Iran, Qatar, Hamas, and other terrorist entities are quietly underwriting South Africa’s effort to prosecute Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a new report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon alleges.
South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), brought its case against Israel on Dec. 29, 2023, just three months after Hamas’s terror spree left more than 1,200 dead and hundreds more kidnapped. The suit alleges that Israel is committing mass genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip but offers little evidence to support this claim. Nevertheless, more than a dozen countries have joined the suit over the last year, elevating international pressure on Israel as the Jewish state fights to survive.
The timing of the lawsuit is raising fresh questions about South Africa’s motivation for bringing it, prompting an in-depth investigation by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), a nonprofit that studies global Jew-hatred. The report “connects South Africa’s political and financial alignment with Iran and Qatar—both leading supporters of global terrorism—with its campaign to bring a legal case against Israel,” ISGAP said in a draft press release.
The African National Congress, ISGAP found, was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy before it received a mysterious cash infusion in early 2024—just days after it launched the ICJ case against Israel. The source of this cash, the report states, is believed to be Iran and its regional allies, including Qatar, which are using South Africa to launder baseless claims against Israel and ratchet up diplomatic pressure amid a brutal yearlong war.
“Crucially, this money appeared in the ANC’s coffers without explanation, mere days after the South African government brought its case against Israel at the ICJ,” according to ISGAP’s report. “Given the lack of merit in South Africa’s case, and the unlikely possibility that it was brought unilaterally by an unpopular and near-bankrupt ANC, a crucial question arises. Who is actually funding South Africa’s case at the ICJ?”
African National Congress leaders, including South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, have declined to disclose the source of this funding, which helped the party recover from nearly $30 million in debt.
Putting a case before the ICJ requires deep pockets. Estimates place the preliminary costs at around $10.5 million, with a trial running as high as $79 million. “Given the enormity of the cost, it is difficult to dismiss the argument that South Africa was the beneficiary of considerable external support,” according to ISGAP’s report.
In March, the Electoral Commission of South Africa opened an investigation into how the ANC settled its soaring debt.
Rumors about Iranian involvement in the ICJ case have been swirling for some time in South Africa. Frans Cronje, a former CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations, alleged in a January interview that Tehran enlisted its allies in the ANC to bring the lawsuit.
“The South Africans,” Cronje said, “have for an extended period of time been fronting an Iranian strategy to do two things: The first is to so poison opinion against Israel in the Western world that military aid to Israel becomes increasingly conditional and, secondly, to so traumatize and stigmatize young Jews around the world that service in the [Israel Defense Forces] becomes increasingly controversial.”
Evidence of Iran’s role in the ICJ case is shown through the legal advisory team leading South Africa’s lawsuit, which includes those “affiliated with internationally recognized terrorist entities.”
A network of pro-Palestinian activist groups sculpted the legal groundwork underpinning South Africa’s suit, according to ISGAP’s research. Those groups include Law for Palestine, a research organization that has worked alongside the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the U.S.-based Democracy for the Arab World Now, which has lobbied the American government to cut off arms shipments to Israel.
“This effective network of legal experts who are united in their attempts to delegitimize Israel in international legal forums played a key role in the submission of South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel,” according to the report.
One member of the South African legal team, Shawan Jabarin, also serves as the general director of Al-Haq, a Palestinian advocacy group that helps push economic boycotts on Israel as part of the global BDS movement. Jabarin is also reportedly linked to the PFLP terror group.
Another member of the South African delegation, Raji Sourani, also maintains ties to the PFLP. He is the founder of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, another group that wages lawfare against Israel.
Sourani served a three-year prison sentence in Israel for being a PFLP member and was denied a U.S. entry visa in 2012. Two years later, Sourani attended a PFLP ceremony and stated, “I was in the ranks of the Popular Front, and there were comrades who taught us with their own hands. … We don’t apologize and don’t regret our past, we are proud that once we were members of this organization and we fought in its ranks.”
ISGAP found that out of 574 citations in South Africa’s ICJ complaint, at least 45 can be traced back to “overtly anti-Israel NGOs,” including Al-Haq and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
Against this backdrop, the South African government has drawn closer to Iran and Qatar for years, lending credibility to claims that anti-Israel powers in the Middle East played a central role in the ICJ case.
In late July, for instance, South African foreign minister Ronald Lamola traveled to Tehran to participate in the swearing-in ceremony for Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian. Lamole met there with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Bagheri, who praised Lamole’s “outstanding role as an undaunted and innovative diplomat in pursuing the case of the Zionist regime’s crimes at the International Court of Justice.” Bagheri added that Iran “fully supports South Africa’s vital role in this regard.”
It has become increasingly clear in recent years that Iran views South Africa “as a hub for circumventing Western sanctions,” according to the report, which notes that Tehran “has sought to acquire satellite interception, online surveillance, hacking, and missile guidance technologies from South Africa.” The African country also championed Iran’s inclusion in the BRICS economic bloc, which has helped it keep access to international cash sources while facing American sanctions.
Economic ties between South Africa and Qatar, an Iranian ally that has sheltered Hamas’s leadership, have also been growing in recent years. Bilateral trade between South Africa and Qatar rose from around $307 million in 2012 to roughly $1 billion in 2022.
Notably, “it was Hamas’s mediation between South Africa and Qatar that prompted them to strengthen their relations,” according to the report.
Charles Asher Small, ISGAP’s executive director, said his group’s findings “position South Africa as a key player in the global web of anti-democratic terror financing.” The ICJ case is part of a broader attempt by anti-Israel extremists “to delegitimize Israel in order to destroy it and to undermine democracy and related institutions.”
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