Israel blends ethnic cleansing and human trafficking
Jared Sacks The Electronic Intifada 12 December 2025
The designs of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump for Gaza must be rejected.
Shawn Thew UPIOn 14 November, South Africa was abuzz with news that about 150 Palestinian refugees from Gaza were being held on the tarmac at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. Even though Palestinians did not require a visa at that time, they were unable to enter the country because they could not tick a few bureaucratic boxes such as having proof of accommodation while in the country.
There was significant pressure from protesters who showed up at the arrivals area in the airport for the Palestinians to be permitted entry. Some civil society organizations also intervened.
When campaigners convinced Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, to overrule the callous decision to deny entry taken by the Border Management Authority, most of the Palestinians were allowed to come into the country. Nearly two dozen others were able to board flights for other countries, where they have family or friends.
The buzz involved widespread misinformation shared on social media, as well as in some mainstream news outlets.
One claim made by pro-Israel sources was that the Gift of the Givers Foundation – a humanitarian aid group – had brought the refugees to South Africa and dumped them at the airport. The intent behind this claim was to rile up xenophobic sentiment – which is exactly what happened.
Many social media accounts started claiming that Gift of the Givers’ founder Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman had paid for the flights himself.
One account on X (formerly Twitter) bearing the name Simon Rossouw called Gift of the Givers a terrorist organization and argued that its support for refugees was “a middle finger to all people who died” fighting for freedom from apartheid. Rossouw also warned – without evidence – that “Hamas is now fully entrenched in South Africa.”
Others claimed – again without evidence – that the arrival of the Palestinians in Johannesburg constituted a security risk and blamed the African National Congress (ANC). Even The Kiffness – a racist comedian famous in South Africa – jumped into the fray in his typical Islamophobic manner and had a go at Imtiaz Sooliman.
The danger here was real. The spread of xenophobic rhetoric and violence in South Africa, usually limited to Africans from other parts of the continent, is now also being directed at Palestinians.
The situation worked in favor of xenophobic groups like the Operation Dudula and the Patriotic Alliance, which supports Israeli apartheid and has denied the genocide taking place in Gaza.
Of course, these xenophobic groups opportunistically elide the fact that Palestinian refugees entering South Africa are compelled to do so precisely because of the atrocities Israel is committing against the Palestinians.
Why do the xenophobes support Israel which is the root cause of this crisis? Critical thinking has never really been their strong suit.
Trafficking
After further investigation, it was discovered that while the refugees were indeed fleeing the Gaza genocide, the trafficking operation which brought them to South Africa was facilitated not by Gift of the Givers or any other pro-Palestinian organization, but by Israel itself.
What was behind the sudden arrival of Palestinian refugees from Gaza?
After the misinformation spread blaming Gift of the Givers for bringing refugees to South Africa, civil society activists began doing their own research.
They found out that an unregistered nongovernmental organization called Al-Majd Europe had chartered the Romanian carrier, Flyyo Airlines, to take the Palestinian refugees to Nairobi. There, the refugees were put on another flight operated by South Africa’s Lift Airlines to take them to Johannesburg.
Investigations into Al-Majd Europe led to the conclusion that it is not a well-meaning humanitarian initiative. Rather, it appears to be a front group for human traffickers.
Its website is, to put it mildly, suspect. Much of the content appears to be generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
The group claims to be headquartered in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem. Yet that information appears to be fake.
Al-Majd claims on its website that its coordinators are two men named Adnan and Muayad. No surnames are given for the men.
I checked the photos of the two men on the Al-Majd website using an AI detector app. According to the app, the photos were almost certainly AI-generated.
While Al-Majd says that the organization was founded in Germany in 2010, there is no evidence of the group’s existence before its website was launched in February this year.
Donations through the well-known online processor Stripe are currently not functioning, so the only way to send Al-Majd money is through untraceable cryptocurrency transfers.
Reports indicate that Al-Majd was charging between $1,500 and $2,700 per person to take Palestinians out of Gaza. Those that arrived in Johannesburg on 14 November, as well as another group that arrived in South Africa the previous week, had filled out an online form and transferred the money to personal accounts, after which they were transported through Kerem Shalom, an Israeli-controlled boundary crossing in Gaza.
At the crossing, the Israeli army stole virtually all their belongings, leaving them with nothing but their passports and a little bit of money.
Once allowed into Israel, they were driven to Ramon Airport and put on the chartered plane. They were promised to be taken to countries such as India and Malaysia, but were surprised when they arrived in South Africa instead.
It gets worse.
Investigations by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, not only link Al-Majd to the Israeli government, but also demonstrate that it operates as a tool of Israeli military policy in Gaza.
Al-Majd, Haaretz discovered, was being run by an Israeli-Estonian national named Tomer Janar Lind who, according to a follow-up report by France24, has ties to a billionaire supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Removing Palestinians from Palestine
Al-Majd has been operating in close cooperation with Israel’s so-called Voluntary Emigration Bureau. This is a division of the defense ministry created earlier this year for the sole purpose of using the apocalyptic conditions that Israel has created as a pretext to remove as many Palestinians as possible from Palestine.
As no country in the world is willing to directly accept Palestinians ethnically cleansed from Gaza, Israel cannot reach formal agreements with third states on accepting people pushed out of Gaza.
The situation is one which Israel can exploit. Israel is able to claim it is allowing “humanitarian” exits from Gaza, while also maintaining plausible deniability of the fact that it is actually facilitating human trafficking.
Israel is able to claim it is not involved and, in effect, shift the blame for how Palestinians are being treated onto Al-Majd and the countries of destination.
It is not a coincidence that Palestinian refugees are ending up in South Africa. Rather, it seems calculated for at least two reasons.
Firstly, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government wishes to punish South Africa for takingIsrael to the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention. And secondly, Israel and its supporters have fomented a xenophobic media storm that undermines the South African government’s humanitarian actions.
South Africa – not Israel – would be blamed if it was to reject entry to Palestinian refugees on the grounds that accepting them would be enabling Israel’s illegal removal of the Palestinian population from Gaza.
South Africa did the right thing by accepting these Palestinian refugees, who showed up unannounced on our doorstep. We cannot reject people fleeing a genocide.
But the world cannot allow Israel to continue to depopulate Gaza – first by making the enclave uninhabitable, and then trafficking survivors to other countries so that US President Donald Trump and his real estate buddies can take over the land and buildtheir “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Unfortunately, instead of holding Al-Majd and similar fronts for Israeli policy to account, the South African government has instead chosen to withdraw its 90-day visa exemption policy for Palestinians. This will collectively punish all Palestinians traveling to South Africa, making it extremely difficult for Palestinians to seek asylum in the country, rather than ensuring a ban specifically on these Israeli-backed human trafficking operations.
More broadly, the recent US resolution at the United Nations Security Council authorizing a “stabilization force” in Gaza will only entrench the occupation, giving Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign an aura of legitimacy. This attack on the Palestinian right to self-determination will not end the genocide, but instead keep it going for years to come.
We must oppose Trump’s designs for Gaza, designs which will allow Israel to continue to facilitate the human trafficking of Palestinians to South Africa and elsewhere.
South Africa and all the other nations of the world must unite in opposing this strategy.
The only solutions are the end of the genocide and the end of the blockade of Gaza – both of which have continued despite Trump’s so-called “ceasefire.” The Israeli forces of occupation must be expelled immediately from Gaza, unlimited amounts of humanitarian aid must be allowed in, and the reconstruction of Gaza by Palestinians and for Palestinians must be foregrounded as the way forward.
Jared Sacks is an activist, writer and member of South African Jews for a Free Palestine.