Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Join the 2% of readers!SUPPORT OUR WORK!
Fast Forward

South African Students Sing In Hebrew To Fight Back Against BDS

Pro-Israel students at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand fought back against a BDS-inspired effort to shut down a rally featuring an Arab-Israeli speaker.

The group of mostly Jewish students formed a protective ring around the speaker when anti-Israel students tried to storm their rally on Tuesday.

“The BDS people came waving their flags, screaming and cursing me, giving me the middle finger,” the speaker, who gave his name as Yahya, told the Algemeiner. “They were very violent and unethical.”

Jewish students sang “Am Yisrael Chai” and forced the BDS proponents to back off.

The confrontation came amid a broader fight over Israel Apartheid Week at the elite university.

StandWithUs, a stridently pro-Israel group, brought the speaker to campus as a way of countering the anti-Israel narrative on the campus, which has been wracked by periodic student protests in recent months.

Are you one of our 2%?

Did you know that only 2% of Forward readers donate to support our nonprofit newsroom? That 2% make it possible for millions to read the Forward without a paywall or subscription — removing any barriers to the full and fair Jewish story.

But while the Forward is free to read, it isn’t free to produce. Big stories — like deep dives into the antisemitism data, political scoops or reporting trips to college campuses  —  take months of research and fact-checking. All while we keep you informed of what you need to know each day.

Don’t just read the Forward — invest in it. Support our work today!

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Forward Publisher & CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.