South Africa’s Chief Rabbi: Trump Right to Confront Ramaphosa About ‘Genocide’
Chief Rabbi of South Africa Warren Goldstein released a video Sunday in which he said President Donald Trump was right to confront South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last week about genocidal rhetoric.
Trump showed Ramaphosa a video of South African politicians calling for the murder of farmers and the taking of land without compensation. The video included footage of South African political figure Julius Malema, who has become infamous for leading rallies of his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in chants declaring “Kill the Boer,” “Kill the farmer,” “Shoot to kill,” and mimicking the sound of automatic rifles.
Goldstein blasted Ramaphosa for never having condemned the “Kill the Boer” chant, which theoretically should be banned under South Africa’s constitution, but which courts have refused to ban or to punish.
He said Trump’s only mistake was to presume that the “genocide” applied to white South Africans only. Goldstein noted that over 650,000 South Africans, black and white, had been murdered since Ramaphosa’s party, the African National Congress (ANC), had come to power in 1994.
“President Trump was right to highlight the moral aberration of the ‘Kill the Boer’ chant, and the horrific farm murders,” Rabbi Goldstein said, “but he is wrong that this is only a white genocide. It is a South African genocide. … It is not a white genocide, it is not a black, genocide it is a human genocide.”
Goldstein played footage of a trade union leader telling Trump about horrific rural crime, including murders and rapes, and said it was damning that the only defense South Africa had against Trump’s claims was to highlight the scourge of violent crime across society.
It was just, Goldstein said, that South Africa, which had falsely accused Israel of “genocide” at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), found itself accused of genocide in front of the whole world.
In that sense, he said, Ramaphosa and South Africa had received an almost Biblical punishment, “measure for measure.”
“The only path to a better future is by having the courage to be honest about the failings of the present,” Goldstein said.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
