South Africa: probe launched into SA citizens fighting in Israel Defence Forces

Protesters in South Africa hold anti-Israel banners during a pro-Palestine demonstration in Johannesburg, on January 27, 2022 [LUCA SOLA/AFP via Getty Images]

 

March 23, 2022 

A probe was launched in Cape Town this morning to look into South African citizens enlisting in the Israel Defence Forces. The South African Zionist Terrorism Corridor Probe is a "comprehensive criminal docket" based upon "sustainable and irrefutable evidence" which has been submitted to the South African Police Services and the National Director of Public Prosecutions.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign – Cape Town and the Media Review Network are the main group sponsors of the initiative. The complaint, they explain, is a request for a criminal investigation by the authorities based on the suspects' alleged violation of South African laws including the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act and the Protection of Constitutional Democracy against Terrorist and Related Activities Act.

"South Africa must meet its international obligations in terms of universal jurisdiction, international law/international human rights law and through its ratification of the Rome Statute and domestic laws which harmonise with our responsibilities in holding to account perpetrators of the most egregious crimes committed with impunity," explained the complainants in the submission to the South African authorities.

OPINION: Justice requires the prosecution of South Africans serving in the Israeli Army

The state of Israel, they point out, is widely recognised as a settler colonial state practising the crime of apartheid. This has been confirmed by major human rights organisations B'Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

"Apartheid," said International Human Rights Attorney Ziyaad Ebrahim Patel, who is advising the complainants, "constitutes a crime against humanity." South Africans, he reminded journalists this morning, know all about apartheid and the need to end it wherever it may exist.

The complainants not only focus on the breach of South African laws by local citizens enlisting in the IDF, but also their complicity in breaches of international law and crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes. "At least 13 South African nationals and/or citizens have, by their own admission, incriminated themselves in having served in the Israel Defence Forces prior to and/or during the wars perpetrated by the IDF in Gaza 2008/9, the 2010 attack on the Freedom Flotilla taking humanitarian aid to Gaza, and Israel's 2012, 2014 and 2021 military offensives against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."

Such "mercenaries and lone soldiers" recruited by the IDF, the complainants add, are part of the broader organised Israeli military structure perpetrating wide scale "state terrorism" against the Palestinian people.

The complaint and submission to the South African authorities lists the thirteen people accused of breaking the law by serving in the IDF, as well as four pro-Israel organisations in South Africa, and another individual accused of aiding and abetting them.

"The IDF recruits around the world and gets away with it," added Patel. "This impunity must end."