International hypocrisy on full display in South Africa
In reality, the “pro-Palestinian” movement has never been about human rights or ending any suffering, but about demonizing Israel.
By Justin Amler
JNS
Nov 25, 2025
The South African government—the same one that took Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague on accusations of genocide in Gaza—had an opportunity on Nov. 13 to demonstrate its moralistic integrity to the entire world.
A charter flight carrying about 150 Palestinians from Gaza arrived at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport in South Africa. It was a chance for the country to display the morality, principles and genuine compassion its leaders have long preached about.
They failed on all counts.
Rather than being greeted with compassion, travelers were treated with contempt, detained on the tarmac for 12 difficult hours amid chaos, panic and bureaucratic paralysis. Because, as it turns out, it seems that chanting slogans and grandstanding at international institutions is far easier than actually caring for living, breathing Palestinians.
However, none of this should come as any surprise.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was reeling from the unprecedented terror onslaught launched by Hamas against its southern communities. As bodies were still being counted and terrorists still wreaking havoc, street demonstrations erupted around the world—not in solidarity with the victims, but in celebration of their slaughter.
In city after city, we saw rallies that glorified the killers rather than mourning the victims, insisting the massacre was “resistance.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres deployed his infamous line that the attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”
And just like that, what little global sympathy existed for the Israeli victims of this murderous, unprovoked cross-border attack began to evaporate.
The narrative flipped: Palestinians were simply breaking free from Israel’s “cruel prison.” The story was no longer about the victims of Hamas but the Palestinians themselves, who were now facing a “terrible onslaught” by Israel.
But the narrative was false. And the so-called solidarity shown to the “suffering” of innocent Palestinian civilians was—for the most part and as demonstrated so clearly by South Africa—insincere.
The international community never cared about Palestinian “suffering” because if it did, then where were the rallies in 1991, when Kuwait expelled tens of thousands of Palestinians after PLO chief Yasser Arafat backed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and the Gulf War ensued?
Where were the protests when Lebanon imposed severe entry restrictions on Palestinians fleeing the ghastly and more than decade-long civil war in Syria?
Where were the global voices demanding that Arab states give Palestinians citizenship and equal rights, rather than keeping their fellow Arabs as stateless aliens in their host countries?
And, above all else, why did virtually no one mention the one thing that could have done the most to relieve the suffering of Gazan civilians during the two-year war their Hamas rulers launched—for Egypt to have opened its shared border with Gaza, thereby allowing Palestinians to flee to a place of safety, as normally happens in almost every other war.
In reality, the “pro-Palestinian” movement has never been about human rights or ending their suffering, but only about demonizing Israel. South Africa, the self-appointed global “defender of Palestinians,” proved that.
While the origin of the flight that arrived on their doorstep remains murky, and allegations continue to be leveled at Israel or at unnamed NGOs, none of that is particularly relevant. Because here were Palestinians supposedly fleeing annihilation in Gaza, and South Africa refused them entry.
South Africa, whose theatrics at the International Court of Justice in The Hague resembled a modern Salem witch hunt, just exposed its own hypocrisy with startling clarity. They wanted to show the world how immoral Israel supposedly was and how moral South Africa claimed to be, but in reality did the complete opposite.
It was not only their hypocrisy exposed, but also all those who claim to care about Palestinians.
Because how could any moral country, even for a second, deny safe passage to people it itself says are escaping a situation of so-called genocide?
We have seen this time and time again.
Hamas murders Palestinians in broad daylight … and silence.
Queen Rania of Jordan condemned the world for “ignoring Palestinian suffering” while her own country refused to take in any as refugees.
Egypt has loudly condemned Israel and warned of “ethnic cleansing” while keeping the Rafah border closed to most Gazans.
So just where are the countries that pound their chests about Palestinian suffering? When given the chance, South Africa, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar did nothing. Actually, Qatar did do something: It housed the Hamas masterminds of Oct. 7 in five-star luxury hotels.
Under enormous pressure, South Africa did eventually let most of the stranded Palestinians in, even as its foreign minister defiantly insisted that Pretoria “no longer wants any flights to our territory.”
The refusal to help ordinary Palestinians wanting to leave a war zone, even as refugees were welcomed from Ukraine or Syria, exposes spectacular hypocrisy and tells the world something even more important.
Either the governments that accuse Israel of genocide actually believe it is better that Palestinians die than be allowed to leave or, more likely, that they always knew this was never a genocide at all, but simply saw repeating this false claim as a useful tool to demonize the Jewish state.
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