Gift of the Givers attacks Jews and Christians in “medieval” video

Prominent humanitarian organisation Gift of the Givers (GOTG) has targeted Jews and Christians in a TikTok video posted on its social media platforms on 4 February. This follows a long record of the organisation and its founder, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, spouting antisemitic tropes and peddling conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel. 

GOTG shared a video made by a South African content creator, Dene Cohen, whose platform, Delivered by Christ, has more than 280 000 followers on TikTok and almost 19 000 subscribers on YouTube. In the video, Cohen said, “You cannot be a Christian and support Israel. To use Christianity to support these monsters [Israelis] … you [Christian Zionists] are an abomination and a heresy to the church.” 

She stated that “modern-day Zionists” and Jews think Jesus is a “pervert” and a “sinner” who has been condemned to exist in a “pot of hot excrement”, which she based on one obscure video. She repeated several times that this was what all Jews believe. 

“This is what they’re teaching their children in Israel,” Cohen stated. “How can you tell me you support Israel when they are not the original Israelites from the Bible? You think these Jews walking around here are Israelites? You think these Jews aiding genocide are Israelites? Please do not support Israel. They are identity thieves. 

“If I see any Christian supporting Israel, you are not a Christian,” Cohen said. “This is why they are inviting pastors over to Israel. To indoctrinate them with rubbish, and then they lie to the world and say, ‘We love our Christian brothers and sisters.’ But in Israel, in their schools, in their synagogues, they teach that Jesus was a pervert.” 

GOTG shared the video with the caption, “You cannot be a Christian and support Israel.” The organisation then asked followers to contribute money to its “interventions in Palestine”. It also posted a comment on the post saying that GOTG “operates on a philosophy that aligns with justice, equity, and the provision of aid to all, regardless of race, religion, colour, class or political affiliation, focusing on servicing humanity with dignity and impartiality”. 

An outspoken Christian, Tim Flack, responded to the post saying, “As a Christian and as a South African, I find this video profoundly offensive. It borders on infringing on my rights as a citizen.” 

He noted that Cohen “doesn’t merely express a political view. She declares Christians who support Israel to be an ‘abomination’ and attempts to police Christian faith. As Christians and as South Africans, we are entitled to ask, does Gift of the Givers stand by this message? Humanitarian work doesn’t grant licence to attack religious communities or undermine the rights that protect us all.” 

On 26 November 2025, GOTG posted a notice on its social media platforms asking its followers to refrain from “hate speech, racism, discrimination, harassment, or any form of incitement to violence”. This was after the SA Jewish Report wrote about how antisemitism is allowed to proliferate in the comments section of the organisation’s online pages. The notice stated that “any individual found engaging in harmful or abusive behaviour will be removed and blocked”. 

However, GOTG continues to post content targeting South Africans and continues to allow its followers to post abusive and antisemitic comments on its social media platforms. Predictably, these came thick and fast in response to Cohen’s video, and they weren’t deleted. 

David May, a research manager at United States (US) think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is the co-author of a recent paper titled “Hiding in Plain Sight: A Playbook for Combating Hamas in South Africa”, which states that the US Treasury “should investigate the extent to which Gift of the Givers and its leadership, including [Imtiaz] Sooliman, may be acting or purporting to act on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Hamas”. 

In response to the video, May told the SA Jewish Report that GOTG had “frequently ventured into open antisemitism”. It’s “truly bizarre” that a group that proclaims to support justice, regardless of race, religion, colour, class, or political affiliation “would veer from its mission to promote a video calling for hatred of Jews”, May said. If this is what Gift of the Givers feels comfortable promoting via social media, “their private beliefs about Jews are likely even more bigoted”, he said. 

Daniel Yakobi, the director of South African Friends of Israel, says GOTG is “hiding behind humanitarian causes. Its real mission is to dehumanise Christians and Jews alike. History shows that theological narratives that strip a people of their covenant, dignity, or purpose create permission for hatred. That isn’t just dangerous for Jews, it poisons any society that claims to value coexistence.” 

We must therefore “challenge teachings that diminish others, and stand firmly for the full humanity of the Jewish people”, says Yakobi. “Silence in the face of harmful ideas isn’t neutrality, it is complicity.” 

Rolene Marks, spokesperson for the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF), asks, “Since when does a humanitarian organisation get to dictate to Christians how they should practise their faith or who qualifies as a ‘real’ Christian?” Millions of Christians around the world, Marks says, “support Israel for deeply held spiritual, historical, and moral reasons. Attempting to police Christians while spreading lies about Jews is religious intolerance.” 

A “high-profile, government-connected” organisation amplifying this material “reflects a serious collapse of neutrality and integrity,” Marks says. 

This isn’t the first time GOTG and its leadership “have crossed the line into extremist messaging, including rhetoric that mirrors Hamas propaganda”, she says. Sharing content that “demonises Jews and attempts to drive a wedge between Jewish and Christian communities exposes a clear ideological agenda that raises legitimate questions about the organisation’s credibility”. 

The claims in the video are “demonstrably false and deliberately inflammatory”, concludes Marks. “Jewish historical and cultural continuity is supported by overwhelming historical, archaeological, and genetic evidence. Israel remains the only country in the Middle East where Christian communities are legally protected and free to practise their religion.” 

South African Jewish Board of Deputies consultant David Saks says GOTG provides a platform for propagating “religious bigotry of the most crass and inflammatory kind”, more reminiscent of “medieval Europe than our own more enlightened times”. 

In addition, GOTG promotes the “fake Jews” theory, which “seeks to write the Jewish people out of history by denying them their identity and portraying them as historical frauds”, Saks says. 

Emeritus Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town, Milton Shain, agrees that it’s “astonishing” that in the 21st century, GOTG platforms a video that “harks back to ugly medieval Christian-Jewish disputations. One would have thought that crude polemics of this sort had been relegated to the dustbin of history. They are unbefitting of our times.”