Madness in the water — Trump Gaza AI, Ramaphosa and the shadow of ethnic cleansing

‘A minute of silence for each of the Bibas children would be appropriate,” said Daniel Levy, “as would a minute of silence for each of the more than 18,000 Palestinian children murdered in Israel’s devastation of Gaza. That silence would extend to over 300 hours.”

It was 25 February 2025, and Levy, a former Israeli government adviser, was addressing the United Nations Security Council. His words were carefully chosen, measured to salvage a ceasefire that was teetering on the brink, and they appeared to be aimed at the Israeli ambassador Danny Danon, who — as Levy knew — was a proxy for the fresh round of rage and grief that had just engulfed the Jewish state.

Four days prior, on 21 February, Hamas had returned the bodies of four hostages, including those of Ariel and Kfir Bibas. At the time of the handover, Hamas claimed that the boys — along with their mother Shiri — had been killed in an Israeli airstrike during the first weeks of the war. But within hours of receiving the bodies, the Israelis had claimed the opposite: according to their own forensics, the children had been strangled to death by their captors.

Israeli media, taking its cue from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had instantly dialled up the heat— words such as “monsters” and “annihilation” flooded the national discourse, with little distinction drawn between Hamas and the civilians of Gaza. It didn’t help that Hamas had delivered the body of an unidentifiable woman in the place of Shiri Bibas; even though the organisation had quickly corrected the mistake, almost all of Israel had been inflamed by the rhetoric.

And so Levy was hoping to inject a dose of reality into the equation. Aware that the first phase of the ceasefire was due to end on Saturday, 1 March, and that negotiations for the second phase had stalled, he laid down a few of the salient facts.

“Hamas has not been defeated,” he said, “and there will be resistance as long as there is the structural violence of occupation and apartheid, it is that simple.”

Reality flies out the window

Less than 12 hours later, reality — or whatever remained of it — flew out the window. On his Truth Social platform, President Donald Trump, who could justifiably claim credit for the ceasefire, shared an AI-generated video of an imagined future Gaza.

In the video, Trump was depicted as the golden saviour — a boy carried a gold balloon in the shape of the president’s head; a gleaming Trumpian statue loomed over a city street; store shelves were packed with gold-plated Trump figurines. There were belly dancers, nightclubs and yachts, banknotes rained down from the heavens on to Elon Musk, skyscrapers and palm trees adorned the turquoise skyline.

Before the video ended, with Trump and Netanyahu sipping cocktails by a hotel pool, the AI-generated lyrics completed the mind-boggling sketch:

“Donald’s coming to set you free, bringing the light for all to see, no more tunnels, no more fear: Trump Gaza’s finally here.”

Given the bodies that were buried under the rubble in the actual Gaza, the vast majority of them pulverised by American bombs, viral comments such as “most hideous public communication by a US president in living memory” didn’t even begin to get at the problem.

Still, on the surface at least, the president was reminding us of his plan, first floated in early February, to take ownership of Gaza and redevelop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Back then, Daily Maverick had pointed out that the plan was greeted with enthusiasm not only by Netanyahu, but by some of the most influential pro-Israel accounts on X, including Eyal Yakoby, Nioh Berg and Hillel Fuld.

What appealed to them most, it seemed, was Trump’s suggestion that the Palestinians of Gaza would be “relocated” during the construction phase, a notion that reeked of ethnic cleansing.

This time, however, the response was a lot more muted. Even the Israeli mainstream press — preoccupied with the funerals of the Bibas family and the return of four more bodies — treated the story as secondary news.

Perhaps it was the shock. This, after all, was the leader of Israel’s most powerful ally, sending a message so bizarre and unprecedented that it truly beggared belief. But hey, if the pro-Israel faction pretended not to notice, maybe it didn’t happen?

Or maybe the sophisticated interpretation, the one below the surface, was the one to watch. As Sky News and others had noted, there was every chance that the stunt was a political tactic, a message to the Arab world that if they did not want Trump Gaza to materialise, they needed to deal with the problem themselves.

Either way, the die was cast — Trump would go as low as was necessary to get the deal done; chaos, confusion and destabilisation was now the foreign policy of the United States.

Of white supremacists and Zionists 

But once again, spearheading the global pushback against the mounting insanity was the government of South Africa, as led from the front by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Also on 25 February, while Levy was addressing the Security Council and Trump was sharing the crazy musings of AI, an article appeared in Foreign Policy under the title, Israel’s Actions Strike at the Foundations of International Law.

Co-authored by Ramaphosa and the state leaders of Colombia and Malaysia, along with the acting chair of the Hague Group, the article outlined the contours of an emerging planetary battle.

“What remains of the international order?” the authors asked. “For more than 500 days, Israel, enabled by powerful nations providing diplomatic cover, military hardware, and political support, has systematically violated international law in Gaza. This complicity has dealt a devastating blow to the integrity of the United Nations Charter and its foundational principles of human rights, sovereign equality, and the prohibition of genocide. A system that permits the killing of an estimated 61,000 people is not merely failing — it has failed.”

And indeed, because their assessment was mostly correct, it garnered the next round of gaslighting and threats. Joel Pollak, the editor-at-large of the rightwing publication Breitbart News and the mooted frontrunner for Trump’s ambassador to South Africa, noted on X that “sanctions” were now on the table for South African officials.

In short order, Howard Sackstein, the publisher of South Africa’s Jewish Report, quoted Pollak’s tweet with what could only be described as glee. “No one has voluntarily tried to destroy SA more than Cyril,” wrote Sackstein.

This, it turned out, was entirely unsurprising, because a few weeks before, Sackstein had interviewed Pollak — himself a South-African born Jew — for a laudatory webinar titled, South Africa in America’s crosshairs.

And then on 26 February, within hours of Sackstein re-platforming Pollak, the “other Howard” was boldly singing the praises of Trump Gaza AI.

“Proper genius,” noted Howard Feldman, talkshow host on Chai FM and former columnist for News24. “Message is clear. If you don’t want this then find another viable solution. @elonmusk and @netanyahu in cameo roles just adds to its creative brilliance.”

These sentiments, although they seemed to reflect the views of the mainstream, were thankfully not the views of the entire South African Jewish community. As both of the Howards would have known, a rift had been developing that was threatening to tear the community apart. The rift had significantly widened on 19 February, when Anton Harber, the founder of the Mail & Guardian and the former chair of journalism at Wits University, had taken sharp and decisive aim at Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein.

Harber’s piece, titled, The Chief Rabbi who lost his soul, was sub-headed, The article that the Jewish Report refused to run.

The final few paragraphs said it all:

“Rabbi Goldstein criticises South Africa’s relationship with the ‘murderous terrorist state’ of Iran. But he does not criticise President Trump’s switch from an alliance with the democracies of Europe to the tyranny of Russia, nor what this means for democracies such as our own.

“If we followed the likes of President Trump, he suggests, we would also be highly successful. Which part of Trump’s behaviour would you have us mimic, Chief Rabbi? His treatment of women? The way he mocks the weak and disabled? His abuse of state power to chase down his rivals? His pursuit of media that criticises him? His and his cabinet’s rejection of climate change, science and modern medicine? His rejection of diversity and inclusion? His hatred for trans people and migrants (at least those who are not white)? His famously unethical business practices? His cynical use of religion?

“Or maybe it is just his support for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.”

Given that the Jewish Report had refused to run the piece on the grounds that it was “too divisive,” Harber had published it on his Facebook account, from where it quickly went viral.

As a board member of the Jewish Democratic Initiative of South Africa, Harber had also made another important link — the one between South African Zionists (who, like Goldstein, appeared supportive of Musk despite his neo-Nazi gestures) and the white Afrikaner faction that had been offered refugee status by Trump.

And here, to round off the maddest of weeks, we needed to look no further than the X account of Kallie Kriel. Early on the morning of 27 February, the Afriforum leader posted a smiling self-portrait of himself in the home of the US Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs.

“The discussions we had in the US Congress with both Republicans and Democrats,” Kriel wrote, “confirmed that there is currently anger … over the ANC leaders’ reckless policies and actions.”

Tough times, it seemed, were on the cards. But if the ceasefire in the Middle East didn’t hold, one thing was clear — the toughest times would be reserved, yet again, for the 2 million inhabitants of Gaza. DM