The unbridled traits of Jew-hate, a.k.a. anti-Zionism, defy belief when giving way to concern for Jewish feelings.
Jean-Paul Sartre, in the unsurpassed 1940’s book, Anti-Semite and Jew reveals that what we’re dealing with is not a bad opinion of Jews but a warped personality.
A wartime acquaintance had no problem with death camps. Yet on the mantelpiece stood the photo of a friend - a Jew - whom the Gestapo had shot.
No one rivals Sartre for picking to pieces the sadistic mania of antisemites for dead Jews. Of several latter day case studies two dramatically illuminate the psychosis.
Linda Sarsour the activist of many parts in her creature head scarf said that “Nothing is creepier than Zionism". When Zionism comes forth we expect the Jew problem to follow on its heels. So that when Sarsour said that Israel had been founded, “On the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else" it was quite characteristic of an antisemite.
In her climb to prominence Sarsour liked to crowd-fund her malignant campaigns. She instigated legal proceedings to stop the Trump administration deporting her namesake, Salah Sarsour as a wanted terrorist. But it was her crowd-funded campaign to repair a vandalised Jewish cemetery which, though seemingly wacky, was entirely in keeping with the antisemite’s behaviour pattern.
A standout antisemite of her standing or greater, is Nava Pillay, formerly the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Pillay had her bad eye trained on Israelis and her good eye on violent Palestinian Arab men. For the wife-beating rife in ‘The Territories’ who or what did she blame? Who else could it be if not Israel whose oppression is what maddened wife-beaters to the point of...well, madness.
None of it stopped her conducting a seminar, deeply empathetic, on the Holocaust. Having eulogised a Jew boy from Prague, Petr Ginz who perished in the gas chambers, Pillay held aloft a snapshot of him and led a minute of silence.
What can be said: people love dead Jews and hate the living.
In all likelihood the spectacular case of the principle occurred in August 2026. Immersed in it were: the South African President and his dominant party, Islamist-captured and all; a rabbi and his wife; their late fallen son, an officer in the IDF; the terrorist group; Hamas; and again the rabbi, in his secular role of President of the World Zionist Organisation.
The intoxicating brew boiled down to antisemites gone bat crazy over a dead Jew.
Communal leadership misread the moment. On a hippo-resembling President of the country it lavished the degree of thanksgiving earned by the famed knight in shining armour.
In “Father to father - Ramaphosa helps World Zionist president" we read with incredulity and growing scepticism:
“President Cyril Ramaphosa became personally involved in efforts to bring (back to Israel) the remains of slain South African-born Israeli soldier Captain Daniel Perez - an intervention the Perez family believe spared them more months of anguish. It was an extraordinary intervention that cut through the bitter divide between South Africa and Israel. Exactly what Ramaphosa and his government did behind the scenes, who they approached and through which channels, remain undisclosed".
The President’s media man related how the feat of rescuing the remains of IDF Capt. Perez was very special to Ramaphosa.
“As a parent himself he felt the pain the Perez family felt with the loss of their son, and he was grateful that the intervention of the government could help bring closure to this tragic situation."
For his part Rabbi Perez took to Instagram to pile praise on the anti-Israel President and government:
“Shelley and I express our heartfelt gratitude for the role they played behind the scenes in bringing our beloved son back to Israel for burial."
They’d met before, the Perez family and Ramaphosa. Washington had been the venue and the occasion Ramaphosa’s bawdy clash with his counterpart Donald Trump in the Oval Office, to the amusement of a global audience.
By this time knowhow gives us occasion to nod at Ramaphosa treating the family with - in the words of Rabbi Perez - “warmth and openness".
Don’t people that hate Jews simply adore them to death.
Rabbi Perez and family were bound, in their traumatic state, to misread the moment.
“Amid geopolitical complexity and division, humanitarian considerations often shine through and ought to rise above all else," he said.
Not so communal spokespeople. We expect them not to be conned. The acts of President Ramaphosa as an antisemite speak loud and clear. He assisted the world’s top Zionist in every way: physically, psychologically and spiritually. And he did so out of real respect for a martyred Jew and a tormented Zionist family.
Consider:
-Ramaphosa appointed Islamists to his cabinet and government department of International Relations.
-He and his colleagues took Israel to the UN’s International Court of Justice for committing genocide.
-They all wrapped themselves in keffiyehs.
-They speak of ‘Palestine’ as a real country rather than the imaginary concept it is.
-Far from treating Hamas as a terrorist group, they hosted its leaders in the country, before and after October 7.
If those are not the traits of antisemitism the critic must explain why they aren’t.
Zev Krengel of the SA Jewish Board had a go.
“At the end of the day, it is the government that protects the Jewish community.
The story is a reminder that reality is rarely that simple. Very few things are black and white. Everything is grey."
Really?
Not black and white?
Jews are hated up to a point. The point of death. Beyond it, more than tolerated, Jews are venerated. To memorialize the martyred, antisemites will go the extra mile. Not for crude virtue-signalling but propelled by their murderous psychosis.
Living Jews are the drivers of antisemitism. The mere designations ‘Israel’ and ‘Zionist’ make antisemites want to kill.
Steve Apfel is a former business economist and director of the School of Management Accounting is a veteran authority on anti-Zionism. His 2012 book, Hadrian’s Echo: the why and wherefores of Israel’s Critics was acclaimed by top Middle East scholars. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007PIVM6G