Board slams Ramaphosa’s ‘shameful’ G20 address

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) has called President Cyril Ramaphosa’s “callous disregard for Jewish life” in his address at the G20 gathering of foreign ministers on 20 February “reprehensible and shameful”.

The SAJBD said the president and the African National Congress had lost their “moral compass” and could no longer claim to be a “beacon of human rights”.

SAJBD national chairperson Professor Karen Milner spoke of the president’s “trite comments” about the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, making mention only of the “suffering of Palestinians” without “a word of compassion nor condemnation of brutal treatment meted out by Hamas to the innocent hostages taken on 7 October 2023”.

What made this so much worse, Milner said, was that Ramaphosa’s statement was made on the very day that the bodies of murdered 84-year-old grandfather and journalist Oded Lifshitz and babies Ariel and Kfir Bibas were returned to Israel.

Milner and SAJBD President Zev Krengel this week sent an open letter to Ramaphosa expressing their disgust at his behaviour.

Ramaphosa had said to those at the G20 meeting, “South Africa welcomes the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas as a crucial first step toward ending the severe humanitarian crisis faced by Palestinians in Gaza.”

On that day, “Hamas paraded four coffins of Israeli civilian hostages in a macabre ceremony that violated basic human rights and every standard of basic human decency,” according to the letter.

The autopsies that followed showed that nine-month-old Kfir and four-year-old Ariel hadn’t been killed in the fog of war, but were deliberately murdered, strangled to death by their captors and their bodies mutilated by the Hamas-aligned terrorists to cover up the atrocity. Their mother’s body was exchanged for another woman, a fact discovered only when the body reached Israeli authorities. Shiri Bibas’s body was later returned under cover of darkness with the shame [of Hamas] that the exchange deserved, said Milner.

“It’s reprehensible that on the very day that these depraved acts that so shocked the world, once again exposing the brutality of Hamas, you chose to omit any mention of this in your comments regarding Palestine in your speech at the G20,” said Milner.

She pointed out that had these babies and the other 242 hostages abducted on the day of the massacre on 7 October 2023 been returned the next day, “this horrific war could have been averted”.

Milner questioned why former Minister of International Relations and Co-operation Naledi Pandor didn’t “demand that these babies be released” in her phone call to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on 17 October 2023.

“How can we accept that when the ANC hosted Hamas at its headquarters, only two months after the hostages were taken, it did nothing to secure their release?” she asked.

In the letter, Krengel and Milner maintained that had the president and his ANC ministers used their influence to call for the babies and other hostages to be released, the Bibas mother and children and all the hostages could have been returned alive.

Milner said that even after Ramaphosa’s remarks at the G20, the government allowed a Cape Town rally to offer a clear message of support for Hamas. “In the face of the Jewish community mourning our dead; swastikas and Hamas flags showed proud allegiance to the murderers of these babies,” she said. “How is it that in 2025, in a democratic post-apartheid South Africa, swastikas are displayed proudly on the streets of Cape Town? This isn’t just a matter of choosing sides in a complex war, and it doesn’t negate the compassion we feel for every civilian death in war, especially of children.”

The leadership of the SAJBD, in their letter, told the president, “Your complete lack of any form of sympathy for this elderly man, these babies and their mother, and your failure to call out Hamas for this atrocity shows how far your government has deviated from the moral compass we were recognised as having in 1994.

“When the brutal murder of babies is ignored, we know that we are no longer a beacon of human rights.”

Krengel and Milner wrote that the South African president, who has often paid lip service to wanting to be part of the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, did nothing to end the war in Gaza over the past 16 months.

“Instead, you and your government went about further polarising the sides while other nations worked to bring about a ceasefire,” they wrote. “We feel ashamed as South Africans that our leadership has failed the Bibas babies and other hostages, whose return could have ended the war to the benefit of both the Gazan and Israeli people.

“We wonder if South Africa has lost its credibility to lead such an important organisation as the G20 during these critical times.”