Online chef accused of anti-Semitism

The Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies has approached the equality court alleging that a string of Instagram posts, including one that depicted a Star of David being thrown in a rubbish bin, amounted to anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist hate speech. 

The Cape board’s Daniel Bloch said there had been an “unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism” in the Western Cape in the past year. He told the Sunday Times the increase in “anti-Jewish attacks” in the past 13 months was “well in excess of 300%”.  

However, Usuf Chikte of the Cape-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), said it was “sceptical” about these numbers as the board “deliberately doesn’t make a clear distinction between Zionism and Judaism when it assesses anti-Semitism”. 

The case in the Cape Town equality court is against Mariam Jakoet-Harris's more than 10 Instagram posts to her approximately 36,000 followers. Two posts relate to boycotts of businesses — one posted after Jakoet-Harris had done “due diligence”, saying the business owner “is open about who she supports”. The other called on people participating in a global boycott to stay off social media that day because “Instagram chief” Adam Mosseri is “Jewish-Israeli” and “Facebook chief” Mark Zuckerberg is “Jewish”.  

Another quoted “Isa” as saying “Mama, can’t Allah make them all extinct?” It followed with a line saying: “God willing, the next generation will be the change we need in the world”. Another calling for a boycott of Cape Union Mart said: “We boycott because the only language they understand is money. They are driven by GREED.”  

Responding to questions from the Sunday Times, Jakoet-Harris's attorney, Ashraf Mahomed, said she did not wish to comment on the specifics of the case because it was before court. But she “denies that she holds any hatred towards Jews and rejects those who engage in anti-Semitism or any form of Jew-hatred”.   

Her posts were taken “wholly out of context and must be viewed against the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians and especially the slaughter of women and children in Gaza for the past year”, he said.  

In its court papers, the Cape board says the meaning of the statements is that Jewish people are “evil, morally corrupt, and wicked” and “should be exterminated, killed or made extinct”. They also mean that Jewish people and their businesses should be “boycotted, or otherwise made to suffer reprisals or revenge for the harm suffered by Palestinian civilians”.  The statements similarly attacked “people who hold Zionist beliefs”, the papers say. 

The board wants the court to declare the statements hate speech and order Jakoet-Harris to apologise “to the South African Jewish community” and to donate R25,000 to the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre.

The Promotion of Equality and Prohibition of Unfair Discrimination Act prohibits hate speech on specified grounds, including race, religion, culture, ethnic or social origins, conscience and belief. 

“The statements are based on and are against all those who have: membership of the Jewish race, religion, or culture; Jewish ethnic or social origins; Jewish beliefs or conscience,” said the board’s court papers. The statements were also “based on, and are against all those who hold, Zionist conscience or beliefs”.

Mahomed said: “We do not believe [they] constitute hate speech or that they are anti-Semitic.”  The statements were “a legitimate form of criticism and/or expression, which is protected by the right to freedom of expression in our constitution.” 

This dogma seems to be used by the Cape SAJBD to justify an outrageous censorship and encroachment of freedom of expression in South Africa

—  Ashraf Mahomed, attorney for Mariam Jakoet-Harris

It was “unfortunate that Zionist ideology conflates Israel with Judaism and equates the linguistic sign 'Israel' to mean 'Jew', regardless of the intentions of the speaker and the understanding of the listeners”, he said.  

“This dogma seems to be used by the Cape SAJBD to justify an outrageous censorship and encroachment of freedom of expression in South Africa.”  

Hate speech based on Jewish ethnicity and faith is a subject that has been traversed by South African courts before. But the prospect of a court finding hate speech on the grounds of Zionist “beliefs” is new.

Advocate and expert on hate speech law, Ben Winks, said he was “not aware of any” previous litigation based on Zionist beliefs.   

He said “in principle”, he did not think Zionism was the kind of belief system contemplated as protected by the equality act. He thought “belief” was included in the legislation to ensure protection for belief systems that “may not fit neatly into the protected categories of ‘religion’ and ‘culture’”.  

To extend protection “to sociopolitical beliefs would be too restrictive of free speech”, he said. It would mean that even bigoted “beliefs” would be protected, such as white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia and so on, which would be antithetical to the purpose of the equality act.   

However, the court in this case may not have to reach this “complex question”, he said. Given the facts, it may well succeed based on the prohibited grounds of ethnicity and religion.   

Bloch said the board’s assertion of an “unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism” was based largely on data collected via a community WhatsApp hotline “where Jewish community members bring to our attention anti-Semitic incidents they have either experienced personally or otherwise become aware of, accompanied by the relevant details concerning the nature, date and perpetrators, photos and/or videos”.   

He said he could not provide the Sunday Times with the board’s full report because of restrictions imposed by the Protection of Personal Information Act. Asked if the Cape board considered it anti-Semitic to be critical of Zionism, he said people were free to express themselves “if the comments are free from hate speech, discrimination, and the incitement of violence”. 

“We do not include in our numbers comments/images which are clearly anti-Israel. For example: graffiti of a Palestinian flag or images of 'Free Palestine' — unless these comments/images use Holocaust inversion, classic anti-Semitic tropes and other forms of hate speech aimed at Jewish people, to express their anti-Zionist views, then that may be construed to be anti-Semitism and potentially added to our report.”  

But Chikte said the board promoted a discredited definition of anti-Semitism “essentially proscribing criticism of Israel, conflating Israel and Zionism with Jews”. It was “a ruse” used to “divert and distract attention from Israel’s genocide and apartheid”, he said.