Chief rabbi compares African jihadi terrorism to Hamas

Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein called on American Jewish leaders to recognise that “Israel’s war with Hamas – and by extension Iran – is against the same enemy raping and pillaging its way through African villages.”

He told a packed audience at the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) leadership summit in Washington, D.C. on 10 March that the ideology of Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, and Islamic State (ISIS) was the same ideology espoused, funded, and propagated by Iran and its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

The summit drew many top United States (US) politicians, as well as Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition in Israel, and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He told the summit that ISIS gunmen had this week stormed a school in the town of Kuriga in Nigeria and kidnapped 287 children from morning assembly. “Terrorists rode through the school on motorbikes, firing their weapons and rounding up students aged eight to 15. The horror is unspeakable and unending.”

This attack occurred just one decade after the 2014 mass kidnappings by Boko Haram from Chibok village in northern Nigeria, when 276 young girls were taken. About 100 of them are still missing today.

“These kinds of atrocities are widespread across the continent,” Goldstein said. “Just last week, gruesome images emerged of a group of village elders being beheaded by ISIS in Mozambique, a country on South Africa’s northern border.”

The chief rabbi said organisations like the European Institute for Security Studies, the Global Terrorism Index, and the American Enterprise Institute had warned the world of the spread of violent Islam across Africa. “And yet, the terror onslaught perpetrated against Africans is one of the most unnoticed stories in the world today. It seems as if black lives don’t matter if they are taken by jihadists in Africa.”

South Africa, he said, was doing Iran’s and its terrorist organisations’ bidding. “Just as Hamas serves as an armed proxy for Iran, the South African government serves as its diplomatic proxy, as it did at the International Court of Justice, the diplomatic equivalent of the 7 October attacks,” he said.

“The different kinds of wars they fight are intertwined,” Goldstein said. “Hamas has its bombs and guns to kill and maim as many people as possible, and South Africa does the same with words and arguments to delegitimise Israel and turn Western opinion against the Jewish state.”

Goldstein maintained that this behaviour by South Africa was forcing Israel into self-destructive negotiations with its enemies through which it might be slowly dismembered or left without the means or support to defend itself and simply overrun. “This makes the diplomatic war of delegitimisation ultimately the most serious national security threat facing Israel,” he said.

He believes the only way to counter “the diplomatic war against Israel is to build alliances, as the Talmud teaches us. When righteous people come together, they make the world a better place”.

Africa, a continent with more than 50 votes on global fora, with a young and growing population with huge economic growth potential, “can in the long run become a more reliable ally for Israel and America, than even Europe”, Goldstein said.

This was possible, he said, because in Africa, the 600 million Christians – the largest such community in the world on one continent – understand firsthand what it means to be attacked by jihadi terror groups.

Goldstein insisted that it wasn’t the time to break bonds with South Africa, but rather to build much stronger “institutional ties between communities of faith in Africa, their counterparts in Israel, and her supporters in America”.

He believes South Africa has the potential to be one of the most steadfast partners and allies of Israel and the US, and called on American leaders not to judge South Africa by its government, which is “sinking under the weight of corruption and ineptitude”.

Goldstein said that according to the latest opinion polls, the African National Congress government had long since lost the support of the majority of South Africans, and he believed the country would enter a new era of coalition and change after the upcoming elections.

South Africa is “a nation of heroes who have endured the suffering of apartheid and emerged from it without bloodshed, with a spirit of forgiveness and compassion that has inspired the world”, Goldstein said. He described South Africans as “hard-working, fair-minded, politically centrist, and moderate, men and women, people of goodwill, who aspire to the same values cherished in America and Israel”.