Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

South African Jews To File Charges Against Union Official Who Called For Violence

A South African Jewish group said it would file charges for alleged hate speech against a trade union leader who accused it of complicity in murder in Gaza.

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies, or SAJBD, decided to take legal steps against Tony Ehrenreich, provincial secretary of trade union umbrella body COSATU, after he wrote about the group on Facebook Wednesday.

“The time has come to say very clearly that if a woman or child is killed in Gaza, then the Jewish board of deputies, who are complicit, will feel the wrath of the People of SA with the age old biblical teaching of an eye for an eye,” he wrote. “The time has come for the conflict to be waged everywhere the Zionist supporters fund and condone the war killing machine of Israel.”

The board said it was instituting criminal and civil charges against Ehrenreich for alleged hate speech and incitement to violence against the community’s representative body.

In a media statement issued Thursday, SAJBD chairman Mary Kluk said the post was “a flagrant violation of South African law prohibiting hate speech and incitement to cause harm” and inflamed “an already volatile situation.”

Ehrenreich said that he stood by his statement, that he was not anti-Semitic and was not calling for violence against Jews, the daily Cape Times reported. His focus was on the SAJBD for what he described as condoning violence against the Palestinians.

“The killings in Gaza by the Israeli army have never been condemned by the Jewish Board of Deputies,” he said, adding he was laying charges against it “for supporting crimes against humanity in Gaza.”

The Facebook post comes in the wake of another statement by Ehrenreich warning the SAJBD to cease its “Zionist propaganda” in Cape Town by Aug. 7 or face a COSATU-led campaign of strikes and boycotts against its members, supporting companies and organizations.

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.