Right of reply: A rebuttal to the BDS protesters - The abuse of a platform

Key topics:.BDS protest labeled as identity attack, not legitimate policy critiqueFlack defends Zionism as integral to Jewish identity and PassoverRebuts antisemitism denial, critiques misuse of legal and activist reports.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Tim Flack.Chaverim, you weren’t offered a right of reply before publication because I’m not employed by BizNews and it was a commentary.There is a certain kind of reply that is not a reply at all. It masquerades as clarification while peddling distortion, dresses as dialogue while engaging in defamation, and postures as protest while pursuing persecution. The so-called "Right of Reply" you published on 21 April 2025 is a textbook example of such theatre. It deserves not appeasement, but exposure.This was not a defence. It was an admission. Every line of your rebuttal confirms what I wrote in my original article: this was a campaign not against policy, but identity; not against governments, but against a community trying to mark one of its holiest festivals in peace.Erasure Disguised as EthicsYou yourselves boast that the original Passover display had been taken down following your "public outrage." That so-called outrage came from the same echo chamber that stood shouting about a Passover display. You’d like the public to believe it was merely a matter of aesthetics. But what was removed wasn’t policy, it was identity. Blue and white cloths. Stars of David. Kosher symbols. If that makes you feel angry thoughts, the problem isn’t the symbols. It’s what they represent to you: visible, unapologetic Jewish life.And make no mistake, this was a protest deliberately timed to coincide with Passover. A religious moment hijacked for political theatre. If you had staged a protest in a halal aisle during Ramadan, you would be rightly condemned. But do it to Jews, and suddenly it's activism.The Star of DavidTo sanitise your actions, you attempt a sleight of hand: separating Judaism from Zionism by trying to claim the Star of David as some post-medieval invention, now sullied by political usage. This is either laughably ignorant or deliberately manipulative.The Star of David was appearing in Jewish texts and communities as early as the 12th century. The colour tekhelet blue, is mandated in the Torah, long before Theodor Herzl put pen to paper. Your effort to recast these symbols as mere tools of nationalist propaganda is as cynical as it is transparent.This wasn’t anti-Zionism. It was a cultural purge. You just didn’t have the honesty to call it that. Get over it: Zionists exist and will always exist. That is not a crime..Read more: .Right of Reply: Protesters reject Zionism at Pick n Pay, call for end to Israeli product sales.Misdirection via MislabellingYou invoke South African DTIC guidelines on product labelling as though this justifies shaming kosher shoppers. It’s not a crime to buy Israeli goods. It’s not a crime to want food that is kosher for Passover from the only Jewish state in the world, where those goods are readily available. What is astounding is trampling on rights by trying to interfere with people’s freedom of association and religious practice.Zionism, Judaism, and the Convenient LieYou insist that criticism of Zionism isn’t antisemitism. That’s your get-out-of-jail-free card. But here’s what you actually said:That the Jewish state is a supremacist project.That its mere existence constitutes genocide.That Jewish symbols in supermarkets are a threat.That’s not criticism. That’s a campaign of delegitimization. And it fits precisely within the internationally recognised definitions of antisemitism.You’re really trying this angle?And then, with breathtaking audacity, you attempt to weaponize the symbols of Passover against me. As if matzah, maror, and the four cups of wine could be rebranded as anti-Zionist allegories. Chaverim, let me help you with the history you’re mangling: the Exodus wasn’t a metaphor. It was the beginning of Zionism. The very moment the Jewish people became a nation, yearning not for vague liberation, but for a land, Eretz Yisrael. “Next year in Jerusalem” is not a poetic flourish. It is the heartbeat of Jewish continuity. So no, you do not get to hijack a Jewish holiday and twist its meaning to shame Jews for believing what they have believed for 3,000 years, that Jews have the right to go home, and the right to exist once they get there.Elijahs door? It is literally about Jewish homecoming, the fulfilment of the promise that the people who wandered the desert would one day return to Zion. It’s not a symbol of borderless utopianism. It’s a declaration: we are still here, still waiting, and still going home.So, when protesters invoke Elijah’s open door to lecture Jews on justice, let’s be clear, they are trying to climb through that door with propaganda.Selective Jews, Selected TruthsYou point to fringe Jewish groups as proof of moral legitimacy, Jewish Voice for Peace, SA Jews for a Free Palestine. These groups have all the utility of a fig leaf: they exist not to protect, but to conceal. And what they conceal is the fact that over 90 percent of Jews globally identify with the right of Israel to exist.You wouldn’t quote a flat-Earther in a piece on astronomy. Don’t quote fringe ideologues and pretend it reflects the mainstream Jewish voice..Read more: .Missed opportunities and mounting pressure: Kevin Lings on SA’s economic crossroads.Reports, Recycled and RejectedYou lean heavily on the usual parade of activist reports, Amnesty, HRW, B’Tselem. Each has been thoroughly discredited by jurists, legal scholars, and analysts who see them for what they are: political manifestos dressed as legal findings.You cite the ICJ’s procedural acknowledgment of a plausible genocide claim as though it were a verdict. It is not. The ICJ ruling didn’t declare Israel guilty of genocide, it acknowledged that South Africa’s case was plausible. That’s a procedural threshold, not a conviction.In fact, ICJ Judge Joan Donoghue clarified the record in an interview:“The court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court... I'm correcting what's often said in the media, it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”What You Really WantYou do not want clear labels. You do not want peace. You do not want reform.You want Israel gone. And you want Jews silent.Well, not on my watch. You can say slogans and repeat phrases over and over again you will not and cannot reinsert your own definition of things.This was never about matzah. It was never about boycotts. It was about the right of Jews to be visible, proud, and protected in the country they call home. And that is not up for debate.Tim FlackPro-Israel. Unapologetically.For the Jewish community. For truth. For South Africa’s sanity.

Right of reply: A rebuttal to the BDS protesters - The abuse of a platform

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