Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
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.”
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Also, the fact that one of the 59 has spouted antisemitism on social media hasn't exactly endeared this group to my clients. Charl Kleinhaus posted "Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group" just a couple years ago.
Odd thing for a chief rabbi to say...
Another Gaslight Media “but” article...
I have heard NO ONE from South Africa stand up for the white farmers.
Better learn how to code or better yet, grow your own food.
Even though African politicians are talking like Nazis - literally - killing whites is the final solution.
I only see crosses in the memorials for murdered South African farmers:
And holding rallies calling for dead whites.
Kill the Boer!
I recall President Truman sighed and wondered if he would ever meet a one-handed economist. “One the one hand this, on the other hand that.” I think the same can be said of Jewish rabbis.
Yeah, how many of these refugees did Israel volunteer to take in?
The rabbi may be locked into the mindset that all things must be based on ‘fairness and equity’. That is a flawed mindset, when one side is quite vocal at wanting to kill the other side. The Quakers in early America had similar core beliefs.
Some would call that mindset ‘dangerously naive and a deliberate suspension of disbelief’.
silly rabbi
Apparently not if the rabbi is saying that Trump helping refugees is "a mistake".
So everyone one in that very successful country should be allowed in over here?!?
That’s a striking sight, but what I’ve found is claims of roughly 3,500 to 10,000 farm deaths over the past thirty years, with most estimates toward the low end.
There are 2.7-3 million white South Africans (including Afrikaaners and English.) The numbers of murdered are awful, but hardly a genocide.
I for one would never live there, but there are plenty of other African countries with greater danger to minorities, most spectacularly Sudan.
If Afrikaaners want refugee status, by all means let them apply. But recruiting them is absurd.
Spin it around. If even five black farmers were murdered by whites, we'd have memorials, cities burning, and white schoolchildren told how evil and racist their skin pigmentation is.
Non-Goverment Organizations would be shoveling boatloads of refugees into your neighborhood.
Those in the Grievance Industry gonna get paid.
As I said earlier. Dance to their piper or else. Interesting this fella brings up one anti semitic post and bam, it is a mistake. LOL
This act of Trump’s has nothing to do with Israel.
Repulsive article.
Of course even some blacks want out of there, but they aren't the ones being targeted by the RABID anti-white crazies! And they CAN move to Israel IF they have enough money to be able to keep buying into the lottery VISA system. NO WHITES HAVE SOMEWHERE, BEFORE TRUMP, TO GO!
And since the RABID "KILL THE BOER" consider the Jews in RSA to be well worth killing, too, he's about as insightful as those Jews, living in Europe, in the mid 1930s, closed their eyes and their minds to what was going to happen and tried to just carry on, instead of trying to get out of where they were!
EXACTLY!
SPOT ON!
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.