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By YUSUF ISMAIL
Two prominent events happen this week: Worker’s Day and the 32nd anniversary of South Africa’s struggle and triumph against apartheid. It would be the height of cynicism if any major figure were, at this time, to provide apologetic polemics for and on behalf of an apartheid state in another part of the world that is presently on trial at The Hague.
And yet the Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Dr Warren Goldstein, has recently issued several high-profile criticisms of the Pope — specifically, in the past, Pope Francis and now his present successor — regarding their stances on Israel and global conflicts. In mid-April 2026, Rabbi Goldstein launched a sharp verbal attack, asserting that Pope Leo has ‘blood on his hands’. Speaking at an event organised by the South African Zionist Federation, the Rabbi rebuked the Pope, accusing him of failing to distinguish between ‘good and evil’ in the conflict involving Israel.
Goldstein directly addressed the Pope in a ‘Remembrance Day address’, further accusing him of failing his ‘fiduciary duty’ to protect Western values and Christians from terrorism.
This is especially hypocritical coming from the Chief Rabbi, who has been defending terror and misery being unleashed on Gazans for the past three years in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. As of April 27, 2026, this past Monday, Gaza was experiencing a significant surge in violence that medical officials and international observers describe as the deadliest period since October 2025. Daily strikes have persisted, with the death toll rising sharply over the previous 48 hours. At least seven Palestinians were killed and 18 injured in new strikes. In northern Gaza, an 18-year-old man was shot and killed by Israeli army fire in Beit Lahia.
These included three people killed in a strike near Al-Dahyan School, four people killed and eight injured when a house was bombed, one person killed in an air attack near al-Mughraq, and two others killed by IDF snipers near Gaza City.
A 40-year-old woman was shot dead by Israeli forces. This is simply over the past three or four days, not forgetting the close to 200 000 Palestinians mass-murdered by Israel, as documented by The Lancet over the past three years.
Goldstein is hypocritically speaking about attacks on Christians by, presumably, Iran or Muslim bogeymen. Yet, as of April 2026, more than 2 000 people have been killed by Israeli bombardment, with Christian villages trapped. Several churches have been bombed by Israel, including St George Church in Yaroun and St George Melkite Catholic Church in Derdghaya, which suffered major damage. Other impacted sites include St Elias in Alma al-Shaab and Saint John the Baptist in Sarda.
Not once has Goldstein or the Zionist Federation come out in condemnation or expressed the same vehement wrath he has reserved for the Pope against the illegitimate apartheid state of Israel. Not once has he spoken out against the systematic gang rapes being perpetrated by the IDF in Sde Teiman detention camp against Palestinian women and teenagers, or the brutal attacks and murders being committed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank on a weekly basis. He has repeatedly condemned South Africa for its stance at the ICJ, despite us having amassed a legal team possessing the best minds within the legal profession and international law. The good rabbi has sunk to such low moral smut that he has audaciously labelled the ICJ case as ‘anti-Semitic’ and launched a bizarre attack against the ICJ, stating that it has ‘no moral authority’ and is a ‘kangaroo court’.
The trouble for Rabbi Goldstein is that he is on the wrong side of not just history but modern Jewish history as well. Prominent Israeli and Jewish human rights organisations, notably B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI), have now concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. These groups, along with international Jewish voices, point to deliberate, systematic actions to destroy Palestinian society, including mass killing, starvation and the destruction of healthcare. Jewish Voice for Peace, a prominent US-based Jewish organisation, has strongly protested and accused the Israeli government of genocide in Gaza, organising widespread demonstrations across the United States.
In September 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) passed a resolution declaring that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide, with 86 per cent voting in favour. The resolution cited mass killing, deliberate starvation and forced displacement of Palestinians, calling on Israel to immediately stop these acts, which to date it has not. The scholars cited ‘deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians’, the use of starvation as a weapon, deprivation of humanitarian aid and the destruction of more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s housing infrastructure.
IAGS president Melanie O’Brien described the resolution as a ‘definitive statement’ from experts. The IAGS and individual scholars — including prominent Israeli Holocaust historians such as Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg — pointed to several factors as evidence of genocidal intent.
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Critics, including South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and some opinion writers, state that Goldstein’s defence of Israel’s actions makes him complicit in the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The SAJFP has accused him of violating the Jewish principle of standing with the oppressed, rather than the oppressor.
Veteran journalist Raymond Joseph labelled him an ‘unguided missile’ whose ‘opinions are detrimental to the South African Jewish community’, describing his stance as ‘politically naive’.
Retired Constitutional Court Judge Edwin Cameron claimed that Goldstein ‘defends apartheid and erases Palestinian suffering’.
His attack on Pope Francis for allegedly ‘colluding with the forces of evil’ for criticising the war was described by the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference as a ‘regrettable’ ‘character assassination’.
Twenty years ago, I reviewed his book, Defending the Human Spirit. In it, he argues that Torah law, or halacha, serves as an advanced, 3 000-year-old framework for protecting human dignity. It contrasts Jewish law with Western legal systems, focusing on the ‘Vulnerability Principle’, a moral obligation to ‘defend the weak against societal, political, and economic oppression’.
His own book is the antithesis of everything that Israel stands for in its brutal genocide and occupation. His stance in supporting an apartheid state goes against the very essence of what it means to be a South African, 32 years later. But more than that, his approach contradicts traditional Jewish values of siding with the oppressed by disregarding Palestinian suffering and enabling the breaking of the ‘human spirit’. This displays a religious leader flagrantly turning against his once-upon-a-time stated ideals.
