Audrey Coleman implores SAJBD to break its silence on the atrocities faced by Palestinians

Attention: Chairperson Karen Milner and President Zev Krengel

Palestine: How can we remain silent? 

I am a 92 year old Jewish South African mother and grandmother. 

I am a human rights activist. In 2018 you gave an award to my family, in recognition of our work to end apartheid and usher in a non-racial democracy in South Africa.

The award was made in the spirit of reconciliation, forgiveness and a renewed commitment to universal values of humanity, peace and democracy. 

But I watch in horror as the SAJBD appears, through its silence and unconditional support of Israel, to ignore or justify the daily atrocities being committed against the Palestinian people. 

This conduct implicates and tarnishes all of us in whose name you supposedly speak.

I cry every night when I watch the news and see the atrocities being committed against defenceless men, women and children whose only crime is to live in Palestine.

I see them being deliberately starved, bombed, shot, mutilated. 

The scale of these horrors is beyond even the brutal repression we experienced at the hands of the apartheid regime. 

I watch in tears at the mass starvation of a population, the bombing and sniper fire on fellow humans whose only crime is to seek food at aid distribution points. 

But the SAJBD which you lead stays silent. Or springs to Israel’s defence. 

When the Nazis exterminated six million Jewish people, the international community declared genocide a crime, and many of those responsible were put on trial. 

Crime against humanity

When the apartheid regime brutally and systematically oppressed the black majority, the United Nations declared it a crime against humanity. 

Peoples and nations of the world spoke up. The SAJBD also decided — albeit late — to speak out against apartheid.

There is little doubt that the atrocities of the Israeli regime against Palestinians in Gaza is likewise a crime against humanity. But this is not only happening in Gaza. The displacement and obliteration of Palestinians is being extended to the West Bank. 

Yet the SAJBD is silent.

The horrific attacks by Hamas and other militants on 7 October 2023 on innocent Israelis stand to be roundly and clearly condemned. But those attacks can never justify the ongoing crimes against  Palestinians.

Silence in the face of these atrocities in Palestine taints and endangers Jews in South Africa, and elsewhere. 

The attacks that continue to be unleashed by the Israeli state nearly two years after these events are leaving a trail of destruction so extreme, violent and unspeakable that revenge has turned into a campaign seeking extermination of a whole population.

Does Israel want to be branded a rogue state, and Jews branded accomplices?

We came back from the brink in South Africa fighting for peace and democracy. As Jews we must now stand up for the same in Israel and Palestine. For a political solution that unifies the people of the region in two states that protects, nourishes and promotes the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Please: banish the guns of war, marginalise the voices of hatred. Let the voices of peace rise!

How can we go on watching children being targeted, bombed and starved?

What has happened to our humanity?

Speak up now. 

Before it’s too late.

Yours sincerely

Audrey Coleman DM

Editor’s Note: The SAJBD was offered an opportunity by Daily Maverick to send a response prior to publication, but declined the offer. 

Audrey Coleman became an active member of the Detainees Parents Support Committee when her sons were arrested and detained. Although not participating actively in politics while bringing up her sons, she later joined Black Sash, eventually becoming national secretary. In 1997, she testified to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on the work of the detention and death of people under the apartheid government. 

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