The chief rabbi of South Africa has invited an international counter- terrorism task force to assist in the investigation of a recent attack on a Jewish center in Cape Town.
The move comes after an explosive device was thrown into the Jewish community center in Cape Town last month on the very day a synagogue was toched in Australia and amid a wave of antisemitic attacks around the globe.
“Although we are now on the front lines, the threat both against our communities as well as against Christian communities is both regional, continental and global,” Rabbi Warren Goldstein told JNS on Tuesday.
He emphasized that the task force, which is being backed by the New York-based World Jewish Congress and is expected to make its recommendations in the coming weeks, is a global initiative.
“Jewish communities should not deal with this in an isolated fashion as terrorism against Jews or Israel, because the forces of terror threaten democracies worldwide and this requires greater collaboration,” he said.
The task force, which is intended to work with local law enforcement officials, is being led by the co-founder of an elite law enforcement unit created by late South African president Nelson Mandela, and will include senior counter-terrorism officials from the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel.
South Africa has emerged as one of the world’s most vociferous critics of Israel amid the Jewish state’s 15-month war against Hamas in Gaza and, in a move condemned by the United States, brought Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague on charges of war crimes and genocide. The ruling African National Congress, which has long backed the Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has only increased its support in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in southern Israel.
Still, Goldstein said he did not feel the country’s 50,000-strong Jewish community was more at risk than Jewish communities anywhere else in the world.
“We are facing the same threat of global terror as Jewish communities in Sydney, Melbourne, or Chicago,” he said.
