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In the Bible there is this tale of brave warriors called the Maccabees. The Good Book tells us that they valiantly fought a guerilla war against Hellenism, the ideology that sought to downgrade and even eradicate the Jewish culture and religion during the times of Greek conquests.
Led by the Maccabee brothers, the revolt eventually routed the numerically superior, better armed and better equipped Greeks. After their triumph they restored the institutions, practices and symbols of the Jewish people.
In the Jewish religion and among Catholic and Orthodox churches they are seen as exemplars of selflessness and champions of moral rectitude. They are the subjects of teachings in these faiths and even in leadership academies.
THE MURDEROUS MACCABEES
South Africa’s Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein recently referenced the Maccabees in one of his suffocating pro-Israel rants on his YouTube channel, which he normally uses to guide the flock on matters of faith but which of late he has used to defend that country’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza and to trash those who are appalled by the carnage.
“The IDF [Israel Defence Forces] are often held up as the modern-day Maccabees," said Goldstein.
In another broadcast reacting to the International Court of Justice’s damning verdict against Israel’s genocidal ways, he stretched incredulity to other levels as he praised Israel’s soldiers.
So the 12 000 dead Gazan children are among these “forces of barbarism”, we assume. He has slammed the South African government as “useful idiots” of the Iranian regime and claimed that the only reason that the state and the ANC have been so resolute in their support of the Palestinians is to please their masters in Tehran.
The ”modern day Maccabees” and saviours of civilised nations that Goldstein wishes the world to be grateful for are the IDF soldiers who have killed more than 28 000 Palestinians in the past four months, displaced 1.5 million civilians, flattened hospitals and schools, denied people food, water and life-saving oxygen and even blocked the delivery of diapers in Gaza.
READ: SA government rebukes chief Rabbi’s ‘insult’
Goldstein’s venom has been directed at anyone who dares condemn Israel’s heartless actions – be it the UN and its institutions, states, NGOs and ordinary citizens around the world who have been moved by their consciences and sense of justice to protest the savagery that we have been witnessing on the television screens of major networks.
NOT EVEN THE POPE IS SPARED
The Catholic Church’s Pope Francis has also fallen victim to his bile, with Goldstein accusing him of “surreptitiously colluding with the forces of evil".
Two utterances seem to have irked the Chief Rabbi. One was a December address by the Pope at the Vatican in which he likened Israel’s actions to terrorism.
The pope said:
And then in a telephone call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog later that month, Pope Francis delivered the message directly to the perpetrator. According to a report in the Washington Post, confirmed by people with intimate knowledge of the conversation, the pope told Herzog that “it is forbidden to respond to terror with terror”.
For most of the those familiar with the terror that Hamas committed on 7 October and the Israeli response that followed, this message would have been clear.
A legitimate state that claims to adhere to international law and civility cannot lower itself to the level itself to the level of a paramilitary group and wantonly kill and brutalise people who happen to look like those who carried the 7 October attacks. But as we know that is precisely what Israel has been doing since 8 October 2023.
READ: WATCH: SA Chief Rabbi labels government Iran's 'useful idiots', over stance on Israel-Hamas war
It has responded with a degree of terror that no other military force in the world has been able to unleash in more than 70 decades. Military historians and experts say the scale of bombing is the most intense in modern times, surpassing even the Allied forces’ bombardment of Germany between 1942, the bombardment of targets by belligerent local and international in Syria’s long running civil war and the US bombing of Iraq during the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
So Pope Francis, one of the world’s most revered figures and a man of God like Goldstein, was speaking for the helpless women, children and men of Gaza who had nothing to do with the Hamas attacks but have borne the brunt of Israel’s vengeance.
But Goldstein, who flatly refuses to believe that Israel can do any wrong and that those who mow down Palestinians are modern-day warriors of God, chose to remind the Pope of the Catholic Church’s own past sins.
He frothed:
Although Pope Pius, who considered himself a quite diplomat, actively used the church’s resources to fight Nazism, support the Allies and save hundreds of thousands of Jewish people and other minorities from the clutches of the Nazis he has been condemned for not being loud enough in open condemnation of Hitler.
THE BIG, BAD BANKS
In his videos Goldstein has also taken a leaf out of Iqbal Surve’s book of banking conspiracies and accused Absa, Nedbank and Standard helping to funnel secret funding to Hamas. Swallowing hook, line and sinker an unsubstantiated report from the right-wing Jerusalem Post, the almighty Goldstein that he, Oh He, had summoned the banking chiefs to come and exonerate themselves.
READ: Goldstein cannot dodge the truth: Israel is an apartheid state
“I have written to the CEOs of these banks and have allowed them to come and see me to provide assurance and proof that these allegations are without merit. Failing this, I have warned them that there are numerous local criminal and international anti-terror laws here that they may be contravening. I will personally pursue this case on every forum to hold them accountable,” he patronisingly pontificated.
The banks would have laughed it all away but unfortunately the seriousness of the allegations – especially following the greylisting of South Africa – deemed it absolutely necessary to respond to this preposterousness. They debunked the nonsense.
SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN, BUT THE RABBI DON’T CARE
On Monday, the body of six-year old Hind Rajab was found after being trapped in a vehicle that she and her uncle, aunt and her three cousins were fleeing an area under bombardment before coming under an IDF attack. Her old cousin made the last desperate call to emergency services before dying, leaving the six-year old alone.
Emergency services, realising that Hind was the only survivor, rushed to the scene but their ambulance was hit by Israeli artillery just as they arrived on the scene. Nobody knows how long she remained alive – hungry, thirsty and afraid. Surrounded by her dead relatives.
To illustrate the loss of limbs, relief organisations are saying that an average of 10 children a day have been losing one or both legs per day since the start of the Israeli incursion. At least 17 000 have been orphaned or separated from their immediate and extended families.
Hind’s story is that of about 625 000 children who have lost over three months of schooling because the modern-day Maccabees have bravely razed to the ground their schools and neighbourhoods and displaced entire communities.
It is the story of the babies whose mothers gave birth in the most atrocious conditions because Israel bombed hospitals and prevented medical supplies to reach the few that were half-standing. Hers is the story of premature babies who have been denied oxygen in their incubators because the IDF deemed fit to block international agencies from reaching them.
ONCE A CHAMPION OF SOCIAL JUSTICE
There was a time when Goldstein was regarded as one of the towering clerics in this country that prides itself on producing men and women of the cloth who take the achievement of social justice as importantly as salving the souls of their flock.
As the country traversed difficult times, he was there among his peers of the various faiths speaking Gods’ truth to power.
HOW CAN A MAN OF GOD NOT HAVE EMPATHY FOR FELLOW HUMANS?
But for the Chief Rabbi, a man of God, not to find empathy for fellow human beings simply because they are of a tribe and faith he blanketly perceives as hostile to his is unconscionable.
His conduct reminds one of Zanu-PF apparatchiks who to this day stubbornly defend the Gukurahundi, the early 1980s genocide carried out by Robert Mugabe’s troops against the people of Matabeleland in Zimbabwe. These apologists defend the terror Mugabe unleashed against civil society, political opponents and white farmers since 2000.
They also have very articulate (and warped reasons) why these acts of terror and scorched earth tactics were necessary. Be it anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, resisting regime change or whatever.
Similarly, heartless regimes on all six continents have perfect excuses for meting out cruelty. It just does not make it right. And they must be rebuked as strongly as the Netanyahu regime.
This week, as Israel was poised to strike the besieged and overcrowded city of Rafah, even the country’s staunchest allies in Western capitals found their consciences and said enough is enough. But there will never be “enough is enough” for Goldstein. He stoically refuses to feel the pain of the people of Gaza, just on a basic human level.
As he did to the Pope and many others, Goldstein responds with the predictable trope of equating critics of Israel with antisemites. Wrong. You cannot willy-nilly label critics of Israel’s brutality as haters of the Jewish people, just like you cannot label critics of the ANC’s corruption and incompetence as racists who yearn after apartheid.
Hopefully, in his own time, Goldstein’s conscience will speak to him and it will tell him that evil is evil, regardless of who perpetrates it.
