DONATION SPARKS COMMUNAL CONTROVERSY

Divisions within South Africa’s Jewish community on Israel reflect global drivers.

By Marika Sboros

“At this moment, the heart of Israel beats as one with the hostages and their families.”

With these words, Israeli President Isaac Herzog took to social media on October 9, 2025 to welcome news of the ceasefire-hostage deal to end Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

The heart of a vocal minority in South Africa’s Jewish community is not beating to quite the same unified rhythm.

Divisions among South African Jews have become yawning chasms since the terror attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 that started the war. You’d have thought the gratuitous savagery on the day was enough to unify all Jews everywhere. It was not.

The brutality was preceded by a barrage of 3873 rockets from Gaza. What followed was an unprecedented orgy of violence that left more than 1200 dead, over 5000 injured and 250 kidnapped as hostages to Gaza – most of them civilians and not all of them Jews. The terrorists mass raped women and young girls; they tortured, beheaded, burnt alive and summarily executed whole families – men, women, children, babies, the elderly, and pet dogs.

Some called it a pogrom. UK historian Simon Sebag Montefiore compared it to:

“a medieval Mongol raid for mass slaughter and trophies.”

A UK-Israel parliamentary report called it “the largest single massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust, the deadliest per capita terrorist attack, with just over 1 in every 10,000 Israelis killed, and the third overall deadliest terrorist attack in the world to date.”

October 7 brought the depth of divisions in South Africa’s Jewish community to the fore. The most recent red flag began waving publicly just days before Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur 2025.

It was the news report of a R1-million (about ILS188 910,60.00) donation by a South African Jewish family charity, the Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF), to Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, a medical doctor and founder-CEO of the globally renowned South African humanitarian charity, Gift of the Givers.

R1-million is pocket change for the Mauerberger family. Its effects on the Jewish community were seismic, with aftershocks that continue.

The main driver of aftershocks?  Most Jews can’t fathom why members of a prominent, philanthropic, Jewish family would even think of donating to a charity run by one of South Africa’s most outspoken, implacable opponents of Israel. Sooliman has distinguished himself, if that’s quite the right word, with so many examples of conduct unbecoming of a humanitarian that they are too numerous to mention them all here.

Suffice to say he is known for inflammatory rhetoric, loathing of Zionists (the anti-Israel lobby’s code word for Jews), and spreading of antisemitic tropes. He believes that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza – and apartheid, ethnic cleansing, deliberate starvation and anything else he can think of to demonise the Jewish state.  He aligns with extremist Islamist jihadist forces that want to wipe Israel off the map. He speaks at anti-Israel protests beneath banners declaring “We are all Hamas”.

Sooliman regularly predicts Israel’s imminent demise.

This recipient of the MFF knows that accusing Zionists or any other Jews of genocide is the most provocative, inflammatory charge possible, as it weaponises the trauma of the Holocaust against its victims. Such rhetoric is not legitimate critique.

It erases the distinction between civilian casualties and intentional extermination. It distorts legal definitions and shifts blame in this war from Hamas, whose charter is explicitly genocidal against Jews. It is just another modern blood libel that effectively delegitimises Jewish suffering and fuels Jew-hatred conspiracy theories.

Genocide claims have targeted not just Israeli government policy. They have made the world a more dangerous place for Jews by normalising and undermining Jews’ right to speak out safely against existential threats.

But, back to the contentious MFF donation.

The MMF is headed by Dianna Yach, granddaughter of South African industrialist Morris Mauerberger, and a member of the University of Cape Town (UCT) Council. Mauerberger founded the MFF in 1936 as part of his philanthropic programme to support educational and community projects in South Africa and Israel that continue to this day. An early initiative was a clinic for Cape Flats workers who struggled to access state hospitals due to poverty and transport barriers.

Since the 1960s, the MFF has supported a wide range of projects in Israel most notably at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1969, the Mauerberger family was directly involved in establishing Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

Yach has a reputation as a “proud UCT alumnus, passionately committed to equality, diversity, and human rights”. After graduating from UCT with a BA and LLB, she was admitted as an advocate to the High Court in South Africa, obtained an LLM from the University of London and subsequently lectured in law at Queen Mary College, University of London.

She serves on the boards of South African NGOs including ORT Cape SA and Cape Jewish Welfare Trust.

If Mauerberger were alive today, one wonders what he would make of his granddaughter’s MFF donation to Sooliman.

There’s no doubting what Sooliman makes of it.

He instantly spotted its myriad PR advantages, posting photos on social media of himself grinning broadly while accepting the donation from Yach. Another image captures him sitting with Yach in the intimacy of the lounge in her elegant Cape Town home.

He posted a statement by Khalid Sayed, African National Congress (ANC) Leader of the Opposition in the Western Cape Legislature, “saluting South African Jews like the MFF for their solidarity with Palestine”.

Sooliman is taking full advantage of the “halo” of moral righteousness that the donation from and association with Jews such as Yach hangs over his head. It may mitigate reputational damage from ongoing claims that Gift of the Givers is a conduit for funnelling funds to terror groups, not just Iran-backed Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad in Gaza, but Hezbollah in the West Bank as well.

The evidence for terror funding is circumstantial, but copious. As legal experts make clear, circumstantial evidence, presented properly and in sufficient quantity, easily secures conviction. Sooliman’s own words support it by implication, at times.

In an interview on YouTube, Sooliman declares that he does not follow local or international law, only Islamic law, and that no one can tell him what to do. He says of himself and Gift of the Givers that “we know how to move cash.”

Sooliman vigorously denies claims of terror funding, while resolutely refusing to do the minimum required to put the claims to rest forever.

He won’t say who his funders are – except in this case, when the donors are Jews. He won’t say how much money Gift of the Givers receives in donations annually or where it all goes. Sooliman also won’t publish audited annual financial statements, as other international charities in South Africa routinely do.

Some South African Jews see the MFF donation as positive, even symbolic. They believe that Yach, however misguided, means it to bridge divisions between Muslims and Jews in South Africa.

Never was that more needed. Open hostility to Jews in South Africa is a top-down dynamic. UCT and the Western Cape province are hothouses of that hostility. It carries the African National Congress (ANC) government’s seal of approval for the “Palestinian cause”.

Most Jews I canvassed in South Africa and in the diaspora find the MFF donation deeply disturbing. They call it “disgusting”, “disgraceful”, a “betrayal”.  Most insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisals.

I emailed Yach for comment on the donation and another matter. She responded with a brief MFF statement and said she would not comment further and had handed my email to her lawyers.

According to a MFF statement, its directors “stand with Gift of the Givers in solidarity, giving their love for humanity and selfless work to address the urgent and pressing food and healthcare needs of the people of Gaza.” The donation is “…for children in Gaza, delivered within six months of fund receipt.”

The “ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza” has resulted in shortage of paediatric medicines, “with many health facilities destroyed and children facing preventable illness and mortality due to lack of access to vital treatment.”

The MFF saw Gift of the Givers as “uniquely positioned to address this urgent healthcare challenge, with an established track record of delivering lifesaving support to vulnerable communities across Africa and the Middle East since 1992.”

Yach’s brother, Dr Derek Yach, a US-based physician and epidemiologist, and fellow MFF director, was more engaging.

He said that the donation “aligns fully with MFF’s 70-year engagement with Israeli, Jewish and other commitments”. Its intent is “to provide humanitarian support to people in need, as (MFF) is doing with separate grants to Israeli mental health programmes.”

Pressed on why the family foundation chose Gift of the Givers, Dr. Yach explained that MFF directors considered its status as an approved non-profit organisation registered in the US; that it works with several faith-based charities (mainly Catholic); and has a “proven track record of getting medicines to those in need.”

Yet the donation is laden with ironies. Chief among them, the MFF is donating funds for medicines for Gazan children to the group that created the shortage of medicines in the first place. There’s also no guarantee that the medicines, by default or design, won’t end up in Hamas’s hands. Hamas, Gaza’s elected government, has a well-documented habit of embedding in hospitals, hijacking aid trucks and shooting to death hungry Gazans trying to access aid.

One critic who did speak openly via email was UCT emeritus professor of historical studies Milton Shain. Shain is author of Fascists, Fantasists and Fabricators: Antisemitism in South Africa from 1948 to the Present (Jacana Media, 2023), the final volume in his trilogy on South African antisemitism.

“One hesitates to criticise anyone giving support for the needy,” he said. The suffering in Gaza made it “obvious that support is needed.” Shain acknowledged Gift of the Givers as a successful global disaster-relief operation but noted that Yach “must surely know of Sooliman’s controversial statements about Israel,” and “…one needs to question (her) judgement.”

Another critic prepared to comment openly was Beulah Lange, a retired resident of McGregor, a village tucked away in the mountains of the Western Cape. Lange worked for more than 30 years in Jewish social welfare in Durban, 20 of those years as social worker and director of the then-titled Durban Jewish Welfare Association. She dealt regularly with trust-fund donations from Jewish philanthropists, including the MFF, which was “particularly generous to us.”

Lange was upset by the MFF donation to Sooliman, who she considers “virulently antisemitic.” She dismissed it as a “woke” attempt by those prepared to “bend over backwards to work with people who desire our demise.”

It does nothing, she said, to change her view of Sooliman and Gift of the Givers. 

An earlier red flag of deep divisions in South Africa’s Jewish community was the so-called “Gaza resolutions” that the UCT Council passed in June 2024. These call for an academic boycott of Israel and reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

The fallout from their adoption was swift. Immediate and massive cuts in donor funding followed, spiralling potentially higher than R700-million, and not just from Jewish sources.

The Donald Gordon Foundation (DGF) withdrew a R200-million donation to a private hospital for UCT. A potential R400-500-million DGF donation to UCT was lost.

The HCI Foundation also withdrew its R15-million funding. The foundation is the corporate social investment wing of Hosken Consolidated Investments, the holding company of a black empowerment investment company that has its origins in the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union.

Despite the deep funding cuts, there was surprising support for the UCT resolutions from Jewish academic and student ranks, including Yach and members of South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP).

SAJFP is closely allied to the global BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel. SAJFP leader Jo Bluen uses inverted red triangles on her social media posts to celebrate the deaths of IDF soldiers in Gaza.

Yach’s lack of support (to put it mildly) for the lawsuit that Prof Adam Mendelsohn brought against UCT for passing the resolutions has also highlighted divisions.

Mendelsohn heads UCT’s Department of Historical Studies and is director of its Kaplan Centre of Jewish Studies. He has alleged in court papers that Yach (a member of UCT Council’s exco at the time) tried to pressure him to drop the case against UCT, using wording suggesting that his career and family were at risk.

Yach has vigorously denied the accusation in an answering affidavit.

Mendelsohn declined to comment on the MFF donation or his case against UCT, as it is still pending. However, I have it on reliable authority that evidence of exactly what Yach said, supports Mendelsohn’s claim.

David Benatar, a UCT emeritus professor of philosophy, has written extensively on the university’s fall from grace in recent years. He said that academics fear risking “the ire of UCT’s activist ideologues who believe that, of all the armies in the world, the only one to single out for boycott is Israel’s.”

Divisions in South Africa’s Jewish community could be simply a function of global drivers. These include “groupthink” and “adoption of submissive behaviours by Westerners who have already capitulated to Hamas and are mirroring the behaviour of Gazans,” as British US-based journalist Eve Barlow has suggested. It leads to “normalising the erasure of Jews from public life” by those who understand the “power, money and social mobility that comes from promoting the Hamas cause,” Barlow tweeted. This leads Jews on a path to “denouncing their own identity, nation and people,” essentially “willing their own deaths by sporting antizionism.”

Some Jews in South Africa are far down this path, as SAJFP and BDS members demonstrate.

Divisions among Jews in the wake of the MFF donation and UCT Gaza resolutions may contribute to the emergence of what Hannah Arendt once called the “conscious pariah”, and not just in South Africa.

Canadian anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein notes on social media that Arendt used the term to describe “the Jew who does not flee from non-Jewish society’s construction of them as heretical, outside, or even despicable, but embraces that position and uses it as a place from which to intervene in society.”

Thus, the conscious pariah Jew stands in contrast to the “parvenu, or exceptional Jew”, the antizionist Jew, who treats his or her Jewishness as “a gimmick or credential for the gentiles, while removing himself from the pulse of his people,” Louis-Klein says.

South Africa has some notable parvenu Jews, Jo Bluen and Ronnie Kasrils, former ANC MP and Intelligence Chief among them.

Kasrils celebrated October 7 in its immediate aftermath by calling it “a brilliant, spectacular guerilla warfare attack.” He continued: “They swept on them and they killed them and damn good. I was so pleased and people who support resistance applauded.”

It wasn’t only South African conscious pariah Jews who found his sentiments grotesque. The MFF, whether by default or design, risks locating itself firmly in the parvenu Jew camp. 

After October 7, I wrote a piece titled: Worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust not enough for some. I quoted US Jewish atheist neuroscientist philosopher Sam Harris saying that October 7 proves that we “are all living in Israel. Some of us just haven’t realised it yet.”

This still holds. After all, Hamas demonstrably does not discriminate when it comes to its genocidal intent.

Tel Aviv author and businessman Saul Sadka writes eloquently in the Jewish Chronicle that the Gaza deal is:

“…no ceasefire – it is Hamas’s near-total surrender.

Even if the jihadis won’t disarm, they have no meaningful ability to project power at Israel, only at its own long-suffering people.”

And yet, Sadka asserts:

 “…there is a genuine prospect for regional peace.”

I hope he’s right. And if regional peace comes, I hope it helps to heal at least some schisms in beleaguered Jewish communities globally.

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.

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).