DAVID SAKS: The insidious new war against Jewish business

The Israel-Hamas conflict has been affecting SA society in many unwelcome ways, and of these the systematic targeting of Jewish-headed business establishments for boycotts and other disruptive action is among the most insidious.

While not a new phenomenon in contemporary SA, the virulence of these campaigns together with the extent to which — unlike in previous years — they have gained at least some traction, is unusual. To an alarming extent, Jewish-owned businesses around the country are being held up as somehow being proxies for the Israel state and subjected to unprecedentedly high levels of intimidation and harassment.

This is affecting not just the larger national chains but even small, individually owned and run establishments. Merely to have expressed some kind of identification with Israel — even with a Jewish organisation — on one’s social media profile at some point is enough to be placed on the boycotters’ hit list. Sometimes though, merely being Jewish appears to be enough.

All of this inevitably raises the question about the motivations of those who, for the sake of gaining token victories against a foreign state they happen to hate by targeting local Jewish businesses, are quite happy to jeopardise such crucial national imperatives as job creation and the resilience and sustainability of their own country’s economic structures. To this can be added the pressing need to forge social cohesion, inter-group harmony and in general a binding unity of vision, without which SA is unlikely to surmount the formidable challenges it faces.      

As all but goes without saying that social media is providing fertile ground for pushing the boycott narrative. In this unregulated, free-for-all environment it is that much easier to engage in blackening professional reputations, linking everyday citizens to every manner of atrocity, and calling for them to be shunned.

As recorded by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, there have been dozens of cases of community members receiving telephonic threats and hate mail and being trolled online, to the extent that many have felt compelled to close their public profiles.

In years gone by, Woolworths was the primary target for boycott action after it refused to remove Israeli products from its shelves. However, since October 7 it is the Cape Union Mart Group that has been the primary target. The campaign against the group, and specifically long-serving CEO Philip Krawitz, has been an ugly affair, characterised by unbridled vitriol often amounting to outright defamation, fake news, character assassination and, not infrequently, overt anti-Semitism.

In recent days, matters have appeared to have deteriorated still further. Two weekends ago shoppers outside the Cape Union Mart store in the Waterfront, Cape Town, were confronted with shouts of “fuck off racists!” and the chant “if you shop inside, we charge you with genocide” screamed at them through megaphones. This was in addition to the usual pamphlets, leaflets and placards bearing sundry false accusations.

Were there a factual basis to these allegations, such virulent rhetoric, while not being defensible, would at least be understandable. However, that is decidedly not the case. In its public statements as well as in its engagements with union federation Cosatu and other trade unions, the company has clarified that the Cape Union Mart Group has only contributed to humanitarian projects in SA and not to any institutions outside the country.

In his personal capacity, Krawitz has supported purely humanitarian projects in both SA and Israel, but has never donated funds to the Israeli army or indeed any other army.

Similarly, the SA BDS Coalition falsely stated that it was targeting Krawitz because he had spoken at a public rally pledging “to raise money for the Israeli war fund”. In reality, as was swiftly shown, Krawitz had in fact spoken at a peace rally pledging support for the Victims of Terror Fund. Notwithstanding such clarifications, the vendetta against Cape Union Mart as an institution, and Krawitz as an individual, continues apace.

When one gets down to it, the basis of the boycott campaign is that Krawitz persists in identifying himself as both a proud Jew and a spiritual Zionist who accepts the concept of Jerusalem as Zion, and because some 10 years ago he received an award for supporting an Israeli charitable foundation.

That the reaction to this has been so grossly and obviously disproportionate tells its own story. What it appears to be all about is smearing, intimidating and silencing anyone who chooses to support and identify with the Jewish nation state, for all that it masquerades as human rights activism.

Those engaged in this targeting of Jewish business people insist that their being Jewish has nothing to do with the matter, and that it is because of their support for Israel, in their eyes the epitome of evil. Sometimes that mask slips though. This was apparent at an anti-Cape Union Mart demonstration, where a placard featuring the “Synagogue of Satan” biblical quotation was displayed. The quotation has infamously come to be used as a way of literally demonising Jewish people, not just “Zionists”. To make the analogy even more obvious, another of the images that has been circulated features Krawitz sporting devil’s horns.

Then there is the matter of how frequently one sees images showing the Star of David in the Israeli flag replaced by a swastika, a symbol which, as is common knowledge, is especially hateful and triggering to Jews. This further underlines the extent to which crass anti-Semitic hatred to at least some extent underpins the campaign against Cape Union Mart. The circumstances and motivations of those responsible are obviously not identical, but it is all becoming scarily reminiscent of how Jewish businesses in SA were targeted by supporters of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

As cannot be emphasised enough, none of this is harming Israel, nor is doing anything to help the Palestinians in any meaningful way. On the contrary, by jeopardising livelihoods, disrupting day-to-day commercial activity, sabotaging potential business partnerships and in general sowing hatred and division, all it is doing is causing harm to SA itself.

It is perhaps appropriate to close with Krawitz’s own deeply felt call to his fellow business leaders, delivered at a national event last November: “If we create jobs, we will reduce poverty. If we reduce poverty, we will reduce crime. If we reduce crime, we will get foreign direct investment. If we get foreign direct investment, we will grow our economy and create more jobs for our people. And that is where it starts in making this country great”.

• Saks is associate director at the SA Jewish Board of Deputies.