Gift of the Givers (GOTG) founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman has urged anyone who has irrefutable proof of the organisation’s support for terrorist organisations to report them to local or international law-enforcement authorities.
Sooliman was responding to allegations from a Jewish human rights lawyer Lawrence Nowosenetz who had written an open letter to the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) calling on it to rescind its invitation for Sooliman to deliver the Helen Suzman memorial lecture on November 11.
The HSF confirmed this week that it had seen the letter but Sooliman will deliver the lecture.
Nowosenetz, the former chairperson of the Pretoria branch of the Jewish Board of Deputies who now lives in Tel Aviv, in his letter addressed to the foundation’s chairperson Naseema Fakir, said that Suzman was a supporter of Israel and he claimed that inviting Sooliman contradicted her liberal values.
In the letter, published in the Times of Israel, Nowosenetz claimed that prior to setting up GOTG, Sooliman had established the South African Branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Al Aqsa Foundation in 1991.
“The Al Aqsa Foundation is part of the Union of Good, controlled by the radical Sheikh Yusef Al-Qaradawi. It is a highly sophisticated mechanism to transfer money to the leadership of Hamas to finance the terrorist group’s illegal activities,” Nowosenetz wrote.
He said that Sooliman had distanced himself from the leadership of the South African Al Aqsa branch but continued to make donations to them and the Union of Good, which had been blacklisted by the US Treasury in 2008.
“This means Gift of the Givers may be directly or indirectly financing Hamas.”
In response, Sooliman said if GOTG was involved in funding terror organisations then they welcomed charges and did not mind if local and international media exposed them.
“Take it to the SAPS, SIU, Hawks, NPA, State Security, Dirco, Reserve Bank, Standard Bank (which are our bankers), Standard Chartered in USA through which we do our foreign currency transactions), banks in Israel through which we fund projects in Palestine.”
He said that he had openly supported the Palestinians.
He said attacks against GOTG started shortly after President Cyril Ramaphosa shared strong views about the Middle East conflict during his speech last month at the UN General Assembly in New York.
Fakir this week confirmed that Sooliman would deliver the lecture, saying the foundation is not in a position to determine the merits of the allegations made against him.
“Dr Sooliman was considered the best choice for this address given the positive impact he and Gift of the Givers have made to alleviate the plight of the most poor and vulnerable in South
Africa, especially in light of the lack of service delivery by government.”
The Mercury