Displaced Palestinian children carry pots of food collected from a charity kitchen to their family shelter beneath the rubble of buildings destroyed by the Israeli military, in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Image: EYAD BABA / AFP
Two prominent events happened last week. Worker’s Day on Friday and the 32nd anniversary of South Africa’s struggle and triumph against apartheid.
It would be the height of cynicism if any major figure would at that time be providing 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 Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Dr Warren Goldstein, recently issued several high-profile criticisms of the pope (specifically in the past, Pope Francis, and now his present successor, Leo XIV), regarding their stances on Israel and global conflicts.
On April 21, Rabbi Goldstein launched a sharp verbal attack asserting that Pope Leo had "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. The criticism was made during a Yom Hazikaron commemoration in Johannesburg.
Goldstein viciously attacked the pope, further accusing him of failing his "fiduciary duty" to protect Western values and christians from terrorism.
Chief Rabbi of South Africa Warren Goldstein.
Image: File
This is specifically "opulent" coming from the chief rabbi who has been defending terror and misery being unleashed on the Gazans for the past three years in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
As of April 27, Gaza is still experiencing a significant surge in violence that medical officials and international observers describe as the deadliest period since October 2025. 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; two others killed by IDF snipers near Gaza City. The total killed since the so-called ceasefire now exceeds more than 1,000.
A 40-year-old woman was shot dead by Israeli forces. This is simply over the past week, not forgetting the close to 200,000 Palestinians mass-murdered by Israel as documented by the Lancet over the past three years.
Goldstein hypocritically speaks about attacks on christians by presumably Iran or Muslim boogeymen. Yet as of April 2026, over 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 had reserved for the pope; against the illegitimate apartheid state of Israel. Not once had he spoken out against the systematic gang rapes being perpetrated by the IDF in Sde Teiman against Palestinian women and teenagers or the brutal attacks and murders being committed by Israeli settlers on the West Bank on a weekly basis.
He had 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 had audaciously labelled the ICJ case as “anti-semitic” and launched a bizarre attack against the ICJ, stating that the ICJ had "no moral authority" and was 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, prove deliberate, systematic actions to destroy Palestinian society, including mass killing, starvation, and destruction of healthcare. Jewish Voice for Peace, a prominent US-based Jewish organisation that 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% 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 over 90% 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 like Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg - pointed to several factors as evidence of genocidal intent.
Critics, including the South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and some opinion writers, stated that Goldstein’s defence of Israel’s actions made him complicit in the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The SAJFP had accused him of violating the Jewish principle of standing with the oppressed, rather than the oppressor.
Veteran journalist Raymond Joseph had labeled 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 did a review of Goldstein’s book, Defending the Human Spirit. In it he argued that Torah law (halacha) served 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 an antithesis of everything that apartheid Israel stands for in its brutal genocide and illegal occupation. His stance in supporting an apartheid state goes against the very essence of what it means to be a South African in 2026. But more than that; his approach contradicts traditional Jewish values of siding with the oppressed, by disregarding Palestinian suffering and enabling the breakage of the “human spirit”, not defending it. This displays a religious leader out of touch with reality and flagrantly turning against his own stated ideals!
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.