January 23, 2025 | Policy Brief

Attempted Bombing Attack on South African Jewish Community Center Remains Unsolved

January 23, 2025 | Policy Brief

Attempted Bombing Attack on South African Jewish Community Center Remains Unsolved

The bomb in Cape Town may have failed to detonate on December 5, but it has sparked an independent investigation. South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein announced in mid-January that an independent counterterrorism task force would examine the attempted bombing of a Jewish communal building in Cape Town, which would have caused “devastating harm” had the intended explosion detonated, he said. The investigation indicates the magnitude of the threat South Africa’s Jewish community faces and Pretoria’s failure to combat this danger.

As Rabbi Goldstein emphasized, on the same day as the failed attack on the Cape Town Jewish community center, arsonists ignited a synagogue in the Australian city of Melbourne. The Counter-Terror Task Force, comprising high-ranking counterterrorism experts from the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Israel, will investigate recent attacks on Jews in Cape Town, Melbourne, and other cities.

South African President Yet to Condemn Attack

While Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis eventually condemned the incident, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has yet to publicly denounce the attempted attack. The South African police’s serious crimes division, known as the Hawks, is investigating; however, officials have yet to publicly issue any findings even though the Jewish community provided investigators with “evidence showing the perpetrators committing the act.”

Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in South Africa Since October 7, 2023

One group that will likely be scrutinized is PAGAD, a South African vigilante organization with a history of antisemitism and bombing attacks. PAGAD’s leader said in November 2023 that it was time to “decentralize” the war against the Zionists and vowed to “go to their homes, to their schools.” The bombing attack might have been an answer to that call.

Worryingly, Muslim leaders in South Africa have expressed their support for Hamas, which carried out the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. A popular cleric publicly declared, “I am Hamas.” A well-connected South African imam attended Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s funeral in Qatar. And the director of a respected Muslim humanitarian organization hailed Hamas’s supposed victory over Israel and openly expressed antisemitic conspiracy theories on multiple occasions that the Zionists — a codeword for Jews — control the world through fear and money.

Signifying that the South African government would persecute its Jews, in March 2024, then Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor vowed to arrest South Africans fighting in the Israeli army. South African police are investigating one such individual, and an activist group is seeking action against another. Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Media Review Network (MRN), two South African anti-Israel organizations, produced a report identifying nine South Africans, or individuals in South Africa, who should be investigated for their Israeli military service.

Separately, the leader of MRN insinuated that the Cape Town bombing attack was fake or exaggerated. Africa 4 Palestine, another South African anti-Israel group, said that Rabbi Goldstein’s actions create “anger and resentment … directed at people from the Jewish Community” by reinforcing links between South African Jews and Israel.

South African Government is Failing to Protect Its Jewish Community

The past two years have witnessed the highest number of antisemitic incidents in South Africa on record, according to the Jewish Board of Deputies in South Africa. Amid a global assault on Jews, several countries have invited further attacks by failing to crack down on the perpetrators of antisemitic violence. Ramaphosa’s failure to condemn the attack, the absence of public progress reports on the part of the South African police, and the South African chief rabbi’s need to invite an independent task force to investigate the matter demonstrate that Pretoria is not protecting its Jewish community.

David May is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow David on X@DavidSamuelMay. Follow FDD on X@FDD. 

Issues:

Issues:

Israel

Topics:

Topics:

Israel Hamas Washington Jewish people United Kingdom Muslims Qatar Zionism The Holocaust Australia South Africa Ismail Haniyeh Anti-Zionism David N. May Pretoria Cape Town Cyril Ramaphosa Naledi Pandor Palestine Solidarity Campaign