The Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, on Thursday slammed the South African’s government’s decision to recall its diplomatic staff from Israel in protest of Israel’s handling of the war against Hamas.
“The South African government and all of the global opponents of the state of Israel are on the wrong side of history and in its most recent actions, withdrawing South African diplomats from Israel and threatening the Israeli ambassador to South Africa with expulsion, this government is supporting Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah to destroy the state of Israel and spread global jihad,” Rabbi Goldstein said in a statement posted to YouTube.
Rabbi Goldstein noted that the Hamas attack on October 7 and all subsequent global events have nothing to do with the Palestinian Arab people and “everything to do with Iran's plans to spread global jihad and to destroy the State of Israel.”
He explained that the Palestinian Arabs could have had many opportunities to have a Palestinian state and “it has been rejected time and time again in favor of a vision plan to destroy the Jewish state and remove it.”
“When people say ‘from the River to the Sea’, that means there is no Jewish state in in that land,” said Rabbi Goldstein.
Noting that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, Rabbi Goldstein said, “Everybody in the world knows that Hamas works with this strategy and they use the media as useful idiots.”
“Israel is doing everything in its power to minimize civilian casualties, as it should, but to be accused of genocide just moves things into the realm of The Twilight Zone. If it were not so dangerous and so serious this would be laughable,” he stated. “This war, this battle, has got absolutely nothing to do with the ‘occupation’, with apartheid, with genocide. These are lies which have been created in order to destroy Israel.”
“From a South African point of view, when the South African government supports not only Hamas but Iran, and when the South African minister of international relations goes to Iran in the wake of the October 7 massacres, that is making a very loud statement and, on that issue, South Africa, together with all of the opponents of the state of Israel who are marching in global capitals in every part of the world, they are in fact the useful idiots of Iran. Either that or they are actually complicit in these plans in supporting Iran and Hamas,” said Rabbi Goldstein.
Anti-Israel sentiments remain prevalent in South Africa, where the government has frequently accused Israel of applying a policy of “apartheid” towards Palestinian Arabs.
This past summer, a South African lawmaker called for a Cape Town-based Jewish day school to be “deregistered” due to the fact that many of the school’s graduates go to Israel and enlist in the IDF.
Earlier this year, South Africa Rugby withdrew an invitation to Israeli club Tel Aviv Heat to compete in a second-tier competition.
Rabbi Goldstein recently rewrote the Shabbat prayer for South Africa in response to the local government’s public support for Hamas. Following the amendment, Jews now pray for the people of South Africa, but not the government.