YOUR LETTER is published behind a paywall associated with an apartheid media company that refuses to publish my own letters and has censored and destroyed my writing and photography, but is copied on social media.

My earlier piece on Nigel Branken, and Cachalia also refers. I choose to respond directly since you claim inter alia “As an anti-Zionist Jew, ex-student of King David and a member of South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP), I have watched the recent saga involving Roedean School, King David, and the subsequent resignation of Roedean’s principal with a profound sense of anger over missed opportunities and a resignation that should never have taken place.“

Your ‘pasquinade’ makes no bones about your open support for a political project that recently adopted a Jew-free Constitution placing a future Palestinian theocracy firmly under Sharia Law with Jerusalem as its capital, an exercise which will reduce Christians to mere status as dhimmi (subjects of the book), whilst excluding Jews and non-believers by omission.

Such cacography enter the bounds of open speculation, arguing ‘what if’, ‘missed opportunities’ and “had Rodean done something completely different”. It is incredibly narcissistic, as most contemporary “speaking as a Jew” pieces tend to be, to assume an echo chamber — the only Jew with any reservations when it comes to nationalism — in a piece in which you provide no basis for your criticism other than that you appear opposed to militarism, whilst expressing support for the Palestinian cause?

For the main, you take exception with a curriculum that (it is alleged) ‘explicitly promotes Zionism’, sees ‘Zionism and Judaism as synonymous, and shows support for the Israeli military.’ You then immediately aver that since these are your well-founded views, it must necessarily follow that anyone opposed to playing King David will have similarly done so on the basis of such lofty principles?

Invention of Reality

The result is an invention of reality and ‘baking of narrative’ in which you excuse the actual reasons given “because King David is a Jewish school” and further, ignore the inordinate pressure placed by parents of students on their children not to play for reasons, which may or may not include the ICJ case, and the position you outline. Since no census or survey has been conducted one can only speculate here.

There is no attempt to provide any actual evidence of the views of the Rodean school body, the pupils as such — no SRC statement, no supporting documents from any representative society or group within the school — other than we should all just take your word for it, because your ‘speaking as a Jew’ and as a member of SAJFP, elevates you into the realm of an untouchable, unelected representative, a local movement Mufti that refuses to debate its critics, refuses to entertain any differences of opinion and declines to acknowledge actual party political platforms, affecting those who will nevertheless live with the outcome.

Lack of evidence

There is absolutely no evidence to support any claim that: “The students’ protest was not an antisemitic one but a principled one — a rejection of complicity with an institution that celebrates a state and army currently engaged in an ongoing genocide“, other than that you wrote an earlier letter to Rodean, and thus appear want to claim victory out of the hands of defeat.

Only the most cynical amongst us would make such a statement whilst simultaneously proffering an opinion that ‘the voices of the students who did not want to play a tennis match against King David’ were at the same time, ‘marginalised and ignored.’

Since I am not a member of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, I will not address your misdirection and contempt in this regard.

Rather, more crucial to my engagement here is the ridiculous patronizing statement: “they seemed to accept the false premise advanced by King David, that Judaism and Zionism are indivisible. They fell into the trap laid by King David’s own educational model, which actively conflates the two. I have written about my own experiences at King David in the past. A heartfelt letter sent to the school last year was ignored by its leaders.“

Clearly you believe the Rodean administration, the SRC, and student body, to have ignored your letters, at the same time as they lack the agency required to make their own statements, derive their own positions and policies?

Apostasy

You then advance the idea that when Judaism and Zionism are considered as two distinct entities the result is greeted by many as ‘sacrilegious’, as if the issue here is merely a theological one involving apostasy versus conformity? I should not have to remind you, and repeat myself, that the term anti-Semitism has nothing to do with the many religious objections that have been made over centuries casting Jews as Christ killers and Judaism as a heresy when it comes to the Church.

You claim to have gone to King David, and yet you operate from an obvious denial of the provenance of the term introduced by German scholar Wilhelm Marr in 1879 when he coined the word “Antisemitismus” with the aim to shift such prejudice from religious grounds to a pseudo-scientific, race-based ideology — framing Jews as a foreign, hostile race — not just a religious group, in the process providing us with a word to describe the exact same hatred he once sought to promote.

In your view, Jews should not control their own narrative, should not be allowed to define themselves as Jews, but should rather be subject to the narcissistic parlour game that seeks to distinguish ‘Good Jew from Bad Jew’? (I take it you must be related to one Steven Friedman, lately of the gulag?)

There was a time when my own views were consistent with what is often referred to as the Universalist/Assimilationist position. A term used for Jews who favor universalist, secular, or socialist ideologies over Jewish nationalism, and even Bundist: A follower of the historically socialist, secular Jewish “Bund” movement, which was historically anti-Zionist and focused on Doykayt (hereness)—the idea that Jews should struggle for a better life where they currently reside, rather than in a Jewish state.

All of this work over many decades was destroyed the minute my own country turned against me — reducing my career to that of a marginalised dissident, placing my faith on trial, in a racist inquisition of identity. I thus refer you to my piece: Most of All I am offended as a Secularist, and also my open letter to Seth Rogen.

Sincerely yours,

David Robert Lewis

Tag: daniel-friedman