The row over allegedly anti-Semitic remarks by Deputy Foreign Minister Fatima Hajaig refused to die after she issued an "unequivocal apology" - which the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) immediately rejected as very equivocal.
Hajaig apologised for any pain she may have caused to South Africans and particularly the Jewish community with her recent remarks about "Jewish money power" controlling the West. She denied that she was anti-Jewish though she admitted she had "conflated Zionist pressure with Jewish influence" in her controversial statement.
But the SAJBD said she had "failed to address, let alone repudiate" her "blatantly anti-Semitic sentiments" and so it was pressing ahead with a complaint against her for anti-Jewish hate speech which it laid last week with the SA Human Rights Commission.
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However, some members of the Jewish community felt that Hajaig's apology, even though "mealy-mouthed" should be accepted.
The row first blew up over Hajaig's statement - at a pro-Palestinian rally in Lenasia on January 14 to protest the Israeli assault on Gaza - that the control of the US and most other Western countries was in the hands of "Jewish money".
"Sometimes I feel that America and [its] people - and most of them don't think anyway - are completely led by their nose, by the Israeli interests that surround the Zionists that are in America," she was reported as saying then.
"They in fact control, no matter which government comes in to power, whether Republican or Democratic whether Barack Obama or George Bush, inclined to be the same, the control of America just like the control of most Western countries is in the hands of Jewish money and if Jewish money controls their country then you cannot expect anything else."
Hajaig has not denied making these remarks.
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