[News] From South Africa to Palestine: Trump's war to defend apartheid

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/south-africa-palestine-trumps-war-defend-apartheid> 



   From South Africa to Palestine: Trump's war to defend apartheid

Soumaya Ghannoushi
February 12, 2025
------------------------------------------------------------------------

US President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending aid 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/trump-cuts-us-aid-south-africa-over-stance-israel> 
to South Africa was framed as a righteous intervention. He positioned 
himself as the defender of an embattled minority, wielding sanctions 
<https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj3e6ypk7xdo> to punish a government 
he accused of racial discrimination.

His target? A land-reform policy aimed at dismantling the entrenched 
economic and structural inequalities left by apartheid.

To his supporters, the story was simple: white farmers under siege, land 
confiscated without cause, another battle in the so-called war on 
western civilisation.

But the truth is far more insidious. This is not about justice. It is 
about shielding the last remnants of apartheid, propping up 
settler-colonialism, and preserving a world order built on racial and 
territorial supremacy.

Trump did not act alone. Behind him stood two powerful forces: a network 
of libertarian billionaires with ties to apartheid-era South Africa, and 
the pro-Israel <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel> lobby, 
both long invested in maintaining systems of racial and territorial 
dominance.

Elon Musk looms largest among them. More than just the billionaire face 
of Tesla and SpaceX, he is a key figure in the so-called“PayPal Mafia” 
<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa>, 
a tight-knit circle of ultra-wealthy libertarians, many from South 
Africa’s white elite.

Peter Thiel 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/elon-musk-and-peter-thiel-south-africa-raised-billionaires-fomenting-global-race-war>, 
one of Trump’s most influential backers, was educated in a southern 
African city where Hitler was still openly venerated. He champions the 
supremacy of economic power over democracy, and has even questioned 
whether women should have been granted the right to vote.

David Sacks 
<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa>, 
another major figure in Musk’s inner circle, was born in Cape Town and 
raised in the privileged world of the white South African diaspora. 
Roelof Botha, the former CFO of PayPal, has an even more direct 
connection to apartheid’s old guard: his grandfather, Pik Botha, was the 
last foreign minister of South Africa’s apartheid regime.


      Colonial project

These men are not outliers. They are the modern heirs of a colonial 
project that was never truly dismantled. Raised within a system that 
treated racial and economic hierarchy as natural law, they now wield 
their wealth and influence to protect its legacy.

Their opposition to South Africa’s land reforms has nothing to do with 
fairness. It is about safeguarding a status quo where land remains in 
white hands, long after apartheid’s official demise.

Ironically, Musk’s public embrace of antisemitic conspiracy theories and 
Nazi imagery has done little to dent his standing among pro-Israel 
elites. When he appeared to give a Nazi salute 
<https://apnews.com/article/musk-gesture-salute-antisemitism-0070dae53c7a73397b104ae645877535?utm_source=chatgpt.com> 
during a speech in Washington last month, outrage erupted - but instead 
of condemnation, Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu 
<https://forward.com/fast-forward/691147/elon-musk-nazi-salute-response-adl-holocaust-joke/?utm_source=chatgpt.com> 
and theAnti-Defamation League (ADL) 
<https://x.com/ADL/status/1881474892022919403> defended him.

    Trump's attack on South Africa has nothing to do with economic
    freedom or justice. It is about defending the consequences of apartheid

Netanyahu called Musk “a great friend 
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/elon-musk-jokes-about-nazis-after-netanyahu-defends-him-as-great-friend-of-israel/> 
of Israel”, while the ADL - usually quick to brand pro-Palestinian 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> activists as 
antisemitic - downplayed the incident as merely an “awkward gesture”.

This selective outrage is no accident. Musk may flirt with Nazi imagery, 
but as long as he supports Israeli apartheid, he remains politically useful.

Standing alongside this billionaire class isMiriam Adelson 
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/miriam-adelson-gives-100-million-to-trump-campaign-making-good-on-reported-pledge/>, 
Trump’s largest financial backer and one of the architects of his 
pro-Israel policies. She has poured more than $100m into his campaign, 
more than 
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/miriam-adelson-gives-100-million-to-trump-campaign-making-good-on-reported-pledge/> 
any other donor, and made her expectations clear.

In a recent interview, she spoke of Trump’s “unfinished business” in 
Israel, openly advocating for theannexation of the West Bank 
<https://forward.com/fast-forward/618034/miriam-adelson-funding-trump-israel/>. 
For her, Trump is the key to fulfilling a vision of Israeli expansionism 
that has been decades in the making.

It is no coincidence that these two forces - libertarian billionaires 
with South African roots and the pro-Israel lobby - have aligned behind 
Trump’s apartheid-reinforcing policies. Their alliance is not new; it is 
deeply entrenched in history.


      Shared ideology

For decades, Israel and apartheid South Africa were bound by a shared 
ideology and mutual interests. When the world turned its back on South 
Africa, Israel remained its most loyal ally.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/elon-musk-and-peter-thiel-south-africa-raised-billionaires-fomenting-global-race-war>

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel: The billionaires fomenting a global race war


In 1976, Israel’s prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, toasted his 
South African counterpart,John Vorster 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/07/southafrica.israel>, a 
former Nazi sympathiser and leader of a pro-Hitler militia, declaring 
that the two nations faced a common struggle against “foreign-inspired 
instability”.

Behind the scenes, their relationship ran even deeper. Israel helped 
build South Africa’s arms industry, providing technology in exchange for 
funding.

Together, they developed military systems, intelligence networks, and 
most damningly, South Africa’s nuclear programme. It was an open secret: 
Israel supplied the know-how, South Africa supplied the money.

The ideological bond was just as explicit. South Africa’s apartheid 
government made no effort to disguise its worldview, stating 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/07/southafrica.israel> in an 
official publication that “Israel and South Africa have one thing above 
all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile 
world inhabited by dark peoples”.

This alliance collapsed only when apartheid officially ended. But the 
underlying ideology - the belief in racial superiority, the right of a 
select group to seize land and rule over others - did not vanish. It 
evolved, found new champions, and gained new political patrons.


      Cast as victims

Trump’s attack on South Africa has nothing to do with economic freedom 
or justice. It is about defending the consequences of apartheid.

At the heart of his executive order isSouth Africa’s Expropriation Act 
<https://aje.io/9n883p>, a law designed to correct centuries of 
racialised land dispossession.

For generations, Black South Africans were systematically driven from 
their land, forced into barren “homelands”, while white settlers claimed 
the country’s most fertile soil. Even today, three decades after 
apartheid’s fall, around75 percent 
<https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn01z1yy0jno>of South Africa’s 
private farmland remains in white hands, despite white South Africans 
making up only seven percent of the population.

Donald Trump, then the president-elect, watches a SpaceX launch with 
Elon Musk on 19 November 2024 in Brownsville, Texas (Brandon Bell/Getty 
Images/AFP)

Donald Trump, then the president-elect, watches a SpaceX launch with 
Elon Musk on 19 November 2024 in Brownsville, Texas (Brandon Bell/Getty 
Images/AFP)

image.gif

image.gifThe Expropriation Act does not mandate mass land seizures. It 
simply establishes a legal framework to reclaim abandoned land or land 
acquired through racial privilege 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/2/7/trumps-fear-mongering-on-south-africas-land-reform-exposes-his-hypocrisy>, 
under strict conditions.

Trump’s response?Sanctions 
<https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-signs-executive-order-aimed-south-africa-white-house-official-says-2025-02-07/>. 
South Africa must be punished for attempting to right historical wrongs. 
White landowners must be cast as victims.

Yet this same Trump, who condemns land redistribution in South Africa, 
has spent his political career endorsing and legitimising Israeli land 
grabs in Palestine.

His hypocrisy does not end there. He denies South Africa the right to 
decide how to deal with land within its own borders, while pushing for 
US <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us> control over land beyond 
its own. He has floated the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark, 
entertained seizing Canada, discussed taking over the Panama Canal, and 
now unabashedly rants about owning Gaza 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-takeover-plan-biden-couldnt-finish-us-nor-will-trump>. 



      Extreme ambitions

Trump has aligned himself with Israel’s most extreme territorial 
ambitions, declaring that Israel is a“tiny little spot” 
<https://youtu.be/jd1Svyj4cWA?si=o8aIDRngSO2qAenu> in the Middle East 
and should be enlarged.

He stands alongside Israeli extremists like Finance MinisterBezalel 
Smotrich 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/smotrich-calls-israels-borders-extend-damascus>, 
who has openly called for Israel’s expansion from the Nile to the 
Euphrates, and settlers likeDaniella Weiss 
<https://www.facebook.com/PalestinianEmbassyinCyprus/videos/israeli-politician-daniella-weiss-says-she-wants-israel-to-have-its-borders-from/284577887970541/>, 
who envisions annexing parts ofSaudi Arabia 
<https://x.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1845287842290991569>. The same man 
who insists that South Africa must not alter its colonial land ownership 
patterns is eager to redraw maps to suit his own imperial ambitions.

In Israel, far-right leaders speak openly aboutexpanding beyond the West 
Bank <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv2g8r0nppgo> - into Jordan 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/jordan>, Egypt 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/egypt>, and even Saudi Arabia 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/saudi-arabia>. These are not 
fringe ideas. They are mainstream.

    The real question is whether the world will once again allow
    colonialism, racism and apartheid to dictate its moral order

Recent polls show that around80 percent of Israelis 
<https://www.jpost.com/international/article-840500> support the forced 
transfer of Gaza’s population, while only three percent of Israeli Jews 
believe it to be immoral.

Trump is not just complicit in these policies. He is their champion.

He claims to protect white landowners in South Africa while emboldening 
illegal settlers in Israel. He offers asylum 
<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-white-south-african-group-rejects-trumps-offer-of-asylum-in-the-us/> 
to Afrikaners, while blocking Palestinians 
<https://time.com/7022828/trump-travel-ban-refugees-gaza/> from entering 
the United States.

The irony was not lost on South Africa’s foreign ministry, which 
responded with biting sarcasm: “It is ironic that theexecutive 
<https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-signs-executive-order-aimed-south-africa-white-house-official-says-2025-02-07/> 
order makes provision for refugee status in the U.S. for a group in 
South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged, 
while vulnerable people in the U.S. from other parts of the world are 
being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship.”


      Act of resistance

It was no accident that South Africa took the lead in bringing Israel 
before the International Court of Justice 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-icj-case>, accusing it of 
genocide in Gaza <https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-war-gaza>. 
More than just a legal battle, the case is a defiant act of resistance - 
one that underscores South Africa’s unwavering commitment to dismantling 
oppression, and highlights the deep, inextricable ties between the 
struggles against apartheid and colonialism.

But for this act of courage, it now faces retribution. Trump and the 
Israel lobby <https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-lobby> are 
determined to make it pay.

South Africans know apartheid when they see it.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/icj-hearing-why-south-africa-accusing-israel-genocide-0#autoplay>

ICJ hearing: Why South Africa is accusing Israel of genocide


John Dugard, a renowned South African lawyer and former UN human rights 
monitor, drew a stark parallel: “Apartheid was all about land.” 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/07/southafrica.israel?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other> 
It was about reserving the best parts of the country for whites, while 
relegating Black South Africans to the most barren, least habitable 
areas. The same dispossession has been unfolding in Palestine, he noted.

Ronnie Kasrils, a Jewish South African and former cabinet minister, was 
even more direct 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/06/southafrica.israel>: 
“Apartheid was an extension of the colonial project to dispossess people 
of their land.” That is precisely what has happened in Israel and the 
occupied territories - the systematic use of force and legal 
manipulation to facilitate dispossession. “That is what apartheid and 
Israel have in common.”

Nelson Mandela, who understood the common roots of colonial subjugation, 
left no room for doubt. His words remain a rallying cry for justice 
<http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/1997/971204_palestinian.htm>: 
“Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

The question before the world is not merely whether South Africa will be 
sanctioned for daring to challenge apartheid’s persistence, nor whether 
Israel will be granted full sovereignty over occupied land. The real 
question is whether the world will once again allow colonialism, racism 
and apartheid to dictate its moral order.

Because from Johannesburg to Gaza, from Pretoria to the West Bank, the 
struggle is one.

/The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not 
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye./

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