INSIGHTS FROM THE INSIDE

Succumbing to Hamas propaganda, South Africa’s government is part of an immoral minority on the wrong side of history

By Derek Arnolds

(recently retired senior intelligence analyst in South Africa’s Secret Service)

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7^th, 2023, South Africa has emerged as the most vitriolic opponent of Israel over the latter’s military actions in Gaza. This article posits that Hamas’s propaganda war has fundamentally shaped South Africa’s policy vis-à-vis Israel. Employing discourse and deconstruction techniques, it unpacks the motivations for this negative trajectory trend. Despite a less-than-sanguine prognosis in resetting Israel-South Africa bilateral relations, renewed hope is possible if the South African government withdraws the International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case against Israel in The Hague.

Pretoria, then under the leadership of Hamas’ acolyte, the rapacious and morally bankrupt African National Congress (ANC), took the Kafkaesque step to charge the only Jewish state with genocide in the ICJ. Apart from the genocide case being meritless, it is the timing that reveals the extent of Hamas’ influence on South Africa’s foreign policy viz-a-viz Israel. Shortly after Hamas’ genocidal attacks on Israeli border communities, the South African government, under the direction of Naledi Pandor, former minister of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), used various platforms to issue the vilest statements against the Israeli government for purported “genocidal actions”, while providing moral succour to Hamas leaders such as the late Ismail Haniyeh. Pandor initially denied engaging with Hamas leaders, only to admit it later. Most disturbingly, Pandor and the ANC leadership failed to immediately condemn the perpetrator of the October 7^th massacre despite Israel exercising its right to self-defence according to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

South Africa’s cabinet then took the reckless decision to close its embassy in Tel Aviv, disrespecting officials of the Israeli embassy in Pretoria, which prompted Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to recall Ambassador Eliav Belotserkovsky, and laid a genocide case against the Jewish state just a few months after October 7. This is not isolated and fits a familiar pattern:

Hamas and its principal patron, Iran, have gradually captured South Africa’s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hamas and Iran have done this through disinformation campaigns, messaging, imagery, symbols, and media narratives, thereby controlling the narrative ecosystem in South Africa. This predates October 7.  Pandor’s successor, Ronald Lamola and the puerile Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, minister in the presidency, continue to spew anti-Israel venom to the delight of Hamas and Iran supporters in South Africa.

It is abundantly clear why Israel views the South African government as the most antisemitic following the genocide case. Since the war, South Africa has intensified its hackneyed broadside against Israel in international forums. This also resonates in statements, speech acts and policy positions of the South African government. The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and former Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, were influenced by South Africa’s hostile anti-Israel policy. Subsequent threats by Israel’s staunchest allies, France, Canada and the United Kingdom, to recognise a Palestinian state in September 2025 if no solution to the Gaza war is found, are a corollary of South Africa’s extremist anti-Israel policy. The timing of the genocide case warrants special scrutiny. The threshold for proving genocide is high, yet it took South Africa’s legal team less than four months to present its initial charge in The Hague. A case not in South Africa’s national interest, Israel’s allies in South Africa’s coalition government should pose the following necessitating an appropriate reply:

– When, where, and why was the egregious decision taken to charge Israel with genocide?

– Was it a coterie of ministers or a whole cabinet that deliberated on the matter? If so, was it a closed meeting? If it were not a closed meeting, then the minutes of that meeting should be made available to the South African public as per Section 32 of the South African Constitution, which guarantees the right of access to information. This is apposite since, in terms of the law of armed conflict, Israel has taken reasonable steps to prevent genocide during the initial stages of the conflict. The genocide case does not advance peace between Israel and Palestine, and only emboldens Israel’s enemies, like Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Yemen’s Houthis and the homicidal Iranian regime.

While historically, Hamas maintained close ties with the ANC under the pretext of being fraternal liberation movements, Hamas is not a liberation movement but an armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood hellbent on obliterating the State of Israel. Although Hamas’s military capabilities and senior leadership have  been eliminated, it remains intact relying on – as Netanel Flamer masterfully explains in his new book, The Hamas Intelligence War Against Israel – geospatial, human, open-source, signals intelligence and cyber warfare against Israel. This was laid bare on October 7^th.

Another dimension  – although not addressed by Flamer –  is Hamas’ influence on countries like Algeria, South Africa, Qatar and Türkiye. It is known that Hamas has ‘declared’ and ‘undeclared’ officials abroad, who promote the organisation’s extremist ideology as defender of the Palestinian resistance. According to open-source information, the movement has no official representation in South Africa. However, since October 7^th, ANC officials and senior government members have openly met with senior Hamas leaders. In addition, Hamas’ propaganda war against Israel has emboldened extremism in some circles in South Africa. On a casual drive through some of Cape Town’s Muslim suburbs, one would be astounded by the sheer number of mosques festooned in the colours of the Palestinian flag as well as the flags of terrorist organisations –  Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. Pro-Palestine groups like Africa4Palestine have been leading the campaign to delegitimise the Jewish state, impose sanctions and prosecute South Africans who serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).   Social media is abuzz with imams glorifying the October 7^th attacks, and one useful idiot even uttering:

 “We are all Hamas”.

Jewish-owned businesses are being targeted for purported links to the Israeli government and the IDF. Hamas’s messaging is clear: Most Jewish-owned companies aid and abet the “genocide” in Gaza. This is a fallacy since South African Jews are part of our society and have made a remarkable contribution to the Republic. It has always been recognised in South Africa that Israel, as the ancestral home of the Jewish people, is central to Jewish identity. However, useful idiots under the direction of Hamas and Iran have turned the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is a political conflict over territories, into a religious conflict. Scornful terms, notably, “apartheid”, “baby killers”, “occupiers”, “war criminals” and “genocidaires” are bandied about and have been normalized resulting in the “New Antisemitism”. Despite several countries taking steps to designate Hamas as a terrorist organisation, the movement nevertheless enjoys strong support in South Africa. This threatens South Africa’s Jewish community as well as the country’s national security. Recent findings by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international anti-money laundering watchdog, reveal that South Africa is a central regional hub for terror financing. It should be noted that South Africa remains on the FATF grey list pending progress in compliance. However, the relevant South African authorities have been ineffective in combating this scourge. It behooves law enforcement and the civilian intelligence agencies to monitor suspected Hamas financiers, institutions and their modus operandi.  More importantly, the State Security Agency, a once rarefied institution, turned into a Potemkin agency by the feckless Ntshavheni, who is also responsible for state security, should immediately investigate if there are links between DIRCO officials and Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood members in South Africa and abroad. In this context, the South African government often deploys ANC loyalists and demagogues to key postings, instead of career diplomats. In April 2017, Ambassador Ashraf Suleiman, then South Africa’s head of the Ramallah Liaison Office, met Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders in Gaza. The meeting took place in the same year that the ANC passed a resolution to downgrade the South African embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office. Suleiman’s meeting with Hamas terrorists drew condemnation from Jerusalem. The liaison office’s riposte was that the mission is mandated to meet with all Palestinian political entities. The same ambassador is now serving as South Africa’s Head of Diplomatic Mission in Syria, which is governed by génocidaires and terrorists. South Africa’s ambassador Ebrahim Rasool’s expulsion in March 2025 from Washington, DC, was hardly surprising when, over and above his public antipathy towards Israel, it was revealed that Rasool had expressed during a webinar that Trump was “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle” as the white population faced becoming a minority in the US. Hardly an astute choice of words for a prospective diplomat to Washinton, DC!

It is palpable that Hamas is ascendant in the information operations domain, as antisemitism across the globe has increased dramatically, as evidenced by the magnitude of violent attacks against Jews. The South African government is now part of an immoral minority on the wrong side of history. It chose to pursue a case that elicited opprobrium from the American administration, its second-largest trading partner. This is the unintended consequence of siding with extremist entities such as Hamas and Iran. The best South Africa can do to extricate itself from an unfavourable situation – both morally and financially – is to withdraw its genocide case against Israel which is anyway grounded on fallacious reasoning. In the main, most South Africans have an affinity for Israel, and let it be known that the ANC’s position on Israel does not represent all South Africans. It is a position that reeks of “ideological necrophilia” – blind fixation with dead ideas. In a related vein, the media landscape is seemingly dominated by leftists or liberals who have abandoned classical liberalism to direct hateful scorn against the Jewish state. Contrarian or alternative perspectives are deemed as Zionist and pro-Israel.  A Derridean approach of recent analyses by so-called pundits fits this pattern.  On August 4^th, 2025, Ziad Motala, professor of law at Howard University in the United States, penned an article in the Sunday Independent, titled “Propaganda masquerading as strategic realism”, wherein he took broadsides against the Sunday Times, a venerable South African newspaper. The central plank of Motala’s thesis is that the Sunday Times’s editorial integrity and journalistic objectivity had been compromised through its overt support for Israel and America and the Sunday Times had always welcomed diverse opinions. Motala further took umbrage at the newspaper’s journalists, who have advocated for improved bilateral relations between Israel and South Africa. Scornfully, Motala highlights a recent trip to Israel – sponsored by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) – by one of the newspaper’s staffers. The newspaper initially did not disclose the fact that the SAJBD sponsored its staffer’s trip; it later acknowledged the omission. Motala remained unforgiving and insisted that the paper’s editorial integrity had been captured by pro-Israel and pro-American apologists. What Motala failed to mention was that the SAJBD paid for the staffer’s trip to observe the objective reality on the ground, without fear of favour. Liberals who share Motala’s perspective have forsaken classical liberalism.

The renowned American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, deftly defends classical liberalism, based on limited government, the rule of law, and individual rights, and criticizes those on the political right and left that have pushed its core tenets to the extreme. In essence, the crisis of liberalism is not a failure of the classic variant, but rather the tolerance of authoritarianism, ethno-nationalism, extremism and bigotry under the guise of liberalism.  

At the time of writing, Israel is about to launch a major offensive on Gaza City  to eliminate any vestige of Hamas, ensure a steady supply of humanitarian aid to Gazans, and allow the enclave to be rebuilt and governed by a non-Hamas entity. Despite the entreaties of its sponsors, Hamas refuses to disarm and leave the Strip. As Hamas will eventually be eliminated in Gaza, it still poses threats abroad. Qatar and Türkiye continue to host Hamas leaders, who, by extension, were complicit in the October 7^th attacks on Israel. These leaders, including Khaled Meshaal, Bassem Naim, Mousa Abu Marzouk and Khalil al-Hayya, should be brought to justice as designated terrorists. South Africa should take a noble step to designate Hamas and its parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, as terrorist organisations. Several countries, like Switzerland and Britain, have banned Hamas activities in their territories. While Hamas’s military capabilities have been degraded, it is almost a Sisyphean task to destroy its extremist ideology, which permeates the globe. Therefore, its activities in South Africa should be closely monitored.

Israel should not abandon South Africa, as the country cannot be blamed for a venal ANC that is on life support and afflicted with political atrophy. Despite strained diplomatic relations, South Africa remains Israel’s largest trading partner in Africa.  Thus, Israel must intensify a sustainedstrategic communications campaignto counter Hamas and Iran’s grey zone operations in South Africa and beyond. David Saranga, Israel’s special envoy and seasoned diplomat, recently undertook an outreach and fact-finding mission to South Africa to open a dialogue channel between the two countries. This Israeli initiative is commendable, yet the biggest obstacle is the ICJ genocide case. The Israeli government can rest assured that it has allies in South Africa’s coalition government, who should exert pressure on the ANC, which initiated the ICJ case, to withdraw the lawsuit. Article 88 of the Rules of the ICJ makes provision for parties to withdraw a case “either by jointly notifying the Court of their agreement to discontinue the proceedings or by the applicant state informing the court that it no longer wishes to pursue the case”. The said Court may then direct that the case be removed from the list. Continued lawfare against Israel militates against dialogue between Israel and Palestine, is costly to the South African taxpayer, and only advances the extremist ideologies of Hamas and Iran.

About the writer:

Derek Arnolds is a freelance writer and corporate intelligence specialist. Educated at the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch, he previously held a teaching position in strategic studies at the South African Military Academy. He later served as a senior intelligence analyst for Africa and the Middle East in the South African Secret Service (later the State Security Agency: Foreign Branch). He retired from the Agency in May 2025.

Disclaimer: Although I previously served in the South African defence department and intelligence services, the opinions expressed in this article reflect my independent, open-source research. They are not intended, in any way, to reflect the views of the South African government.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).