Bloom dances dangerously close to ‘anti-Semitism denialism' in a hostile UCT campus climate

Daily Maverick

18-07-2025

In this piece, David Saks has, on behalf of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, authored a reply to Kevin Bloom's article in which the journalist reflects on the narrative that the council of the University of Cape Town had chosen to wilfully sacrifice donor funding on the altar of its so-called Gaza resolutions. Bloom writes that a pro-Israel lobby is attempting to shut down criticism of the Jewish state. Saks challenges this reflection.
Those following the debate over the escalation of anti-Semitism at US universities will well remember the almost surreal occasion back in December 2023 when Harvard University's then president Claudine Gay could not bring herself to concede that calls for the 'genocide of Jews' would violate Harvard's rules on bullying and harassment.
Asked this question before a congressional hearing, Gay essentially answered instead that it all depended on the context. It was a telling moment, and a revelatory one. More than any officially commissioned report, it demonstrated the extent to which even the most extreme anti-Semitic attitudes had come to be tolerated on leading US campuses, from the most senior leadership downwards.
Anti-Semitism on university campuses continues to manifest at unprecedentedly high levels, not only in the US, but globally. South Africa has certainly not been immune to these trends, but, on the whole, it has been considerably less of a problem compared with what is happening abroad.
Unfortunately, in recent years the University of Cape Town (UCT) has been something of an exception. Particularly in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 terror attacks against Israel, but for some time even before that, Jewish students and faculty there have reported being subjected to a range of threats, insults and general abusive behaviour.
Not unlike what happened at Harvard, the failure of the university to take appropriate action to address these incidents, combined with its move over the past year towards instituting a boycott of Israeli academia, has contributed to a campus climate that is increasingly anti-Semitic and unsafe for Jewish students and academics.
A broadside against mainstream Jewish leadership in SA
It is against this background that Kevin Bloom's latest article, which I consider to be a broadside against the mainstream Jewish leadership in South Africa, should be considered (Zionism untethered — inside the legal battle for the soul of UCT, 18 June 2025).
In this piece, Bloom weighs in against a court application brought by Professor Adam Mendelsohn in respect of two resolutions adopted by the UCT council last year. How the purpose and substance of Mendelsohn's application was misrepresented by Bloom from a legal and technical point of view has since been adroitly unpacked by Elsa van Huyssteen.
Suffice it to say here that contrary to the impression that Bloom tries to create, even a cursory reading of Mendelsohn's affidavits would show that the litigation is not about Zionism and the war in Gaza. Rather, it is about whether the UCT Council, in adopting the impugned resolutions, has exercised its powers 'in accordance with its members' fiduciary duties to UCT', and also over whether the resolutions themselves 'infringe on the right to academic freedom by prohibiting individual academics from pursuing research collaborations of their choice'. Van Huyssteen also points out that the application in no way concerns the contents and applicability of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism, for all that Bloom tries to make out that Mendelsohn appeared 'to be insisting' on UCT adopting it.
From the perspective of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), a significant concern is that Bloom not only dismisses credible claims of unprecedented anti-Semitic abuse and harassment faced by Jewish students and staff on university campuses worldwide, including at UCT over the past 18 months, but also suggests these claims are fabricated to suppress criticism of Israel.
This emerges most clearly in his quoting approvingly of an affidavit from Princeton University's Professor Joan Scott that has likewise been submitted to the UCT Council. According to Scott, [Zionist] students on US campuses 'express their discomfort in terms of feeling 'unsafe' or 'threatened' … when there is little or no evidence of any physical danger they have experienced'. On this Bloom comments, 'And so Daily Maverick could not help but wonder: Was this also the reality of Zionist fears on the UCT campus?' He adds that this would be for the Western Cape Division of the High Court to decide, but of course has already made his own view on the subject quite obvious.
Beyond his misrepresentations over the purpose of the court application against UCT, what Bloom is also arguably doing here is engaging in what can broadly be characterised as 'anti-Semitism denialism'. According to this way of thinking, not only should claims made by Jews themselves about prejudice against them be treated with scepticism, but their very motives in making them should be called into question. It is not, in other words, only about Jews being objectively wrong when they speak out against anti-Semitism, but that they are being wrong on purpose because they have another agenda.
Anti-Semitic prejudice
To make an obvious point, portraying Jews as being capable of fabricating persecution narratives about themselves and coercing others into accepting them as true is itself a form of anti-Semitic prejudice. There is even a designated term for this, namely 'The Livingstone Formulation'. Coined by University of London academic David Hirsh, this focuses on the manner, particularly on the political left, in which accusations of anti-Semitism are (almost reflexively) responded to with counterclaims that the complainant is weaponising anti-Semitism to suppress criticism of Israel. As Hirsh shows, this rhetoric device is itself dishonest and propagates anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish power and deceit.
Anti-Semitism denialism has a long history. Its most infamous form is Holocaust denial, which asserts that the systematic genocide of European Jewry during World War 2 did not occur and was fabricated by Jews for their own malicious purposes. Those who adhere to such beliefs are for the most part far right Nazi apologists, but anti-Semitism denialism often surfaces on the left as well.
One thinks of the persistent insistence by acolytes of the former Soviet Union that there was no problem of anti-Semitism behind the Iron Curtain and that those claiming otherwise were simply engaging in anti-Soviet propaganda. Such knee-jerk defences on the part of the hard left continued throughout the Cold War era, even as Soviet Jewish dissidents were being dispatched to the gulags for such crimes against the state as learning Hebrew, practising their religion and wishing to immigrate to Israel.
Then there are those who deny the persecutions that triggered the mass exodus of Jews from Arab-speaking countries following Israel's establishment. That countries like Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Yemen today have no or at best a few dozen Jews still living there, whereas prior to 1948 there were tens of thousands, is either never acknowledged, or attributed to the evil machinations of the Zionists themselves.
As a local example of anti-Semitism denialism, I would remind readers of how last year then Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola blandly informed the international community that there was 'no anti-Semitism in South Africa' and that claims to the contrary were 'a nonsense'.
This came just weeks after the SA Jewish Board of Deputies had met with President Cyril Ramaphosa and provided him with chapter and verse details on how local anti-Semitism levels had escalated by more than 600% following the 7 October 2023 massacres. It was also despite legal proceedings, both criminal and civil, having been instituted in a number of these cases. In the wake of Lamola's statements, social media was awash with claims that Zionist Jews were fabricating charges of anti-Semitism to divert attention away from what was happening on the Israel-Gaza front. The self-same insinuations that Bloom makes in his article, in other words.
A common feature of anti-Semitism denialism in all these cases is that those propagating it do so in the face of extensive and conclusive evidence to the contrary. Which brings us to the issue about anti-Semitism on university campuses. Has there indeed been a significant escalation in this regard, as Jewish rights organisations insist, or, as Kevin Bloom and his ilk would have you believe, are such claims no more than a Zionist sleight of hand aimed at silencing and penalising those who speak out against Israel?
In actuality, it is not a question at all. That university and college campuses globally have become hotbeds of anti-Semitism is attested to by a copious and ever-growing body of evidence that is as conclusive as it is damning. However much the actions and rhetoric of those concerned might be couched in anti-imperialist, anti-apartheid or anti-Zionist narratives, in practice it consistently manifests in Jews on campus being subjected to acts of intimidation, gaslighting, character assassination, exclusion, verbal or written insults and sometimes physical violence.
Harassment, vandalism and assault
Since the events of October 7 there have been a plethora of detailed investigative reports demonstrating the extent to which the situation has deteriorated at institutions of higher learning throughout the Western world. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks incidents of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and assault in the US, found that incidents on college and university campuses spiked by 321% in 2023, most occurring after 7/10, and the 2024 figures were not much better. Typical examples of the incidents recorded were Jewish students being routinely confronted by militant anti-Israel activists making such statements as 'Death to Jews', 'go back to Poland' and 'the 7th of October is going to be every day for you'. Beyond the in-your-face abuse, insults and threats has been the practice of social shaming, whereby students and faculty are encouraged to avoid normalising relations with Jewish students.
The parallel situation in the UK was described in a report by the Community Security Trust, whose purpose is to work for the safety and security of the UK Jewish community in December 2024. This found that in the academic years covered by the report (2022-2024) 325 university-related anti-Semitic incidents were recorded, which was more than double the figure recorded in the previous report. Recorded instances included 10 cases of assault and 21 of damage and desecration of Jewish property.
Globally, leading universities are waking up to the fact that they have a real problem, and some at least have been doing something about it. One is the University of London's Goldsmiths College, which commissioned an independent inquiry that in due course concluded that Jewish students and staff had indeed experienced anti-Semitism in the course of their studies or work. The Council and Executive Board of Goldsmiths fully endorsed the findings, stating that anti-Semitism would not be tolerated and that the college would be 'acting against such behaviour as a form of racism'. Similarly, Harvard University established a task force 'to examine the recent history of anti-Semitism and its current manifestations on the Harvard campus with the aim of identifying causes of and contributing factors to anti-Jewish behaviours'.
The final report of that body, released in April this year, confirmed that instances of anti-Semitic harassment at the university had reached unacceptably high levels. One of the most alarming indicators of the breakdown of Harvard's on-campus community was found to be the multiple accounts of social shunning that had emerged in the course of the investigation.
From these two credible investigations (among others that have been conducted) one can easily see that anti-Semitism on both US and UK campuses has not been overstated or even invented by the Jews themselves, but is a genuine and pervasive menace. Since both were commissioned or conducted by the relevant academic institutions themselves, Bloom would not even have the supposed excuse of rejecting them on the grounds of their having been sponsored by Jewish organisations. Why, then, does he persist in disregarding this body of evidence?
Regrettably, and in stark contrast to other South African university campuses, UCT has also reportedly witnessed a significant increase in anti-Semitic attacks. Contrary to the offensive strawman argument that Jews/Zionists seek to conflate all legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, no mainstream Jewish leaders are in actuality seeking to shut down debate on this, or any other subject.
Robust but acceptable discourse
The problem rather is when what can be regarded as robust but acceptable discourse over issues that are well known to be highly emotive and bitterly contested goes beyond simply engaging in free speech to amount to intimidation, harassment, incitement to violence and racially charged hate speech. Those who wish to condemn Israel, even in extreme, exaggerated terms, have every right to do so. However, conveying intense hostility toward Jews who are connected to Israel in a way that violates their dignity, threatens their safety and deprives them of their right to express their own beliefs and opinions is another matter altogether, and indeed, must be regarded as anti-Semitic behaviour.
Particularly since October 7, but also before that, the SAJBD received regular reports of anti-Semitic attacks. These have included Jewish students being physically assaulted while praying on campus, slapped, having posters they were carrying ripped out of their hands and torn up, and those displaying outward manifestations of their Judaism being crassly insulted and not infrequently threatened. All these incidents have been brought to the notice of the university, with disciplinary action being taken against one of the perpetrators, but not to date against others.
There is another kind of harassment that is going on, more low level and not as egregious and in-your-face, but much more pervasive, and, from a psychological point of view, just as harmful. By way of example, a Jewish student at UCT reported sending a neutral question on a course WhatsApp group asking when their essays would be returned, to which another student replied: ' When Palestine is free', and to which several classmates responded with agreement, emojis, and affirmations. This was in a context that had nothing whatsoever to do with the Israel-Palestine issue, but was motivated solely by the student's being Jewish.
The anti-Israel boycott resolution adopted by the UCT Council last year has only legitimised this kind of 'othering', exacerbating hostility towards Jewish students on campus, emboldening those who use anti-Zionism as a smokescreen for anti-Semitism, and reinforcing the idea that Jewish students must disavow Israel to be accepted.
Bloom attempts to turn all of this on its head by holding anti-Zionist Jewish dissidents (like himself) to be victims of harassment and persecution by fellow Jews seeking to intimidate them into silence. This rather clumsy piece of misdirection quickly falls apart when considering the objective evidence of who is trying to censor who.
On the contrary, it is those who wish to identify as Zionist and express views supportive of that ideology and of the State of Israel who are being bullied, smeared, silenced and sidelined.
In a democratic society, this should not be allowed to happen anywhere. And that is especially true when it comes to universities, institutions whose fundamental purpose is to provide intellectual spaces where a full spectrum of opinions on the widest variety of topics can be safely expressed and civilly debated. DM