“There is not the slightest incompatibility in being a good Jew and a good Zionist at the same time as being a good South African: we shall continue to be both,” Edel Horwitz, chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, said in reply to a letter signed “Jodeboer” (Jewish Boer) which questioned whether Zionists could have full loyalty to South Africa and which was prominently featured in a recent issue of the leading Afrikaans weekly, “Dagbreek.”
Mr. Horwitz referred to the letter in the course of an address to the Johannesburg Zionist Luncheon Club, saying: “I don’t think this letter — so prominently placed — merits much attention, and it ought perhaps to be treated with the contempt it deserves. But ‘Dagbreek’ is a prominent newspaper, and articles and letter have appeared in that paper during the past few months which have given a completely false image of the Zionist Movement; which have been calculated to sow dissension in the Jewish community and to question the loyalty to South Africa of Jews and Zionists.
“I should have thought the statement issued some time ago by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies in reply to an article written by the editor of ‘Dagbreek,’ and the letter written by Chief Rabbi Casper explaining that Zionism — the attachment of the Jewish people to the Holy Land — is indeed an act of faith and has been part of the Jewish religion for thousands of years. I should have thought they would have been sufficient to lay the ghost which is being set up that Zionism is a sinister bogey. It is an impertinence for anyone to question my loyalty to South Africa or the loyalty of my colleagues.”
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