In the Media

JNS – 25 November 2025

On November 13, the South African government, the same one that took Israel to the International Court of Justice on accusations of genocide in Gaza, had an opportunity to demonstrate their moral integrity to the entire world.

A charter flight carrying about 150 Palestinians from Gaza arrived at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport in South Africa. It was a chance for South Africa to display the morality, principles and genuine compassion they had long preached about.

They failed on all counts.

Rather than being greeted with compassion, the travellers were treated with contempt, detained on the tarmac for 12 difficult hours amid chaos, panic, and bureaucratic paralysis.

Because, as it turns out, it seems chanting slogans and grandstanding at international institutions is far easier than actually caring for living, breathing Palestinians.

However, none of this should come as any surprise.

On October 7, 2023, Israel was reeling from the unprecedented terror onslaught launched by Hamas against Israel’s southern communities. As bodies were still being counted and terrorists still wreaking havoc, many street demonstrations erupted around the world – not in solidarity with the victims, but in celebration of their slaughter.

In city after city, we saw rallies that glorified the killers rather than mourning the victims, insisting the massacre was “resistance”. UN Secretary-General António Guterres deployed his infamous line that the attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”

And just like that, what little global sympathy existed for the Israeli victims of this murderous, unprovoked cross-border attack, launched in violation of a ceasefire, began to evaporate.

The narrative flipped: Palestinians were simply breaking free from Israel’s “cruel prison” and the story was no longer about the victims of Hamas, but the Palestinians themselves who were now facing a “terrible onslaught” by Israel.

But the narrative was false, and the so-called solidarity shown to the “suffering” of innocent Palestinian civilians was, for the most part, and as demonstrated so clearly by South Africa, insincere.

The international community never cared about Palestinian ‘suffering’, because if it did, where were the marches in 1991 when Kuwait expelled tens of thousands of Palestinians after Arafat backed Saddam Hussein?

Where were the protests when Lebanon imposed severe entry restrictions on Palestinians fleeing the ghastly civil war in Syria?

Where were the global voices demanding Arab states give Palestinians citizenship and equal rights, rather than keeping their fellow Arabs as stateless aliens in their host countries?

And above all else, why did virtually no one mention the one thing that could have done the most to relieve the suffering of Gazan civilians during the war their Hamas rulers launched – for Egypt to have opened its shared border with Gaza thereby allowing Palestinians to flee to a place of safety, as normally happens in almost every other war.

In reality, the “pro-Palestinian” movement has never been about human rights or ending their suffering, but only demonising Israel.

South Africa, the self-appointed global “defender of Palestinians”, proved that.

While the origin of the flight that arrived on their doorstep remains murky and allegations continue to be levelled at Israel or at unnamed NGOs, none of that is particularly relevant. Because here were Palestinians supposedly fleeing “genocide”, and South Africa refused them entry.

South Africa, whose theatrics at the International Court of Justice resembled a modern Salem witch hunt just exposed their own hypocrisy with startling clarity. They wanted to show the world how immoral Israel supposedly was – and how moral South Africa claimed to be, but in reality they did the complete opposite.

But it was not only their hypocrisy exposed, but all those who claim to care about Palestinians.

Because how could any moral country – even for a second – deny safe passage to people it itself says are escaping a situation of ‘genocide’?

We have seen this time and time again.

Hamas murders Palestinians in broad daylight – silence.

Queen Rania of Jordan condemned the world for “ignoring Palestinian suffering” – while her own country refused to take in any as refugees.

Egypt has loudly condemned Israel and warned of ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘genocide’, while keeping the Rafah border closed to most Gazans.

So just where are the countries that pound their chests about Palestinian suffering? When given the chance, South Africa, Egypt, Jordan, and Qatar did nothing. Actually, Qatar did do something: it housed the Hamas masterminds of October 7 in five-star luxury hotels.

Under enormous pressure, South Africa did eventually let most of the stranded Palestinians in, even as its Foreign Minister defiantly insisted that Pretoria “no longer wants any flights to our territory.”

The refusal to help ordinary Palestinians wanting to leave a war zone – even as refugees were welcomed from Ukraine or Syria – exposes spectacular hypocrisy and tells us something even more important.

Either the governments that accuse Israel of ‘genocide’ actually believe that it is better that Palestinians die than be allowed to leave or, more likely, they always knew this was never a genocide at all, but simply saw repeating this false claim as a useful tool to demonise the Jewish state.

Justin Amler is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).