THE RIGHT OF JEWS TO THE LAND OF ISRAEL

Indigenous and Sovereignty are in most cases mutually exclusive.

By Neville Berman

On February 18, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar addressed the UN Security Council on Israel’s right to the biblical land of Israel. He stated that the Jewish people are the indigenous people of the land of Israel. He then asked a question of how is it possible that Jewish presence on its ancestral land is seen as a violation of international law? The delegates were left in stunned silence as the logic of Jewish claims to the land of Israel were clearly articulated. This article is about whether Jews are in fact indigenous to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and whether they have the right to sovereignty over the land. It is based on the narrative as described in the Torah.

The Torah is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus. Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. It is the basis of monotheism and western civilization.

According to the Torah, Abram who later became Abraham was born in Mesopotamia in 1,813 BCE. He is described as an Ivri. He married Sarah, who remained childless during a woman’s normal child bearing years. With his wife’s approval Abraham fathered a child with his wife’s maidservant, named Hagar. She was not Jewish and the child was named Ishmael. When Abraham was 70 years old, he received the Covenant from G-d. Five years after this epic event, Abraham moved to Canaan, where in accordance with an important part of the Covenant, he circumcised himself as well as his firstborn son Ishmael, who was then 13 years old. At the age of 90, Sarah miraculously gave birth to her only son called Isaac. G-d promised Abraham that both his sons, Ishmael and Isaac, would be the progenitors of great nations.

**Contact Concluded**. A 18 century graphic by William Hogarth depicting Abraham buying a field from Ephron the Hittite which included the cave of Machpelah in Hebron to be used as a family tomb.

Using the dates above, we can conclude that monotheism began when Abraham received the Covenant 3,769 years ago. This is the number of years between when Abraham received the Covenant and the current year of 2026. After his marriage to Sarah, they became the first monotheistic Hebrew couple. Sarah had a son with Abraham named Isaac. Isaac married Rebecca, and they had a son named Jacob. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are considered the three Patriarchs of what would become Judaism. Sarah is considered the first of the four Jewish Matriarchs. After Sarah’s death, Abraham purchased a tomb in Hebron known as the cave of Machpelah, for her burial. The cave was purchased from Ephron the Hittite at an exorbitant price. In the book of Genesis, Abraham confessed that he is:

a stranger and a resident among you.

**Heavenly Hebron**. The Cave of Machpelah in Hebron is the world’s most ancient Jewish site and the second holiest place for the Jewish people, after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The cave and the adjoining field were purchased by Abraham some 3700 years ago and it is where he, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are all buried in the same Cave of Machpelah. These are considered the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people.

The purchase of the site is highly significant. The cave became the burial site of all three Patriarchs and three of the four Matriarchs of the people that became known as Hebrews, then Israelites and finally Jews. The fact that Abraham had to purchase the burial site, indicates that people previously lived there, and were the owners of the property. They were Hittites, who were pagans. Indigenous people do not need to buy land from someone who lived there before they arrived.

**Stamp of Sovereignty**. “I hold up a jug handle from the Kingdom of Judea, 2700 years ago. It has a stamp of the Jewish king on it,” says Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in an explosive address on the 19^th February 2026 before the UN Security Council session on the Middle East. He strongly argued that “No other nation, in any other place in the world, has a stronger right than our historical and documented right to the land of the Bible”.

Part of the narrative of Judaism is their exodus from Egypt. For hundreds of years Jews lived in bondage in Egypt. After suffering 10 plagues including the last plague of the deaths of all first-born Egyptian males, Pharaoh finally relented, and allowed Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. After the Red Sea miraculously parted to allow the Israelites to escape the advancing Egyptian army, the Israelites journeyed to Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments from G-d. Moses then led the Israelites towards the land that G-d had promised to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Before entering the land Moses sent out 12 spies, one from each tribe of Israel, to spy out the land. After 40 days they returned.

All twelve spies reported that the area was harsh and occupied. Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, reported that with the help of G-d, they would be able to conquer the land. After all the miracles that Moses and the Israelites had personally witnessed, it seems surprising that they were hesitant to enter the land that G-d had promised to the seeds of the Patriarchs. Probably, due to this hesitancy, Moses and the Israelites were then required to wander in the desert for 40 years. Only when the next generation was considered worthy of entering Canaan, were the Israelites allowed to enter Canaan. Moses never entered Canaan and he died in 1,273 BCE.

**Tumbling to Trumpets**. Well-fortified Jericho is the first city that Joshua’s Israelite forces encounter and according to the Bible, falls in a miraculous manner following the march around the walls with the Ark of the Covenant once a day for six days, and on the seventh day and seventh lap they blow ram’s horn trumpets and shout really loud causing the walls to crumble.

Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River into Canaan, and was instructed by G-d to wipe out the Canaanites. The first city Joshua attacked was Jericho. Remnants of pottery found in Jericho have been carbon dated to be over 5,000 years old. From this, it can be concluded that people were living in Jericho for over a thousand years before Joshua conquered the land. The vast majority of the Canaanites were wiped out by Joshua. The Israelites would eventually become known as Jews and Canaan was renamed Judea. It is important to note that indigenous people do not need to conquer land that others inhabit.

To cut a long story short, the Romans conquered Judea, and renamed the area Palaestina. Over the course of time, it became known as Palestine, and finally in 1948, the Jews renamed it the Land of Israel. This name is based on the fact that Jacob was also referred to by the name Israel.

If Indigenous people are defined as the original inhabitants of a region, then from the events mentioned above, it appears that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel. The question now arises whether Jews have the right to sovereignty over the land.

The Right of Jews to sovereignty over the land of Israel, is primarily based on G-d’s promise of the land to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This promise is repeated several times in the Torah. This right was never promised to the seed of Ishmael, or anyone else. The claim of sovereignty is supported by over 3,000 years of Jews living in the land, as well as the building of the First Temple that was destroyed by the Babylonians and the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans. Both Temples were built by Jews on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem that is the present site of the Mosque in Jerusalem. The United Nations approval of Resolution 181 in 1947, known as the Partition Plan of Palestine, merely confirmed the right of Jews to sovereignty over a sliver of the biblical land of Israel. The victories in the War of Independence in 1948, and the Six Day War in June 1967, further extended the right of Jewish sovereignty over the land. This is the same right claimed by America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries that gained sovereignty by subjugating the land by conquest.

**History Unearthed**. Excavation of King David’s palace in Jerusalem. According to the Hebrew Bible, the name “City of David” was applied to Jerusalem after its conquest by King David in 1000 BCE.

Sovereignty involves granting citizenship to the people living in the area. Israel cannot remain a Jewish and democratic state with a majority of Palestinian citizens. To avoid this scenario, Israel should not extend sovereignty to areas with large Palestinian populations in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza. What it can do, is to place the large Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank under Israeli sovereignty. These large settlements are all situated in the biblical land of Israel.

The saga of the return of diaspora Jews to their ancestral homeland is a testament to the fulfilment of G-d’s promise of the land to the seeds of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Jews have survived exile after exile, and thousands of years of blood libels, persecution and demonization. They have never abandoned their belief in one G-d and their devotion to Jerusalem. They have miraculously returned to their ancestral land, and have resuscitated Hebrew as a spoken language. They have made the desert bloom. They have established what has been metaphorically described as the villa in the jungle. It is not utopia, and has many serious problems and faults that still need to be resolved in the fullness of time.

Archeological digs in Jerusalem, and many other sites, have confirmed that Jews have lived in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea for thousands of years. From the above, it appears that there is a compelling case for Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel based on three claims. The first is the promise by G-d of the land to the seed of the Jewish Patriarchs, the second is over 3.000 years of Jews living in the land, and the third is conquest, both ancient and modern. No other sovereign country can claim all three of the above. I will end with the following message from G-d from the book of Genesis:

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse.

Unearthing Jewish Life in Ancient Times. The Excavation of King David’s Palace

About the writer:

Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award. In 1978 he immigrated to the USA to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel. He is married with two children and one granddaughter.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

ANC AMNESIA

As South African leadership indulges in state-sponsored antisemitism, it should remember the Jewish state’s unique contribution in the transition to post-Apartheid.

By David E. Kaplan

Attending from Israel the South African Limmud Conference in Johannesburg in 2016, I recall a presentation by the then Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Authur Lenk. He fended off questions from a deeply troubled audience about a rumor of El Al reducing its weekly flights between Israel and South Africa. There were animated exchanges reflecting how concerned people were. It would not only complicate travel arrangements for a community that has many family members living in Israel but it would also send a “depressing and distressing message” to a strong Zionist community of increasing isolation. The fear was as much psychological as geographic.

The anxiety in 2016 over flight reduction would end up in March 2024 of El Al suspending all flights to South Africa.

This termination of Israel’s national carrier flights that began in October 29, 1950, proved a metaphor for the flight path of diplomatic relations between South Africa and Israel, culminating with South Africa recent expulsion of Israel’s top diplomat in the country under the pretext of “violating diplomatic norms“. South Africa, who welcomes terrorists and their sponsors – Hamas and Iran – with red carpet fawning, declared Israel’s chargé d’affaires Ariel Seidman, persona non grata and gave him 72 hours to leave the country.

“Zionism” has become anathema to this South African government and its President, Cyril Ramaphosa, who probably is unaware that the South African Zionist Federation was established in 1898, the second country after the UK to do so, and one year after the first Zionist Conference in Basel in 1897. It predates the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, and the establishment of South Africa’s ruling party, the ANC, in 1912.

AGE OF TRANSITION

All this I was pondering from my home in Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv and thought while South Africa offends, insults, demonizes, accuses and kicks out Israel’s diplomats, I thought back in time and to a place only a few kilometers north of where I live, to a complex called Beit Berl and the enriching contribution it made to the emerging new South Africa of the 1980 and 1990s.

Back then, if you by chance were to stroll along the stone paths of the wooded Beit Berl Campus outside of Kfar Saba in central Israel, you would have been surprised to overhear conversations in Xhosa, Tswana, Zulu or Afrikaans. Participants of every shade of colour from South Africa’s “Rainbow Nation” were attending a unique ‘Community Development & Leadership Training’ programme. Why unique?

Well, there was no other country in the world – besides Israel – providing this essential training for South Africa’s future!

**Learning to Lead**. Aspiring leaders in the new South Africa with local South African resident, Janine Gelly at Beit Berl in the 1990s. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

SECRET STUFF

That it has been doing so without any fuss or fanfare may explain why so few Israelis or South Africans knew about it then or would even know about it today. Then it was a closely kept secret – a programme running since the dark days of Apartheid.

On the day in 1997 that a delegation of the Kfar Saba branch of the South African Zionist Federation in Israel (Telfed) visited the campus, the atmosphere was vibrant. Met with traditional South African dance and music, the 28th group of participants from South Africa was celebrating the near completion of their leadership course with a farewell cocktail party. Among the graduates of the Beit Berl programme at that time were over two dozen mayors of South African towns and cities including the present mayors of the country’s two largest cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as those from smaller towns like Randburg, George, and Grahamstown. Adding to that list was Port Alfred’s mayor, Eric Khuluwe who addressed us:

“Port Alfred is growing at an enormous pace as people are streaming in from the rural areas, seeking employment. The job situation is bleak and we are finding it an uphill battle to provide basic civic services. We have sixty-one local councils in my district and we need to involve as many people on the local level as possible in decision-making. This is the policy of the ANC government and is indicative of the nature of our democracy that empowers people to determine their own destiny. The Beit Berl three-week intensive course was excellent; it widened my horizons and provided practical guidance on team-management. I feel far better equipped to return to my city now and impact on its future.”

**Campus Contribution**. Beit Berl’s graduates that comprise almost one-fifth of all Israeli secular public-school teachers – Jewish and Arab – and hold prominent positions in Israeli national and local government, also include amongst its alumni 24 mayors of South African towns and citiesincluding the past mayors of the country’s two largest cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as those from smaller towns like Randburg, George, and Grahamstown.

From 1986 until that evening in 1997, over twenty South African Members of Parliament, as well as hundreds of local government officials and ministers of provincial councils had passed through Beit Berl. Patrick Adams, in charge of Emergency & Disaster Management for the Cape Metropolitan Council in Cape Town, had this to say:

“The course was very professional. I am in charge of Reconstruction & Development programmes in the Western Cape region, and my team is currently immersed in running numerous housing and community projects. Not only have I learned a new dimension of problem solving, but I have also been exposed to the problems in Israel and enjoy a greater understanding of the issues here.”

UNDERCOVER OPERATION

What would seem inconceivable today in 2026 seemed routine back then 1997. Fascinated, I began to research on the genesis of this wonderful programme of South Africa/Israel cooperation and enriching partnership and learned that it all began in the undercover world of the early 1980s when clandestine contacts took place between progressive Israelis and the anti-Apartheid forces in South Africa. The Israeli powerhouse behind the project was Prof. Shimshon Zelniker, who masterfully manoeuvered between South Africans, Americans and Israelis, a fascinating amalgam of colourful characters that included Hollywood stars, Jewish politicos, civil rights activists, freedom fighters and donors. A professor of political science at Beit Berl and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), Zelnicker, was a member of Shimon Peres’ advisory team in 1982.

“I was given responsibility for third-world policies, and my first mission was making positive contact with leaders of the struggle in South Africa,” said Zeiniker.

COLOURFUL CHARACTERS

The players in this unfolding theatre of clandestine operations spread across three continents. In South Africa, Clive Menell of Anglovaal paved the way by bringing on board Archbishop Benjamin Tutu. Soon other internationally renowned personalities like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden joined the circle, as did Ethel Kennedy, who twisted the arm of a reluctant Tutu into meeting with the Israelis. This was the turning point, for what followed was a secret meeting in South Africa between a delegation of Israelis representing anti-Apartheid sentiment and prominent Blacks, such as Albertina Sisulu and Ntatho and Sally Motlana.

**Charismatic Characters**. In the inner circle that inspired the Beit Berl project were Jane Fonda and husband Tom Hayden (above), Ethal Kennedy, the American human rights advocate and widow of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy as well as in South Africa, Clive Menell of Anglovaal and Archbishop Benjamin Tutu.

“We came out of the meeting with a clear mandate for action. Armed with an understanding that there would be no political manifestos and no pictures of politicians kissing each other, but a programme geared solely to assisting in the struggle, we approached Jews in the United States for support. In Israel, Yossi Beilin, Alon Liel, Ruth Baron and myself, among others, spearheaded the programme to be called the Israeli and South African Centres for International Cooperation” (ICIC) and would be based at Beit Berl.”

CLANDESTINE RECRUITMENT

“The early days saw us,” explained Zelniker, “pounding the pavements in South Africa for some twenty months recruiting support and participants. The success of the operation was predicated on our ability to keep it under wraps.”

Asked how that was possible, Zelniker replied:

“You know how porcupines make love? Very carefully.”

The first group of twenty arrived in 1986 representing three constituencies:

– Soweto,

– the Cape Coloured community and

– Women’s groups.

“We brought in the Histadrut (General Federation of Labour) to help in the initial training,” said Zelniker. “After the success of that first group, it was easier to obtain more funding. We approached very prominent, radically anti-Israel, Black leaders in the U.S. and received their blessing. Individual Jews donated large sums of money in the full knowledge that they would receive no recognition, and the American Government very quietly also assisted us in funding.”

Zelniker’s shuttling to-and-fro between Israel and South Africa was not without risk.

“My associate Ruth Baron was also detained. There were many ways the South African Authorities could have derailed the programme and they made it crystal clear that physical intimidation could be escalated. We were worried about the graduates being whisked away on their return from Israel for interrogation and intimidation, which on occasion did happen.”

Despite all the harassment, including infiltration by the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), the programme flourished. At one point in the late 1980s, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times bumped into a group of Black trainees in Tel Aviv. He thought he had uncovered the scoop of the century:

‘ANC and AZAPO forge secret ties with Apartheid’s ally!’

“He telephoned me and said, ‘this is sensational. What’s it all about?” When I explained to him the need for secrecy, I thankfully managed to persuade him that the programme and South Africa’s future were far more important than his ego. He dropped the story.”

THE NEW AGE

It was only a year or so after Mandela’s release in 1990 that the programme’s profile entered the public domain.

“In 1993, we introduced a rural community development programme in the former homelands, and it was then that we came out into the open,” revealed Zelniker.

The participants had such interesting stories revealing the enormity of the challenges they faced in South Africa. Thabisile Msezane from Boksburg, who ran a daycare centre related that:

“…in the Boksburg area there were no schools and children loitered aimlessly in the streets wasting away their lives. Each day I noticed a little boy roaming around the shopping centre where I bought milk. He would ask me for money to buy food. I thought:

“What kind of future does this child have? As I was starting a day care centre, I wanted to enroll this kid and so went in search of his parents. I was directed to a shabby compound behind a farmhouse, where I found them. While speaking to the boy’s father, the child spread the word amongst his friends telling them he was going to school. By the end of my conversation, I had enrolled another twelve children. Today I have 150 pupils, some of whom walk a distance of twelve kilometres to get to the school.”

Trevor Ngwame, a councilor from Johannesburg, was all praise for Israel’s ‘Beit Berl Programme’.

“We are dealing with the legacy of apartheid – no jobs, lack of housing and poor education. My approach is to offer people hope, and motivate them to organize themselves. We have seen how successful Israelis have been in overcoming insurmountable odds. Like South Africa, Israel has never been short of problems and yet it manages to advance amazingly. This is what we want to do. Of course, Israel’s problems are very different, and in the South African context we must ensure that people see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am not naïve to believe that matters are going to fall into place overnight. While the government must deliver the goods, the people also must rise up to the challenge and they need the tools to it. This programme has been a tremendous help in this regard.”

Reflecting on his role, Zelniker’s expressed to me:

“As a Jew, I have learnt that liberation is not simply about taking the people out of the ghetto. It means taking the ghetto out of the people. To say that I am proud of this programme would be an understatement.”

In the years that followed, this writer, together with fellow South Africans living in Israel became actively involved in the project offering home hospitality and engaging with the participants. One of the South Africans living in Israel taking a keen interest in the project was architect and artist Prof. Arthur Goldreich, who years earlier had been recruited by Nelson Mandela to join uMkhonto weSizwe, the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress. Arrested during a raid at Lilliesleaf Farm, he would later escape from the Old Fort prison in Johannesburg, flee to Israel where he became a prominent figure at the famed Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. Such were the personalities that were involved in the Beit Berl project that had as its primary goal – to help the new South Africa emerge from the darkness of Apartheid.

**Pulsating Partnership**. Seen here with a gathering of South African participants on the Leadership and Community Development programme are Arthur Goldreich former member of uMkhonto weSizwe, the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress (bottom left) and local South Africans Hilary Kaplan (holding flag) and Vivianne Abelsohn (right bottom). (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

Today, in 2026, I reflect back to those encouraging days of partnership as I observe what is tragically playing out presently in South Africa. Rather than focus on uplifting its people after three decades after Apartheid, the South African government is focused on:

– falsely accusing Israel of genocide

– expelling Israel’s diplomats

– sabotaging Israel’s offers of its expertise in agriculture and water management.

**Toasting Enriching Tomorrows**. South African Ambassador to Israel, Frank Land and wife Maatchen (top left) at a cocktail party with Prof. Arthur Goldreich, initiator and head of the unique Israel leadership programme for South Africans Prof. Shimshon Zelniker, and local South African Janine Gelley with participants from across South Africa at Beit Berl in the 1990s.

Worst of all it is fueling antisemitism like what transpired earlier this month when Johannesburg’s prestigious private girls’ school, Roedean, cancelled a scheduled tennis match against players from King David – a Jewish day school. It was revealed that some parents at Roedean argued “that the school should align with the government’s anti-Israel stance.” Little wonder what is unfolding has been characterized as “State-sponsored antisemitism.”

We have seen how and where unchecked vitriol leads to – the murderous attack at a synagogue in Manchester in October 2025 and the massacre on Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach on the 14 December. Can anybody say they would be surprised if a terrorist against Jews was to occur in South Africa?

All this I reflected on and wondered where are all those graduates of Kfar Saba’s Beit Berl Programme today? What contribution did they make and what impact did they have on the lives of fellow South Africans?

And what would they think of how their country has so turned against the Jewish state that had voluntarily helped them to help South Africa and remains ready to help?

**Full Steam Ahead**. Young and ambitious to lead their people, where are these South African Beit Berl graduates of the 1990s today and what impact did their experience in Israel have on their future?

Feature picture: Participants from South Africa on the Community Development & Leadership Training programme at Beit Berl, Israel with members of the South African community and South African embassy staff in 1997. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

WE ARE ALL JEWS HERE

The heroism of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds

By Andrew Fox

This month, the United States is set to posthumously award America’s highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor to US Army Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a man who displayed one of the most difficult kinds of heroism: not with a rifle but with moral clarity. According to his family and reports confirmed by a White House official, President Trump told Edmonds’ son that the Medal of Honor has been approved and will be presented on a date still to be announced.

If you only remember one line from Master Sergeant Edmonds’ story, remember this: “We are all Jews here.”

Medal of Honor recipient, Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds

In late 1944, Edmonds was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and taken to Stalag IX-A, a German prisoner-of-war camp. There, he became the senior American non-commissioned officer responsible for approximately 1,200–1,300 American POWs.

On 27 January 1945, the camp commandant ordered Edmonds to identify the Jewish-American prisoners for separate assembly. Edmonds understood what “separate” meant in Nazi Europe. Instead of handing Jews over one by one, he ordered all the American POWs to stand on parade together, Jews and non-Jews, then told the German officer: “We are all Jews here.”

The German officer raised a pistol and threatened to kill Edmonds on the spot. Edmonds refused to comply, invoking their rights as POWs under the Geneva Conventions and warning the officer about war crimes accountability. The officer backed down. The camp did not attempt segregation again. Edmonds’ refusal is credited with saving around 200–300 Jewish-American soldiers.

That is what “above and beyond” looks like when courage is guided by conscience. Like many others of his generation, Edmonds returned home and did not turn his story into a personal brand. He scarcely spoke of it at all. Only decades later did his son, Christopher, piece together what had happened, helped by testimonies from men who survived because Edmonds stood firm.

In 2015, Yad Vashem recognised Edmonds as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’, a rare honour awarded to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, making him the first US soldier (and one of only a few Americans) to receive it.

At a 2016 ceremony in Washington, President Obama warned that antisemitism was rising and urged people not to ignore it. Now, more than 80 years after the act itself, America will finally award its highest military honour to his name.

Edmonds’ story goes beyond inspiration to expose how evil manifests in the real world. It is more relevant today than at any time since his courageous act. The Auschwitz gas chambers were simply the culmination of the antisemitic journey. The Holocaust started with segregation and the demand that Jews be singled out, and that everyone else stand aside and let it happen. That is why Edmonds’ act remains so powerful: he refused to take the first step.

Today, that first step is making a comeback. Across the United States, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024, the highest total in the ADL’s tracking history, marking a fourth consecutive year of increases. In 2025, more than half of Jewish Americans (55%) report experiencing some form of antisemitism in the past year. Nearly one in five reported assault, threat, or verbal abuse based on their identity.

In the UK, the Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 instances of anti-Jewish hate crimes across the country in 2025. This is the second-highest annual total ever reported to CST. It represents a 4% increase from the 3,556 antisemitic incidents in 2024 and is second only to the 4,298 incidents logged in 2023.

In France, government data counted 1,320 antisemitic acts in 2025, accounting for 53% of all anti-religious incidents, remaining at historically high levels for a third straight year.

Jewish people are being threatened, targeted, excluded, blamed, harassed, assaulted, and made to feel that their public existence is a provocation. We should be precise and unwavering about where eliminationist antisemitism is being promoted and put into practice today.

Hamas’s original 1988 charter explicitly contains antisemitic incitement and conspiracy theories about Jewish control; language that reflects the same worldview that fuelled Europe’s exterminationist movements. Hamas later released a 2017 document attempting to alter some of its framing (stating its struggle is against the “Zionist project” rather than Jews), yet it continued to reject Israel’s legitimacy and endorsed “liberation” claims “from the river to the sea”. Hamas’s words are now repeated on our streets, legislatures and university campuses, daily and weekly.

Meanwhile, Iran’s regime has aided Hamas for decades, including materially and financially. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has documented a long history of Holocaust denial and distortion from the Iranian government and official media sources, one of the classic ways through which antisemitism is disguised as “politics” and “respectable debate”.

We are witnessing a revival of Nazi-style antisemitism in modern guise: sometimes religious, sometimes revolutionary, sometimes “anti-Zionist” in label, all while still peddling the oldest anti-Jewish myths.

We need action today. Master Sergeant Edmonds did one thing: he made it impossible to single Jews out. That is the heart of this call to action. When someone Jewish is targeted for their identity, it does not matter whether it occurs online, on campus, in a workplace, on a street, or in a synagogue. Our response must not be silence, ambiguity, or “both sides” of the issue.

It must be: we stand together.

Speak out loud. If you hear “Hitler was right,” “the Jews control…,” “Zionists are Nazis,” or any other recycled poison, do not let it go unanswered. The social cost of antisemitism decreases when decent people remain silent.

Report what you see, document what you can. Use credible reporting channels (community security groups, campus reporting tools, the police when appropriate). Patterns become undeniable when they are recorded.
Show up for Jewish spaces. Attend a public Holocaust remembrance event. Visit a Jewish museum. Accept an invitation to Shabbat dinner. If a synagogue or Jewish event is threatened, ask how to support them, not as saviours, but as neighbours.
Push institutions to enforce their own rules. Schools and workplaces often have policies against harassment and hate. Demand they apply those rules consistently when the target is Jewish: no euphemisms, no excuses, and no special carve-outs for the “right kind” of hate.
Respect moral courage and demand it from leaders. In the US, there was a bipartisan legislative effort to recognise Edmonds’ heroism, including a bill introduced in 2025 to award him a Congressional Gold Medal. Wherever you live, let your elected officials know you expect this kind of moral clarity, not just symbolic statements when convenient.

The Nazis demanded a list. Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds refused. Our era and our societies today face a similar choice, only with different uniforms and slogans. Make your decision. It matters. Will we continue to allow Jews to be singled out? Or will we stand united and declare, in practice and not just in sentiment:

We are all Jews here.

About the writer:

A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, Msc in Psychology and is currently studying for a PhD in History.

Lay of the Land Weekly Newsletter- 19 February 2026

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(1)

CRYING FOR THE BELOVED COUNTRY. AGAIN

Diplomatic ties hit all-time low between Jerusalem and Pretoria
By Rolene Marks

**Sacking Seidman**. It defies belief that in a country beset with so many challenges, its government would rather place skewered ideological allegiances above the well-being of its citizens.

CRYING FOR THE BELOVED COUNTRY. AGAIN
(Click on the blue title)

(2)

‘COURTING’ ANTISEMITISM – THE ROEDEAN HIGH SCHOOL AND KING DAVID SAGA

A tennis match that did not take place between two girls’ schools in Johannesburg exposes attitudes and antipathy towards Jews.
By Marika Sboros

**Tennis Troubles**. Once considered a “finishing school” for the country’s future leaders, Roedean’s reputation may well be “finished” having become mired in accusations of antisemitism for failing to honour a scheduled tennis match against a Jewish girl’s school.

‘COURTING’ ANTISEMITISM – THE ROEDEAN HIGH SCHOOL AND KING DAVID SAGA
(Click on the blue title)

(3)

BONDI SHOWED WHAT HAPPENS WHEN UNTRUTHS GO UNCHALLENGED

A mass murder of Jews on a public beach did not “just happen” – When lies reign, death ultimately follows.
By Allan Joffe

**Bondi Beach Massacre**. Left behind was more than people’s personal belongings but the end of a nation’s innocence. The dangers that lurk in the sea has been superseded by the danger that lurks on the sand.

BONDI SHOWED WHAT HAPPENS WHEN UNTRUTHS GO UNCHALLENGED
(Click on the blue title)

(4)

THE SUBVERSIVE HATERS

Roedean no-show at scheduled tennis match against Jewish Day School exposes deafening silence in mainstream South African society to antisemitism.
By Craig Snoyman

**Sounds of Silence**. The writer notes that while the Gauteng Department of Education is customarily quick to respond to racist WhatsApp messaging from white pupils, it was silent with no statement or
condemnation of Roedean’s antisemitic conduct towards King David School.

THE SUBVERSIVE HATERS
(Click on the blue title)

LOTL Cofounders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche

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THE ISRAEL BRIEF – 16-19 February 2026

16 February 2026 – At last! Doctors without Borders backs up what IDF have been saying for over two years and more on The Israel Brief.

17 February 2026 – Warning: Sensitive content. Former hostage shares her account of captivity, will Hamas disarm and more on The Israel Brief.

18 February 2026 – Is war with Iran just days away and why are feminists silent about the violence hostages and victims of 7/10 endured? This and more on The Israel Brief.

19 February 2026 – Israel on high alert, Tucker in Israel and more on The Israel Brief.

THE SUBVERSIVE HATERS

Roedean no-show at scheduled tennis match against Jewish Day School exposes deafening silence in mainstream South African society to antisemitism.

By Craig Snoyman

Johannesburg’s elite Roedean School cancelled an inter-school tennis match against King David School Linksfield

Something that seemed superficially normal, but by scratching the surface the puss of festering religious bigotry oozed out. The match wasn’t cancelled because of rain or injury or a genuine scheduling conflict. It was cancelled because a clique of parents demanded their daughters not play against Jews. This was not whispered bigotry; it was explicit and Roedean was too scared to deal with its internal demon. Roedean’s head of senior school, Phuti Mogale, in a telephone call to King David’s principal Lorraine Srage was candid – some parents were applying “significant pressure” not to play “a Jewish school.” This was religious and ethnic discrimination in its purest form — Jewish children excluded from a children’s sporting event solely because of who they are and what they believe.

Under any honest reading of the Constitution this is unlawful. Mogale did not know how to deal with the issue. Whether she should have been left alone to solve the problem reflects very poorly on the Roedean school board that had not grappled with this intolerance and showed no desire to rebuke the parents urging this boycott. The real culprits, the bigots, would remain completely untouched:

no identification
no sanction
no public shaming
no mandatory re-education, nothing!

They, as part of Roedean’s fee-paying ecosystem, would remain protected while the school pretended the problem is administrative. Money talks, but bi money talks louder!

Roedean conducted itself shamefully. In two separate, statements, crafted days apart, and published by Flow Communications — a supposedly sophisticated PR firm that should know better — the school peddled outright fabrications: “prior school commitments,” “compulsory academic workshops,” “scheduling clashes,” “miscommunication.”

**Go with the Flow**. Sophisticated South African PR firm, **Flow Communications** facilitates antisemitism by pedalling outright fabrications by Roedene of “prior school commitments,” “compulsory academic workshops,” “scheduling clashes,” and “miscommunication.”

The second release on 10 February even wrapped itself in virtue-signalling piety: “We will place the best interests of young people first.” It promised an “independent review” and “facilitator” for vague “student concerns,” all while studiously avoiding the non-kosher elephant in the room. These were not clumsy errors. The audio clip of the telephone conversation between the two school heads has gone viral. These statements deliberately gaslighted the Jewish community, buying time, shielding the real perpetrators and deceived the South African public, casting aspersions on King David and indirectly the entire Jewish community. Flow allowed itself to participate in laundering antisemitism using nice polished corporate language. This was not benign PR, this was Bell Pottinger style propaganda. It tapped South Africa’s religious sensitivities, in suggesting that King David, the Jewish school, was lying. It disseminated falsehoods, it resulted in public social media attacks on the Jews and Zionists, and it ignored the humiliation of the young Jewish tennis players, and amplified the school’s denial.

The truth was on the audio clip between the two school heads. The statements were indisputably false. And at this stage Roedean’s house of cards collapsed. A reluctant school board was finally forced to take the first steps in confronting religious intolerance. A grudging written apology admitted that its actions were “deeply hurtful to the Jewish community” but studiously avoided any suggestion that its actions had been antisemitic. Phuti Mogale was under the bus – probably pushed but officially resigning. But in reality, she was the only person who tried to address this discrimination. She didn’t invent the excuses. She was not part of the deception. Somebody had to take the fall and she was the convenient scapegoat. An unwitting high profile non-Jewish African victim of an antisemitic incident, not of her making.

**Thrown under the Bus**. School principal Phuti Mogale (above) was the only person – says the writer – who tried to address the discrimination. “ She didn’t invent the excuses… was not part of the deception,” but was the “convenient scapegoat,” who resigned – whether voluntarily or pushed.

Let us not forget the deafening silence of the guardians of equality enforcement. The Gauteng Department of Education and the national Department of Basic Education — lightning-fast when a racist WhatsApp message from white pupils surfaces — didn’t utter a single word.

-No statement.

-No investigation

-No precautionary suspensions

-No public statements

-No condemnations

-No equality court referrals ISASA, the independent schools’ body that was just as culpable. It too, remained mute.

All the parties one expects to know better were on show, and displaying selective tolerance of antisemitism. The pattern is both unmistakable and shameful. South African institutions normalised the exclusion of its Jewish citizens at the expense of “Palestine solidarity”. The South African Rugby Union banned Tel Aviv Heat from participating in a tournament in 2023. Cricket South Africa stripped David Teeger of his Under 19 captaincy because of Jewish identity and views. Universities like UCT have blacklisted Israeli academics. The climate of passive discrimination has created environments were Jews conceal their identities and opinions to avoid harassment. Forced declarations of anti-Zionism to join groups are now en vogue. What is framed as “principled politics” is really rank discrimination. But the principled politics of boycotting has been seen to work, and the Roedean parents simply followed the national playbook.

King David Linksfield and Lorraine Srage have shown what actual moral courage looks like: they recorded the call with consent, refused to accept lies, demanded truth, and ultimately accepted an apology so the girls could play tennis without politics poisoning the court. On the other hand, Roedean, its school board, Flow Communications, the bigoted parents, the mute authorities all displayed a spineless cowardice and a disregard for what is right. This cannot be accepted as ‘politics as normal’. This is discrimination by another name. Religiously intolerant action was nipped at school-level, but the rot will spread.

**Antisemitism Exposed**. The recorded conversation between the heads of the two schools revealed the truth from the lies leading to in the writer’s words, the collapse of “Roedean’s house of cards.”

The Roedean incident is not an outlier, it is not an aberration. It is the logical outcome of a society that has decided some bigotries are more equal than others. Until parents face consequences, until PR firms are held to account for lies, until school boards stop tolerating intolerant organisations that claim to teach about religious tolerance, until educational institutions take strong constitutional stands for what is right rather than acquiesce to the ethnic and religious prejudices of fee-paying parents and until authorities enforce equality without fear or favour, until people and organisations stand up and oppose this, the guarantee of South African human dignity is worthless. Dignity should not be negotiable – and that applies to Jews as well.

About the writer:

Craig Snoyman is a practising advocate in South Africa.

CRYING FOR THE BELOVED COUNTRY. AGAIN.

Diplomatic ties hit all-time low between Jerusalem and Pretoria

By Rolene Marks

When the dark years of Apartheid came to an end, South Africa brimmed with promise. Humanitarian icon, Nelson Mandela became the country’s first black President, resigning the previous racist regimes to the garbage bin of history. Investment poured into the country. Sports teams like the national soccer and rugby teams, blessed with that “Madiba Magic” won the African Cup of Nations and Rugby World Cup respectively. The “Rainbow Nation” had been born and the future could not be brighter.

I can’t help but think if Madiba and the other icons of the struggle against Apartheid, saw what has happened to the country they fought so hard to bring a true democracy to, where everyone is equal, they would feel not only betrayed, they would be heartbroken. The dignified examples set by these stalwarts of the struggle to pursue reconciliation and dialogue – especially with those you disagree with, have been dashed by their successors who prefer capture over cohesion and ideology over ideas.

Nothing is more emblematic of this than the recent expulsion of Israel’s highest ranking diplomat in the African state. The story is quite mind boggling.

For decades, South Africans have experienced a lack of basic services due to government incompetence. Some report having no access to water for days on end or no electricity. Many public hospitals are in disarray and in parts of the country that are poverty stricken, there is barely any access to clean water or adequate healthcare. On the contrary, the State of Israel, a leader in so many fields including Agritech, water technology, medical technology and other industries, is perfectly poised to provide solutions. Israel faces some of the same challenges that many African countries do and over the years more and more countries have sought solutions from the Jewish state. Their foreign policy stances have been resolute – why do we have to choose sides between Israelis and Palestinians when we could make decisions that benefit our people?

**Go Figure!** Israel’s assistance to bring drinkable water to remote villages across the Eastern Cape has been sabotaged by Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC government as being “inconsistent with solidarity with Palestine.”

It is a great pity and loss to the people of South Africa that their government’s foreign policy has been so firmly captured by the tyrannical Iranian regime that has and continues to slaughter tens of thousands of its own citizens. I do want to stress not all parties support the fanatics in Tehran whose “empire of evil” has traversed the region and beyond, leaving a trail of murderous terror attacks in their wake.

Which brings me back to Seidman. It beggars belief that in a country beset with so many challenges, the government would rather place ideological allegiances above the well-being of their citizens.

The crime that Seideman stands accused of is “a series of unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice” that DIRCO said amounted to a direct violation of the country’s sovereignty. The reality? The embassy’s social media had criticized South Africa’s allegiance with internationally recognised terror organization Hamas. We know this was just the cover up so what was the real “crime” that had the South African authorities in a snit?

In recent weeks, Israel’s Foreign Ministry dispatched diplomat David Saranga to serve as a “visiting ambassador.” South African officials viewed the move as an attempt to impose a de facto ambassador without their approval. Declaring Seideman, the highest-ranking Israeli diplomat in the African country as persona non grata is largely seen by Israeli officials as a response to that.

Israeli officials said that under an agreement between the two countries, holders of diplomatic passports are exempt from visa requirements. This allows Israeli diplomats to enter South Africa without prior approval. They said South Africa’s objections centered on what they described as the diplomatic profile Saranga maintained during his visits.

During his trips, Saranga had visited the province of the Eastern Cape, a part of the country beset with many challenges – one being access to clean drinking water. Saranga met with the Xhosa king, a strong supporter of Israel who recently visited the Jewish state. Saranga offered Israeli solutions in the field of water management, citing shortages of running water and drinking water in parts of the country. Help was also offered for the repair of hospitals in the Eastern Cape that would give many better access to much-needed healthcare. Israeli officials said those initiatives embarrassed the South African government by highlighting deficiencies.

**Israel assistance ‘upsets’ South Africa**! Israeli diplomat David Saranga seen here with King Dalindyebo in the Eastern Cape where Israel is assisting in water management and other vital services and what the ANC has condemned as “counter-revolutionary”

Israel’s response was swift. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on X that it was expelling a senior South African diplomat, Shaun Edward Byneveldt, in response and ordered him to leave Israel within 72 hours.

Seidman was not officially informed by DIRCO (Department of International Relations and Cooperation) – instead he found out when he was door-stopped by the media after he returned to the embassy following an event that day.

Relations between Israel and South Africa at a diplomatic level have reached an all-time low. Israel’s solution is to engage people to people. That is how we move forward.

Foreign policy does not just affect bilateral relations – it is also filtering down on a micro scale. One example is the recent refusal of elite girl’s high school, Roedean, to play tennis against King David High School. The incident attracted international headlines. Roedean denied the charge that discrimination was at play when it didn’t show up for its February 3 meeting with the King David High School girls’ team. South Africa’s Constitution protects the rights to religious freedom and the freedom of association.

A leaked recording of a conversation days later between representatives from both schools seemed to show that Roedean was under significant pressure from parents to withdraw from playing against a Jewish school. “We’re facing a bit of pressure from our community and our constituents regarding just not playing against King David,” a teacher is heard saying with a tone of regret in the recording, which was leaked a few days later. “Parents are basically saying, because of the stance that the government took, we’re supposed to support that.” The remark was a reference to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party’s anti-Israel stance.

Following a week of intense media scrutiny, the headmistress of Roedean, Phuti Mogale, resigned and the school has apologized to King David. One hopes that lessons in tolerance have been drawn from this.

**Roedean Rumpas**. Despite denials, explanations, and finally an apology from Roedean School (above) for refusing to play tennis against a Jewish school, smacks of nothing less than institutional antisemitism.

It is no great secret that South Africa’s foreign policy has been duly captured by Iran with their pathological hatred of the Jewish state. In post-Apartheid South Africa, one of the tenets that South Africans have been so proud of is the spirit of Ubuntu. The word “Ubuntu” is often translated as “I am because we are” or “humanity towards others“. It reflects the belief that a person’s humanity is affirmed through their relationships with others and their contributions to the community. South Africa’s Jewish community is as an integral part of the country’s mosaic of people – as is Israel in the family of nations. One hopes that the spirit of Ubuntu extends to the Jewish community who are proudly Zionist as well as Israel’s envoys who seek to find the best possible solutions to deal with the challenges so many in the rainbow nation face. Recent events have eerie echoes of a past where discrimination was the order of the day. I can’t help but cry for the beloved country. I think the founders of the post-Apartheid South Africa are crying too.

‘COURTING’ ANTISEMITISM – THE ROEDEAN HIGH SCHOOL AND KING DAVID SAGA

A tennis match that did not take place between two girls’ schools in Johannesburg exposes attitudes and antipathy towards Jews.

By Marika Sboros

(First appeared in Biznews)

Roedean was once one of South Africa’s premier private girls schools. It was even considered a “finishing school” for the country’s future leaders.

Some of its pupils have become strong, principled, polished young women, academically formidable, able to negotiate the frays of prejudice and party politics, no matter how petty.

The gloss on that reputation has been dimming for years. Roedean now remains mired in accusations of antisemitism for failing to honour a scheduled tennis match against King David Linksfield girls on February 3, 2026.

**School for Scandal**. Following top private school pulling out of tennis match against Jewish school, Roedean “strongly” refuted allegations of antisemitism.

That’s even after offering what many consider a “sincere” apology in writing.

Roedean probably hopes the apology will put an end to the scandal. That’s unlikely, despite the school acknowledging that its actions “were deeply hurtful to the Jewish community.”

Roedean also conceded that its earlier public justifications of “communication challenges” for the failure to hold the match were “incorrect.”

It was not just incorrect. It was false.

Roedean admits in its apology that these “challenges” were not the cause of the cancellation of the match. It does not admit to antisemitism.

Leaked recordings of phone calls between King David principal Lorraine Srage and Roedean senior school head Phuti Mogale, who has since resigned “with immediate effect,” are revelatory.

**Losing Points to Make a Point**. According to King David, Linksfield principal Lorraine Srage (above), Roedean counterpart, Phuti Mogale confirmed that King David’s identity as a Jewish school led to the withdrawal and that Roedean was prepared to forfeit the league points.

Anti-Israel lobbyists either don’t or don’t want to know that in South Africa, it is not illegal (though not generally recommended) for people to record a conversation in which they are a participant for their record even if they haven’t told the other person(s).

Legal implications depend on what happens to the recordings thereafter. That’s according to RICA, (the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act 70 of 2002).

Lobbyists also ignore the fact that Srage tells Mogale upfront that she is recording and has recorded previous conversations. Mogale offers no objection whatsoever.

Who leaked the conversations and why is currently unknown. Perhaps, if Roedean had not lied publicly in statements from the outset about why it failed to honour the tennis fixture, the recordings may not have been leaked.

In one, Mogale says clearly that the failed fixture began with pressure from Roedean parents who did not want their daughters playing against King David girls because this did not align with the ANC government’s anti-Israel stance.

When a startled Srage asks whether the parental objection is because the King David girls are Jewish, Mogale confirms it. To her credit, Mogale also says she told the parents that Roedean is “apolitical.” That clearly didn’t wash with the parents.

The mere fact that some supposedly well‑educated, influential Roedean parents would treat the ANC’s foreign‑policy posturing as a moral compass is a plot twist even Kafka might have rejected as implausible.

**Gate ‘Closed’**. King David girls’ tennis team arrived at Roedean for their scheduled match on February 3 to find the match had been cancelled due to students feeling “uneasy” about playing against Jews. It was initially spined as their students “having other commitments” and “miscommunication”.

The same ANC refuses to condemn its close ally, Iran, for slaughtering more than 30,000 of its own people, many of them teenagers in the streets during the ongoing uprising.

Roedean has turned to PR spin doctors to handle the fallout from the failed tennis match. They’ve wasted their money.

The school first claimed in writing that the tennis match was cancelled due to “prior school commitments” and “compulsory academic workshops” and that this was “miscommunicated” to King David. Its first apology was on that basis alone.

That was disingenuous, as phone conversations showed.

EMPTY COURT

Roedean communicated clearly to King David the day before the match that all contentious issues were resolved and the match was going ahead. On that basis, King David girls turned up to play tennis against Roedean. On arrival, they were greeted by an empty court.

Mogale didn’t help herself or Roedean by claiming in conversation that the girls themselves didn’t want to play the match as they were still suffering “distress” and “trauma” after visiting King David’s campus last year to play tennis.

That raised the question: what on earth happened on King David campus to distress and traumatise them?

Mogale is heard saying (to a presumably gobsmacked Srage) that the sight of armed guards outside at King David’s school entrance had “disturbed” the girls. She’d have been wise to stop there.

**Excuses Exposed**. Following public outrage and accusations of antisemitism, Roedean principal Phuti Mogale (above) resigns as school apologises to King David School acknowledging that “its actions were hurtfull to the Jewish community.”

Instead, she said the girls were also “traumatised” by seeing posters on King David campus. Poster of hostages, including children, babies and the elderly, still in captivity in Gaza after the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas against mostly civilian targets in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The problem for Roedean is that there was nothing distressing or traumatising whatsoever about the posters.

They were not images of bloodied young women dragged by their hair after being raped by terrorists, of children and babies in their pyjamas, tortured, mutilated, torn from their parents’ arms and homes.

The posters were of happy, smiling people before their savage kidnapping on October 7. Families supplied the photographs to raise awareness of the hostages’ ongoing plight in Gaza.

One might reasonably have expected Roedean’s tennis coach to have easily soothed the girls’ ruffled, sensitive feathers with non-distressing facts.

Facts, such as, that King David schools don’t post guards at their gates because they like the optics; armed guards outside Jewish schools as a sign that South Africa is a dangerous place for Jews; and antisemitic attacks are a real threat to Jews worldwide.

One would also reasonably expect Mogale not to have been so absurdly theatrical and hyperbolic in describing the feelings the posters evoked in Roedean girls as a “trauma”.

The only real trauma behind those posters was that suffered by hostages and their families and friends. Not the Roedean girls. Such moral inversion is as mystifying as it is a common driver of antisemitism.

National director of the South African Jewish Board of deputies Wendy Kahn is clear that the incident on Roedean campus on February 3 was blatant antisemitism.

On a Facebook post, Kahn defines antisemitism as:

“prejudice, hatred or discrimination directed against Jewish people, identity or institutions.”

She says that phone conversations make clear that the tennis fixture was a “Jewish day school issue” and that King David’s identity, like that of other faith-based schools, is based on the religious, cultural and historical life of the community it serves.

Roedean’s refusal to honour a sporting fixture based on the players’ Jewish identity, therefore, “constitutes an antisemitic act and is discrimination based on religion,” Kahn says.

It clearly violates South Africa’s constitution.

Section 9 of the constitution, as Kahn notes, provides that:

“No person may be unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly, on the grounds of religion, belief or culture.”

Roedean’s leaders should have known that.

Anti-Israel lobbyists have been predictably quick to support the Roedean pupils’ refusal to play against Jews. One lobbyist said that students who raised “principled concerns about war, state violence or ideology” should not be made to feel that these were “illegitimate or hateful.”

That’s true but that’s not what King David was making Roedean pupils feel.

After all, Roedean had not expressed any “principled concerns” that the Roedean pupils had. Just intimations of miasmic “distress and trauma” at seeing armed guards and posters of happy faces.

Roedean’s tennis-match debacle does not exist in religious, political isolation.

In 2020, Roedean was one of several schools hit by waves of social media testimonials from alumni detailing experiences of institutional racism. Activists and ANC-aligned commentators criticised Roedean for being “too slow” to change and for maintaining a “colonial” culture that excluded Black students. White students also felt under pressure.

In 2023, Roedean invited the Ummah Al-Rahma madrasah to provide religious, spiritual programming – Ummah Heart – on its campus for Muslim pupils. It spun the initiative as a gesture of inclusivity.

It signalled something darker: a willingness to outsource moral judgment to the loudest ideological faction in the room.

The madrasah’s public record and associations had already drawn significant criticism and concern. It was accused of expressing sympathy and support for Hamas, including sharing or endorsing material aligned with Hamas and other jihadist causes.

That represented “school capture” as South African attorney and essayist Richard Wilkinson has argued. Roedean was not just accommodating Muslim pupils within a pluralist, school‑controlled framework. It was outsourcing part of its religious curriculum to a “fundamentalist Islamic provider.”

Critics have warned of the perils of combining ‘woke’, diversity rhetoric with a hard‑line madrasah. It allows reactionary, radical and religious politics to shelter under the language of “true inclusivity and belonging,” while narrowing the space for dissenting or minority views – particularly Zionist or even just openly Jewish ones.

Appeasing a particular worldview, including one openly sympathetic to a terrorist organisation, is not a smart move and not just for schools. Bringing a Hamas-aligned group onto any campus normalises rather than challenges a climate in which Jewish pupils are already vulnerable – and in which ANC‑style, anti‑Israel agitation quickly slides into open antisemitism.

To its credit, Roedean allowed the partnership to peter out. However, failing to honour a simple tennis fixture with Jewish schoolgirls has put its credibility and moral scruples again under a microscope that may linger.

It signals more school “capture”. It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to work out where that can lead. It’s where ringing calls to “globalise the intifada” bring us.

Roedean statements, prepared and distributed by its PR company, Flow Communications, have been a study in obfuscation, euphemism and sophistry, beginning with the opening line of its February 10 offering: “We will place the best interests of young people first.”

Roedean demonstrably did not place the interests of its own “young people” first in this incident. It trampled over the interests of King David’s young people.

The only interests it did place first were those of the (hopefully) minority of staff, unnamed parents and students who don’t want to play sport against Jews.

Roedean has “engaged an independent party to review allegations.” It has also engaged “an independent facilitator to work with our students to resolve their concerns fairly and respectfully.”

If there really was no antisemitism involved, then why the need for an “independent facilitator” to resolve students’ “concerns”?

And if concerns mean some Roedean girls don’t want to play tennis against Jews, they will have a problem in future. There are Jews in private schools other than King David. Presumably, Roedean girls won’t be asking every schoolgirl they face on sports fields whether or not she is Jewish?

Roedean’s apology on February 12 was a good move but did not go far enough. It does speak of intentions to learn from mistakes made. However, repairing the damage will require more than facilitated dialogues and public-relations-spun messaging.

It requires ensuring unequivocal future action to ensure that prejudice, discrimination and antisemitism, whether dressed up as politics, “distress”, “trauma” or scheduling confusion, will never again decide who is allowed onto Roedean’s sports fields.

Sport should be a crucible where differences are put aside. Women’s tennis, in particular, has a rich history of breaking barriers and fostering respect across lines of class, race, religion and nationality.

To see that ideal undermined by a narrative that says “we won’t play against you because of who you are, your religion, what you think” is to witness the descent of sport into the tribalism it should transcend.

Tennis is a simple game. Serve, rally, score. It requires focus, the ability to reset after a lost point and, crucially, respect for your opponent.

In contrast, Roedean’s handling of its tennis fixture with King David was all fault and no reset – a series of clumsy, unforced errors in strategy, empathy and communication.

It leaves Roedean with scrambled linguistic egg on its face. It has spawned a satirical, informal verb in the urban dictionary: Erodean.

It is defined as “stripping credibility from an institution by knowingly recasting antisemitic exclusion or hostility as a neutral, administrative error, while shifting responsibility onto the Jewish person affected, despite clear, contrary evidence”.

Here’s an example of common usage:

“Watching institutions attempt to erodean their way out of accountability has become a disturbingly familiar pattern.”

About the writer:

Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.

BONDI SHOWED WHAT HAPPENS WHEN UNTRUTHS GO UNCHALLENGED

A mass murder of Jews on a public beach did not “just happen” – When lies reign, death ultimately follows.

By Allan Joffe

Two months on from the Bondi attacks, a hard truth remains: antisemitism is nourished when untruths about Israel go unchallenged. Much of this misinformation spreads easily because many who consider themselves neutral remain uninformed out of complacency or the belief that the issue is simply too complex to engage with. Others fall into false moral equivalence that blurs the line between atrocity and response.

The level of misunderstanding is often astonishing. Joe Rogan recently guessed that there are “500 million Jews in the world.”

The real number is 15 million.

In this environment, where algorithms deliver information designed to provoke rather than clarify, ignorance – to paraphrase Joseph Goebbels – is what allows a lie repeated often enough to become accepted as truth. In this sea of disinformation, some facts remain beyond dispute. These are not matters of interpretation or ideology, but facts that anyone engaging in this debate should understand.

FACT 1: denying the Jewish connection to Zionism is antisemitic.

For most Jews, Zionism is an expression of identity and faith. The Jewish people have long understood themselves as a nation with an enduring historical, cultural, and spiritual connection to the land of Israel. Nationally, Israel is to many Jews what Armenia is to Armenians or Greece to Greeks. Religiously, the longing for Zion is woven into Jewish prayers, holidays, and scripture much as Mecca anchors Islam and Rome anchors Catholicism.

To insist that Judaism be defined without Zionism is an attempt to dictate to Jews how they understand their own faith and identity. No-one claims the right to redefine any other religion or identity in this way.

Zionism is simply the belief that the Jewish people, like any other nation, have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. To deny that right uniquely to Jews isn’t progressive. It’s prejudice.

**‘Facing’ Facts**. For thousands of years, Jewish law and tradition have directed Jews across the world to pray while facing the Land of Israel, specifically towards Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, considered the holiest site in Judaism.

FACT 2: 7 October wasn’t resistance. It was terrorism.

Hamas terrorists carried printed orders explicitly instructing them to kill as many people as possible and to target schools and civilian communities. They raped women, burned families alive, and executed children. These weren’t acts of desperation or liberation, but war crimes. Those who justify or “contextualise” such crimes reveal moral bankruptcy.

FACT 3: Israel didn’t occupy Gaza

In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew completely from Gaza in the hope that the territory would become a peaceful, self-governed Palestinian entity. It was a real opportunity for Palestinian self-rule, however Hamas used it to wage war on Israel.

To limit the flow of weapons, Israel and Egypt jointly controlled Gaza’s borders – a policy often misrepresented as a “blockade”. The massacres of 7 October proved how ineffective that measure was. The claim that Gaza was “occupied” isn’t a legal or factual reality.

FACT 4: the conflict isn’t about borders, it’s about Israel’s existence

If the Palestinian cause was really about ending the “occupation” and achieving statehood, it would have been resolved decades ago. Palestinian leaders were offered independence repeatedly – in 1937; 1947; 1967; 2000; and 2008 – and rejected each proposal.

At Camp David in 2000, under then United States President Bill Clinton, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairperson Yasser Arafat was offered a state comprising most of the West Bank and all of Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Arafat walked away, and the Second Intifada followed. In 2008, Mahmoud Abbas rejected a similar offer.

**Concrete Evidence**. Serving as tangible evidence of Jerusalem’s origin, the City of David is the 3,000-year-old archaeological heart of ancient Jerusalem, located just outside the Old City walls, serving as the foundational site of King David’s capital.

The record is clear: the conflict has never been about the size of Israel. It is rooted in an ideological refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state in any borders.

FACT 5: Hamas isn’t a resistance movement

Hamas’s founding charter calls for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews. Its leaders openly promise to repeat massacres like that of 7/10.”

This isn’t a movement of resistance, but a jihadist regime whose worldview is fundamentally opposed to liberal democratic values. Hamas enforces Sharia law; suppresses dissent; persecutes LGBTQ+ people; and strips women of basic rights.

This ideology isn’t confined to Hamas. Repeated polls show broad public support for Hamas and for the 7 October atrocities in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Authority continues its “pay-for-slay” policy, paying salaries to the families of terrorists, with higher payments for killing more Jews. Schools are named after “martyrs” who murdered Israeli civilians, and children are taught to idolise them. This isn’t a fringe phenomenon but an institutionalised worldview that is taught, celebrated, and rewarded.

Author and philosopher Sam Harris captured the core asymmetry of the conflict, saying, “If the Palestinians laid down their weapons, there would be peace. If the Israelis laid down theirs, there would be genocide.” Israel is fighting a jihadist ideology that openly calls for genocide.

FACT 6: the Palestinian refugee system keeps Palestinians stateless by design

After World War II, refugee crises involving millions were resolved through resettlement. Twelve million Germans expelled from Eastern Europe; 14 million Hindus and Muslims displaced by the India-Pakistan partition; and three million Koreans separated by the Korean War were all resettled and rebuilt their lives.

The Palestinian case is unique. In 1948, roughly 750 000 Palestinians became refugees and a comparable number of Jews were expelled from Arab states. Yet today, the number of Palestinian “refugees” exceeds five million, while the number of Jewish refugees is zero. This is because the United Nations via UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) applies a unique system used for no other refugee population: Palestinian refugee status is inherited indefinitely, even by those who hold full citizenship elsewhere. And unlike every other post-war refugee crisis, not one Palestinian refugee has ever been resettled under UNRWA’s mandate. Each generation is kept stateless by design.

**False Fixation**. Obsessed with demonizing Israel in order to undermine its exitance, from 2015 to 2023, the General Assembly passed 154 resolutions censuring Israel, and only 71 against all other nations combined. Fixated on the Jewish state, the UN has little to say about countries such as Venezuela, Sudan, North Korea, and Iran, and of course ignoring superpower abusers of human rights and international law like China and Russia.

The absurdity is obvious. Omar Yaghi, the 2025 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, was born in Jordan to Palestinian parents and left for the United States at age 15. Today, he holds American, Jordanian, and Saudi citizenship. Under UNRWA’s rules, he could still be classified as a Palestinian “refugee” if he had been registered with UNRWA before he emigrated and if so, his children could also inherit that status.

This is an institutional system designed to keep the refugee issue alive indefinitely. It ensures that it is never resolved, and it leads directly to the next fallacy: the so-called “right of return”.

FACT 7: the “right of return” is a demographic weapon

The so-called “right of return” – the demand that more than five million Palestinians and their descendants be allowed to resettle inside Israel isn’t a humanitarian proposal but a demographic weapon.

No other refugee population makes such a demand. The descendants of Germans expelled after World War II or of Hindus and Muslims displaced in 1947 don’t claim a “right” to return to homes their ancestors left generations ago. This demand exists only in the Palestinian case because it serves a political goal: to undo Israel’s existence through demographic means.

If implemented, Israel would be transformed into a Palestinian majority entity. A solution that includes a “right of return” isn’t a peace plan. It’s a political impossibility.

FACT 8: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East

According to the 2023 Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, Israel ranked 30th in the world, between the United States and Portugal. Australia ranked 14th; and South Africa, one of Israel’s harshest critics, 47th. The Palestinian Territories – ranked 115th – and every Middle Eastern state were classified as authoritarian.

Israel stands as the region’s only democracy, with free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, and a free, critical press.

Fact 9: the UN applies double standards to Israel

No country has faced more condemnation by the UN than Israel – a level of scrutiny that reflects an institutional fixation while the UN has very little to say about countries such as Venezuela, Sudan, North Korea, and Iran. From 2015 to 2023, the General Assembly passed 154 resolutions censuring Israel, and only 71 against all other nations combined. At the Human Rights Council, Agenda Item 7 exists solely to debate Israel’s alleged violations, while no other state faces comparable treatment.

This bias extends to the officials leading these supposedly neutral bodies. Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, has had her positions on Israel condemned by France,Germany, and the US as “disgraceful”, “scandalous”, and “antisemitic”, yet remained in her post. The UN’s “independent” inquiry into Israel is chaired by Navi Pillay, who took the position after publicly branding Israel an apartheid state.

These patterns reveal a culture within the UN and its agencies that legitimises Israel’s detractors and fuels modern antisemitism.

Fact 10: Israel is falsely portrayed as a settler-colonial state

Israel and Zionism aren’t colonial projects. Jewish presence in the land stretches back thousands of years, and as academic Dr. Einat Wilf notes, one need not be Jewish or religious to recognise that few relationships between a people and a land are as deep and enduring.

The return of Jews to their homeland bears no resemblance to colonialism in which a foreign power conquers territory to extract resources. From humble beginnings, Israel has built one of the world’s most open and diverse societies and has the 18th-highest GDP (gross domestic product) per capita in the world, between Belgium and Germany.

The descendants of the Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries after 1948 now comprise more than half of Israel’s Jewish population, meaning that the majority of Jewish Israelis are from the Middle East and not from Europe.

**History Revealed**. Having fled, Jews from Yemen living in tents at a camp in Rosh HaAyin in central Israel in 1950. The descendants of Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries, often referred to as Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews, now comprise over half of Israel’s Jewish population, dispelling the contrived lie of characterizing Israelis as European colonialists.

Israel also has more than two million Arab citizens who enjoy full and equal legal rights. Arab representatives serve in the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) and on the Supreme Court. The Arab population has grown from 156 000 in 1948 to more than two million today. This demographic reality is incompatible with claims of colonialism or apartheid.

BEFORE YOU DECIDE WHAT THE TRUTH IS

The debate about Israel is, at its core, a debate about moral clarity. The loudest anti-Israel movements draw on a familiar convergence of ideas. Some of their leading figures openly support jihadist violence, presenting it as resistance. Others on the far left reframe the conflict through distorted theories of settler-colonialism and race. And on the far right, there are those who promote antisemitic conspiracies, minimise the Holocaust, or revive old-fashioned Jew-hatred.

Before you decide where you stand, ask yourself whether these voices reflect your values.

Bondi starkly demonstrated the cost of indulging such narratives.

In the war for truth, ignorance isn’t neutrality. It’s a choice.

*Feature picture: Bondi Beach Massacre. Left behind was more than people’s personal belongings but the end of a nation’s innocence.

About the writer:

A Chartered Accountant by training, Allan Joffe is a businessman based in Johannesburg. He is husband to Sandi, and father of their three children.

Lay of the Land Weekly Newsletter- 15 February 2026

Unveiling the contours and contrasts of an ever-changing Middle East landscape Reliable reportage and insightful commentary on the Middle East by seasoned journalists from the region and beyond.

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THE ISRAEL BRIEF –09–12 February 2026
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Lay of the Land’s disturbing ‘PhotoPick’ of the Week

Threatening Jews at Opera House, mass murdering Jews at a beach, violently protesting against the visiting president of the Jewish state, Australia’s message to the Jewish world is CHILLINGLY clear!

**The Worst of Oz**. Protests in Sydney turned violent as demonstrators protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s state visit to Australia in the wake of December’s Bondi Beach mass shooting during a Hanukkah celebration. (Photo: AFP, Reuters).

ARTICLES

Please note there is a facility to comment beneath each article should you wish to express an opinion on the subject addressed.

(1)

HOME AT LAST

In the final chapter of a national tragedy, some 700 personnel participated – including roughly 400 combat soldiers – in ‘Operation Brave Heart’ – bringing home the last hostage from Gaza.
By Jonathan Feldstein

**Homeward Bound**. Retrieving Israel’s last hostage was a masterpiece of military precision and moral resolve. The writer – who interviewed **Colonel Golan Vach** who led the mission – offers insights into the operation and its meaning for Israel.

HOME AT LAST
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(2)

SEIDMAN’S EXPULSION: THE COMEDY AND THE DARKER SIDE

South Africa’s expulsion of Israel’s Chargé D’Affaires is looking like absolutely fabulous fodder for comedians.
By Marika Sboros

**Hardly Clean Hands!**Duplicitous and devious, South Africa’s President Ramaphosa takes extreme and
unwarranted action against Israel’s head diplomat in Pretoria for alleged transgressions, while the truth lies entirely elsewhere!

SEIDMAN’S EXPULSION: THE COMEDY AND THE DARKER SIDE
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(3)

COULD WE GO FROM GAZA’S LAST HOSTAGE TO COEXISTENCE?

Tensions between Muslims and Jews has not always defined their relationship. Can shared roots and cultural commonalities provide a favorable way forward?
By Steven Gruzd

**Seeking Common Ground**. With the current climate of animosity, can the long complex relationship between Judaism and Islam which began in the 7th century, offer instructive insights relevant for today?

COULD WE GO FROM GAZA’S LAST HOSTAGE TO COEXISTENCE?
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LOTL Cofounders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche

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Lay of the Land Weekly Newsletter- 15 February 2026

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