To the Helen Suzman Foundation of South Africa
Dear Naseema Fakir,
Helen Suzman Annual Memorial Lecture: Dr Imtiaz Sooliman
I address this letter to you as head of the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) in the spirit and memory of the late Helen Suzman, in the sincere belief she would be as appalled as I am by what I am now bringing to your attention. The HSF was founded in 1993 to honor the work and legacy of Helen Suzman, the iconic parliamentary opponent of apartheid. She was renowned for her honor and integrity both as a public and private person. While not practicing Judaism actively, she fought antisemitism and was a staunch and vocal supporter of Israel. The stated mission of the HSF is to promote constitutional democracy, rule of law and human rights and to safeguard institutions of constitutional democracy in South Africa.
It has come to my attention that you have invited Dr Imtiaz Sooliman to present the prestigious Helen Suzman Memorial lecture on 11 November 2024. Not too long ago I might have joined you in celebrating this decision and event, believing him to be a majestic humanitarian of global proportions. However, unpalatable information has increasingly come to my attention which I am duty bound to raise with you, which puts a very different light on the persona of Dr Sooliman who we all think we know.
It is in the public interest that the contents of this letter are widely known, including by the donors to the HSF who could be negatively affected by aiding and abetting activities of the HSF which may be in conflict with its own liberal values. For this reason, this letter is being copied to them, and is an open letter in the public interest. Citation of references can be provided.
There is another world inhabited by Dr. Sooliman largely out of the public gaze. It appears that Dr. Sooliman is an ardent and long-time activist in support of radical Palestinian causes, and that the Gift of the Givers, (a translation of the original ‘Waqful Waqifin‘) has a different identity to the one we know: that Dr. Sooliman was instructed to create to promote Islamism through the provision of humanitarian relief to the poor and vulnerable in South Africa and beyond its borders. A task he has undeniably performed admirably and to deserved acclaim but his reach is much further.
Waqful Waqifin/ Gift of the Givers, was in fact the second not-for-profit company created by Dr. Sooliman, the first being the South African branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Al Aqsa Foundation which he created in 1991. This is an Islamic charity committed to Islamic rule and the destruction of the Jewish state. He handed it over to Sheikh Ebrahim Gabriels when he created Gift of the Givers the following year.
I have learnt that the Al Aqsa Foundation formed a part of the Union of Good, established and run by radical Sheik Yusef Al-Qaradawi. It is a highly sophisticated mechanism to transfer international funds to the leadership of Hamas in support the terrorist organization’s illegal activities, and that Sheik Gabriels was South Africa’s representative of this Union. Further that Dr. Sooliman continued to donate to both the Al Aqsa Foundation and that Waqful Waqifin/Gift of the Givers donated directly to the Union of Good, which has since been designated by the US Department of Treasury as supporting terrorism (Executive Order 13224 of November 2008. )
This means that Gift of the Givers may be directly or indirectly financially supporting Hamas.
Regrettably, Dr. Sooliman’s direct association with Al-Qaradawi, who saw fit to honor him with an award for his services to Palestine in 2011, and his known financial support for the designated, Hamas-supporting Union of Good makes him a most unsuitable candidate to give a memorial lecture in memory of Helen Suzman. Al-Qaradawi’s views on jihad and endorsement of suicide bombing appalled Ms. Suzman in her lifetime, and it would be a travesty to celebrate them in her memory.
Based on reliable information from people concerned about unfolding radical Islamist events and their potential impact on ordinary fellow South African citizens, I note that Dr. Sooliman prominently participated in a large rally on 5 October 2023 under the banner of Iranian terror proxies which celebrated the barbaric acts perpetrated by Hamas and other Islamic militants on 7 October 2023.It was recorded and publicly aired on Salaam Media.
I understand that the platform was sponsored by the Al Quds Foundation. Gabriels’ affiliations with a designated terror organizations and his extreme views are well known. The platform was shared by others with extremist views including Sheikh Riad Fataar, president of the SA Muslim Judicial Council, who, instead of calling for unity across religious communities as expected of a man of faith in our multicultural society, he promoted Hamas which explicitly seeks the death of more Jews. Also on the platform were members of PAGAD who have an established track record of attacking places of Jewish worship and Nazier Paulsen who recently called for members of the Cape Exit party to be executed by a firing squad. A gathering which at the very least cannot be said to be promoting constitutional democracy in South Africa.
Addressing the crowd in this company, Dr. Sooliman showed a face not previously seen: a crude racist bigot using undeniably antisemitic stereotypes and denigrating legitimate concerns regarding global antisemitism. He said –
“They [the Zionists] run the world with fear, control with money, and terrify you with antisemitism, well I have a message: find a new narrative, this one is dull, boring.”
It would be most unfitting for the HSF to associate itself with this kind of rhetoric and to endorse Dr. Sooliman’s unjustified view that substituting the word ‘Jew’ with the word ‘Zionist’ mitigates antisemitism in any manner, or to identify with his belief that endorsement of anti Israel sentiment by a fractional group of malcontent and misidentified Jews constitutes the wider South African Jewish communal identity and concern needing to be taken seriously.
Dr. Sooliman endorsed an event that raises concerns about tolerance and public safety in an already fractured society. The meeting may reasonably create the apprehension of lone wolf terror operatives being emboldened to commit acts of intimidation or worse against South Africans who disagree with the extreme Islamist views aired. Indeed Dr. Soolaiman’s sister Quraysha Ismail Sooliman, expressed ludicrous and ugly antisemitism a few days later in her writing of Sex, power and control: The hidden crimes behind the Gaza genocide‘, Mail & Guardian, 8 October 2024 thereby contributing to a rapidly deteriorating and hostile public discourse in South Africa, an embarrassment to the University of Pretoria where she is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Sciences.
Your attention is drawn to Dr. Sooliman’s recorded statement, in a broadcast interview with his sister Dr. Quraysha Sooliman on 7 October 2024, that;
“I don’t follow international law or human law. I follow Koranic law. I am 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. Breaking the law is laws of the West and people and governments. It’s not Islamic law. I follow Islamic law, and Islamic law overrides any other law. … I don’t have to follow any 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,” he said[i][ii].
While Dr Sooliman is personally welcome to his personal jurisprudential views, his identity as a devout Muslim and South African citizen country should not be in conflict. It is not possible for the HSF to be positively associated with such views while upholding the rule of law as you are mandated to do.
Dr. Sooliman is the founder and face of an NGO with a high public profile that attracts and administers billions of Rand in philanthropy from ordinary people, from corporations, and, through his close collaboration with government. Notably including the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) with whom he appears to have enjoyed significant influence and his organization derives significant financial benefit. His website describes “R6 billion rand in aid in 47 countries over 32 years”[iii]. Dr Sooliman actively solicits cash donations: “Assist Palestine right now. With cash” he told Quraysha Sooliman. He boasts about his ability and willingness to move cash around internationally: “We know how to move cash“, he told her. Dr Sooliman does not provide annual financial reports that provide transparent, publicly available information showing where this money comes from, where it goes and how it is moved.
Among its activities in Gaza, Gift of the Givers distributes cash. Like Al-Qaradawi, Sooliman supports and promotes Hamas’s jihadist theology of martyrdom. He is on record celebrating the extensive loss of Palestinian lives as a success story that reveals the spirit of the Palestinian people and the military power of their religious faith.
“So in every way this has been a huge success for the people of Palestine. Yes, they’ve lost a lot of life, but take it relatively.”
and
“Martyrdom or victory, both ways they have won,” said Sooliman. He also promotes religious war with Israel and believes Islamic retribution is inevitable and desirable:
“Of course they’ve won … But what you can’t break and nobody can break is the spirit of the people. Their spirit, their faith and their conviction that they’ve won … And of course retribution is going to come. That’s the promise of Allah. They haven’t seen that side yet. Allah says, ‘I take my time. I give rope. And when I decide to hang, I hang’. I’m looking forward to that day,” he said, smiling.
The resulting possibility that the cash Sooliman freely moves could be being distributed to support adherents of militant jihadism and families of deceased jihadist militants is deeply concerning.
Based on the detailed and highly credible information I have received, it appears certain that Dr Sooliman’s activities in Gaza, from 2009 to current, will be rendered increasingly visible as the fog of war diminishes. The likelihood that donor funding in Gaza was used exclusively to provide humanitarian relief for innocent civilians is remote. Far more likely is that a significant part of the resources went into supporting Hamas itself, perhaps indirectly in the Hamas run hospitals. Questions are being asked about the role of Gift of the Givers’ Khuzaa Clinic, a mere two kilometers across the border from Kibbutz Nir Oz which suffered such barbaric destruction on 7 October 2023. Was the Clinic used as an assault launch pad on 7 October? I certainly am in no position to answer the questions, but am disquieted that they can be realistically posed.
It is probably only a matter of time before Gift of the Givers and Dr Sooliman personally will be exposed for what all evidence is currently suggesting: an international fundraiser and money-mover to support Hamas and other terror organizations, and that it faces the same fate as that which has befallen the anti-Israel Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network which has recently been sanctioned by the US and Canada, with the US State Department describing it as “a sham charity” that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization. The PFLP was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US in October 1997 and October 2001 respectively.
You are no doubt aware that South Africa is increasingly attracting the scrutiny of international players concerned with international rule of law and has been grey listed by the intergovernmental Financial Action, facing comprehensive blacklisting for failure to remedy inadequate investigations and prosecutions of money laundering and terrorism financing and inaccurate terrorism financing risk assessment”[iv]. And a full review currently pending of the relationship between the United States and South Africa, due in part to South Africa’s uncritical relationship with Iranian proxy Hamas and the wrongful and libelous accusation of genocide against Israel, could result in South Africa losing the preferential trade provided by the Africa’s Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), eligibility criteria for which include that beneficiaries do not provide support for acts of international terrorism such as perpetrated by Hamas or engage in activities that undermine US national security or foreign policy interests.
At this critical time, it may be appropriate for the HSF to distance itself from financial opaqueness and to call on Dr Sooliman to lift the veil, to explain how he moves cash, how much he has moved to where, and to what effect, and to render the financial records of Gift of the Givers fully transparent. Dr Sooliman’s disdain for the law of the land should be subjected to scrutiny by HSF if it is to remain true to upholding the rule of law in South Africa.
Many questions remain unanswered regarding Dr Sooliman and Gift of the Givers. HSF funders and donors who believe they are contributing to building constitutional democracy in South Africa need to be clear about the answers. I respectfully suggest that rather than giving Dr Sooliman a platform to continue to raise funds in support of organizations and processes that have been designated as terror-related and to promote actions which amount to aiding and abetting designated terror organizations, the HSF should call on Dr Sooliman to co-operate fully in a process of financial transparency.
Governments, international aid organizations, philanthropic foundations, individuals, global financing and banking institutions should be called on to carefully examine Gift of the Givers’ activities and their coalitions.
In the meantime, I call on the HSF to suspend all funding to Gift of the Givers until there are guarantees and mechanisms in place to ensure that there are no ties to terror organizations and there is compliance with international conventions and legislation for the prevention of terror financing. Additionally, a comprehensive forensic audit is required to ensure that funds previously granted were not and are still not transferred to terror groups or are not being used to carry out and fund terror activities.
The appointment of advocate Max du Plessis to the HSF Board of Trustees is questionable. His involvement in the ICJ case as counsel has led to his association with the PFLP’s Al-Haq whose director Shawan Jabarin was present with Adv. du Plessis in The Hague. This impacts on the HSF which should have no business with the PFLP.
The HSF is at a critical crossroad. Is it well on its way to being captured by supporters of terror, or will it stand against them?
There is no doubt where Mrs. Suzman would have stood as a friend of the State of Israel and implacably opposed terrorism. You and the current leadership of the HSF are the custodians of her memory. It would be a violation of your mandate to invite a person to the HSF who is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish State, disrespects the rule of law and who identifies with radical Islamist ideologies – the antithesis of constitutional democracy.
I look forward to an urgent response.
Sincerely
Lawrence Nowosenetz