Ebrahim Rasool, the South African ambassador to the United States, is persona non grata in Washington, and “we have nothing to discuss with him,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on Friday.
The South African envoy said at a seminar earlier in the day that U.S. President Donald Trump is leading a white supremacist movement, Breitbart reported. “What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency, at home,” Rasool told attendees at the event.
“South Africa’s ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country,” Rubio stated. “Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician, who hates America and hates President Trump.”
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Ebrahim,” wrote Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisc.).
South Africa has led international efforts accusing Israel of genocide, and its envoy has praised Hamas.
“Worth noting Rasool owns a keffiyeh signed by the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was indicted by the U.S. government on terrorism charges,” wrote Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran.
Rasool’s social media account refers to him as “ex-South African ambassador to United States of America.”
In 2018, he wrote that “I do not support Israel as ‘Jewish’ just as I do not support any religiously exclusive state. Zionism is in danger of making itself a pejorative term through its morality-free unconditional support for any and all actions by Israel.”
That same year, he wrote that “all justice-loving people must enforce over all Jews a distinction between the noble religion of Judaism and the cruel ideology of Zionism, for their own dignity and our own humanity.”
