

Leaders of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and SA Zionist Federation (SAZF) said after meeting Ramaphosa on Wednesday that he “re-iterated Dirco’s public position that there was no intention to sever diplomatic ties between Israel and South Africa.”

This position appeared to contradict the ANC support of a resolution passed in Parliament last month calling on Pretoria to sever relations with Israel because of its bombardment of Gaza. The government had indicated already that it regarded this resolution as purely advisory and was not obliged to implement it. But the SAJBD’s statement was the clearest sign that it does not intend doing so. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: National Assembly votes to cut diplomatic ties with Israel and shut embassy, but it’s symbolic until government acts

Ramaphosa did not refer directly to this in his statement on the meeting. However, he did say he had told the Jewish leaders that SA would not return its diplomats to its closed embassy in Tel Aviv until Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has ended. All the diplomats in the embassy were recalled last month. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: SA recalls diplomats in Tel Aviv over ‘untenable’ situation with Israeli ambassador

The SAJBD also said that Ramaphosa had told them that it was Israel’s decision, not South Africa’s, whether Israel’s ambassador to South Africa Eliav Belotsercovsky returned to this country. Israel recalled him for consultations just before the ANC-supported Parliamentary resolution to cut ties with Israel was adopted.  

The SAJBD said that its National Director Wendy Kahn, had shared a presentation with Ramaphosa “on the documented threats and incidents against the Jewish community, including:

• Calls to expel the Jewish representative bodies from the country;


• Incitement by a PAGAD leader to ‘decentralise the war. Let’s take the war to them right here’;


• Marches on Jewish areas on the Sabbath to ‘Shut down the Zionist enablers’;


• Assaults on Christian Zionists and Jews on the Sea Point promenade;


• Threats to close a Jewish School and threats to bomb that school;


• Boycotts of Jewish businesses; and


• The rise in antisemitism that has spiked from nine incidents in the previous year to 125 incidents, during the same time period, including an increase in physical assaults.”

International pressure on Israel mounts

Palestinian Permanent Observer to the United Nations Riyad H Mansour (centre) speaks during a press conference as the UN General Assembly holds an emergency special session on the Israel-Hamas war at the United Nations headquarters on 12 December 2023 in New York City. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

1. Restore full diplomatic recognition of Israel, including the re-opening of the South African embassy in Tel Aviv and providing assurances that the Israeli embassy in Pretoria will not be closed  to enable the return of the Israeli Ambassador to South Africa;


2. Speak and/or act against the boycott of Israeli and Jewish businesses in South Africa; and


3. Protect the South African Jewish community against anti-Semitic incidents and/or attacks.

1. Stands with the people of Palestine who have endured over seven  decades of apartheid type of brutal occupation;


2. Condemned the attacks carried out by Hamas on 7 October 2023 on Israeli citizens, including women and children;


3. Calls for all hostages to be returned;


4. Condemns the genocide that is being inflicted against the people of Palestine, including women and children, through collective punishment and ongoing bombardment of Gaza;


5. Calls for the International Criminal Court to investigate all the atrocities and war crimes committed in Israel and Palestine and to hold all those responsible to account;


6. Calls for the immediate cessation of hostilities to allow for more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza; and


7. Calls for the resumption of negotiations between Palestinians and Israel that will lead to a two-state solution along the 1967 internationally recognised borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.