From the “world’s most respected voice” to the voicefor the world’s most disrespected, a leaked BBC dossier exposes bias but the spotlight on Trump exposes antisemitism!
By David E. Kaplan
Accustomed to covering the news, the BBC suddenly found itself in the invidious position of being the news.
Headline read: “When Journalism Becomes Propaganda – Two Senior BBC Execs Resign in Earthquake of a Scandal”
The “earthquake” and “scandal” – as it is being characterized – appears solely as an offence caused to Donald Trump in the Panorama documentary by the splicing and doctoring of his 6 January 2021 speech thus corrupting the meaning and his message. It was bad; it was injurious; and could be construed as defamation, having harmed the President’s reputation.
However, how does this one-time offence of biased reportage on one individual – albeit the US president – compare with the BBC’s deliberate protracted assault on the reputation of the Jewish state in its agenda-driven lopsided coverage of the Israel-Gaza war?
Death to Israel. By platforming terrorists and serving as a “mouthpiece” for Hamas as revealed in leaked report, the BBC is contributing to the rise in global antisemitism.
Even worse than the BBC’s English service behaviour is its Arabic service that has been unashamedly acting as:
“a mouthpiece for Hamas”
With BBC commentators and correspondents doubling as activists or advocates for causes they were covering, begs multiple questions, notably:
– Where is the professionalism?
– Where is the proud BBC adage of relaying the truth to the public?
– Where is responsibility for the deadly consequences of spreading disinformation?
This cumulative misconduct of the BBC towards Israel and Jews is far more egregious than the offence to Trump, yet the characterizations of “earthquake” and “scandal” pertain only to him.
Why?
Gadi Ezra writes on YNET Global of the reputational damage inflicted on the Jewish state by the BBC since October 7:
“The organization that once stood for “telling the truth in the service of peace” has become a front for warfare. Blatant falsehoods, half-truths and distortions of fact have become routine. Over two years, 215 corrections or apologies have been issued.”
With Israelis traumatized by the horrendous accounts of the treatment of the hostages in captivity in Gaza, how agonizing was it for them to process hearing the BBC’s astounding ‘Jaw-dropping propaganda’ when it reported that:
“…hostages well treated by Hamas.”
Danny Cohen, a former director of BBC Television, had it spot-on when he described a BBC clip as:
“…a puff piece on war criminals who have executed, starved, beaten and sexually assaulted the hostages that Hamas kidnapped on October 7.”
He laid into the BBC Arabic broadcasts that he described as “antisemitic poison and terrorist propaganda to its 38 million viewers,” adding that the offending clip “proves beyond doubt that hatred toward Jews is ingrainedin the BBCand must be uprooted.”
HOW TO SURVIVE THE BBC!
Earlier this year, the BBC aired its own documentary “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone” where it failed to disclose that the 13-year-old narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official. Jews may well ask “How to survive the BBC” because the UK today is a “warzone” for Jews! Identifiable Jews today in the UK are potentially moving targets!
BBC Bias. In the BBC’s“Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone”, it was not disclosed to viewers that the 13-year-old narrator was a son of a senior Hamas official. The documentary was later withdrawn but the damage was done. (Photo: Screenshot)
Weighing in, Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch said the BBC’s Arabic channel was providing a “platform for terrorists.”
Revered as Britain’s ‘cultural emblem’ from the time of its illustrious service during WWII, the BBC is not just another broadcaster – it is globally respected. It is thought of as a symbol of free journalism, the proverbial ‘Gold Standard’ for accuracy and credibility. However, this has not been the case when applied to Israel. Over a period of cumulative inaccuracy, Israel has been the target of a media campaign that has helped fan the flames in Western public discourse. The results in Britain have seen a monumental rise in antisemitism resulting in the murder of Jews as recently occurred at a synagogue in Manchester.
BBC Complicity. Weighing in, Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch said the BBC in Arabic, which is state run and funded by British taxpayers was providing a “platform for terrorists.”
In London, Britain’s Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 774 anti-Jewish incidents in just six months – an unprecedented onslaught. Can the BBC deny that it has not contributed to the toxic atmosphere that has fueled violent antimerism in the UK and around the world and particularly its followers on its Arabic service? Especially troubling has been a rise in violence against Jewish schoolchildren.
Zvika Klein in his editorial in The Jerusalem Post (November 14) writes:
“At least 107 school-related antisemitic incidents were reported in half a year, including 41 cases of students being attacked during their daily commute to or from Jewish schools.
In one incident in north London, a 13-year-old boy wearing a kippah was surrounded by two men in balaclavas who performed Nazi salutes, spat, and snarled “dirty Jew” at him.
They then grabbed him by the collar and beat him, leaving him traumatized.”
What should be the “SCANDAL” in the UK is not so much what was done to Trump but the state of the country when one of its citizens, a Jewish mother in London, can ask:
“Do I send my kids to a Jewish school, where they’ll be safe inside but attacked once they leave? Or do I put them in a regular school and hope they don’t get bullied for being Jewish?”
This is a fine situation for a Jewish parent today in the UK!
“BURN JEWS”
Michael Prescott, the former independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) leaked his 19-page report not only because of his disgust at the BBC’s bias but his exasperation with the inaction by the broadcaster’s high-ranking executives.
Providing multiple examples, he cites the BBC Arabic service providing a platform to journalists who made antisemitic comments including one man who said Jews should be burned “as Hitler did,” and who appeared as a guest on BBC Arabic 244 times in a year and a half. Another, who said Jews are “devils”, appeared 522 times during the same time period.
This is not defaming one man – albeit the US president – but an entire people – Jews!
Should this not be the making of a “scandal”? If doctoring Donald’s documentary is more the “scandal” than a frequent BBC commentator suggesting “burning” Jews “like Hitler did,” than the UK is in serious trouble!
This is not the UK and the BBC that stood up to Hitler.
Not Okay, UK! With malicious media hype in the UK, is it any surprise that sights like this occur outside a synagogue in Manchester where on Oct. 3, 2025, two Jewish congregants died in an Islamic terror attack. (Photo: Peter Byrne/A)
Prescott’s report also exposed the “critically different treatment” between the main BBC news website and BBC Arabic of the rocket attack on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights in July 2024, which killed nine Druze children. While the English-language BBC reported on Hezbollah’s denial of the strike although it included that the terror group had bombed other sites in the vicinity, BBC Arabic did NOT EVEN MENTION other strikes nor the children’s deaths. The next day, the BBC published claims that Israel faked the attack.
Is it any wonder that an understandably horrified Prescott found it hard not “to conclude anything other than that BBC Arabic’s story treatment was designed to minimize Israeli suffering and paint Israel as the aggressor.”
So yes, the BBC’s top executives eventually did resign — but for unrelated reasons. The BBC Director-General Tim Davie and its news chief Deborah Turness resigned not because of the fiendishly false reporting on Israel under their leadership but because they peeved off the wrong man – Donald Trump.
That the “earthquake” and “scandal” is the result of a defamation of a US president and not the systemic bias within the broadcaster that has endangered Jewish lives everywhere smacks of antisemitism.
The BBC has apologized to Donld Trump. What are its intentions towards Israel and the global Jewish community?
* Feature picture: Masters of Misinformation. The BBC has drawn criticism from the Jewish community over its biased coverage of the war with Hamas causing danger to the lives of Jews in the UK and across the world. (Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images)
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).
10 November 2025 – At The Car Wall / Nova Memorial and more on The Israel Brief.
11 November 2025 – The late Hadar Goldin laid to rest after 11 years and more on The Israel Brief.
12 November 2025 – President Trump requests pardon for Prime Minister Netanyahu and your headlines inThe Israel Brief.
12 November 2025 – Former hostages testify at the UN. Warning: Sensitive content. This and headlines in The Israel Brief.
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).
Dr. Naledi Pandor, who as the former South African Minister of International Relations hastily instituted with Iranian complicity the false charge of genocide against Israel at the ICJ, will this November, be visiting the US, where she will publicly engage with audiences. In the photo above, Dr. Pandor is seen with senior Hamas politburo member, Bassem Naim at the Sandton Conference Center on the 10 May 2024. On the 10 November 2025, WELT reported that Naim’s son had been arrested in London on suspicion of receiving weapons from a terrorist detained a few weeks earlier and who had hidden them in Vienna, allegedly preparing for attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets across Europe. Authorities had positively linked Bassim Naim’s son to a Hamas terror cell that was intercepted and arrested in Germany earlier in October 2025. Bassem Naim’s son will be extradited from Britain to face charges in Germany. Naledi Pandor who has called for “Jihad when necessary” and “armed struggle” is on her way to the United States.
What are her true intentions?
Will she use her visit in to the US to continue her incitement against Israel, a US ally and show support to Hamas which has been designated as a terrorist organization by several countries, including the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand?
____________________________________
To: The United States Secretary of State
Honorable Marco Rubio, Washington, D.C., USA
Subject: Urgent Concern – Naledi Pandor’s Planned Entry into the United States
Dear Honorable Secretary of State Rubio,
I am writing to raise serious concerns regarding Dr. Naledi Pandor, the former South African Minister of International Relations and current Chair of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Dr. Pandor is scheduled to appear publicly in Wisconsin on 14 November 2025.
I respectfully request you to consider whether Dr. Pandor’s activities and rhetoric warrant action before her scheduled appearance. Some problematic aspects of her conduct are briefly mentioned.
Dr. Pandor as foreign minister played a key role in the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2023. In a three-month window preceding South Africa’s 29 December 2023 ICJ filing there was a tightly sequenced diplomatic alignment with actors already promoting the same narrative. Pandor travelled to Tehran for bilateral meetings with Iranian officials. She and President Ramaphosa had diplomatic meetings with Qatar in Doha. In December 2023 she participated in the “Solidarity with Palestine” conference convened by Mandla Mandela in South Africa. Public records and reports confirm that Palestinian factions affiliated with the PFLP, Hezbollah, Fatah and Hamas were present.
In her visit to the United States in mid-2025, Pandor appeared at events organized by the Chicago-based NGO Justice for All and was promoted and hosted by Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a board member of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).CAIR has been widely documented by congressional investigations and U.S. court documents as an entity established out of early Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations in North America.
It was at the behest of Dr. Pandor as chair of the Foundation who invited US sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, to deliver the prestigious Nelson Mandela Foundation 23rd Annual Lecture on October 25, 2025, in Sandton, South Africa.
Dr. Pandor has repeatedly stated that “armed struggle may become a necessity” and that Muslims are “permitted to engage in jihad when necessary.” She made these remarks at high-profile events and has previously been photographed in direct conversation with senior Hamas officials. Shortly after the October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, she also held a call with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, expressing support for what that group called the “Al Aqsa Flood battle.”
Her rhetoric and documented contact with sanctioned figures are not matters of free expression but indicators of alignment with extremist networks. Allowing a former minister who has endorsed violent jihad and engaged with terrorist actors to address audiences in the United States poses clear risks of incitement and public disorder.
As Chair of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Dr. Pandor continues to use an institution with American-linked donors and partners, including major foundations and corporate sponsors, to advance politically radical messaging. This creates reputational and potential compliance risks for U.S. entities associated with her programs or appearances.
Given the precedent of the U.S. expelling South Africa’s ambassador in 2025 for inflammatory conduct, I respectfully ask that your office bring this matter to the attention of the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security. It is reasonable to request a review of her planned entry into the United States in the interest of public safety and diplomatic integrity.
Sincerely,
Lawrence Nowosenetz Retired Advocate (High Court of South Africa) Fulbright Scholar (USA) Tel Aviv, Israel
About the writer:
Now retired, Pretoria-born human rights and labour lawyer, Lawrence Nowosenetz practiced at the Pretoria and Johannesburg Bar. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Nowosenetz completed an internship in the USA and served as a part-time Senior Commissioner at the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) as well as a panellist at Tokiso Dispute Settlement – the largest private dispute resolution provider in South Africa. He has also served as an Acting Judge of the Hight Court, South Africa.
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).
Rewriting history through sustained propaganda, the ‘Free Palestine’ movement takes a page from post-Holocaust Lithuanian revisionism and inverts the truth turning the persecuted into the persecutor.
By Grant Gochin
The Palestinian cause has become the world’s most effective moral spectacle – commanding headlines, swallowing aid money, captivating international conscience. But this is not advocacy. It is diversion. The obsession shields perpetrators of genuine genocides from scrutiny.
What the world fails to recognize is the source code. The propaganda machinery deployed by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their Western enablers did not emerge from the Middle East. It is a replica perfected in the killing fields of Eastern Europe, refined in post-Soviet bureaucracy, and exported as a blueprint for moral inversion. Lithuania pioneered these techniques in the 1990s and 2000s, systematically rewriting Holocaust history. Today, these same methods shield mass murderers from Darfur to Nigeria while Israel – like Lithuanian Jews before – stands falsely accused.
After almost four decades tracing the mutation of Jew-hatred – from Lithuanian revisionists to modern anti-Zionists – I recognize the pattern with forensic clarity. The assault on the Jews has never been about geography. It is an existential campaign to invert truth:
turn the Persecuted into the Persecutor.
The “Free Palestine” movement borrows directly from Lithuania’s post-Soviet playbook. Under its cover, real genocides unfold—unfilmed, unfunded, unacknowledged.
THE LITHUANIAN LABORATORY: INVENTING MODERN HOLOCAUST INVERSION
In the 1940s, Lithuanians and their allies exterminated 96.4% of their Jewish population. The pits of Ponary, Kaunas, and the forests of Telšiai became mass death pits. Lithuania achieved the highest Jewish murder rate in all Nazi-occupied Europe. It was safer to be a Jew in Nazi Germany than in Lithuania. An estimated 20,000 Lithuanians actively participated; hundreds of thousands more profited from stolen Jewish property or stood by as unrepentant witnesses.
But here is where true innovation occurred: After regaining independence in 1990, Lithuania did not confront this history. Instead, it systematically inverted it.
THE 8 PILLARS OF LITHUANIAN PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUE
Through approximately 30 legal cases, hundreds of documented government actions, and relentless exposure campaigns, I have identified the exact mechanisms Lithuania deployed. These 8 techniques now form the core arsenal of anti-Israel propaganda:
1. Victim-Perpetrator Inversion Through “Double Genocide” Theory Lithuania’s masterstroke was “double genocide” theory—the proposition that Communist crimes equal Nazi crimes, making Lithuanians victims of both. If everyone suffered equally, Lithuanian Holocaust perpetration becomes merely one episode in mutual suffering. Jewish victims are displaced by Lithuanian victimhood.
The logic is circular and intentional: Lithuanians who massacred Jews were “anti-Soviet resisters”. Jews who survived by joining Soviet partisan units became “Judeo-Bolsheviks” – perpetrators of genocide against Lithuanians. The murdered become the murderers.
Crowd views the aftermath of a massacre at Lietukis Garage, where pro-German Lithuanian nationalists killed more than 50 Jewish men. The victims were beaten, hosed, and then murdered with iron bars. Kovno, Lithuania, June 27, 1941.
Hamas deploys this identically. Israel’s self-defense becomes “genocide”. Hamas’s October 7 massacre – 1,200 Israelis slaughtered, hundreds raped, families burned alive – is recast as “resistance”. The aggressor becomes the victim. The Lithuanian precedent provided the template.
2. Heroification of Perpetrators as “Freedom Fighters” Lithuania systematically elevated Holocaust perpetrators to national hero status. Jonas Noreika, who personally orchestrated the murder of up to 14,500 Jews in northern Lithuania, was declared a national hero. Kazys Škirpa, who in 1941 called for the “elimination” of Jews, remains honored. The Lithuanian Activist Front – responsible for initiating pogroms before German forces arrived – is celebrated as an independence movement.
Lithuanian militiamen in Kovno round up Jewish women. Kovno, Lithuania, June-July, 1941.
The state’s Genocide Center – created ostensibly to research Nazi and Soviet crimes – became an engine of perpetrator glorification. Government “historians” like Dr. Alfredas Rukšėnas and Dr. Arūnas Bubnys produced pseudo-academic reports whitewashing Noreika’s crimes, claiming he “rescued Jews” even as archival evidence documented his orders establishing ghettos, confiscating Jewish property, and facilitating mass murder.
Hamas uses this same mechanism. Terrorists who murder Jewish children become “martyrs”. The October 7 pogrom becomes “liberation”. Suicide bombers are heroes. Murder is resistance. Both systems require the perpetrator to become heroic for the inversion to succeed.
3. State-Funded “Research Centers” That Manufacture Counter-History Lithuania’s Genocide and Resistance Research Centre represents perhaps the most insidious innovation: state-funded institutions with academic veneer whose sole purpose is historical fraud. The Centre’s own historian, Dr. Alfredas Rukšėnas, admitted in 2023 that it is not a “scientific” center but serves “nationalist, pro-Nazi, political interest groups.”
The Centre produced “findings of history” declaring Jonas Noreika innocent. When challenged with archival evidence -documents bearing Noreika’s signature ordering Jewish ghettoization, testimony from survivors, German records confirming his role – the Centre ignored it. When I filed legal challenges, every case was dismissed on technicalities without examining evidence. Multiple separate legal actions; not once did a Lithuanian court adjudicate the facts.
Monuments to Monsters. As part of the whitewashing, Lithuania installed numerous monuments to brutal collaborators including to Jonas Noreika as seen here (left) a plaque to Noreika on the Wroblewskis Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in central Vilnius and (right) his name on the wall of national heroes on Vilnius’ Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights. Similarly in the Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled areas of the West Bank, places – including streets, squares, and schools – have been named after Palestinian terrorists responsible for the murder of Jews.
The modern anti-Israel apparatus copied this wholesale. Organizations with authoritative-sounding names – the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), various UN “fact-finding” missions, academic departments -produce predetermined conclusions wrapped in scholarly language. When just 100 IAGS members (from 500 total, recruited for $30 each) voted to accuse Israel of genocide, they created propaganda at minimal cost with maximum impact. The method is Lithuanian: create the appearance of authority, ignore contradicting evidence, dismiss challenges procedurally rather than substantively.
4. Criminalization of Truth-Tellers Through Lawfare Lithuania weaponized its legal system against those exposing Holocaust fraud. I was threatened with criminal charges for “slandering” national heroes by documenting their genocide. Holocaust survivor Yitzhak Arad, who escaped the Vilna Ghetto and fought in Soviet partisan units, was investigated for “war crimes” by the same government that honors actual Holocaust perpetrators.
Displaying proudly the swastika on his right arm, a member of the Lithuanian Security Police marches Jewish men through Vilnius, 1941
The message was clear: speak truth about Lithuanian Holocaust collaboration, face prosecution. The government declared in 2019 that opposition to their Holocaust narratives constituted a “national security threat.” They literally defined truth as treason.
This is now standard anti-Israel practice. Those who document Hamas’s use of human shields face “lawfare” accusations. Israelis who fought in defensive operations are pursued with arrest warrants while Hamas leaders operate freely. The International Criminal Court issues warrants for Israeli leaders while ignoring perpetrators of actual genocides in Sudan and Nigeria.
5. Semantic Manipulation: Redefining Key Terms Lithuania mastered semantic fraud. The term “Nazis and their collaborators” became mandatory – always “Nazis” first, “collaborators” reduced to footnotes. This obscures the fact:
that Lithuanians often initiated massacres without German orders,
that Lithuanian units volunteered for concentration camp duty across Europe,
that Lithuanian enthusiasm for murder shocked even German observers.
At Ponary, 70,000 Jews were murdered. Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, when vandalism occurred at the site, referred to victims killed by “Nazis and others” – unable to say “Lithuanians”. The formulation was deliberate: spread responsibility, dilute Lithuanian culpability, make perpetrators anonymous.
Lithuanian collaborators guard Jews before their execution. Ponary, Lithuania, June–July, 1941.
Modern anti-Israel propaganda has perfected this. “Israeli occupation” replaces historical context. “Apartheid” is weaponized despite Israel being the region’s only democracy. “Settlers” dehumanizes Jews in their ancestral homeland. “Genocide” is deployed so promiscuously it loses meaning -applied to the only conflict where the Palestinian population has consistently grown. When words mean whatever propagandists need them to mean, truth becomes impossible.
6. The 2-State Strategy: Different Messages for Different Audiences Lithuania deployed sophisticated audience segmentation. For international consumption: glossy “We Remember” campaigns, Holocaust museums with minimal content, expressions of sadness about how Jews were “lost” (as if they wandered into the forest and will soon be located). For domestic consumption: honored perpetrators, glorified collaborators, textbooks minimizing Lithuanian responsibility.
Lithuanian diplomats became experts at performing contrition abroad while defending genocide at home. When pressed by foreign governments, they offered symbolic concessions – an admission here, a removed plaque there – while the underlying revisionist infrastructure remained intact. The Genocide Centre keeps producing fraud; Noreika remains a hero; children learn the sanitized version.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority run the identical playbook. In English: “We want peace, two states, coexistence.” In Arabic: “From the river to the sea,” celebrations of martyrs, textbooks teaching Israel has no right to exist, summer camps training children for jihad. Western journalists interview the English speakers; the Arabic content remains unexamined. The Lithuanian model demonstrated you can maintain contradictory narratives for different audiences – and largely get away with it.
7. Bureaucratic Exhaustion: Delay, Obstruct, Outlast Lithuania’s response to every challenge followed a pattern: delay, obstruct, redirect to another bureaucratic dead end, wait for attention to fade. My thirty legal cases against Lithuanian Holocaust revisionism all ended in dismissal on technicalities. Not once did a court examine substantive evidence. Each dismissal redirected to another venue, which redirected to another, which declared lack of jurisdiction, which sent it back to the start.
The strategy is brilliant in its cynicism: create the appearance of legal process while ensuring truth never receives adjudication. Exhaust the challengers through endless procedural loops. Wait for witnesses to die, activists to tire, international attention to move elsewhere.
This is now standard response to documentation of Hamas war crimes. UN investigations are delayed pending “security.” Evidence is disputed through procedural challenges. Requests are redirected between agencies. Hamas refuses to cooperate; the UN waits. Media cycles move on. By the time any conclusion is reached, the conflict is old news. The Lithuanian innovation was understanding that modern attention spans are short – you don’t need to refute evidence, just delay adjudication until no one cares.
8. Appropriation of Victim Status: Jewish Memory as State Property Perhaps Lithuania’s most audacious technique: appropriating Jewish suffering as state property while erasing actual Jewish voices. The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, under Ministry of Culture control, minimized the Holocaust in its exhibitions. A memorial culture centered Lithuanian suffering. Commemorations excluded uncomfortable truths.
The government marketed Lithuanian Jewish heritage to tourists while silencing living Jews who contradicted the narrative. When Silvia Foti, Jonas Noreika’s granddaughter, exposed her grandfather’s crimes in ‘The Nazi’s Granddaughter’, she faced vilification. Ruta Vanagaite, a Lithuanian author who documented Lithuanian Holocaust collaboration, was so viciously attacked she had to leave the country.
The state claimed authority to determine what the Holocaust meant, who its heroes were, which stories could be told. Jewish memory became Lithuanian state property, sanitized for national consumption.
The Palestinian movement has copied this wholesale. Palestinians claim the mantle of Holocaust victims (“the new Jews“) while denying the actual Holocaust. They appropriate the language of Jewish suffering while celebrating those who inflict it. “Never Again” becomes “Never Again to anyone (except Jews)”. The genocide of Jews is erased while a demonstrably false genocide accusation against Jews is amplified.
THE EXPORT: FROM VILNA TO GAZA These techniques did not remain in Lithuania. The post-Soviet world became a laboratory for propaganda innovation, and authoritarian regimes took notice. Iran, Russia, and their proxies studied these methods. The Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority adopted them. Western NGOs became transmission mechanisms.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance identified Lithuania as a Holocaust distortion state. The U.S. State Department and German government issued joint statements condemning Lithuanian revisionism. Yet the methods spread. Why? Because they worked.
Lithuania demonstrated that a small nation could rewrite history through sustained propaganda, neutralize international criticism through symbolic gestures, maintain domestic mythologies while projecting international respectability, and ultimately escape accountability for genocide. If Lithuania could transform Holocaust perpetrators into heroes, others could do the same.
GAZA: THE LITHUANIAN METHOD IN REAL TIME Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre of over 1,200 Israelis, the narrative machine has operated at full tilt using the Lithuanian playbook:
Victim-Perpetrator Inversion: The story was inverted overnight. Hamas became “resistance“; Israel became “the aggressor”. The October 7 pogrom – families burned alive, children murdered, women raped – was erased or justified as “context”. Israel’s defensive response became “genocide”.
SEMATIC WARFARE: The word “genocide” was deployed so aggressively it lost meaning. Experts who screamed “genocide” at Israel were exposed when the ceasefire deal proved Israel’s stated aims: dismantle Hamas, rescue hostages, defend civilians. Yet the semantic damage was done. The term “genocide” will forever be associated with Gaza in millions of minds, despite Gaza’s population growing throughout the conflict.
STATE-FUNDED COUNTER-NARRATIVE INSTITUTIONS: Qatar’s Al Jazeera functions as Hamas’s Genocide Centre—an ostensibly journalistic entity manufacturing alternative reality. The BBC’s leaked internal report confirmed systematic suppression of Israeli suffering, unchecked airing of Hamas fabrications, and recasting terror as resistance. These aren’t news organizations; they’re propaganda arms following the Lithuanian model of pseudo-authoritative institutional fraud.
APPROPRIATION OF VICTIM: Palestinians claim Holocaust victim status while Hamas’s charter calls for Jewish annihilation. The same activists who chant “Never Again” ignore the October 7 pogrom’s explicitly genocidal intent. Jewish suffering becomes universalized while specific Jewish suffering is denied or justified.
CRIMINALIZATION THROUGH LAWFARE: Israeli leaders face ICC arrest warrants while Hamas operates freely. Jewish students are investigated for “hate speech” for displaying Israeli flags while open calls for Jewish genocide go unpunished. The legal system becomes weaponized against victims defending themselves.
BUREAUCRATIC OBSTRUCTION: Every attempt to document Hamas’s war crimes meets delay. UN “investigations” remain incomplete. Evidence is disputed procedurally. By the time any adjudication occurs, the news cycle has moved on. Lithuania taught the world you don’t need to win the argument; you just need to delay it.
THE PRICE – REAL GENOCIDES ECLIPSED: The consequences extend far beyond Israel. By monopolizing moral bandwidth, by diluting “genocide” into political insult, Lithuania’s exported propaganda methods shield actual genocide.
Since April 2023, Sudan‘s Rapid Support Forces have slaughtered tens of thousands in Darfur, displaced millions, and weaponized famine. The UN calls it one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Yet it is rendered invisible beneath Gaza hashtags. Where are:
– the emergency UN sessions?
– the campus protests?
– the ICC investigations?
In Nigeria, Islamist militias murdered over 4,000 Christians in 2024 alone. Entire villages burned, churches razed, children incinerated. Yet not one Western march, not one celebrity Instagram post. The same media outlets that turned Gaza into a daily dirge barely acknowledged Nigeria’s extermination campaign.
The machinery of pro-Palestinian activism – NGOs, influencers, “human rights” experts – has perfected Lithuania’s art of monopolizing moral attention. They scream “Israeli genocide” until the word loses meaning, erasing real genocides by sheer volume. The result: impunity for Africa’s butchers and applause for Palestine’s propagandists.
THE PATTERN EXPOSED – ANTISEMETISM AS TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER: What Lithuania did to its Jews, the pro-Palestine movement now does to Israel. Old blood libels have gone digital: Jews as child-killers, settlers, colonizers. Ancient myths are rebranded as “decolonial theory.” Hasbara – the defense of truth – is dismissed as propaganda, while Hamas’s explicitly genocidal charter is excused as “context”.
The technology of antisemitism has evolved, but its source code is visible. Lithuania proved that:
– Perpetrators can become heroes through sustained propaganda
– Victims can be made into villains through narrative inversion
– State institutions can manufacture authoritative-sounding lies
– Legal systems can criminalize truth while protecting fraud
– International opinion can be managed through audience segmentation
– Accountability can be avoided through bureaucratic exhaustion
– Actual genocide becomes invisible if attention is directed elsewhere
Hamas, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their Western enablers didn’t invent these techniques. They imported them from Lithuania, refined them for modern media, and deployed them globally. The Lithuanian model of Holocaust inversion became the template for Israeli demonization.
Honoring Killers. Dalal Mughrabi, responsible for one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the history of the State of Israel prior to October 7, when she in 1978, led a terror attack hijacking a bus and killing 38 civilians, 13 of them children, is today honored in Palestinian society by having bearing her name, schools, a computer center, a soccer tournament, and a summer camp.
The connection is not merely philosophical – it is methodological, systematic, and intentional. When South African officials meet with Hamas before filing ICJ charges, they follow Lithuania’s pattern of using international legal institutions for propaganda. When the IAGS passes an anti-Israel resolution with minimal participation, they replicate Lithuania’s Genocide Centre model. When BBC editors suppress Israeli suffering while amplifying Hamas claims, they follow Lithuania’s two-narrative strategy.
CONCLUTION – THE LIE THAT KEEPS KILLING Both Lithuania and Hamas provide the lies, and the world gobbles them up with fervor. It is always Jews being murdered while our murderers sanitize themselves in real time. My decades of work exposing Lithuanian fraud – thirty court cases, thousands of documents, endless campaigns – appear to have fallen flat. Hamas simply repeated Lithuania’s strategy, and the world consumed it with even greater appetite. The cycle endures because the world wants the lie. Until that hunger is confronted, the weakest will keep paying the price in blood.
About the writer:
Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/
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).
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LONE WOMAN IN UK STANDS UP TO HOSTILE ANTISEMETISM
Outside the Aston Villa grounds in Birmingham where the club was playing Maccabi Tel Aviv and Israeli fans had been barred from attending, a lone brave young Jewish woman stands up to Islamic thuggery by holding up the Israeli flag amidst chanting “Death, Death to the IDF”. In this “Brave New World”, this young Jewish woman – instead of the thugs – was bundled away by the police – “for her own protection”!
ARTICLES
Please note there is a facility to comment beneath each article should you wish to express an opinion on the subject addressed.
(1)
ALBANESE IN SOUTH AFRICA – A POLITICAL RALLY NOT LECTURE TOUR
Under the banner of the Mandela name, the visit of the UN’s Special Rapporteur to South Africa platformed less of promoting ‘unity, integrity and reconciliation’ and more in spewing hate against the Jewish state. By Marika Sboros
Talking Terror. FrancescaAlbanese who indulges in Holocaust distortion, spreads antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theoriesabout Jews, money and power, recently toured South Africa on a lecture tour. In truth, her visit – in her own words – was to bolster South Africa’s flagging ICJ case against Israel and to rally support for global BDS.
South Africa aligns its foreign-policy with a partisan UN office to conspire against the Jewish state. By Grant Gochin
Leveraging a Legacy. South Africa’s most familiar export today is not a rich mineral but a rich name and a legacy – Mandela. Today it is used and abused against the Jewish state and rather than enriching the legacy it cheapens South Africa’s image and undermines its credibility and future.
DEAD BUT ALIVE IN THE MINDS OF MANY – ACROSS ISRAEL AND TANZANIA
After two years of captivity in Gaza, the remains of agricultural student Joshua Loitu Mollel returned to Israel. By Jonathan Feldstein
Dreams Dashed. Leaving behind his parents and siblings and arriving in Israel full of hope, Joshua Mollel dreamed of returning skilled in Israeli agriculture to combat drought and poverty in Tanzania. 19 days later that dream and his life was cut short in a frenzy of Hamas atrocities. He returns home this month – a body.
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).
03 November 2025 – Three more hostages returned and could terrorists face the death penalty on The Israel Brief.
04 November 2025 – Israel lays a hero to rest, sends aid to Jamaica and more on The Israel Brief.
05 November 2025 – Israeli officials concerned about a Mamdani victory, the BBC exposed, again and more on The Israel Brief.
06 November 2025 – This broadcast contains content of a very sensitive nature. Rom Braslavski shares his horrific story of captivity and more on The Israel Brief.
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).
After two years of captivity in Gaza, the remains of agricultural student Joshua Loitu Mollel returned to Israel.
By Jonathan Feldstein
In the early morning of October 7, 2023, as rockets streaked across the sky and gunfire shattered the quiet of southern Israel, a young man from Tanzania pedaled his bicycle along a dusty road near Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Joshua Loitu Mollel, 21, had arrived in Israel only 19 days earlier, pursuing a personal dream and to be part of the Biblical prophecy of Ezekiel 36:8 witnessing and learning from the tremendous agricultural innovation that has made Israel such a beacon of agricultural prowess to developing nations of the world, miraculously making the desert bloom. “And you, the mountains of Israel, will produce your branches, and you will bear your fruit for My people Israel because they are about to come.”
From Student to Hostage. Poster of Joshua Loitu Mollel who was only 21 when he arrived in Israel as an agricultural student from Tanzania to join a training program run by Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Two weeks later He was murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7 and his body held in captivity until this week.
Joshua was a devout Christian, embodying the quiet resilience of his faith – humble, hardworking, and hopeful. He saw the opportunities in Israel as an answer to personal prayer and a light unto the nations, planning to glean experience to bring back to and enrich his impoverished village. But that morning, Hamas terrorists stormed Israel’s border, and Joshua’s life was cut short in a frenzy of inhuman atrocities. Joshua was confirmed killed, his body dragged into Gaza and held captive ever since.
Earlier this month, the remains of four other hostages who were killed on October 7 or murdered in captivity were returned to Israel. But Joshua’s remains, and that of six other hostages, were still being held by Hamas terrorists, a bargaining chip in Hamas’s cruel calculus, a poignant reminder of how far their extremist Islamic hatred extends and impacts Jews and Christians together, worldwide. Joshua’s remains were finally returned to Israel during the evening of November 5, 2025.
Returning Home. Before returning to Africa, IDF troops salute over the casket containing the body of Tanzanian hostage Joshua Mollel after it was returned by Hamas, during a short ceremony in the Gaza Strip, in November 5, 2025. (Photo: IDF)
It was meant to be so different.
Arriving in Israel full of hope, leaving behind his parents and siblings, Joshua promised to return with skills to combat drought and poverty and make agriculture in Tanzania blossom. Joshua’s faith sustained him; he attended church, prayed, and wrote home about the “miracle” of irrigation systems that turned desert into bounty. Yet, on that fateful day, his innocence made him a target. Albeit not to be confused as an Israeli Jew who Hamas vows to annihilate, eyewitness accounts describe him begging for mercy in broken English as terrorists beat him, his cries drowned out by the chaos. To Hamas, he was a non-Muslim intruder, an infidel. Love and mercy are not in their vocabulary.
Final Flight. Never to return home alive, an inspired and motivated, Joshua Mollel landed in Israel three weeks before the deadly attack on October 7, 2023.
Joshua Mollel is not the only African or Tanzanian to have been murdered amid the Hamas slaughter that day and taken into captivity. In November 2023, the body of Clemence FelixMtenga was found by Israeli soldiers, brought to Israel with all the love and respect afforded to all hostages who have been recovered, and repatriated to Tanzania for burial. The Genesis 123 Foundation spearheaded an effort to pay last respects all the way to the Kilimanjaro region in which Mtenga was buried, and to comfort his family among the mourners of Zion and Israel. (Follow the video testimony of that powerful project HERE.)
Underscoring the common bond and that the victims of Islamic terror know no borders, President Isaac Herzog told a delegation of African Christian leaders in October 2025, “Hamas’s refusal to return Joshua’s body is a desecration, a continuation of the barbarism that has haunted my people for generations.”
Joshua’s murder reveals a broader, unifying threat and urgent call for solidarity: the scourge of Islamic terrorism that preys on Christians with equal ferocity. In sub-Saharan Africa, where Joshua’s story resonates deeply, radical Islamist groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria have razed Christian villages, slaughtering tens of thousands, sacrifices to their Islamic caliphate. In Cameroon, Fulani militants affiliated with ISIS target Christian farmers, forcing conversions or death. These atrocities, spotlighted recently by U.S. political figures decrying “Islamic terrorists committing horrible atrocities,” parallel the October 7 massacre, where Hamas invoked jihad to justify beheading babies and abducting grandmothers.
The common thread is ideological: a radical interpretation of Islam that views Jews as eternal enemies and Christians as apostates, unworthy of the protection afforded “People of the Book.” From the 1929 Hebron massacre, where Arab rioters killed 67 Jews chanting “Slaughter the Jews,” to ISIS’s 2014 genocide of Iraqi Christians and Yazidis, the playbook remains unchanged – intimidation, expulsion, extermination. Until this week, somewhere in a Gazan tunnel or sandy pit, Joshua’s body had lain alongside Israeli Jews and even a former Thai worker, a stark symbol of this convergence. As part of God’s covenantal promise which is so intricately linked to the Land and people of Israel, as one of the remaining eight hostages in Gaza, the simple truth is that Jews and Christians face a common enemy and threat under Sharia’s heel.
In an interview following the kidnapping, Joshua’s father, Loitu Mollel had said “The last time I spoke to Joshua was Thursday 5 October. “I said, ‘Be on your best behaviour because you’re somewhere new, and make the most of the internship you’re there to do.”” Two days later Joshua Mollel’s new home – Kibbutz Nahal Oz – was attacked by Hamas.
This shared peril forges an imperative for solidarity. Visiting Israel and the land from which his son’s lifeless body was taken hostages, Joshua’s father, Loitu, didn’t seek vengeance; he sought justice, and a proper burial under Tanzanian skies. His plea transcends borders:
“return the body, honor the dead, dismantle the networks of hate”
This plea of a father has been partly met with the body of his son Joshua being thankfully returned and honoured both in Israel and soon in Africa.
There still remains that part of the plea to “dismantle the networks of hate.”
Together in Grief. Flags of Israel and Tanzania are held aloft at the funeral procession in Tanzania of Clemence Mtenga, a 22-year-old Tanzanian agricultural student, murdered by terrorists at Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, just weeks after arriving in Israel on a government training program.
*Feature picture: Taken hostage on October 7, 2023, Joshua Loitu Mollel murdered by Hamas and his body returned to Israel on the 5 November, 2025.
About the writer:
Jonathan Feldstein - President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.
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).
South Africa aligns its foreign-policy with a partisan UN office to conspire against the Jewish state.
By Grant Gochin
Francesca Albanese’s October 2025 campaign in South Africa was not humanitarian diplomacy. Official records reviewed show that her visit – staged under United Nations insignia while she was under U.S. Treasury sanctions – was conceived, hosted, and protected by South Africa’s own foreign-policy machinery. Naledi Pandor, DIRCO, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and Palestinian academic Haidar Eid converted a UN mandate into an instrument of lawfare against Israel and the democratic West that sustains it. Their collaboration marks the open fusion of state, ideology, and propaganda.
Truth behind Tools. Francesca Albanese receives ‘The Coalition for Good Tool Kit’ from Founding Member, Naledi Pandor, symbolizing not their proclaimed shared commitment “to advancing truth, justice, and global solidarity” but to working towards the eradication of the State of Israel.
WHAT AMERICANS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DIRCO
For an American audience: DIRCO is South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation – the exact equivalent of the U.S. State Department. It is the executive arm that controls South Africa’s foreign policy, diplomats, embassies, and international legal strategy.
Under the ruling African National Congress (ANC) – the party of Nelson Mandela that ended apartheid in 1994 – DIRCO has been transformed from a neutral diplomatic service into a political weapon purchased, owned and operated by Iran, Qatar, and Hamas.
It filed the ICJ “genocide” case against Israel in December 2023
It hosts Hamas and Hezbollah officials in Pretoria
It uses South Africa’s UN vote to shield Palestinian terror groups
DIRCO is not a think tank. It is state power – and under Naledi Pandor’s influence, it became the logistical backbone of Albanese’s sanctioned propaganda tour.
Behind the Smiles. Sharing a common hatred of the Jewish state and plotting against it, the former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (right) welcomes then visiting South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) Naledi Pandor at the Presidential Palace in Tehran, Iran, on Oct. 16, 2019. ( Photo: Ahmad Halabisaz/Xinhua)
PANDOR’S POLITICAL PROTECTION: THE ARCHITECT OF CAPTURE
Files reviewed from October 2025 confirm that Naledi Pandor – South Africa’s former Minister of International Relations and Cooperation (2019–2024) and now Chair of the Nelson Mandela Foundation – extended direct political cover for Albanese’s travel and appearances.
Pandor is not a bystander. She is the mastermind:
– She personally invited Albanese to deliver the 23rd Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture on October 25 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg
– She introduced Albanese as a “woman of conscience and courage” – three months after U.S. sanctions were imposed on July 9, 2025, for Albanese’s illegal attempts to drag American and Israeli citizens before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague
– She moderated the post-lecture conversation, allowing Albanese to accuse 63 democracies – led by the United States—of “collective genocide” in Gaza
DIRCO officials – still loyal to Pandor’s vision – coordinated:
– Albanese’s private briefing with ANC parliamentarians (including ANC Chair Supra Mahumapelo and EFF’s Naledi Mhlongo)
– Her Robben Island photo-op – the prison where Mandela was held for 18 years – to falsely equate Israel with apartheid
– Security, transport, and press logistics for the entire tour
A Sell Out. While it was reported that tickets for 23rd Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture at the Sandton Convention Centre on October 25, 2025 in Johannesburg “were sold out within 30 minutes,” what was truly more seriously “SOLD OUT” was South Africa’s foreign policy! Sees here on stage following the lecture is Naledi Pandor draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh with UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese.(Photo: Alet Pretorius/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
These same records describe DIRCO‘s “soft diplomatic cover,” including interference in foreign legal processes to shield a sanctioned UN official from accountability. Pandor’s dual role – former head of DIRCO and current moral custodian of the Mandela Foundation – made her the gatekeeper. She turned Mandela’s legacy into political currency for a sanctioned propagandist.
MANDELA FOUNDATION’S CAPTURE: FROM MORAL BEACON TO PROPAGANDA ARM
The Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) is not a government agency – it is a registered Public Benefit Organization (PBO) under South Africa’s tax law, meaning it enjoys tax-exempt status like a 501(c)(3) in the U.S. It was founded in 1999 to preserve Mandela’s legacy of reconciliation, truth, and non-racialism.
Under Pandor, it has been fully captured:
– It co-branded Albanese’s 24-page report Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime with its logo
– It amplified the apartheid analogy across its website, social media, and global newsletters
– It hosted Haidar Eid – a Gaza-based academic who uses Hamas Ministry of Health casualty figures – at a University of Cape Town (UCT) roundtable on October 28
The files show no internal dissent. The NMF functioned as an extension of Pandor’s DIRCO, not an independent civil-society body. This is state capture – a term South Africans know well from the Zuma-era corruption scandals, where government officials hijacked public institutions for private or political gain. Pandor has done the same to Mandela’s name.
DIRCO’S LAWFARE ENGINE: THE ICJ PIPELINE
DIRCO’s internal documentation reveals deliberate integration of Albanese’s messaging into South Africa’s ICJ strategy at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague – the UN’s top court for disputes between countries.
Staff notes and briefing materials show:
-Albanese’s meetings with DIRCO legal advisors were used to refine ICJ pleadings
-Her 24-page report – co-authored with Haidar Eid – was distributed to ICJ delegates as “evidence“
-DIRCO coordinated with Law for Palestine (a Ramallah-based propaganda hub) to frame the report as UN-endorsed scholarship
This is not advocacy. This is operational alignment between a UN office and a national foreign-policy war machine.
HAIDAR EID:FROM ACADEMIC TO STATE COLLABORATOR
Haidar Eid is a Palestinian academic from Gaza, formerly a professor at Al-Aqsa University (a Hamas-controlled institution) and now a research associate at the University of Pretoria – a South African state university.
He is not neutral:
– He is a leading BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) activist
– He is a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestinian BDS National Committee
– He founded the One Democratic State Group
– He was the complainant in South Africa’s ‘Al-Aqsa Docket’ – a legal case targeting Israeli officials
Albanese credits Eid as co-author of her report. DIRCO‘s Director-General Zane Dangor personally received him at OR Tambo Airport in December 2023 as a “guest of the state” shortly before the ICJ filing, stating that DIRCO would “reconnect with the returnees to debrief them and get their perspectives on events in Gaza.”
Eid’s testimony and draft text were integrated into Albanese’s UN-branded document, then fed into South Africa’s ICJ case.
In effect, South Africa imported a partisan activist, gave him state hospitality, and used him to launder Hamas propaganda as UN evidence!
“COALITION FOR GOOD”: AL QARADAWI’S BLUEPRINT REBORN
Albanese, Pandor, and DIRCO intersect again in the Coalition for Good (CFG) – a South African NGO chaired by Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman of Gift of the Givers (South Africa’s largest Muslim charity).
CFG‘s structure and membership mirror Yusuf Al-Qaradawi‘s Union of Good – a global network designated by the U.S. Treasury in 2008 for financing Hamas.
– Pandor is listed as an “esteemed member”
– Albanese was photographed wearing the CFG pin during her October 2025 appearances
– Sooliman publicly stated he invited Albanese to join the Coalition
– CFG‘s fundraising drives were synchronized with Albanese’s report launch and ICJ milestones – promoted as “humanitarian aid” but aligned with lawfare objectives
Sooliman accompanied Albanese to every appearance during her South Africa tour, including on flights between cities.
This is not charity. This is Islamist political infrastructure operating under South African state protection.
Coalition for Evil. UN’s Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese (left) expresses great admiration for ‘The Coalition for Good’ initiative chaired by Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman (right) of ‘Gift of the Givers’ (South Africa’s largest Muslim charity) that in its own words appearing online is “exposing Israel’s actions as those of a terrorist, pariah, inhumane, genocidal, apartheid state that has occupied and usurped Palestinian lands.”
FROM MANDELA TO MECHANISM: THE FINAL BETRAYAL
The transformation is complete.
– Pandor’s DIRCO supplies the state machinery
-The captured Mandela Foundation supplies the moral façade
-Albanese supplies the UN branding
-Eid supplies the Hamas-sourced content
Each node reinforces the others. The product is a seamless propaganda loop that uses the language of human rights to launder political warfare – and seeks not coexistence, but Israel’s erasure.
BREAKING THE ALIGNMENT: ACTION REQUIRED
The evidence warrants formal scrutiny, not silence.
The UN must:
-Suspend Albanese’s mandate pending investigation into state coordination and external funding violations
The U.S. Treasury must:
– Impose secondary sanctions on the Nelson Mandela Foundation and DIRCO officials involved in hosting sanctioned individuals of the Coalition for Good and Gift of the Givers for platforming a sanctioned individual
– Revoke U.S. tax-exempt status for any American donor to the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which is now operating as an agent of Hamas
South Africa’s SARS (tax authority) must:
– Revoke the NMF‘s PBO tax-exempt status for political campaigning and sanctions evasion
Global donors must:
In the interests of preserving the true legacy of Mandela, withdraw from any entity bearing his name where Naledi Pandor exercises control.
Pandor and DIRCO have converted diplomacy into propaganda. The Mandela Foundation has converted history into a megaphone and Haidar Eid has converted scholarship into political warfare.
Together, they have turned South Africa into the African staging ground of a global campaign against democracy itself.
Free Mandela’s legacy.
Defund Pandor’s machine. Now.
About the writer:
Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/
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).
Under the banner of the Mandela name, the visit of the UN’s Special Rapporteur to South Africa platformed less of promoting ‘unity, integrity and reconciliation’ and more in spewing hate against the Jewish state.
By Marika Sboros
(First published in BizNews and updated by events)
Francesca Albanese may be an Italian citizen but that hasn’t stopped Italy’s government, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, from distancing itself publicly from her.
Albanese, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has been haemorrhaging support in the wake of her recent whistlestop visit to South Africa.
It turned out to be more political rally than the lecture tour as the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) billed it.
Her main aim, in her own words, was to bolster South Africa’s flagging International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against Israel on a genocide charge. It was also to rally support for the global BDS (Boycott, Disinvest, Sanction) movement against Israel.
The NMF invited Albanese, to deliver its prestigious 23rd Annual Lecture on October 25, 2025 in Sandton. It did so at the behest of NMF Chair and former Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor.
Bolstering BDS. Rallying support for global BDS, Francesca Albanese, (right) is seen here with Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) Chair and former Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor draped in a keffiyeh who invited the virulently anti-Israel UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories to deliver the 23rd NMF Annual Lecture in Johannesburg.
Pandor is one of South Africa’s most vocal critics of Israel. She played a pivotal role in launching the country’s landmark genocide case against the Jewish state at the ICJ in December 2023.
Albanese visited Cape Town on October 26 to speak at a rally held in a church. On October 28, she released her latest UN report remotely at the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation headquarters. It is titled: Gaza Genocide: Collective Crime.
On October 29, Italy’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Maurizio Massari, dismissed her report as “entirely devoid of credibility and impartiality.”
He went further during the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee session. Massari criticised her for disregarding the UN Code of Conduct for Special Rapporteurs, which mandates “integrity, impartiality, and good faith.” He called these “the foundation of any credible report… and of the UN itself.”
In South Africa, Albanese’s visit raised concerns in the Jewish community over appropriateness of the NMF inviting a person sanctioned in the US in July for ties to terror groups, including Hamas, to deliver its annual lecture.
Albanese has indulged in Holocaust distortion, trivialisation and Nazi comparisons. She has spread antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories about Jews, money and power.
In a statement, Wendy Kahn, national director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), described Albanese as “a figure globally condemned for antisemitic rhetoric and Holocaust inversion.”
She said that the NMF had “betrayed its founding values” in hosting her. Once an institution that symbolised unity, integrity and reconciliation, the NMF had become a “platform for division and hate” under Pandor’s chairpersonship, Kahn said.
Pandor and Albanese “both repeatedly accused of antisemitic bias, now stand together under the banner of the Mandela name, not to bring South Africans together but to unite them in hate.”
Albanese’s lecture was titled Enhancing Peace and Global Cooperation.
As a speaker, she was charismatic, articulate and passionate.
There was little peaceful in her delivery and content. Nor was there the reasoned, calm and fact-finding demeanour one normally associates with officials working on behalf of others at her elevated level.
Her lecture was overblown, rich in moral urgency, light on legal and factual nuance and heavy on emotion – and emotional blackmail.
It was remarkable as much for what she did not say as what she did say.
She chose her words carefully. Albanese described the NMF invitation as a “call to destiny.” She declared that “the world is watching its conscience collapse.”
Throughout, she called Gaza “Falasteen” – the Arabic name for Palestine. It carries significant cultural, political and emotional weight.
She linked Nelson Mandela’s ideals to the fight against “the cruellest injustice of our time” – her words for the “genocide” she claims Israel perpetuated in Gaza.
Francesca Albanese delivers the 23rd annual Nelson Mandela Lecture at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg. (CNN on Youtube)
Albanese did not mention the word, Jew, once.
She repeated the word, genocide, not just once; she intoned it 21 times in her 60-minute lecture. At every mention, with increasingly demagogic intensity, she enunciated each one of genocide’s three syllables.
She called Israel’s war in Gaza a “textbook case of genocide” and South Africa’s ICJ case “a moment of historic resonance”. She framed genocide as a money-making venture for Israel, the US and other countries.
Albanese called genocide “the dormant gene of an apartheid regime rooted in settler-colonialism.”
She omitted any mention of what started Israel’s war against Hamas: the terror group’s genuine genocidal attack on mostly civilian targets in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Details of the attack are well-known but bear repeating, since denialism, including by Albanese, is rampant.
On October 7, terrorists murdered more than 1200 people, including children, babies, the elderly, and injured more than 5000, most of them civilians. They mass-raped women and children (the youngest aged just eight), some so violently that their pelvises shattered.
They tortured, burnt alive whole families and shot to death children in front of their parents, parents in front of their children. The terrorists also kidnapped more than 250 people, mostly civilians, and took them back to Gaza as hostages.
Among them were Shiri Bibas, and her sons, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas and Ariel, aged four. All three were murdered in captivity in Gaza.
Captured terrorists revealed orders to rape, kill and kidnap as many Jews as possible. Hamas leaders have since vowed publicly to repeat October 7 “again and again until Israel is annihilated.”
Albanese gave Hamas a free pass. She ignored its charter that is explicitly genocidal against Jews. She ignored its deliberate strategy of maximising civilian deaths in Gaza by embedding among civilians and using civilians as human shields as a propaganda tactic to win sympathy.
Albanese has support for the genocide claim from eminent legal experts and scholars and human rights advocates globally, some of them Jewish.
Globally, equally eminent legal experts and scholars and human rights advocates, Jewish and non-Jewish, vigorously disagree.
They offer legal critiques challenging her framing of genocide.
They stress the Genocide Convention requirement of proof of dolus specialis – the legal term for specific intent “to destroy a protected group in whole or in part.”
The phrase “in whole or in part” is critical. It underscores that intent, not scale alone, defines the crime. It emphasises a critical legal threshold that legal experts say Israel has not met in its military response to October 7, as its army targets Hamas, not Gazan civilians.
Together, these analyses form cross-institutional rebuke of Albanese’s genocide rhetoric.
Apartheid and deliberate starvation of Gazan civilians were more leitmotifs in Albanese’s rhetoric in South Africa.
On October 21, while visiting Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum, she tweeted: “It reminds me that Apartheid Israel could morph into genocidal machinery (because) no one stopped it.”
Tim Flack, a Cape Town-based PR strategist and military specialist, responded that Albanese was visiting “not to learn but to hijack history.”
Calling Israel an apartheid state “is an insult to those who lived under real apartheid,” Flack said.
Nelson Mandela’s granddaughters, Zamaswazi and Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway, would agree. After their recent visit to Israel and Gaza, they said:
“Apartheid was government-mandated racial separation. What we saw in Israel and Gaza is very different. There is no comparison.”
Legal scholars have criticised Albanese’s invoking of genocide, apartheid and starvation claims. They argue that collapsing these into a single narrative politicises international law and weakens its deterrent power.
Still, Albanese has fans globally, including in South Africa.
Reverend René August, of SA Christians for a Free Palestine, called her presence “a moral reckoning.” NMF CEO Dr Mbongiseni Buthelezi, said she “embodies” its mission.
The NMF invited groups to have private, round-table meetings with Albanese. Among these were the Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI) and South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP). Both groups support the genocide claim.
Predictably perhaps, neither the SAJBD nor the South African Zionist Federation received invitations.
Anton Harber, veteran journalist, JDI board member and former University of the Witwatersrand journalism professor, attended the JDI’s round-table meeting with Albanese and found her “gracious, open and highly intelligent.”
He listened to her lecture on YouTube and said that it “contained nothing new.” He expressed “surprise” at her use of “non-legal, non-diplomatic language.”
Albanese “expresses views the Jewish community should engage with, not close their ears to,” Harber said. He dismissed criticisms of the NMF for hosting her and said it was “shameful” that the SAJBD “should shun” the foundation.
The JDI was “proud to associate with the NMF and what it represents,” he said.
“We feel we have to create open debate as it seldom happens within the community. It is imperative to open up and face hard issues in debate about Zionism, Israel and Jewishness.”
Dr Max Price, JDI member and former University of Cape Town Vice Chancellor, attended the round-table and lecture. Via email, he said he had read Albanese’s report on how companies globally were benefitting from the Gaza war and “occupation of the Palestinian territories” and wanted to “engage her views on questions of sanctions.”
Balancing Act. Despite her one-sided ranting against Israel, Max Price, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town and an active member of the Jewish Democratic Initiative in South Africa who is seen here (left) in a group photo with Francesca Albanese (centre) found her perspectives “balanced”.
She came across as “balanced,” he said and showed “understanding and empathy with the impact the Hamas massacre had had on Israeli society.”
Albanese was “clearly well read about fascism in Europe and the Holocaust, and appreciates its impact on Jews ever since, and the lessons for the world,” Price said. He called her “an important voice globally.”
Such engagement was often “especially productive with people with whom, on some issues, you disagree,” he said.
He found her lecture “disappointing and one-sided.” As she is a rapporteur on human rights, Price “expected her to comment also, and in fact, to condemn the war crimes Hamas committed and their historic genocidal goals and statements.”
Albanese had condemned Hamas atrocities in the past, he said. “Not to have done so in the context of this lecture compromises her credibility.”
Buthelezi, in his opening remarks, thanked sponsors, including Gift of the Givers. Its founder and CEO Dr Imtiaz Sooliman remains mired in claims that his charity has been a conduit for funding to Hamas and other terror groups.
Calculating Conspirators. Francesca Albanese (left) and Naledi Pandor (right) cozy up with Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman who when addressing a demonstration in Cape Town under a banner “We are all Hamas” told the crowd that Zionists “control the world with money”.
In the same breath, Buthelezi thanked SAJFP and JDI. The latter’s involvement was limited to round-table private meetings.
It is hard, if not naive, to ignore the propaganda value for the NMF of Jewish support, even if only from a vocal minority. And in a country where the vast majority of Jews (around 90%) are staunchly Zionist.
The reality is that Jewish support for genocide claims against Israel is not always principled dissent or polemical discussion. It can create legal, moral and emotional landmines detonated from within.
US-Jewish atheist, neuroscientist, philosopher Sam Harris is not a Zionist. He has warned that Jewish endorsement lends “false moral authority” to genocide claims that quickly collapse under legal scrutiny.
Harris noticed the same phenomenon I noted on October 7: the genocide charge was being lobbed globally even before Israel had dropped a single bomb in Gaza in response to the massacre.
Selective Suffering. Scenes like this of children’s toys and personal items on a bloodstained floor of a child’s bedroom on kibbutz Beeri following the deadly Hamas massacre on October 17 failed to meaningfully resonate with Francesco Albanese who omitted in her lecture in South Africa any mention of what started Israel’s war against Hamas. (Photo: Reuters/Ronen Zvulun)
“That tells you something about the moral confusion we’re dealing with,” he said on a podcast.
Likewise, Canadian anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein has criticised the genocide claim as a “weaponised identity” tactic that is “ideologically driven, not evidence-based,” and fractures Jewish solidarity.
The reality remains that Jewish support for genocide, apartheid and starvation claims risks creating a halo of ideological cover to movements that, at best, want Israel and Jews demonised and terrorised.
At worst, these movements want Israel and Jews wiped clean from the earth’s face.
*Feature photo: UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese delivers the 23rd annual Nelson Mandela Lecture at the Sandton Convention Centre in Sandton, Johannesburg. (Photo: AFP)
About the writer:
Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.
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‘Confirming what everyone in Gaza already knows’but the world prefers to ignore or believe
Hamas operatives looting an aid truck traveling on Friday as part of a humanitarian convoy delivering needed assistance from international partners to Gazans. “The claims are baseless and unfounded,” was Hamas’s response, claiming that the looters “were sponsored by Israel.”
ARTICLES
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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).
