Pro-Palestinian activists have targeted the South African Holocaust Museum.
By Rachel Avraham
In South Africa, a respected monument to human suffering is now navigating a new turbulence. The Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre and its Johannesburg counterpart have been targeted by protests calling on them to declare the war in Gaza a “genocide” and include it in their exhibitions.
Pro-Palestinian groups—including Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Mothers4Gaza and South African Jews for a Free Palestine—have laid siege to the museum’s credibility, challenging its silence. “It cannot remain a museum of remembrance while genocides continue in real time,” read one of their letters.
This pressure comes amid the broader legal and moral dispute between South Africa and Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the Gaza military operations. South Africa accuses Israel of violating the Genocide Convention; Israel rejects the charge as a politicization of one of the gravest international crimes.
From Israel’s standpoint, the targeting of Holocaust and genocide institutions for contemporary political goals sets a troubling precedent. Museums of this kind exist as guardians of memory, not arenas of current geopolitical contention. When they are pulled into the vortex of live conflicts, their impartiality and the weight of the Holocaust legacy are at risk. For many in Israel, the South African protests underscore a narrative: the Holocaust’s memory is being repurposed to serve present-day agendas.
Yet the museum’s dilemma is understandable. As the protests in Cape Town revealed, its visitors carry expectations: “Why does the Centre not include Gaza?” they ask. Its director conceded that “the designation of genocide is a legal matter,” implicitly signaling that activism now presses upon legal institutions.
The word “genocide” is at the heart of the matter. Legal experts note that labeling a conflict genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention is difficult—intent must be proven and destruction of a protected group must be shown. Some editors warn that applying the term loosely could weaken the Convention’s credibility.
In democratic societies, the role of museums, universities and public memory institutions is rarely static. They sit at the crossroads of scholarship, politics and public emotion. The choice of one conflict versus another, one victim group over another, is inherently political—even when the institution claims neutrality. In the South African case, the broader allegiances of government and civil society towards the Palestinian cause intensify the pressure.
For Israel, the key take-away is two-fold: first, alliances of memory must resist being co-opted by rhetorical fights over contemporary violence; second, institutions that stand for remembrance must remain rooted in historical clarity, not present-day polemics. The museum’s challenge in Cape Town is symptomatic: when yesterday’s horrors become today’s battlegrounds, the museum risks becoming part of the conflict rather than a step above it.
In conclusion, the unfolding saga at the South African Holocaust and Genocide Centres is more than a protest—it is a litmus test for the politics of memory. For Israel, the message is clear: refusing to allow historical suffering to be rewritten for political ends is not just a moral demand—it is a strategic necessity. The museum may remain open, but if it becomes a forum for live grievances rather than a monument to remembrance, it risks losing its meaning.
Photo from Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre: https://ctholocaust.co.za/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_Holocaust_Centre#/media/File:Cape_Town_Holocaust_Centre_logo.png
