South African President and ANC member Jacob Zuma. Photo: wiki commons.

JNS.org – The social media manager of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa’s Western Cape province is under fire for posting an anti-Semitic comment praising the Holocaust and lamenting that more Jews were not killed. The ANC is South Africa’s ruling party.

“Yes man, you were right!” Rene Smit posted next to an image of Adolf Hitler on Facebook. “I could have killed all the Jews, but I left some of them to tell you why I was killing them,” the post added.

Smit told the South Africa Times that she was protesting “the Israeli killing of innocent babies and women in the Gaza Strip.” She said she later “remorsefully removed [the post] immediately once I became aware that it is inappropriate and offensive.”

Marius Redelinghuys, the spokesperson of the Democratic Alliance, another political party in the country, called the post “not only anti-Semitic and hate speech, but can also be construed as an incitement to violence and is an insensitive insult to victims and survivors of the Holocaust.” Wendy Kahn, director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, called on the ANC to “distance itself from such comments and say it would not work with that volunteer again,” reported The Guardian.

Cobus Grobler, a spokesman for the ANC in Western Cape, said that Smit is not an actual employee of the ANC but had assisted the party’s recent election campaign as a volunteer. “The ANC condemned the conflict on both sides. But the oppression of the people of Palestine is unacceptable,” he said.

Just last week, ANC’s deputy secretary-general, Jessie Duarte, also compared Israel’s attacks in Gaza to the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

“Israel is guilty; guilty of defending her citizens from the onslaught of hundreds of missiles, terrorist kidnappings, and murder. Israel is guilty of actually calling and texting Gaza civilians, used as human shields by Hamas terrorist thugs, urging innocents to evacuate buildings, before they are bombed. All freedom-loving people and opponents of terrorism should back Israel’s struggle and commitment to a two-state solution,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in response to Duarte’s comments.

“With this despicable attack, ANC is also guilty; guilty of desecrating the legacy of Nelson Mandela, the ultimate icon of a freedom fighter, whose integrity and heroism still inspires millions of people around the globe. Which ‘death camp’ or ‘open air prison’ boasts five star hotels? Gaza does. Who continued to supply Gaza with electricity and fuel despite thousands of terrorist launchings from Hamas-controlled territory? Whose hospitals treat the most critically ill Gazans in their hospitals? The very nation that the ANC denounces as ‘barbarians,'” Cooper added.