Open court: In dialogue with a South African Zionist leader, Benji Shulman

As background context to the discussion below, it started how most engagements on the war in the Middle East start: with a hostile exchange on social media. 

But, obviously, although most of these exchanges also end there — that is, in unchecked animosity, unassuaged tempers and a creative spewing of two-way invective — that is not how this particular interaction ended. 

Instead of consigning our brief exchange to the scrapheap of the Facebook comments section, Daily Maverick decided to invite Benji Shulman into the light of day, to test our capacity for open dialogue before a national readership. 

The result, of course, was never going to be agreement. If anything, after a week of drafting questions and waiting for answers, the poles appear even further apart. But Shulman, who for the past 15 years has sat on the boards of numerous South African Jewish institutions — as the former director of public policy at the SA Zionist Federation, he has taken on some tough assignments for mass audiences — has given about as cogent an account of the local Zionist perspective as it is possible for a reader to find. 

Also, as the current director of the Middle East Africa Research Institute, his knowledge of the region’s inherent fractures is vast.

Here, then, is the exchange in its full, always contentious, sometimes angry — but never abandoned — glory.

DM: Welcome, Benji, and thanks for agreeing to do this.

You have pointed out to me, during a social media exchange, that 90% of the South African Jewish community follows the Zionist line. After all that’s happened in the last year, does this community really still feel that Israel in its current form offers safety and security to the Jewish people?  

Shulman: Thanks for the opportunity, Kevin. It’s worth noting that support for Zionism (the idea that Jewish people have a right to a country in their historic homeland) has a very long historical consensus amongst the South African community that goes right back to its original founding as a movement. Research at UCT shows, for example, that 69% of South African Jews self-define as Zionist, and 92% agree that “Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people” to give just one data point. 

In my view of the community’s understanding, the Hamas invasion of 7 October and the subsequent explosion of support for them by many sectors of society (including our government) has simply underscored the importance of a strong Israel. Without it, there is pogrom, civilians get killed, Jews, Muslims, Christians, foreign nationals are all at risk, ideological extremists like Hamas don’t care.

This macro perspective is broadly shared, even as there is considerable debate on specific policies. Within the community, you’ll find discussions on the coalition government whether they approve of it or not, those advocating for greater compromise in ceasefire and hostage release negotiations and others who think the focus should be on threats from groups like Hezbollah and Iran. While these debates are significant, they do not overshadow the overall commitment to the security and resilience that Israel provides.

DM: And yet the global explosion of anti-Semitic incidents in the wake of the IDF’s response to the 7 October attack – as well as the attack itself – shows that Jews, thanks to Israel’s security policies, are now more unsafe than at any time since the Holocaust. In the documentary Israelism: The awakening of young American Jews, released by Al Jazeera on 25 October 2024, one of the most important take-homes for me was the observation that Zionism places support for Israel above Jewish safety. How do you reconcile that paradox?     

Shulman: Just as diseases like racism remain embedded in society, so afflictions such as anti-Semitism tend to continue to persist within the body politic. And, as with racism, I think we should resist the urge to blame the victims of the disease rather than the perpetrators. Even with this disturbing rise in anti-Semitism, it’s crucial to recognise that Jews globally today enjoy a level of safety unparalleled in two millennia. This enhanced security is due in large part to the Israeli state, with its citizen military, dedicated diplomatic corps, vibrant civil society and free press.

I was struck by the recent rescue from Gaza of a Yazidi woman, who had been sold into sex slavery to a Palestinian Isis fighter a decade ago. This underlines I think the dangers faced by communities in the Middle East without the means to protect themselves.

The annihilationist ideologies that drive the regimes in Tehran and the leadership of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have long existed in history. What’s different now is that Israel, the global Jewish community and other moderate states, including many in Africa, have the resources and tools to collaborate in combating these threats.

DM: There is a strong counter-argument, backed up by mountains of evidence, that Israel today is the opposite of a moderate state with a vibrant civil society and a free press. In a recent article for Daily Maverick I referenced a number of academic papers, authored by respected Israeli scholars, that make a coherent case for modern Israel’s descent into fascism. As a journalist, such allegations to my mind are extremely serious. Since 7 October, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 131 media workers have been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon, marking the deadliest period for journalists since the organisation began collecting data. Meanwhile, inside Israel itself, rampant censorship seems to be the order of the day, with veteran Israeli media watchers referring to the “pact of silence” between mainstream media outlets and their audiences. 

In other words, the Netanyahu government appears hell-bent on presenting a sanitised version of the truth to the outside world and to Israeli society; a version that excludes any real reporting on the atrocities that the IDF is committing in Gaza and the West Bank.

Surely, if Jews were still the “victims” as you suggest, Israel would have nothing to hide?

Shulman: I think that any time that a democracy has to conduct a war, there is going to be a stress test for its institutions. Israel is currently involved in its longest war since its founding, so it’s not surprising that you are going to get voices being raised like the ones you are citing. That’s good, it helps maintain a bulwark against potential government overreach. At the same time, we must not overstate the problem. If you look at democracy-monitoring organisations such as Freedom House you will find that Israel has maintained its standing as the Middle East’s only democracy, despite the challenges of the last year.

On the issue of reporting, it’s worth noting that Israeli media faces similar structural and resource pressures as media anywhere in the democratic world, including South Africa. Also, this is a small society with a population size less than that of KwaZulu-Natal. Everyone is affected by the war, whether they are a hostage family, have relatives in the army or are just trying to get access to a bomb shelter. So it is not unusual that Israeli media are going to be focusing on stories close to home that matter to its readers and viewers.

Certainly, you see this kind of reporting of the conflict in South Africa, now that the country has become an active player on the field. News24 not only sent a Hamas-sympathetic journalist to cover the ICJ hearings, the trip was funded by the South African government. The same organisation spiked a columnist [who] offered a dissenting viewpoint on the conflict on spurious grounds. (Shulman did not provide proof that the journalist was sympathetic to Hamas - Ed)

This war has also seen a disturbing blurring of lines between those legitimately reporting news and Hamas operatives. A number of international outlets including the New York Times and CNN have had to cut ties with journalists that embedded themselves with Hamas on 7 October. Similarly, the Committee to Protect Journalists report has been severely criticised for using methodologies that allow for the deaths of Hamas militants to be recorded as the deaths of journalists. To be clear, in a war zone as many precautions have to be taken as possible to prevent the deaths of journalists, but the media also has a responsibility not to allow combatants to take advantage of their profession. This is not a new problem, with AP insiders raising the issue a decade ago.

DM: We’ll agree to disagree, Benji, mainly because 131 dead (killed) journalists already adds up to 62 more journalists than were killed during the entirety of World War 2. Also, thanks to the work of Reporters Without Borders, it seems pointless for us to get into the weeds of whether these journalists were all “terrorists” or not – ultimately, it is now up to the International Criminal Court to decide that pivotal question. 

So let’s turn our focus, rather, to the incontrovertible fact that South Africa has become “an active player on the field.”

It’s no secret, as laid out in the groundbreaking book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa — authored by the former editor of international opinion for the New York Times, Sasha Polakow-Suransky — that there was a deep and clandestine association between the white supremacist government of “old” South Africa and the Jewish State. Neither is it a secret that the greatest Jewish heroes of the liberation struggle in our country — Denis Goldberg, Joe Slovo, Albie Sachs, to name just a few — were treated as pariahs by the mainstream Jewish community until 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

In this context, and bearing in mind that the ANC has aligned itself with the Palestinian struggle for statehood since the late 1960s, why is it so surprising and/or shocking to South African Zionists that our current government has brought the case for genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice?

Shulman: Several books explore the relationship between anti-apartheid activists and the broader Jewish community. How this relationship unfolded was due to a range of factors, including specific anti-apartheid activities and the ideological orientations of those involved. Relations were often strained, though there were notable exceptions. For example, Rivonia Trial accused Arthur Goldreich, who served in the Israeli armed forces in the 1948 war and used the skills he acquired to help establish Umkhonto weSizwe with Nelson Mandela. After escaping the apartheid police, Goldreich moved to Israel, where he lived for the remainder of his life.

Polakow-Suransky’s book was groundbreaking, but it is also a little out of date. Thanks to extensive research by Daily Maverick and Open Secrets, we now understand much more of the extensive international links that the apartheid regime maintained, even with some of the ANC’s supposed allies. We now have more detailed knowledge, for instance, of how Iran’s mullahs kept apartheid-era Pretoria supplied with oil in exchange for South African arms. Polakow-Suransky also acknowledges that before the 1970s, Israel had a long-standing period of close cooperation with sub-Saharan African countries and liberation movements. This included the ANC, which publicly thanked Israel for its anti-apartheid stance.

In other words, history is only one part of the equation when assessing the actions of the current government. Since 1994, the ANC has shown a consistent pattern of trading diplomatic favours with autocratic regimes for funds for the party. This benefited figures like Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Indonesia’s President Suharto and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, among others.

Given the government’s conduct and the ANC’s own statements of financial distress leading up to the ICJ case, the influence of external parties appears at least as significant a possible driver of its behaviour as historical associations.

DM: I appreciate the concession that historical factors have played a significant role in the South African government’s submission to the ICJ; in my experience, it’s not a point that Zionists will readily admit. Back in September, in fact, during a reporting trip to Germany, I found myself in a brief (and somewhat heated) exchange with a senior media liaison for the European Jewish Association, who suggested that our government was “doing this to divert attention from its own problems.”

“That may be true,” I partially conceded, “but it’s good that they’re doing it anyway.”

While I wouldn’t expect you to agree with the second part — neither did he, of course — I do want to restate what the media liaison left me with on ending the conversation. “Anyway,” he said, “we won’t know for at least 10 years.”  

There was an obvious question that occurred to me as I watched him walk off: If there was categorically no case for war crimes and a potential genocide in Gaza, why would we need to wait a decade to find out?

Since he didn’t hang around to let me ask it, perhaps you would be willing to stand in for him in offering an answer? In other words, in the face of all evidence to the contrary – much of it provided by the social media posts of Israeli soldiers themselves – is there emphatically no justification from the South African Zionist perspective for our government’s case?

Shulman: So I think that we need to start with the acknowledgement that what we are dealing with here is nothing more than an accusation being made by the ANC and their supporters. What’s more, they started making the allegation before Israel started any major defensive ground operations in Gaza. That point alone I think speaks volumes about its credibility. As the immediate past president of the ICJ Joan Donoghue has reiterated, the allegation of genocide does not even rise to the level of “plausibility”.

In this discussion we’ve explored various motivations behind the ANC’s actions—financial gain, distraction from service delivery issues, targeting voters in the Western Cape, its historical ties. But let’s be clear, the ANC doesn’t care about international law. Their behaviour towards Sudan, Russia and other countries confirms this.

Some have suggested to me that the ANC’s move could be beneficial – not because they believe the accusations, but out of a desperate desire to end the fighting. While I appreciate the humanitarian impulse, misusing the international system in this manner is ultimately going to harm those who genuinely need its resources for their protection.

What’s needed for peace to prevail is to deal with the fundamental problem in the region. This is the existence of an Iranian regime willing and capable of launching hundreds of ballistic missiles at cities like Tel Aviv and by extension also Dubai, Paris and eventually New York, and that it is willing to share this technology with its extremist proxies.

By supporting this process, the ANC has shifted from its traditional backing of the Palestinian population to aligning itself explicitly with Hamas and its regional allies in the war. Unfortunately, I believe this will have repercussions for ordinary South Africans as the global community re-evaluates its relationship with us as a result.

DM: Tragically, Benji, here is where we may forever part ways — and I say “tragically” because I want you and your cohorts to know, whatever our mutual pact with dispassionate truth may be, that it breaks my heart as a Jew to watch you consciously subvert the obvious tenet and thrust of my previous question. I was asking, to reiterate, whether you reject the essence of the allegations of war crimes and potential genocide on the part of the Jewish State. I was not asking for another disquisition on the South African government’s right to bring the charges.

Anyway, since we’re now here, I want to briefly quote an esteemed list of Jewish “dissidents” whose views inform my own. Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, for instance, whose co-written letter to the New York Times in 1948 foresaw the fascist murderousness that is now tearing our ancient tradition apart. Naomi Klein, who published yet another soul-achingly searing essay, in early October 2024, on how “Israel has made trauma a weapon of war”. The Holocaust survivor and renowned childhood development, addiction and trauma expert, Dr Gabor Maté, who stated in a podcast interview just a few weeks ago that “Zionism will be looked upon as one of the greatest disasters in Jewish history”.

From my perspective — and, although still a minority, the perspective of tens of thousands of other Jews like me — these views are reflective of one of our most cherished cultural and spiritual inheritances: the tradition of our prophets, who since the time of the Old Testament have been warning our leaders and kings against internal savagery, sacrilege and befoulment. 

And what is befoulment if not the testimony of the surgeon on CNN the other night (29 October 2024), in an interview with Christiane Amanpour, who stated the following about his recent stint in Gaza:

“You have 50 people on the floor bleeding to death and sometimes it feels like there’s more dead bodies or body parts than there are people to treat. Every day felt like a horror show.”

This, as a finale to our interaction, is not so much a question as a request for comment.  

Shulman: Kevin, again, thanks for this interaction, I am fully aware that I have the minority viewpoint here and it would be more comfortable to just pretend it doesn't exist. Instead, you engaged and allowed for dissent and dialogue, which maybe means there is no parting ways after all, at least not entirely. 

I think, though, that you have misread my response. So let me make it more clear. The core of  your proposition on the ANC and ICJ, as I understand it, is that in your own words, “It’s good that they’re doing it.” 

My response, to be blunt, is to say, no sorry, actually it’s not.  

It’s bad; it’s bad because there is no genocide happening in Gaza. The superiority of arms that Israel enjoys means that could easily have been an outcome if it was desired. Instead, we see that despite immense infrastructure destruction, the combatant/civilian death ratio sits at about 1:1.5, which is less than any army in modern history. By way of comparison, the ratio of the American forces is 1:9, and in next-door Syria with its civil war, poison gas and barrel bombs more civilians were killed than all the Israeli-Arab wars, ever on all sides, combined.

I know you are revolted, rightly so, at the destruction that is happening in Gaza. Please don’t think I wish to deny that reality. Especially in a social media age, it is heartbreaking to see the images that swirl about on our devices. If Israeli soldiers behave in a way that occurs outside of the law, they have to be investigated, prosecuted and punished. Something that the IDF has done already in this war.

What we both want is an end to this war. Israel has tried in the past to find some kind of peaceful resolution in Gaza. Instead, billions of dollars in aid for Palestinian civilians were used to build a tunnel network potentially longer than the road from Johannesburg to Maseru, as well as the production of tens of thousands of rockets, in a society where Hamas sees benefits from Palestinian deaths.

My suggestion is that the international community must pressure Hamas, now, to release all the hostages and lay down their arms. That’s the fastest way to end this. Not to weaponise the United Nations into giving cover for Hamas, and allowing it to rebuild so that, in its own words, it can do 7 October all over again.

As for bringing our Jewish traditions into this (not to mention your one-dimensional view of Einstein), then maybe I should remind you that this is not the first time we have been here. The prophet Nehemia, 2,500 years ago, said that the walls of Jerusalem “were rebuilt with one hand doing the work and the other on the spear.”

As Jews, we are sent into the world to build, for everyone, but it will come to nothing if we don’t also take the measures necessary to defeat evil. DM

Read more by Kevin Bloom on the war in the Middle East:

Fascism’s strange resurgence — a ‘bad Jew’ South African breaks bread with the German media (9 October 2024)

Conversations with Randa: How the life of a Gazan refugee maps Israel’s dilemma (17 July 2024)

Holy War revisited — ‘You want it darker, we kill the flame’ (8 May 2024)

Messianism and madness: An intimate hell ride through end times in the Holy Land (22 October 2023)