Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

South Africa University Hit by Anti-Israel Protest

A proud bastion of anti-apartheid, the University of the Witwatersrand, found itself the target last week after the Johannesburg school hosted an Israeli jazz quartet – triggering a round of protests by anti-Israel activists.

During the era of apartheid, the 1960s to the 1980s, Wits University in Johannesburg seethed with protest. The school offered academic studies into apartheid. Anti-apartheid NGOs proliferated, run by students and faculty, many of them Jewish. Students mounted picket lines and police broke up demonstrations and made arrests.

Last Wednesday evening, Wits’ tradition took an ironic twist. Jewish erstwhile activists, now in their 60s and 70s, revisited their alma mater for a concert featuring Israeli saxophonist Daniel Zamir and his quartet in the Great Hall – the venue where they had attended anti-apartheid meetings – and found themselves walking through picket lines manned by demonstrators with white tape over their mouths. Placards condemned ‘apartheid Israel’, and accused the newly appointed Wits’ principal, Professor Adam Habib, of ‘silencing’ them.

Five months earlier, during “Israel Apartheid Week” on campus, the Israeli-born pianist Yossi Reshef had abandoned his concert at Wits after 15 minutes as BDS demonstrators stormed the hall. Reshef was escorted out by security. The university had apologized for the debacle and billed last week’s concert as a replacement for it, as proof of its impartiality.

For more, go to Haaretz

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.