Roedean-King David fallout: Religious discrimination cannot hide behind political protest

South Africa’s Jewish community has faced its share of complex moments, but few have been as instructive as the Roedean tennis fixture incident, not for what it revealed about one school’s lapse in judgment, but for what it exposed about those who rushed to defend it.

What began as a clear act of religious discrimination, acknowledged and apologised for, was seized upon by a determined group of anti-Israel lobbyists as an opportunity to advance their agenda. In doing so, they revealed far more about themselves than they intended.

A striking example appeared in Daily Maverick last week, written by Kalim Rajab.

The premise of the article was that, in future, action against a Jewish school needs to be more “creatively” thought through. It reads as a carefully designed blueprint for discriminating against and intimidating Jewish schools in South Africa, in a far more savvy and calculated way.

He includes a list of practical techniques for doing this. It is an exercise in manipulation, deviousness and propaganda dressed in politically correct language.

The decision by Roedean not to play a Jewish school was, by any measure, a clear-cut case of religious discrimination, unacceptable under our Constitution.

The voice recording of a call between the principals lays it out clearly when Roedean’s head said that the problem presented itself only as a “Jewish day school issue”, definitively identifying the Jewish nature of the school as the core issue.

King David High School Linksfield and the SA Jewish community were correct in raising their objection. The apology tendered by Roedean School acknowledged that the incident was discriminatory and was immediately accepted by King David.

Hopefully, the schools will work together to find a way forward, and in particular to reschedule the match. It is heartening that this matter was addressed and resolved through dialogue and engagement in a truly South African manner.

Incident reframed

Rajab has retroactively reframed the incident of a boycott of a Jewish school as mere political protest rather than what it plainly is: anti-Semitism.

A central pillar of anti-Zionism insists that Judaism and Zionism are entirely separate, one acceptable, the other abhorrent and justifying any discrimination, intimidation or violence against it.

This is a strawman that patronisingly imposes external definitions of Jewish identity upon us.

Zionism is the core belief in the Jewish people’s right to political self-determination in their ancestral homeland, and recent studies from the UCT Kaplan Centre show that around 96% of South African Jews feel a connection to Israel, making it an intrinsic part of our communal identity.

Viewing Israel (home to more than half the world’s Jews), including the majority of diaspora Jews, as inherently evil, is a form of bigotry in a politically correct mask.

We call this type of anti-Jew hatred anti-Semitism, not because Jews are uniformly “Semitic” (we encompass many races and ethnicities), but because the term was coined in 1879 by German agitator Wilhelm Marr to repackage crude Jew-hatred (Judenhass) as a pseudoscientific racial opposition, whitewashing irrational prejudice as rational ideology.

This same pattern repeats itself today when raw anti-Semitism is disguised as legitimate “anti-Zionism,” nowhere clearer than in boycotting a Jewish school and intellectualising it as politics.

Rajab’s article exemplifies this, explicitly referencing “more sophisticated forms of protest” against Jewish schools and proposes that visiting teams wear “armbands, pins or bodywear” to signal Palestinian solidarity with the stated intention of pressuring selected players to “conscientiously object to taking part in interactions with King David.”

He concludes that “future discomfort may well be expressed more creatively than what occurred at Roedean”.

Rajab is not reflecting on a troubling incident; he is providing a roadmap for causing greater discomfort to Jewish schoolchildren in the future.

Most egregious is his suggestion that students “wear armbands” when they participate in sporting events involving Jewish schools. We remember all too clearly the photographs of SS soldiers with armbands rounding up Jews in the late 1930s.

If the Roedean Affair taught us anything, it is that we must prioritise social cohesion and reject attempts to polarise fellow South Africans, particularly impressionable young people. What message does this send to our learners? Political awareness matters, but not when it crosses into religious or any other discrimination.

The Helen Suzman Foundation perpetuates the legacy of a woman who dedicated her life to fighting discrimination in all its forms, and it is shocking that the chairperson of its board should use discourse that promotes discrimination against her own community.

Helen Suzman was not only a towering figure in the struggle against apartheid, but she was a proud member of the Jewish community, deeply committed to its welfare and values. It is a profound betrayal of her legacy for the foundation’s chairperson to lend his platform and authority to the targeting of Jewish learners.

Freedom of belief, association and religion

As South Africans who embrace and celebrate diversity, we accept that schools rooted in minority identities will honour their histories and cultural ties.

Saheti School practises its Hellenic culture and honours its relationship with Greece. The Deutsche Internationale Schule maintains its special connection with Germany, and is free to fly its flag and sing its anthem. The Pretoria Chinese School has its connections with China.

In a diverse society, a Jewish school should not be expected to dilute or justify its identity to avoid being targeted. Just as other minority community schools are accepted in our country, we expect similar respect for a Jewish school. No campaign is launched against other schools. The contrast is impossible to ignore.

King David and other Jewish schools in South Africa include Israel in their Jewish education programmes as a matter of religious and traditional practice. Our constitution enshrines our freedom of belief, association and religion.

These freedoms do not entitle Rajab to excuse Roedean’s act of religious discrimination, nor to provide a framework on how better to discriminate against a Jewish school, and certainly not to castigate Roedean for doing the right thing – which was to apologise.

Bigotry does not become acceptable when framed in the language of political solidarity. When you excuse bigotry because of who its target is, and justify religious discrimination against a Jewish school, you have not advanced the cause of human rights; rather, you have undermined it.

The test of a genuine commitment to human rights is whether it is applied consistently, something Mr Rajab has certainly not done. DM

Wendy Kahn is National Director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.