Prominent Nationalist Condemns Anti-semitism in So. African Parliament

A prominent leader of the governing Nationalist Party and a member of the South African Parliament, has added his voice of condemnation of the “Go to Israel” and other anti-Jewish remarks made recently by some of his colleagues in the Parliament, which provoked an angry retort from the floor by Alec Gorshel, Jewish member of Parliament.

Abraham Jonker, the Nationalist leader, said in an interview in “Sunday Times” here that the anti-Jewish remarks made in Parliament had come from a few individuals and did not reflect the feelings of the National Party. “If they were manifestations of anti-Semitism, then they were to be condemned as strongly as possible, ” he said “If they were meant to be light-hearted, they were in bad taste, and if they were made in the heat of the moment, they were out of place.

“I have had the personal assurance of our leaders that they will not tolerate anti-Semitism, and I think we can state that emphatically, ” Dr. Jonker said. The Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd, and the previous Prime Ministers, Dr. Malan and Mr. Strijdom, had all spoken out against anti-Semitism. “I am quite sure that the majority of my colleagues feel as I do. These remarks must stop, as they are doing us great harm, ” Dr. Jonker said. Another Nationalist Member of Parliament, J. von S. Von Molte, who had in the 1930’s been a leader of the anti-Semitic Greyshirt movement, told the “Sunday Times” that the Government stood for racial peace and was against anti-Semitism He blamed some of the Jewish Members of Parliament for the comments that had been made. “They taunt the Nationalists to such extent that they must expect this sort of retaliation,” he said.

“Die Burger,” the Cape Town Nationalist newspaper which generally supports the Government, says editorially that just as people should not give offense by ill-considered remarks, people should not take offense when certain types of remark are made. “We should be as little touchy about our own race as offensive about another’s,” But the paper adds: “In this connection the Jewish South Africans are in a special position. They are members of a race with an extremely tragic history, especially in the recent past. They have more reason than most to be touchy, and it therefore behooves us to practice so much the more self-control towards them. Foolish and humorless ejaculations and stings such as sometimes occur in Parliament cannot be excused by pleading provocation by a member of that race, because he is not there as a mouthpiece of his race.”

(The New York Herald-Tribune, in a cable from London today by Seymour Friedin, its executive editor, reported: “The Jewish community in South Africa is singled out by the militant apartheidists today as the most influential internal bloc supporting African desegregation aspirations. Jews also have been charged with furnishing, illegally, funds to Africans to promote their objectives. A demand has already been made–still somewhat muted–to detail income and outgo of all Jewish-held business and property. There also have been some ugly, outward anti-Jewish manifestations. Apartment doors in some buildings in Johannesburg have been smeared in white paint with the word “Jew.”)