Due to there being no South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) group in Durban, non-Jewish activists wore shirts denoting affiliation with the anti-Israel Jewish group at a Friday protest in front of the Durban Holocaust and Genocide Centre.
Members of the South African Palestine Movement (SAPM) wore SAJFP shirts in front of the Holocaust center, according to a SAPM Instagram post, since “in the absence of a local” SAJFP chapter, their organization wished to stand with “all Jewish voices across the world who reject Zionism, apartheid, and genocide, and who continue to call for a Free Palestine. Solidarity knows no borders, faiths, or races; humanity stands united for justice.”
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies said on Facebook, Tuesday, that the incidents cross from anti-Israel activism into “political theater.”
“Apparently, when there were no Jews available for the protest, the protesters improvised some. The incident exposed a growing problem: fringe Jewish voices are repeatedly used to provide cover for campaigns directed at Jewish communal spaces. In Durban, even that cover had to be manufactured,” said the Board of Deputies.
“The irony is striking. Activists seemingly understood that protesting outside a Holocaust and genocide center as non-Jews targeting a Jewish institution would look deeply uncomfortable. So instead, they dressed the protest in borrowed Jewish legitimacy.”
The Board argued that groups like SAJFP represented a fringe of South African Jewry, yet they were amplified as if they represented the broader Jewish community.
“A costume is not a community. And wearing a t-shirt is not the same as representing South African Jews,” said the Board.
Protest at Holocaust center demanding to recognize supposed genocide in Gaza
The Durban Holocaust Centre has seen frequent protests, with SAPM demanding that the organization recognize a supposed genocide in Gaza.
“A center built on the promise of ‘Never Again’ is silent while Gaza burns,” the group said in a Friday Instagram post. “’Never Again’ means never again for anyone.”
SAJFP has expressed similar sentiments, writing on Holocaust Remembrance Day that if the Holocaust was to mean anything, it had to mean “Never again for anyone.”
“We see the painful parallels between the Nazi Germany Holocaust and the realities faced by Palestinians today,” said SAJFP on April 14. “Israel’s actions insult the memory of the Holocaust, and this should concern the Jewish community in whose name these atrocities are being committed.”
The group compared Gazan children facing food insecurity during the October 7 War to that of Jews starving in concentration camps, Israeli soldiers prompting captured Palestinian men to strip down to Jews lining up for gas chambers, and instances of soldiers engaging in vandalism to those of Kristallnacht.
In October, South African anti-Israel groups protested the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, demanding that the museum recognize the situation in Gaza as a genocide and adopt Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) policies.