Why American President Donald Trump nominated a conservative media critic and pro-Israel commentator as the ambassador to South Africa after expelling that country’s ambassador to the U.S. is anyone’s guess.
The nomination of Leo Brent Bozell, described by the Associated Press (AP) as “an outspoken Israel supporter,” follows the administration’s expulsion of South Africa’s U.S. Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool.
Relations between the two countries have worsened since an executive order signed by President Trump in February stopped U.S. financial assistance to South Africa.
The Trump administration cited South Africa’s land reform policies and its genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against America’s most important Middle East ally, Israel, as reasons for the move.
The AP also reported that President Trump “falsely accused the South African government of targeting the minority White population in the country and illegally seizing their land through its recently enacted Expropriation Act and offered to grant refugee status to White people (Afrikaners) who want to relocate to the U.S.”
During the heights of the oppressive and anti-Black apartheid rule in South Africa, Whites stole and confiscated the land from Black people. Post-apartheid not much has changed as Whites still own most of the land.
The expulsion of Ambassador Rasool, because of a speech the Trump administration deemed objectionable has South Africa sharing a growing list of countries and individuals on the receiving end of the president’s ire.
However, the South African ambassador who was declared persona non grata and expelled from the U.S. received a hero’s welcome from hundreds of supporters upon his return home to South Africa.
“It was not our choice to come home but we come home with no regrets,” Ambassador Rasool told the cheering crowd gathered at the Cape Town International Airport, palestinechronicle.com, reported.
In a commentary published in Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF.org), titled: “It’s Time: Boycott America,” written by John Feffer, he asks, “What did Ebrahim Rasool say that was so objectionable?” Feffer is an author and director of FPIC at the Institute for Policy Studies.
He continued, “But embedded in his remarks is this observation: ‘Donald Trump is launching … an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency at home.’”
According to Feffer, he interpreted the “incumbency” as the dismantling of several federal initiatives in government and businesses targeting so-called “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
He added that in his view, Ambassador Rasool was pointing out that the U.S. administration and its supporters “… have launched a campaign to advance White supremacy in a country where the civil rights movement achieved enough progress to qualify today as the mainstream.”
Feffer pointed to the immigration overtures President Trump has made to White Afrikaners in South Africa, while at the same time, deporting Blacks and Brown people from the U.S. Feffer points out the executive order of a promise of American citizenship to White South Africans made by the Trump administration.
President Trump has offered White farmers a chance to resettle in the U.S. According to the German-based Deutsche Welle (dw.com) “nearly 70,000 White South Africans have since shown interest in relocating to the U.S.”
Ambassador Rasool pushed back against the false propaganda of the anti-White “land grab” and also spoke out against dictating who South Africa can support and advocate for. Addressing the crowd gathered at the airport, palestinechronicle.com reported that the ambassador stated,
“I want to say that we would have liked to come back with a welcome like this if we could report to you that we had turned away the lies of a White genocide in South Africa, but we did not succeed in America with that.”
He continued: “We would have preferred to come here to say that we have won for you AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act), but we could not win it by withdrawing our case from the International Court of Justice against Israel.
Because as we stand here, the bombing has continued and the shooting has continued, and if South Africa was not in the ICJ, Israel would not be exposed and the Palestinians would have no hope.”
Ambassador Rasool said, he would have preferred “to come here and say that we have won for you trade deals and that we have been able to secure for us trade deals, but we could not do so by allowing the U.S. to choose who must be our friends and who must be our enemies.”
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