Warren Goldstein, the chief rabbi of South Africa, gave his annual Yom Ha’atzmaut address on Sunday, warning: “The only thing that stands between Jews in Israel and another holocaust is the immense strength of the IDF.”
He also said that recent decisions by Western political leaders have endangered the Israeli people.
Goldstein said Israel needed to learn that its allies in the West “are unreliable and that it needs to diversify its sources of military support and look to its domestic industry to supply as much as possible of the defense needs that it currently relies on the U.S. for.”
Disputing the suggestion that Oct. 7 amounted to a Holocaust, Goldstein said it was not—and “for only one reason. The IDF defeated the attackers. Without them, Hamas would have rampaged through the country killing millions of Jews.”
Goldstein said that leaders whose policies weakened the IDF were “placing the Jewish people in mortal danger.”
