Posted on 05/14/2025 2:33:25 PM PDT by Miami Rebel
When Donald Trump entered his second term as president, he found a full-throated supporter in South Africa’s chief rabbi.
Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein said in February that South Africans “should welcome the Trump administration’s interventions” in the country’s affairs, praising the president in a widely distributed video message.
A vocal critic of the South African government, Goldstein backed Trump’s opposition to South Africa for its cooperation with Iran and its new land expropriation law, which Goldstein believes will slow the country’s already sluggish economy.
But since Trump decided to admit some white South Africans into the United States as refugees — the only refugees he is letting in — Goldstein has changed his tone. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he sees the move as a “mistake.”
“It is wrong to think that the problems that saw white South Africans take up residence in the U.S. are unique to the white community,” said Goldstein. He challenged the Trump administration’s contention that the Afrikaners — a minority that arrived in South Africa in the 17th century whose members led the country’s system of apartheid until its end in 1994 — are being singled out for persecution and what Trump called “genocide” because of their identity.
Like Jewish leaders in the United States and elsewhere, Goldstein finds himself walking a tightrope when it comes to a U.S. president whose pro-Israel and philosemitic rhetoric is often matched by policies that many Jews oppose. Some American Jews have welcomed the attention the administration has paid to campus antisemitism, for example, but many have worried that his attack on universities has been too harsh, blunt and undemocratic.
In South Africa, where Jews strongly identify with Israel, Trump’s general pro-Israel stance is welcome. But there too that stance has clashed with local politics.
Milton Shain, an emeritus professor of South African Jewish history at the University of Cape Town, said the overwhelming majority of South Africans — Jews and non-Jews alike — were perplexed by the idea of some Afrikaners receiving refugee status. He called the rhetoric about a genocide against Afrikaners “absurd” and speculated that there could be a connection between Trump’s policy and South Africa’s decision to file genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
“It seems to me that the Trump regime wants to target South Africa for taking Israel to the ICJ,” Shain said. “That is the only reason I can think of for such an odd and sustained initiative.”
But even before the war in Gaza that led to South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, both Trump and his South Africa-born advisor Elon Musk hurled accusations of “genocide” and “the large scale killing of farmers” at South Africa. Their claims are based on documented attacks against white farmers and the complaints echo a subset of South African white nationalists. Although the farm attacks have persisted for years, they represent a small percentage of the country’s high violent crime rate, which affects all parts of the population.
Goldstein said Trump has wrongly framed South Africa’s economic, social and political challenges in racial terms. He pointed to a poll by the Social Research Foundation, which found that 67% of Black South Africans wanted their children to live and work abroad for a better future.
The first group of 59 Afrikaner refugees arrived at Dulles International Airport on Monday. They were greeted with fanfare by Trump officials, including the Jewish deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau, who compared their journey to his father’s escape from Nazi-annexed Austria in 1938.
In the United States, some migration aid groups have said they are morally opposed to resettling the newly arrived Afrikaners. The Episcopal Church said on Monday that it was ending its decades-long partnership with the federal government to resettle refugees, citing its “steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation” and “historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.”
The U.S.-based Jewish refugee aid organization HIAS said it would support Afrikaners in their new home. But HIAS’ president Mark Hetfield told The New York Times it was “not right” that this group was singled out for admission.
“We are profoundly disturbed that the administration has slammed the door in the face of thousands of other refugees approved by DHS months ago, notwithstanding courts ordering the White House to let many of them in,” said Hetfield.
On Monday, Trump said he welcomed Afrikaners despite his anti-migrant stance because they were victims of a “genocide.” He suspended resettlement programs for other refugees around the world almost immediately after taking office.
White South Africans, of whom about half are Afrikaners, comprise some 7% of the country’s population and own about 78% of private farmland. Research shows white South Africans collectively have roughly 20 times the wealth of Black South Africans.
South African Jews are a small minority within the white minority, and their ranks are shrinking — after peaking at 120,000 in 1970, the population has declined to less than 50,000. Many Jews have connections to Israel and feel isolated by the frayed relations between Israel and South Africa. Some, said Shain, worry about being identified by their government as allies to its foreign adversaries.
“I believe Rabbi Goldstein’s supportive comments [of Trump] are problematic,” said Shain. “Jews are rapidly being identified as a fifth column, like the far-right Afrikaners, working against the interests of the country by cozying up to the Trump administration.”
Goldstein’s support for Trump drew criticism from other members of the local community. Journalist Anton Harber wrote an essay in February titled “The Chief Rabbi who lost his soul,” writing, “Something is very wrong when a Chief Rabbi sings the praises of political and business figures without mentioning their neo-Nazi affiliations.” Harber referenced a gesture by Musk that drew comparisons to a Nazi salute and his ringing support for Germany’s far-right AfD party, as well as Trump’s past socializing with antisemitic conspiracy theorists.
However, Shain and Goldstein agreed that Jewish South Africans have the same concerns as most South Africans as a whole — violence, corruption, poverty and high unemployment. Many young Jews are leaving South Africa for opportunities elsewhere.
“The challenges facing the community are the same as those facing the country,” Goldstein said. “The more that South Africa as a country will achieve economic growth and thrive, the more the Jewish community will.”
Wanna see “STUPID”? Go look into the nearest mirror or shiny surface.
In fact, the rabbi may be concerned that Jews looking to leave Israel would be welcomed under a similar program - he might not want to see their claim diluted if numbers drop there.
I seem to recall recently that the Dutch were trying to get rid of their own famers in the Netherlands.
They live in Johannesburg.
That was a war of COLONIAL EXPANSION for the Brits!It had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with "Capitalism"!
There is no need to shout.
At the time, the British Empire was associated with world capitalism, and socialists supported the Boers just as just about everyone else did (they were the underdogs). It is also true that in the early 20th century the Afrikaners were indeed on the Left. That is a fact of history easily checked out.
"Ideological drift" is not at all unusual. In the United States the "Eastern Liberal Establishment" were originally conservative Federalists while the "conservative" Southern planters supported the French Revolution. The Afrikaners are just one more example.
Israel is open for anyone with a Jewish grandparent who is not another religion or anyone who had a valid conversion to Judaism, although they cut back on the grandparent thing pretty hard due to non-Jewish Russians taking advantage of it.
I think the original theory was “anyone who would have been persecuted” by Nazis was eligible (under the Nazi theory if you were 1/4 you were a mischling (sp? “mixed blood”).
I’m surprised about the Netherlands. I’m Irish and Norwegian and Ireland actually courted me pretty hard when I worked in the North Sea (engineer -oil) and had a house in Ireland. I got a work permit (choosing it over Scotland) and they pushed for me to become a citizen. I assumed all of Europe was like that.
South Africa hasn't quite degenerated to the level of Zimbabwe, where there was active ethnic cleansing of white farmers, but there are enough incidents of racial violence against whites by the Bantu majority population to make it pretty clear that's the direction SA is heading. The ANC stays in power by fomenting the Bantu's racial grievances, and alternatives to the ANC are even more extreme.
The Rabbi’s claim that the ANC’s policies are not racially motivated is a blatant lie - it’s like saying that the Black Panthers or Nation of Islam are not racially-motivated groups. Taking money and property from whites and handing them over to blacks, and looking the other way during eruptions of anti-white racial violence, has been the whole MO of the ANC ever since they came to power, and especially in the past 10-12 years.
Thousands of dead white farmers trumps all these idiots with their opinions.
The only question is whether those who are saying that all is well in South Africa are telling blatant lies to deceive others, or if they just mimicked the ostriches of South Africa and first deceived themselves by burying their heads in the sand.
Again, no need to discern their statements. Simply know that thousands of dead whites overrides any statements to the contrary.
Ireland is somewhat unique in Europe in that the country suffered an immense loss of population due to the Potato Famine and British oppression. Countries like Germany, Italy, and Poland contributed millions to the American immigration stream from 1840 to 1920 but their population loss was relatively small in comparison to Ireland. Even in 2025, there are fewer people in Ireland than there were in 1830 before the Potato Famine.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/01/13/42-of-immigrants-to-israel-in-2021-are-non-jews-cbs-finds/
...Almost half of immigrants to Israel in 2021 are not Jewish, a report by the Central Bureau of Statistics published this week said...
If it were just about economic need and building up the workforce, you'd think they'd welcome white South Africans. The fact that they don't says that their immigration agenda isn't about economics at all, but about intentionally importing the most unassimilable people possible who are destined to be wards of the state.
There are thousands, nay hundreds of thousands of dead farmers throughout the world.
What makes these special?
If they want to apply for refugee status, fine, but the idea of our government actively SOLICITING refugees from anywhere in the world is crazy.
Now be honest. Who do you think would more readily integrate into American society and make some kind of positive economic or social contribution: Afrikaaners, or Darfuris and Fulani tribesmen?
To be honest, Poles, Jews, Italians, Chinese, and Irish were once excluded for the same reason.
The KKK hated Catholics as much as they did blacks and Jews.
“There are thousands, nay hundreds of thousands of dead farmers throughout the world.
No, there is not. You’re just being a childishly argumentative idiot.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.