Al-Qalam 
By Ebrahim Rasool (Former Ambassador to the USA)
The declaration of Israel’s Chargé d’Affaires, Ariel Seidman, as Persona Non Grata has elicited yet another extraordinary diatribe from Warren Goldstein, Chief Rabbi of SA, in early February. His expulsion from South Africa indeed had an unmasking effect. But it did not, as Warren Goldstein asserts, unmask the South African President, the government he leads, or the ANC as captured by a variety of forces who are anti-West, Islamist or Iranian. The unmasking was in forcing the real representative of Zionism and its political project, Israel, to step into the breach, directly and unfiltered, dispensing the onerous and inconvenient mask of “Chief Rabbi”.
Indeed, Warren Goldstein has been juggling these two personae, Chief Rabbi and Chief Representative, throughout his tenure to manage the moral tumult that Israel has been at the centre of, and that Zionism, as a political–colonial ideology, has inspired. A political problem needs a politician, but a moral conundrum needs religious sophistry. But we’ve all been too polite to call him out, partly because it is imperative that we redeem – mostly for our own humanity – Judaism and Jews as a noble religion and indeed a people who have been victims of a holocaust perpetrated by Western Europe.
In the demeanour of Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, the Chief Representative emerged. The only clue to his rabbinical role, in the nine-minute diatribe, was the reference to Genesis 12:3 that those who bless will be blessed and those who curse will be cursed. Although the reference is to Abraham, the appropriation is for Israel. He then anoints himself as God’s appointed blesser and curser and proceeds to curse President Ramaphosa, the Government and the ANC for the temerity to expel the Israeli diplomat, discovering belatedly that this is reserved for serious misdemeanours like bordering on espionage. Such cursing is the sound and fury of fundamentalist extremism, which would be irritating only if it were not so severe in the Middle East, where such extremism has power and is not afraid to exercise it perniciously on the vulnerable.
Balancing his personae, he froths moral outrage at how the expulsion of the diplomat has now cursed the children of the Eastern Cape to a life of deprivation of potable water and sanitation – when Israel is the global leader in water management; to a life of compromised health care as a consequence; and endangered the country’s relationship with President Trump and the USA who will visit economic doom on us. Let’s examine whether Warren Goldstein’s “moral outrage” is that of a naïve Chief Rabbi or a calculated Chief Representative.
Israel is the global leader in water management! Indeed. It is so good that Israel has perfected the art of ensuring 100% access to Israeli Citizens to water and sanitation – even in the northern Negev Desert – by intercepting the aquifers into Palestine from the mountains, by diverting water with pipes, tunnels, and channels from, among others, the Sea of Galilee, and restricting and limiting Palestinian water drilling for wells and development of water infrastructure. The result is that Israelis receive about 137 litres per person per day – for household and agriculture – whilst Palestinians can barely manage agriculture on 76.4 litres/person/day! A stark example is in the establishment of a Jewish settlement in northeast Jerusalem, where, in addition to the appropriation of Palestinian land, the Palestinian villages lost access to its springs, wells and other water resources. Since October 2023, persisting right into the ‘ceasefire’ in 2026, the Israeli Defence Force has repeatedly bombed and shelled Gaza’s water infrastructure and prohibited access to water sources in Gaza and limited the entry of water and other humanitarian aid, resulting in 96% of Gazans becoming water compromised. No wonder UN experts declared: “Israel is using thirst as a weapon to kill Palestinians.” In South Africa, it appears, the Chief Representative is using thirst as a diplomatic weapon to mask a genocide.
The people in SA will suffer dire health consequences. Quite rich coming from the man who in February 2025, is quoted in The Times of Israel as saying “…we should welcome the Trump administration’s interventions…” and later only admitting that Trump was mistaken to only allow white Afrikaners as refugees into the USA. It is not ironic that he feigns concern about our health but welcomes Trump’s cutting of PEPFAR funds that combat HIV/AIDS – not only in SA, but Africa; cuts USAID Programmes; defunds the WHO, and many others, that, in one night’s executive orders, bequeathed death and disease. This is the cynicism of a Chief Representative, not the morality of a Chief Rabbi.
How do we take his warning about ‘endangering’ SA’s relationship with Trump, and jeopardising the African Growth and Opportunities (AGOA)? That boat has sailed. Before any word was said in anger, SA lost all its aid, had 30% tariffs imposed (together with the rest of the world), and AGOA’s renewal was delayed. All of this based on a lie about a white genocide! The Chief Rabbi could be moved to call out this lie, but the Chief Representative would revel in the delicious symmetry: SA charges Israel in the ICJ with Palestinian genocide and land occupation and, in retaliation, Trump accuses SA of white genocide and white land confiscation! The only reason AGOA is still being considered for SA, is because our diplomacy has amplified the point that while, sadly, black workers’ livelihoods will be imperilled, the main victims will, ironically, be the white owners of the farms, mines, and factories that Trump purports to defend. Hopefully, unfair as it is, this will be enough for the morally dubious to defend and renew AGOA.
Chief Rabbi Goldstein in 2017, was included in the Algemeiner’s Top 100 in the religious category – for denouncing Jacob Zuma’s corruption. Some were exiled from the ANC and government for precipitating this at Polokwane in 2007 already. But the Chief Rabbi was absolutely and morally correct! This research was easy to find and would prove morally consistent with his fervour in his 9-minute address, charging the ANC with corruption. Yet the search for his moral outrage regarding the corruption charges against Benjamin Netanyahu is hard to find. I thought I would find scriptural admonition from Deuteronomy 31:29 with Moses predicting “utter corruption” for Israel: “evil will befall you in the latter days, because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands”. But not much in the face of Netanyahu being indicted on breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud! Nothing about Case 1000 (taking gifts & presents), Case 2000 (conspiring against a competitor), Case 4000 (the telecommunications industry), …. Maybe the Chief Representative persuaded the Chief Rabbi that a corrupt and flawed leader who could bring wrath to the Palestinians must, perforce, get a free pass – just as support and admiration for a leader accused of paedophilia is okay!
The problem with interchanging a yarmulka and a political cap is that politics tends to undermine your professed morality and compromise your ethical judgement and connect you to causes and leaders for which there is no defence. Take the Chief Rabbi’s correct empathy for Iranian protestors’ deaths and compare that with the Chief Representative’s stoic denial and defence of a Palestinian genocide. The problem is that when you attach the name of your faith to a political project and thus legitimise it, you open your entire moral-ethical foundation to the vicissitudes of that project: when the Taliban prohibits women, when ISIS kills and maims, when Al Qaeda bombs civilians, etc it takes a Muslim community decades to overcome the damage even, if there’s ambiguity about the original sin. Similarly, if a Chief Rabbi endorses Israel as a “Jewish State”, then that Chief Rabbi has to be that State’s Chief Representative to defend or deny atrocity – even if there’s ambiguity about the original sin. The Chief Rabbi can no longer dissemble whether an eye for an eye can be interpreted to mean that 2400 eyes on October 7th justify 200 000 eyes ever since. The debate is mathematical, polemical, political, not moral, religious or ethical.
*Ebrahim Rasool is a former ambassador to the United States.
