Offensive display of Anti-Jewish bigotry University of Pretoria (UP)
For the past few weeks, the South African Union of Jewish Students (SAUJS) at UP have been subjected to a barrage of hostile and discriminatory statements and actions. This culminated today in a sit-in protest aimed to exclude the Jewish Student Representative body from working with the SRC.
The SAUJS students partnered with the SRC to arrange a stationery drive to assist fellow students. This engagement so infuriated the anti-Israel BDS lobby on campus that they waged a vicious campaign to get the SRC to sever ties with Jewish students.
Despite assurances that this action was not sanctioned by the UP administration, today students were confronted with an ugly sit-in designed to intimidate them make them feel unwelcome.
The BDS campaign against SAUJS flies in the face of our country as well as the university’s values of engagement, non-discrimination and inclusion.
We will continue to engage with UP to ensure that those students who have flouted these values are held to account, as was assured by the administration.
It is deeply disturbing that, in 21st Century SA, we are seeing Jewish students targeted and excluded from university spaces, as happened today.
