South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa attends the 20th East Asia Summit (EAS), as part of the 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Oct. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hasnoor Hussain

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted that “boycott politics doesn’t work” following the Trump administration’s announced absence from a summit in his country later this month — despite his ruling party’s ongoing support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

On Wednesday, Ramaphosa urged US President Donald Trump to reconsider his decision to boycott the G20 Leaders’ Summit, scheduled for Nov. 22-23 in Johannesburg, northeastern South Africa.

Ramaphosa criticized Washington for “giving up the very important role that they should be playing as the biggest economy in the world” in its decision to skip the summit — the first to be held in Africa.

“It is unfortunate that the United States has decided not to attend the G20. All I can say in my experience in politics is that boycotts never really work. They have a very contradictory effect,” the South African leader told reporters outside parliament in Cape Town.

Trump, who has previously accused the South African government of human rights abuses against white minorities — including land seizures and killings — called the decision to host the G20 summit in the country a “total disgrace.”

“No US government official will attend [the summit] as long as these human rights abuses continue,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. 

However, the South African government has strongly rejected any claims of genocide, saying such accusations are “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence.”

Ramaphosa reaffirmed that the summit will proceed as scheduled, regardless of Washington’s absence.

“The G20 will go on. All other heads of state will be here, and in the end, we will take fundamental decisions. And their absence is their loss,” he said.

“The US needs to think again whether boycott politics actually works, because in my experience, it doesn’t work. It’s better to be inside the tent rather than being outside the tent,” he continued. 

Despite such claims, Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party has officially endorsed the BDS campaign against Israel for years.

The BDS movement seeks to isolate the Jewish state internationally as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the campaign have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.

In 2012, the ANC announced its full backing of the BDS movement, urging “all South Africans to support the programs and campaigns of the Palestinian civil society which seek to put pressure on Israel to engage with the Palestinian people to reach a just solution.”

Following Ramaphosa’s comments this week, it remains unclear why he continues to back anti-Israel boycotts if he believes they don’t work.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, the South African government has been one of Israel’s fiercest critics, actively confronting the Jewish state on the international stage.

Beyond its open hostility toward Israel, South Africa has actively supported Hamas, hosting officials from the Palestinian terrorist group and expressing solidarity with their “cause.”

In one instance, Ramaphosa led a crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Since December 2023, South Africa has also been pursuing its case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.

Peter Beinart, a prominent anti-Israel writer, being interviewed in January 2025. Photo: Screenshot

One of the most notorious anti-Israel activists in the US has castigated prominent Jewish writer Peter Beinart, a strident critic of Israel himself, for describing antisemitism as a “real” phenomenon rather than a political tool. 

The fracas began on Nov. 5, when Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of the radical anti-Israel organization Within Our Lifetime (WOL), attacked New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, another anti-Israel activist, on social media, posting that Mamdani’s condemnation of swastika graffiti spray-painted outside a Jewish school in Brooklyn the day after his election victory. In his tweet, Mamdani called the vandalism “disgusting and heartbreaking” and said he will “always stand steadfast with our Jewish neighbors to root the scourge of antisemitism out of our city.”

Kiswani took issue with Mamdani’s statement, despite the mayor-elect’s fierce opposition to the Jewish state.

Swastikas were found painted on the exterior walls of Magen David Yeshiva, a Jewish school in Brooklyn, in the early morning on Nov. 5, in what police are investigating as a hate crime. Surveillance footage reportedly shows a man on a bicycle scrawling the antisemitic symbols before fleeing the scene. The incident came just hours after Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, prompting renewed concern over rising antisemitic acts across the city.

Beinart chided Kiswani, asserting that antisemitism is in fact a “real social phenomenon” that needs to be countered. He pointed to the growing popularity of antisemitic streamer Nick Fuentes as evidence of societal antisemitism on the rise.

“Your response to a swastika at a yeshiva is to condemn the mayor for condemning it? Because that might imply that antisemitism is a ‘real social phenomenon?’” Beinart wrote. “Yes, like other bigotries, it’s a ‘real social phenomenon.’ If you don’t believe me, ask the 1 million people who follow Nick Fuentes on this platform.”

In her retort, Kiswani clarified that while she found the swastika graffiti “reprehensible,” she took issue with Mamdani asserting that antisemitism is a “problem in NYC.” She argued that Jews weaponize antisemitism to silence critics of Israel and accused Beinart of using the plight of Palestinians to sell books. 

In his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, Beinart writes that Jewish texts, history, and language have been “deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation [of the population of Gaza].”

“I took issue with the implication that there’s an antisemitism problem in NYC and cited Norman Finkelstein on the idea that it’s not a social phenomenon. He talks about it in the context of the US, I referenced NYC,” Kiswani wrote, referencing another prominent anti-Zionist.

You really have some nerve, grifting and writing books about “after” the genocide of my people as it’s still ongoing, to completely reframe what I was saying. I never condemned his condemnation of the graffiti, I explicitly called it reprehensible myself. I took issue with the… https://t.co/Gx52RnGsyx

— Nerdeen Kiswani (@NerdeenKiswani) November 7, 2025

New York City has experienced a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.

“There’s no structural disadvantage to being Jewish like there is to being Palestinian, and you know that. You’re being purposely obtuse. You can pander to the anti-genocide line but you’re still a liberal zionist [sic],” she continued, further attacking the Jewish academic.

“Peter Beinart calling Palestinians antisemites while claiming to ‘recognize our suffering’ shows what liberal Zionism really is: a project to save Zionism’s legitimacy, not dismantle its violence. It’s the rebranding of supremacy into something palatable, the illusion of moral balance while genocide continues,” Kiswani added. 

Kiswani has called for the expulsion of Zionists from all public spaces and for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Leadership for WOL has repeatedly expressed support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and for violence against Israel, defending Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israeli communities. Previously, Kiswani reprimanded US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the foremost critics of Israel in the US Congress, as a “genocide apologist” for honoring the victims of the Nova Music Festival, where hundreds of Israelis were murdered and dozens were kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during the Oct. 7 atrocities.

Beinart, meanwhile, has established himself as one of the most prominent anti-Zionist public intellectuals in the US in recent years. As a contributing opinion columnist for the New York Times, he penned an op-ed for the newspaper disavowing his previous support for Israel, claiming that he “no longer believes in a Jewish state.” He has accused Israel of oppressing Palestinians and erecting an “apartheid” state built on the notion of ethnic supremacy. 

Though Beinart has condemned the Hamas-led massacre, he has also compared the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust to the Haitian Slave Revolt and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, arguing that Israel’s alleged “oppression” of Palestinians led to the Oct. 7 invasion. He has also accused Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” in Gaza.

Some observers noted on social media that Kiswani’s attacks against Beinart were an example that “for those who object to Jewish peoplehood to begin with, no Jew will ever be anti-Zionist enough.”

President Donald Trump is trying to persuade Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In doing so, he is asking Israel to become an illiberal state, rather than a democratic one — the same change he is working to bring to his own country.

In writing to Herzog earlier this week, Trump — himself a convicted felon on 34 counts — used the same conspiratorial rhetoric he has peddled in the United States to describe Netanyahu’s charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The case is a “political, unjustified prosecution,” he wrote. During a recent 60 Minutes interview, Trump said he would “be involved” in Netanyahu’s trial to “help him out.”

It would be a problem for any foreign government to seek to interfere in Israel’s domestic judicial system. But Trump’s overstep threatens to weaken Israel’s already fragile democracy by impugning the legitimacy of its legal system and insisting that the country’s prime minister is beyond accountability.

Herzog essentially rejected Trump’s request, but his response was tepid, stating that pardons must only be made “in accordance with established procedures.” He made no denunciation of foreign interference in Israel’s domestic affairs, no affirmation of the integrity of Israel’s judicial system and certainly no repudiation of Netanyahu’s relentless efforts to avoid his day in court, including by  repeatedly seeking to have his hearings delayed.

Herzog should have. There are broad swaths of Israeli society that yearn to see Netanyahu brought to justice, not just on corruption charges, but also for the disastrous choices that helped prime the ground for the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023. But there are others, primarily among the far-right parties aligned with Netanyahu, who will seize upon any chance to help him extend his hold on power.

Already, the far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has urged Herzog to follow through on Trump’s request.

“The fabricated and disgraceful indictments against Prime Minister Netanyahu have long since turned into an indictment against the prosecution, whose disgrace and crimes are exposed in the trial every day,” Ben-Gvir tweeted. “A pardon in this case is the right and urgent thing to do. President Herzog, listen to President Trump!”

Dissuading Ben-Gvir and his ilk, and taking the firm stance that the process of justice must play out on its own terms, is essential. Because the fissures in Israel’s governmental system run far deeper than many realize — which works in Netanyahu’s favor.

The charges against Netanyahu have been methodically investigated by prosecutors over many years. He is accused of accepting some $300,000 in gifts to influence the country’s tax law, and discussing a quid pro quo for favorable coverage with both the news site Walla! and the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot.

Despite the evidence that supports these assertions, Netanyahu, mirroring Trump’s rhetoric, insists the prosecution is corrupt, and evidence that a liberal “deep state” controls the country — a move from the authoritarians’ playbook, designed to erode public trust in independent institutions.

Unfortunately, it’s working.

In 2025, Israeli researchers Asif Efrat and Omer Yair found that about one-third of Israelis believe Netanyahu’s unsubstantiated claims in a shadow rule over the country. Those numbers soar to roughly 50% among voters of Netanyahu’s current coalition.

Efrat and Yair see that data as a warning sign. Support for such conspiracies can “weaken public trust in the legal system, the bureaucracy, and the security forces,” they write. “It would allow the government to thwart the actions of these bodies and even take control of them.”

This is what Anne Applebaum, the award-winning journalist and historian, warns about in her book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. 

Applebaum describes how authoritarians take “major steps toward the destruction of independent institutions.” They harness more and more power by repeating conspiracy theories that embolden their desire to circumvent the rules.

Two years ago, during the country’s judicial overhaul uproar, Applebaum saw reason to fear Israel backsliding into “an undemocratic Israel, a de facto autocracy.” Netanyahu and his government responded at the time “in the way that all autocratic populists react to any challenge” — with intransigence, accusations of disloyalty and strategic circumvention.

In Trump’s view, pardoning the prime minister would ensure “his attention” is not “unnecessarily diverted.” Then, Netanyahu could “unite Israel” once and for all.

Even ignoring the fact that Netanyahu has never been a unifying figure, such a position overlooks the price Israeli democracy will pay by allowing its leader to flagrantly violate and disrespect its rules.

Netanyahu is not a figure who respects law, democracy, or checks and balances. Trump’s pushing for a pardon will only embolden his Israeli counterpart’s worst instincts.

Right now, as Israel recovers from a devastating two-year war and seeks to regain its international footing while paving a future for Gaza, the country cannot afford to spiral into a deeper anti-democratic crisis.

The people of Israel must stand against Trump and Netanyahu’s plot and reject any efforts to undermine the country’s liberal democracy.

Netanyahu has long tested the elasticity of Israeli democracy. Trump’s single-page letter could be the catalyst to push it past its breaking point.

The post Trump has degraded American democracy. Now he’s aiming for Israel appeared first on The Forward.