An aerial view on December 26, 2023 shows destroyed buildings in Beit Lahia after Israeli bombardments in the northern Gaza Strip, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by AFP)
South Africa’s chief rabbi, Warren Goldstein, has hit back at the government’s decision to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague for an order directing that Israel, which is also a State Party, refrain from any acts that may constitute genocide or related crimes under the United Nations’ Genocide Convention.
On X, Goldstein called the genocide allegations “grotesquely false” and accused South Africa of acting “as Iran’s ally and proxy in the Islamic state’s plans to destroy the Jewish state through its multifaceted strategy, a critical element of which is to undermine Israel’s legal and moral right to defend itself”.
Goldstein said President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government “support Iranian proxy Hamas in its war crimes of using its own civilian population as a human shield to cause maximum Palestinian casualties so as to delegitimise Israel’s just war of self-defence, thereby to neutralise its military superiority”.
Goldstein claimed that “there is considerable evidence, even in the public domain, of the SA government’s growing closeness to Iran and its Hamas proxy over many years.
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“As far back as 2007, the SA government invited Hamas to the country on an official visit.
“And at the 2017 ANC conference which elected Ramaphosa as its president, a Hamas delegation was in attendance.
“Of late, Ramaphosa led the charge to admit Iran into the Brics grouping.
“And in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October massacres, the SA government dispatched its foreign minister to Tehran in a show of support of the Iranian administration.”
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He said Iran’s “latest power play” to “use the ANC government’s historic mantle of the anti-apartheid movement as a weapon is a despicable and cynical use of one of history’s great human rights struggles against racism in the cause of the world’s oldest form of racism – anti-Semitism.”
He added that the SA government’s latest action was “an Iranian attack on the Jewish state, on the Free World led by the United States, that also endangers Christian communities in Africa vulnerable to Jihadist persecution at the hands of Iranian and Hamas allied terror groups across the continent”.
In his New Year address to the nation on Sunday evening, Ramaphosa said: “As a country that itself emerged from a bitter past to build a united nation, we will continue to work for reconciliation, peace and an end to conflict and war.
“We have maintained a principled position against the continued oppression of the Palestinian people and reaffirmed our support for their quest for full nationhood.
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“We are deeply concerned by the onslaught against the residents of Gaza and the West Bank. We condemn all violence against civilians, both Palestinian and Israeli.
“We call for an immediate ceasefire and dialogue towards a lasting and peaceful resolution of the conflict.”
In announcing the approach to the ICJ, the Presidency said: “South Africa has repeatedly stated it condemns all violence and attacks against all civilians, including Israelis.
“As a State Party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, South Africa is under a treaty obligation to prevent genocide from occurring.”
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