Pro-Hamas demonstrators march in Cape Town, South Africa. Photo: Reuters/Nic Bothma

Jewish leaders in South Africa have angrily condemned the decision of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in its war against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.

In an application filed with The Hague-based ICJ last Friday, South Africa claimed that Israel “has engaged in, is engaging in, and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

It further accused the Jewish state of acting “with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnic group.”

Responding to the ICJ application, South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, accused the ANC government of serving the Iranian regime’s interests.

Calling the genocide allegations “grotesquely false” in a post on X/Twitter, Goldstein accused the government of acting “as Iran’s ally and proxy in the Islamic state’s plans to destroy the Jewish state through its multifaceted strategy, a critical element of which is to undermine Israel’s legal and moral right to defend itself.”

Iran is the main international sponsor of Hamas, providing the Palestinian terrorist group with funds, arms, and training.

Goldstein added that the ANC supports “Iranian proxy Hamas in its war crimes of using its own civilian population as a human shield to cause maximum Palestinian casualties so as to delegitimize Israel’s just war of self-defense, thereby to neutralize its military superiority.”

Goldstein had particularly harsh words for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, whom he said had drawn the country closer to Iran and Hamas while in office.

“As far back as 2007, the SA government invited Hamas to the country on an official visit,” he noted. “And at the 2017 ANC conference which elected Ramaphosa as its president, a Hamas delegation was in attendance.”

He added that “of late, Ramaphosa led the charge to admit Iran into the Brics grouping” — a reference to the bloc led by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa that presents itself as a counter to the global influence of the US — and that “in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacres, the SA government dispatched its foreign minister to Tehran in a show of support of the Iranian administration.”

Strong criticism was also voiced by Rolene Marks, the spokesperson for the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF), who charged that the government was using the Palestinian issue to deflect from its woeful domestic record.

“This move seems designed to distract from the government’s own spectacular domestic failures,” Marks said in a statement that was shared with The Algemeiner. Citing statistics on crime that revealed an average of 75 murders and 120 rapes daily, Marks asserted that the ANC’s “focus on Israel is not only misplaced but negligent.”

South Africa temporarily withdrew its diplomats from Israel and shuttered its embassy in Tel Aviv shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom, saying that the Pretoria government was “extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians” in Gaza. Last month, two Hamas officials  — Bassem Naim, a member of the terrorist organization’s politburo, and Khaled Qaddoumi, its official representative in Iran — arrived in South Africa to attend a government-sponsored conference in solidarity with the Palestinians as well as ceremonies commemorating the 10th anniversary of the death of Nelson Mandela, the former South African president who led the ANC in its struggle against apartheid.