Humanitarian Organization or Front for Terror?

A small disclaimer: I originally wrote this for a South African audience who are frequently ignorant or misinformed about the situation in Israel, and I would still like it to be read by such people, so please pardon any over-explaining on my part of concepts with which most readers of this site are undoubtedly already all too familiar.

Since Hamas declared war on the state of Israel on 7 October last year with its unspeakably barbaric spree of rape, torture, mutilation and murder across southern Israel, the response by many in the international community has been… less than ideal. Sometimes surprisingly so, sometimes decidedly not. The rise in antisemitism and – as UK journalist and author, Jake Wallace Simons, accurately terms it – Israelophobia, has shaken Jewish communities worldwide almost as much as the events of October 7^th themselves.

The sheer scale and savagery of Hamas’ attack was unimaginable, to be sure, but Hamas is a radical Islamist Jihadi organization that has never hidden its intentions to murder Jews and destroy Israel. And though it was certainly no surprise that radical Islamists and their sympathizers would celebrate the attacks, it was a genuine shock to discover just how far and how deep their tendrils reached.

The UN has been a lost cause for decades, and I don’t think there was any surprise by anyone following the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict over the years that the Palestinian Authority would tacitly condone the attack or that UNRWA, the United Nation Relief and Work Agency tasked solely with maintaining (in every sense of the word) Palestinian refugees, had become just another arm of Hamas, but the same certainly wasn’t true of the many respected individuals, institutions and NGOs – many of which had been actively supported by Jews for decades – that would follow suit.

Whether it’s the ANC’s one-sided view of the conflict and outright support of Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran, Amnesty International literally changing the definition of “genocide” in order to accuse Israel of it, or a recent event at the once-hallowed Oxford Union where a debate on whether Israel is “an Apartheid genocidal state” quickly devolved into a pro-Hamas hate–fest, it seems like little is safe from the corruptive forces of this toxic ideology.

Arguably the most insidious form of this Jihadi infiltration, though, comes in the form of one of South Africa’s largest charitable organizations; one that should be very familiar to most of us: Gift of the Givers.

A Force for Good?

Established in 1992 by Imtiaz Ismail Sooliman, Gift of the Givers (Waqful Waqfin, as it is known in Arabic) is a humanitarian organization that has provided billions of rands in aid to people suffering the consequences of natural disasters and wars, worldwide. It was founded in South Africa and South Africa remains its home base, but it is a truly international organization with branches across the globe and close affiliations with other international and South African NGOs.

It has, quite unquestionably, done a tremendous amount of good in the world. It has provided medical care and humanitarian aid to those in desperate need of both in the developing world – most especially in Africa and the Middle East. Whether caring for Iraqi civilians affected by the US/ Iraq war, building nurseries in Mauritania, being intimately involved in the rescue of hostages in Yemen in 2014, providing aid to those caught in the Syrian civil war, or helping victims of Turkey’s devastating earthquake in 2023, Gift of the Givers has saved and immeasurably improved the lives of countless people worldwide.

This is all entirely true. It is also entirely true that it is registered as an Islamic institution in South Africa, clearly prioritizes helping Muslim countries, and operates within Gaza and Lebanon. None of this is remotely problematic in and of itself, of course. Charities focused on particular communities, or religious groups are often the most effective, and Gaza and Lebanon are two territories often in dire need of humanitarian assistance. And, intrinsically, there’s nothing more problematic about an organization started and run by committed Muslims being “pro-Palestinian”, than organizations started and run by committed Jews being “pro-Israel”.

These things only matter, ultimately, because of how they may be linked to a dark underside of the organization; a place where Islam becomes radical Islamism, being pro-Palestinian becomes being pro-Hamas, and helping Palestinian civilians during the war becomes supporting Jihadist organizations.

Gift of the Givers is an organization that does tremendous good, there’s no question about that. But what if those good actions are tainted by sinister intentions? Worse, what if all the good Gift of the Givers does is used precisely as a cover for its wrongs?

Shady Origins

To understand Sooliman and Gift of the Givers, we have to turn back to 1991. Just one year before founding his ground-breaking and best-known charity, Sooliman founded the South African chapter of the Al Aqsa International Foundation – which as its name suggests, was the local branch of an international charity supporting exclusively Palestinian causes. Again, this wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself if not for the established fact that numerous intelligence agencies worldwide have flagged strong links between Al-Aqsa International and Hamas.

Indeed, it’s worth understanding just how Hamas makes its money. And make no mistake, for all that some love to paint the terror organization as poor, scrappy underdogs, they’re literally anything but. Hamas’ leaders are some of the richest people on earth, with personal worth in the billions of dollars. They have contributed nothing to the world but death and destruction, and none of them come from anything resembling wealth, so how precisely have they made that much money? And how, for that matter, has Hamas managed to build “terror tunnels” that are more extensive than the London Underground, amassed a seemingly endless supply of weapons, and effectively turned Gaza into the biggest terror base in the world? Such things do not come cheap.

Along with copious support from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas is funded through two primary methods: 1) stealing from their “own” people, hundreds of millions of dollars a year in international humanitarian aid and 2) fund-raising directly through established charities that act as legitimate fronts for terror.

It’s notable then, that just one year after starting the South African chapter of Al-Aqsa International – the same year, incidentally, that Hamas aimed for legitimacy by founding its political bureau – Sooliman jumped ship from the Al-Aqsa charity, handing the reins to Sheik Ebrahim Gabriels (aka Ibrahim Jibril), and established a far more respectable humanitarian organization without obvious links to Jihadist, or even particularly Islamic, organizations.

In an interview that Sooliman gave to Hilaal TV, he had this to say about his decision, which he credits as being based on instruction by a spiritual advisor in Turkey: “And then of course the instruction came to create Gift of the Givers and we handed that [Al-Aqsa] over. Because we were not going to concentrate on one country only. We were not going to concentrate on Islamic causes only. We were going to focus on our country and our people because charity starts with those next to you.”

Crucially, though, this did not mean a complete parting of ways from the Al-Aqsa Foundation. Far from it. Sooliman, in the same interview, went on to clarify, “But of course we don’t forget the bigger picture. So in between we made ad hoc donations to Al Aqsa Foundation, maybe R50 000, R100 000, R200 000″.

As for the Al-Aqsa Foundation’s new South African head, Sheik Gabriels would also go onto chair the South African branch of the Al-Quds International Foundation and the Muslim Judicial Council. Both Al-Aqsa and Al-Quds have been sanctioned by the United States treasury for proven ties to Hamas, along with other Islamic NGOs that would fall under the ironically named Union (or Coalition) of Good that was founded in 2000. But more on that in a bit.

Now, obviously, all this might be entirely co-incidental, and you could perhaps even make the case that Sooliman left Al-Aqsa International after learning of its Jihadist underpinnings. The problem, though, is that everything that came after this – not least Sooliman’s own views – suggests something far more sinister.

Shadier Associations

For all of his attempts to re-establish himself as a humanist and a moderate Muslim with Gift of the Givers, the people and organization with whom he has associated over the years – along with a notable lack of transparency in Gift of the Givers’ financial transaction – paint a very different picture. As, in fact, do some of his public views.

In many respects, it all comes back to his association with the afore mentioned Union of Good and its chairman, Sheik Yusuf al Qaradawi. Al-Qaradari, who died in 2022, seems to have been something of a complicated figure himself who has at times been described as a “moderate Islamist” and an “Islamic modernist” – the fact that he’s daughter is a nuclear physicist surely bears this out – but was also a notable part of the “intellectual leadership” of Hamas’ parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, and unabashedly endorsed Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis and against US soldiers in Iraq.

There seems to be little about the Union of Good that’s complicated, though. There is substantial evidence that it has been used to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas, leading to it and the charities falling under its purview, being sanctioned by the United States Treasury, who unlike our government, correctly designate Hamas a terrorist organization.

This what the US Treasury had to say in 2008 when it imposed sanctions on the Union of Good:

“Union of Good was designated today under Executive Order 13224, which targets terrorists, terrorist organizations, and those providing financial, technological, or material support to terrorists, terrorist organizations, or acts of terrorism.”

One might perhaps ask what this has to do with Gift of the Givers, but it’s hardly insignificant that Gift of the Givers can be contacted by phoning the Al-Aqsa Foundation in South Africa and both organizations are indeed listed under the same contact details by the Union of Good. Sooliman also received an award in 2011 from Al-Qaradari in recognition of Gift of the Givers’ “service to Palestine”.

And just what are those “services”?

Though much of the humanitarian work done by Gift of the Givers comes in the form of material services – digging wells, providing medical supplies, providing educational structures, alleviating hunger by providing food – but along with establishing clinics in Gaza (virtually all of which have been used by Hamas to store ammunitions, acts as command centres, and provide access to the terror tunnels), it openly hands out cash to individuals and organizations in Gaza. Further, many of the donations to Gift of the Givers comes in the form of cash – within the South African Muslim community, it has been found that 63% of the givers surveyed had made regular cash contributions. Again, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with any of this and charity is frequently given in the form of cash, but it is notable that cash is much, much harder to trace than electronic transactions.

Sooliman has also met with many known terrorists in the region. Just during his trip to Lebanon during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, he met with PFLP terrorist, Leila Khaled, and toured Beirut’s Dahyeh neighbourhood as the guest of Hezbollah leaders – who, unlike Hamas is Gaza, are not the elected government of Lebanon but military occupiers and a proxy of the Islamic Republic.

Perhaps most damning of all, though, is the appointment of Malik Abou-Rageila as Gift of the Givers’ Palestine Country Manager and founder of the Poor Patient Fund – a division of Gift of the Givers devoted to providing medical aid to Palestinians affected by the war in Gaza. Abou-Rageila is a Gazan doctor who holds a foreign (Egyptian and/or possibly Saudi Arabian) passport and has been living in South Africa since 2009, while being Sooliman’s “point man” in Gaza ever since. He also has crystal-clear terrorist sympathies.

He is, for example, a known associate of Basem Naim, a senior Hamas political figure and former Minister of Health in Gaza. Naim is known to be no one less than the person most responsible for the militarisation of Gaza’s hospitals. Sooliman, himself, describes Abou-Rageila as “the fixer”, who liaises between all Gift of the Givers activities in Gaza and the Hamas controlled Ministry of Health. Abu-Rageila also employed Ahmed Abbasi, a known terrorist, to work for both Gift of the Givers and the Poor Patient Fund, and has never hidden his terrorist sympathies as his Facebook page is filled with tributes to fallen Hamas terrorists.

The Veil Slips

However much Sooliman and Gift of the Givers may have been discrete in the past in terms of their affiliations with Jihadi terrorism, their intentions and affiliations have never been more explicit than they have been since 7 October 2023 – especially over the past few months.

On 5 October 2024, to commemorate one years since Hamas’ massacre of Jews within the sovereign state of Israel, Sooliman joined his protege and associate, Sheik Gabriels, along with members of the radical Islamist group Pagad, at a rally under the banner, “we are all Hamas” and he proceeded to trade in the most tired and well-worn of antisemitic tropes: rich Jews (sorry, “Zionists”) secretly controlling the world with their unlimited wealth.

“Every time we protested, the Zionists were too clever,” Sooliman said. “They were arrogant, acting with impunity, [to]put fear into you. They put fear into corporations, into universities, into communities, into governments, into political parties, into associations. They run the world with fear. They control the world with money. And every time you say something, they terrify you and they say it’s antisemitic. But I’ve got a message for them. Find a new narrative, this one is dull, boring, and stupid.”

That he openly admits to being antisemitic hardly makes him any less so.

In an interview he gave on 7 October 2024, he dug in further by boasting how his actions are governed by Sharia law only: “I don’t follow international law or human law. I follow Koranic law. I’m a Muslim. I don’t need any permission from anybody in the world to tell me what to do. I break the laws all the time. I follow Islamic law, and Islamic law overrides any other law. My law is very clear to me. Allah himself has instructed me. I don’t need men to tell me what to do. I don’t follow them.”

And, indeed, though his words certainly set off alarm bells, it is his actions that are even more troubling.

He, and his organization, has hardly been shy in admitting to hiring a recently deceased French Lawyer, known to represent Hamas their funding and spearheading the ludicrous ICC and ICJ cases against Israel where they have been trying – quite unsuccessfully, on a legal level at least – to paint Israel’s defensive war against Hamas (and Hezbollah who started firing rockets at Israel, unprovoked, from 8 October 2023) as a “genocide”. There is even evidence that he tried to influence the forming of South Africa’s government of national unity (GNU) by pressurizing the ANC to avoid working with anyone that didn’t share their one-sided view of Israel.

But arguably nothing is more damning than the fact that he started the year by relaunching and personally running Al-Qaradari’s Coalition (Union) of Good in South Africa – the purpose of which could hardly be clearer: to continue in the footsteps of his mentor in bringing together Muslim charities in support of Hamas and to dedicate itself to demonizing Israel on a local level. It’s not for nothing after all that he co-founded his Coalition of Good charity with noted Israel-haters, Naledi Pandor, Ronnie Kassrils, Issak Munther, and Frank Chikane.

So, What Now?

Even if you were to argue that none of the above facts are a smoking gun, individually, it’s surely impossible to deny that if you add them all up, things start to look more than slightly fishy. Not least because, this is only a very superficial overview of the many, many reasons we have to be suspicious of Imtiaz Sooliman and his world renowned “humanitarian organization”.

Predictably, any attempt to bring these suspicions to the public eye, especially by members of the South African Jewish community, have been met with hostility. Inevitably, regardless of how much evidence is brought against him, Sooliman and his supporters try to write it all off as more proof of “Zionists” working to undermine the good works of an upstanding Islamic philanthropist.

But this is all rather missing the point. No one in their right mind would deny the incredible good done by Gift of the Givers, but just because it is a highly respected, even revered organization, does that mean it should be above scrutiny? Especially in light of Sooliman’s clear sympathies with Hamas and the way Hamas – and other Jihadists – uses exactly this sort of humanitarian charity as a legitimate front for funding Islamist terrorism?

Of course not.

Because, ultimately, the point here is not to destroy the Gift of the Givers or to take away from its exceptional humanitarian work – quite the opposite. By having Sooliman and his organization properly audited by an impartial (non-South African) third party can hopefully only lead to one of two outcomes, both enormously positive: either to prove Sooliman and Gift of the Givers innocent of any wrongdoing and allowing donors to support the organization without any fear that they may be supporting Jihadism, or to cleanse an organization that contributes so much to the world of any and all corrosive elements. There is, obviously, also the possibility that those corrosive elements are so intertwined with the very foundations of Gift of the Givers that the whole thing would need to be rebuilt from scratch, but if that’s the case then such an audit is even more of a desperate necessity.

Or, more simply, if Mr Sooliman truly has nothing to hide, then he should welcome any opportunity to clear his name. What’s stopping him?