The Planeload of Gazans Arriving in South Africa – a Saga of Silence and Misdirection
There is something deeply wrong with the way this story has been framed in South Africa. For a week, the country has been fed a fake narrative that suits the political and activist sector that favors casting Israel as a malignant player. The South African media swallowed it whole, without questioning the source, the motives, or the glaring contradictions.
On 13 November a commercial jet belonging to Global Airways landed at OR Tambo Airport, Johannesburg carrying 153 people from Gaza. They had lawfully departed from Gaza through the Israeli Keren Shalom crossing to Ramon Airport, a civil (not military) airport near Eilat in Israel, and had flown to Nairobi, Kenya.
For 9 hours, Border Control officials barred them from disembarking from the aircraft due to lack of documentation. They did not have exit customs stamps of Israel and entry visas to South Africa. They had not sought refugee status with the United Nations prior to their departure. Nor had they applied for asylum under South African immigration or refugee law. The Department of Home Affairs was apparently unaware of their arrival and regarded their entry as illegal. Eventually, 130 were granted 90-day tourist visas and entered South Africa under the care of Gift of the Givers. The remainder transferred to their ultimate destination.
A single storyline has dominated. Imtiaz Sooliman of Gift of the Givers presented himself as the heroic interpreter of the crisis. Politicians claimed confusion and ignorance. Commentators repeated the same talking points and as usual blamed Israel for everything and blindly accepted the Palestinian Authority’s version without hesitation or scrutiny.
Yet the one group that the media should have been listening to has been completely sidelined. The people who actually made the journey from Gaza to South Africa.
The Testimonies That Change Everything
While newsrooms were still recycling press statements, Tim Flack (https://x.com/tim_meh87) did the basic work that journalism used to value. He spoke to the individuals involved.
Two Gazan women spoke to Flack independently. One who is in South Africa and another who travelled to Indonesia. Both used the Al Majd humanitarian pathway that has been operating quietly and legally. Both voluntarily applied to leave Gaza. Both willingly boarded the flights. Both thanked Al Majd and Israel for coordinating their safe exit.
According to Tim Flack, their testimonies destroy the pre-packaged narrative about abandonment, scams, trafficking, forced removal and Imtiaz Sooliman’s new buzzword “Ethnic Cleansing.”
Obviously, these testimonies contradict the claims made by Sooliman who thrived by pushing for an investigation by the South African President, who took to the media in an Al Jazeera style operation of blaming Israel at all costs. The testimony of these women clearly undermines the political theatre that played out in South Africa.
The Palestinian Authority’s Attempt to Control the Story
One of the women shared a WhatsApp directive that was allegedly sent by the Palestinian Embassy in South Africa. It was not a request. It was an instruction.
Translation: “We are about to issue an official press statement regarding the situation of the Palestinian group that arrived from Palestine. It is very important that you all commit to not issuing any statements on social media and not communicating with any press outlet. If any journalists contact you, please direct them to speak with Sara. [Presumably Sara Oosthuizen from Gift Of the Givers] The purpose of these instructions is not to restrict your freedom, but to protect your privacy and to ensure a better legal situation for you. We do not want any statements being made outside the approved framework, because that would create obstacles for the group.”
No talking to media. No social media posts.
Only speak to a designated individual who is not even a government official named Sara Oosthuizen who works for Gift of the Givers.
No public statements outside the approved framework.
This is a gag and classic political repression disguised as advice.
Even more sinister, she claims the Palestinian Authority forced the embassy in Indonesia to cancel visas earlier in the year, just as another group of Gazans was preparing to leave. Those visas were unduly revoked under political pressure.
This raises important questions.
Why did the Palestinian Authority attempt to block people from escaping Gaza legally and peacefully? Is it because the orderly and legal emigration of Gazans does not fit the so beloved Palestinian narrative of Gaza being an open-air prison? Is the media ignoring this? Is South Africa’s media controlled and manipulated by the government or perhaps by Imtiaz Sooliman?
Why are journalists not interrogating the actions of the Palestinian Authority with the same intensity and zeal they apply to Israel? Is it because they are the prime suspects in trying to ensure the passengers from Gaza never left the plane, or is this just another covert operation by DIRCO, hidden from their own government, to bring Palestinians illegally into South Africa? Or perhaps Gift of the Givers trying to once again to pull the wool over so many South African’s eyes in portraying itself as the humanitarian savior. Thus, serving the real agenda of his associates in the Coalition for Good or Francesca Albanese denouncing Israel and crying “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” and “genocide”. Some light cast will certainly backfire on these claims.
South Africa Knew. South Africa Approved. The Flight Was Legal.
The story about South Africa being blindsided does not stand up to scrutiny. This was not the first but the second flight of Gazans to South Africa.
Palestinians do not require visas for visits up to ninety days. It’s on the South African Department of Home Affairs website. The South African government officially announced in September 2023 that Palestinians with valid Palestinian passports are visa-exempt travellers. The only requirements for entry are valid travel documents and perhaps proof of resources for accommodation and intent to return.
Israel has not stamped exit passports since 2013. Israel publicly stated that the exit was coordinated.
The flight could not have landed without South African approval as the third country.
France24 confirmed that the unnamed third country was South Africa itself.
Air traffic control at OR Tambo was always in the know about the incoming flight and its landing schedule.
Despite all of this, South African media outlets continue to promote the idea that the passengers arrived in some irregular fashion.
The facts say otherwise. The law says otherwise. The testimony of the Gazan women says otherwise.
The Real Scandal Is the Media Silence
Several questions remain unanswered.
Why are these testimonies not being platformed? Why do the media outlets in South Africa not pursue or investigate the story that Flack has exposed? Why has no investigative journalist demanded answers from the Embassy of the Palestinian Authority regarding these damaging allegations of thinly veiled gagging threats and pressure? Why have Sooliman’s claims not been interrogated against the evidence now available? Why is the public only hearing one story when multiple independent accounts point in a different direction altogether?
The answer points to a quiescent mainstream media subservient to the South African government, the Embassy of the Palestinian Authority in South Africa and the Gift of the Givers being their enablers and abetters. The shabby truth is that once the Rainbow Nation, South Africa is now a country where crime and corruption are part of the unwritten constitution, and in step with this decline, turned its foreign policy against true democratic Western interests and values to which it pays lip service. Instead, it is embracing BRICS and the so-called global South, which includes rogue nations such as Iran. It pursues a perverted and hypocritical stance on human rights, which is passive about the ongoing atrocities in Sudan, Yemen and of course massacres of Christians in Nigeria and other African countries.
The Narrative Machine Has Been Exposed
This saga is not only about a flight from Gaza. It is about how narratives are manufactured, manipulated, and spun, and how easily journalists abandon independence and human empathy. The human aspirations of the Gazan travellers and their quest for a better life does not seem to be a topic worthy of pursuit.
Journalism is debased when a particular narrative, in this instance, demonisation of Israel, becomes paramount, either because it aligns with their preferred worldview or they abandon seeking the truth as their jobs are more important.
A Call for Accountability
This is not complicated. When people who survived the Gaza war speak, the responsible act is to listen to their personal account. There was no shortage of tearful accounts of Gazan suffering during the war but suddenly this is reversed when Gazans leaving for a better life wish to tell their story. Ignoring them is a moral and journalistic failure.
Two Gazan women, thousands of kilometres apart, told the same thing. They explained how they left Gaza legally, willingly, and with gratitude. They explained how they were pressured and intimidated after landing. They explained how the Palestinian Authority played a disruptive role.
If the media continues to ignore the facts and the truth, the silence will speak louder than any statement they have published so far. The truth is available. The testimonies are real. The evidence is growing. It is time for the media to step up and ask the questions they should have been asking from the very beginning.