Trump Should Reject Pro-Hamas Ebrahim Rasool as South Africa’s Ambassador to US

Ebrahim Rasool Is the new South African Ambassador to Washington; his credentials were accepted by the Biden administration in its waning days. Now, two analysts with the Foundation For Defense of Democracies argue that Trump should reject Rasool as ambassador. More of their argument can be found here: “Biden quietly approved South Africa’s pro-Hamas envoy. Trump should fire him.” By Max Meizlish and Richard Goldberg, The Hill, January 29, 2025:

“I do not recognize Israel as ‘Jewish.’”

“Iran is not our enemy.”

These are the words of South Africa’s new ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, who quietly presented his diplomatic credentials to then-President Joe Biden earlier this month. As an emissary of the country’s African National Congress, Rasool has long supported the terrorist group Hamas, defended Iran and strengthened South Africa’s ties with Russia.

Biden should have never allowed Rasool to enter the country, let alone approve his service as ambassador. President Trump should correct Biden’s mistake and demonstrate that the ANC’s brand of anti-Western foreign policy — one that embraces Russia, China, Iran and Hamas — will no longer be tolerated.

Trump should rebuke the ANC by cutting off Rasool and swiftly revoking his credentials — or at the very least encouraging Rasool to step down on his own accord. In other words, Rasool should get the full Trump treatment and be told in no uncertain terms: “You’re fired.”

Rasool’s track record represents all that is wrong with South Africa’s foreign policy under the ANC. He has hosted senior Hamas operatives. He has reportedly praised Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as “one of the greatest inspirations.” Just two weeks before the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack against Israel, Rasool gloated about receiving a signed keffiyeh from the group’s former political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, whom Israel assassinated last July….

Rasool is out far and in deep with Hamas. He has hosted senior leaders of the terror group who were visiting South Africa, praised Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, one of Hamas’ founders, for being “one of the greatest inspirations,” presumably to him among others, and he proudly boasted about the signed keffiyeh he had received from the late Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’ so-called “political wing.” The American government has declared that Hamas, the group that Ebrahim Rasool is proud to associate with, to praise, and to support, is a “foreign terrorist organization.”

In addition to his admiration for a Hamas founder, and his proud receipt of his very own keffiyeh from the former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Ebrahim Rasool has been involved in increasing the financial links between South Africa and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. While Western governments have tried to diminish economic ties to Russia in, Rasool has been happy to develop them, apparently unconcerned with Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.

Rasool belongs to the African National Congress (ANC), the party that serves the needs of a corrupt ruling class. The ANC has allowed South Africa’s navy to conduct joint drills with Chinese and Russian warships, has loaded arms and ammunition onto a Russian ship in 2023 for delivery to the Russian military, materiel that was intended for Russian use in Moscow’s war with Ukraine. In addition to China and Russia, the ANC has supported Iran for inclusion in the grouping known as the BRICS, initially consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and subsequently enlarged to include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and the UAE. It is considered to be a counterpart and alternative to the G7 bloc of the world’s largest economies and combined, these countries belonging to BRICS include nearly half of the world’s population.

According to the World Bank, South Africa has the highest unemployment rate in the world. Nearly 42% of South Africa’s working-age population is unemployed. The water crisis throughout the country is a result not just of a long drought, but also of spectacular mismanagement. Almost half of all water supply systems (46%) in South Africa do not comply with microbiological standards. In these water supply systems, drinking water is contaminated by sewage and bacteria.

A new elite has appeared in South Africa, which has now acquired a reputation of having one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Billions of dollars of government money have been diverted to enrich President Cyril Ramaphosa and his loyalists in the ANC. Ramaphosa himself has accumulated about $500 million, in a country where the average annual salary is less than $20,000 a month.

Electricity across the country is spotty, with on average electricity cuts occur nine times a day. The coal-fired plants are aging; the government has failed to spend money to replace them with oil-and-gas plants, or nuclear plants; its investments in renewable sources of energy, especially solar power, have been insufficient.

Instead of focusing on South Africa’s severe domestic problems, men such as Ebrahim Rasool want South Africa to strut upon the world stage, as they were so pleased to do in bringing charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice. In fact, it seems that the political elite in South Africa is obsessively fixated on the putative crimes — “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” — of the tiny Jewish state that has ever since May 15, 1948 been fighting a multi-front war, both against Arab armies (five in 1948, three in 1967, two in 1973) and against terror groups. South Africa’s ANC spends vastly more time on the nonexistent “genocide” in Gaza than it does on the real genocide being conducted right now in the Sudan by Arabs of the Rapid Support Forces who have been murdering tens of thousands of black Africans.

Pretoria has chosen to be ever more tightly linked, economically, politically, and militarily, with America’s worst enemies — Russia, China, and Iran. American disapproval of South Africa’s choice of allies can be most suitably expressed by Trump reversing the acceptance of Ebrahim Rasool as South Africa’s representative by the Biden administration, and declaring him, “as a supporter of the terrorist group Hamas, unacceptable as an ambassador to the U.S.” This would cause an uproar, and an uproar is no bad thing, when it will bring to public consciousness the scandal of South African support, at the highest levels, for Hamas.

Let those diplomats who, like Ebrahim Rasool, embrace and support our enemies, including Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and, especially right now, the terror group Hamas, know that there will be consequences. Send Rasool packing back to Pretoria. As for his replacement as South African ambassador in Washington, surely there must be at least one South African diplomat who has not sung the praises of Hamas; find him and send him promptly to Washington, where the Trump administration will be happy to welcome him.