Sooliman says Gaza war will ‘end Israel’

Gift of the Givers (GOTG) founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman is a globally-recognised humanitarian, but his venom and hatred towards Israel and the Jewish people is becoming more and more overt and ugly.

He has now made it clear that he wants Israel to be obliterated. “This war isn’t the end of Gaza, this war is the end of Israel. It’s going to happen very, very soon,” he said to applause at the Congress of Business and Economics (CBE) gala dinner and awards evening in Johannesburg on 23 November, a rabidly anti-Israel event.

His statement comes in the wake of his antisemitic rant at a pro-Hamas rally on 5 October 2024; GOTG allowing antisemitic graphics and comments on its Facebook page; and questions about GOTG funding Hamas.

While some South Africans would like Sooliman to be their next president, he took on some age-old antisemitic tropes at the event when he said, “The ICJ [International Court of Justice] case did something more important than taking Israel to court. It showed them that we have nothing to fear. Because they rule the world with fear, with money, with power, with influence. They’re getting away with their deception, their lies, their control, and their power. It’s time to expose who they are, what they do, the lies they speak, the people they control.”

Sooliman was keynote speaker at the CBE event where the congress, a Muslim business forum, presented awards honouring the South African government and legal team who took Israel to the ICJ on charges of genocide.

Sooliman told the audience, “The Zionists put fear into you. I expect all of you not to be afraid of anybody. They tell you they’ve got money, we’ve got money too. They say they’ve got legal teams, we’ve got legal teams too. They say they have power, we have power too. They have influence, we have influence too. You’re defending genocide, we’re defending humanity. You lose. Seventy-six years of lies they’ve exposed to the world. It’s not going to take another 76 years to free Gaza. It will happen very soon.”

He went on to recount how Israel’s challenges were evidence of its imminent demise, and said these challenges were being hidden from the world. “They haven’t told you that two million Israeli citizens have left. That it’s difficult to get a doctor, because so many medical professionals have left. That the war has cost them $120 billion [R2.1 trillion]. That they’ve lost investment.”

Describing all Israelis as “settlers”, he said, “Two hundred and fifty thousand settlers are now living as refugees in the country, and the government has to support them.” He described how tourism to Israel and within it has dropped “because Israelis are too tired, afraid, and broken” to travel inside the country. He mentioned that Israelis were suffering from mental-health challenges, but at no point said that the attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah were behind the trauma of 7 October, the internal refugee crisis, and the lack of travel and tourism.

Sooliman repeated his recently-spouted conspiracy theory that Israel has to “borrow people from Africa to fight for them”, and then said that Israeli soldiers don’t want to go to war because they don’t have the “guts, strength, and resilience to fight. These are cowards.”

David May, research manager at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, DC-based research institute focusing on security and foreign policy, says he believes Sooliman’s November address may be even more concerning than his 5 October rant.

“Sooliman has doubled down on the overt antisemitism he expressed in October. He repeated his conspiratorial trope that the Zionists – in other words, Jews – control the world through money, power, influence, and fear,” May says.

“It’s shocking that the founder of a respected humanitarian organisation would spew such vile antisemitism using the veneer of humanitarian work, and the global resurgence in acceptance of antisemitism, to espouse views rife with classic antisemitic tropes,” he says. “Sooliman’s dehumanisation of displaced Israelis – falsely castigating them as ‘settlers’ – and jihadist view of Israel’s supposed demise present a person who is firmly ensconced ideologically in the Hamas camp.”

Antisemitism expert Professor Milton Shain says, “Sooliman strikes me as a desperate man whose dream of destroying Israel via his friends in Iran and that country’s Middle Eastern proxies has come to nought.” But Shain says this shouldn’t allow him to employ “conspiracy theories and well-worn anti-Jewish tropes, such as his reference to Zionist ‘money, power, and influence’.

“Sooliman simply lies. Two million Israelis haven’t emigrated from Israel in the wake of the war, and it’s not true that Israelis are struggling to find a medical doctor,” Shain says. “The rest of the figures he cites are hopelessly wrong. In essence, for Sooliman, the only good Jew is one who shares his narrative. Forget about a two-state solution, which is still the South African government’s position, or reconciliation. The conflict is black and white for this doctor turned preacher.”

Shaun Sacks of NGO Monitor, a globally-recognised research institute working to ensure that society operates with accountability, transparency, and universal human rights, believes that Sooliman has adopted some of the “most venomous conspiracy theories regarding Israel and Zionism. His rhetoric employs language such as ‘world rule’ and ‘control by money’, historically associated with antisemitic tropes.

“These phrases, when directed at Jews, are widely recognised as deeply hateful and harmful,” Sacks says. “Yet, Sooliman appears to assume immunity from criticism by redirecting these age-old prejudices under the guise of anti-Zionist rhetoric. This thinly-veiled approach is a stark reminder of how antisemitic tropes continue to resurface – reframed and repurposed – even in modern discourse.”

Hate speech expert, advocate Mark Oppenheimer, says, “One of the crucial reasons to safeguard free speech is that it reveals the true beliefs of pernicious actors in society. Sooliman’s own words lay bare his disdain for Israel, his rejection of its legitimacy at its founding, and his yearning for its destruction. He celebrates Israeli suffering, takes pleasure in the displacement of 250 000 internal refugees, and revels in the economic and psychological harm inflicted on Israelis. Far from being the humanitarian he claims to be, Sooliman’s rhetoric exposes a man consumed by hatred for Israel.”

South African Jewish Board of Deputies analyst Adam Charnas says, “It’s highly regrettable that an organisation and a leader who has such a history of assisting those in need – without reference to race or religion – has descended into perpetuating classic antisemitic tropes.

“Once again, Sooliman embarked on an extended rant about the malign control that Jews supposedly exercise, a core theme of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other classic antisemitic tracts,” says Charnas. “Far from walking back on his previously antisemitic ravings, Sooliman has evidently decided to double down on them. An additionally unsettling aspect of his rhetoric is the inflammatory ‘us against them’ terms in which it is framed, which may be read as pitting Muslims against Jews. It’s concerning that Sooliman’s statements have become so conspiratorial, confused, contradictory, and delusional.”