To the Editor of The Star newspaper
The past few weeks have seen campaigns of intimidation and threats to members of the Jewish community and any other South African who has dared to express a view contrary to the narrow narrative of the anti-Israeli lobby groups. Any hint that there is another perspective to the conflict and that there is any culpability by Hamas has been met with by aggression and demonisation.
It has been no different with Redhill School. The `Redhill Alumni’ are insisting on bulldozing their political agenda into the school. They have done this by vilifying the headmaster, spamming anti-Israel propaganda through children’s’ WhatsApp groups, holding ugly protests outside the school and most recently providing an ultimatum to the school on who can and who cannot participate in a discussion on the Palestinian Israeli conflict. They are demanding that Ronnie Kasrils be the panellist to address their students to the extent that they have put a paid advert in The Star newspaper.
So who are they rejecting? Nausheena Mahomed, a young woman who has devoted herself to advocating for peaceful solutions to the Palestinian Israeli Conflict. She has partnered with organisations like `Women Wage Peace’ (a Jewish, Christian and Muslim organisation who seek alternate ways to finding peace) and Prof Mohammed Dajani (a Palestinian academic also dedicated to reconciliation). Nausheena has visited Israel and Palestine and is a peace activist. She is a woman who speaks to Muslim and Jewish communities, a rarity in this hostile environment and something that should be embraced by educators.
One wonders why they would want Kasrils over Nausheena. Kasrils has consistently denigrated and libelled the South African Jewish community. Just last week in a vicious personal attack on the Chief Rabbi in the Sunday Times he maligned the spiritual leader of the South African Jewish community, with sneering references to aspects of traditional Jewish religious belief.
Why The Redhill Alumni are so insistent on a speaker who has been deliberately offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community over a woman who tells the story of tolerance and peace. We shudder to think that Redhill is being bullied into choosing toxicity and vicious hatred over peace activism.
It is pathetic that an `alumni association’ are holding a reputable school hostage. They are preventing free speech by forcing their own narrative into this space.
Yours sincerely
Prof Karen Milner
Gauteng Chair
SA Jewish Board of Deputies