A PIECE by Hassan Lorgat published by IOL mischaracterises two cases involving UCT professor Adam Mendelsohn. In the first instance, he takes issue with Tali Feinberg’s article in Jewish Report on Mendelsohn v Choritz, in the second he condones Megan Choritz’s crude criticism of the Mendelsohn lecture, which both parties appear to not have read — in the process attempting to institute a morality commission on the subject that has no basis in South African common law.

This in a publication that was expelled from the Press Council in 2024 and which has paid lip service to the so-called Press Code.

The Jewish Report is similarly, not affiliated to the Press Council, which is an industry body with no statutory oversight.

Lorgat’s views are thus based upon a false set of assumptions and wrong claims, and his article and its attempt to frame the subject matter as a ‘SLAPP case’ is misleading. This is not a multinational corporate suing a small-time critic (as in the Macdonalds vs Jamie Oliver case), and yet Lorgat is quick to misapply the label to everyone with whom he disagrees, while nitpicking.

“Feinberg’s article is more an instrument of lawfare than quality, independent journalism” he claims before proceeding to criticise the timing of a request for comment, in an opinion piece best sent to the Jewish Report, not the daily news (why was it even published by IOL?). Perhaps he hope to score an easy ecclesiastical point, in order to overwhelm his target with irrelevant clerical objections in a rag directed at a local Religious Community? I don’t seem to see the same level of commentary directed at periodicals such as Muslim Views?

More concerning is the manner in which this signals an attempt to bar debate outside of the confines of newspaper house without bothering to abide by the same rules, but let us entertain Lorgat’s public views here:

“She emailed Choritz late on Friday afternoon, 19 June 2026: “I am writing an article on the defamation summons served to you this week, and I wanted to give you the opportunity to comment. What are your thoughts on being served this summons, and how are you planning to respond?” Choritz was given until the morning of Tuesday, 23 June to reply — a tight weekend deadline with no specifics offered.”

Having worked in the Cape Times newsroom, I can vouch for the extraordinary leeway granted Choritz. Most pieces published go out with or without comment, given a few hours, not days or weeks notice.

A publisher can certainly print without gaining adequate comment — comment here is not an absolute requisite for publication, and the issue is one of reasonableness, not an imperative. The subject may thus respond, in subsequent copy, this is what is known as the ‘right of reply’. The code, if adopted by either party, is thus a flexible balancing standard, not grounds for imputing bad faith.

Mischaracterisation of Mendelsohn cases

Both the Mendelsohn v UCT case and Mendelsohn v Choritz cases are mischaracterized by the parties, Lorgat and Choritz as ‘SLAPP cases’ by implication, with the former a “case against UCT “over its anti-Israel resolution” and the later a case against Choritz over her ‘Pro-Palestine activism’.

This is very far from the truth. Instead Mendelsohn, initially approached the High court to set aside two resolutions that impact upon Jewish life and academic freedom on campus, and which presented serious risks to donor funding, not to mention freedom of association, belief and opinion.

Far from attempting to shut down debate, which would be the primary motivation for a lawfare-based SLAPP case, the Mendelsohn cases are the exact opposite.

Persons such as Choritz and Lorgat, (and by extension UCT administration) are rather the ones attempting to corral public opinion within the narrow confines of a religious fatwa on the subject matter. Anyone who disagrees with their summation is immediately labelled a ‘genocide supporter’ or ‘child-killer’.

There is no room for any disagreement on any of the terms. The cases are notable precisely because the respondents fail to provide any evidence for their counter-claims, relying instead upon innuendo, half-truths, urban legend, and recycled propaganda.

Mendelsohn vs UCT

Two resolutions form part of the grounds of action. The first resolution rejects the widely-adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism on the grounds of falsely claiming that it ‘conflates criticising Zionism and Israel’s policies as antisemitism’, which is a misreading of the IHRA definition. It does nothing of the sort. In a situation in which there are competing, minority definitions of anti-Semitism, for example the Jerusalem Declaration, one would expect at very least some debate and engagement on the subject with those affected.

A conference on racism that excluded persons of color would meet similar objections. The phrase: ‘Nothing about us, without us’, also springs to mind.

Donor funds to the tune of R250 million were contingent upon UCT recognising the IHRA, which has been widely adopted, and the withdrawal has seriously impacted funding for the student body.

The second resolution is an academic boycott: it prohibits UCT academics from “entering into or continuing relations with any research group and/or network whose author affiliations are with the Israel Defense Forces and/or the broader Israeli military establishment.” Fair enough, why would anyone object to a bar on research involving the military?

Mendelsohn does not oppose the substance of the resolution and its intended academic boycott, rather he rejects it due to its being unimplementable, “too narrow, and too vague to achieve any legitimate purpose”.

Why target only the Israeli Defense Force? And the inclusion of the term ‘network’ for instance, raises unintended consequences, any person with any ties to Judaism not merely Zionism, being on the receiving end of an embargo. Having a distant family member serve in the IDF, and your academic career is placed in jeopardy. An uncle waving an Israeli flag, and you’re toast, and this is pretty much the terrain in which Lorgat and Choritz operate when they proclaim a globalisation of the Intifada (read Inquisition).

More pivotal to this discussion: “Council failed to consider the views of affected persons and stakeholders (staff and students) before taking its decision, as a matter of rationality and in terms of its own Risk Management Policy of June 2020; The decision is irrational as it rejects the IHRA definition of antisemitism on the purported grounds that it conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel, which it does not, as it says the opposite.”

Mendelsohn vs Choritz

Choritz is no scholar of Anti-Semitism (a term she rejects). If she was, she would have taken the time to acquaint herself with the subject of the Mendelsohn lecture: “Where to for the Jews” which traced the history of the infamous “Jewish Question” in South African history (and by inference, the attempt at a “Final Solution”).

“We have seen, for example, the unanticipated reappearance of the “Jewish question,” a subject that agitated many European societies from the 19th century until World War II. Then the public debate about the “Jewish question” focused on what was to become of the largest non-Christian minority in Europe. The debate became ugly and urgent – including in South Africa – in the 1920s and 1930s,” writes Mendelsohn.

Instead of engaging with the subject matter of either the High Court case, or the lecture, in any academic or popular sense, Choritz chose to defame Mendelsohn in a crude piece of narcissistic writing, alleging a broad conspiracy and with social-media that is very far from Lorgats narrative of ‘reasonable criticism’.

“Expressed in two formats: a TikTok video and a Substack article. In the video, she labels Mendelsohn “a supporter of Israel’s genocide” and “an Islamophobe,” arguing he should be stopped and deplatformed. In the article, she goes further, asserting that Mendelsohn and his Zionist allies do not merely fear Muslims but hate them — a hatred she says “looks and sounds exactly like antisemitism.”

It is noteworthy that Lorgat himself fails to dissect the lecture, in which Mendelsohn reviews the popular record of mass migration involving Jews and Muslims to the Levant in terms that are anything but hateful.

He writes: “At the same moment that Jews were leaving en masse – and for some of the same reasons – more than a million Muslims were escaping the Russian Caucuses for the Ottoman Empire, settling in large numbers in the Levant. As Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, the historian of this migration has argued, there is much overlap in the “specific directionality and religious mandate of [Jewish and Muslim] emigration [from the Russian empire into the Levant] as well as in their origins in persecution and mass flight.”

This is very far from the Islamophobia allegation. But then Lorgat, like PSC in the related Krawitz case, is really arguing that critics have a right to be wrong, they may lie and be dishonest about their subject matter and spread calumny. The impact on local libel law will be interesting to see.

Tag: academic