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MRN condemns Israeli medical propaganda visit

The Media Review Network (MRN) condemns recent engagements by Israeli embassy officials and associated organisations with public hospitals, universities, and traditional authorities in the Eastern Cape.

These interactions were conducted without authorisation from South Africa’s national executive, which holds exclusive constitutional authority, through the DIRCO to manage foreign diplomatic relations.

Provincial governments, public institutions, and traditional leaders therefore acted outside their mandate by meeting with foreign state representatives, constituting a breach of diplomatic protocol and undermining South Africa’s sovereignty.

MRN contends that portraying these visits as humanitarian healthcare cooperation is misleading, given Israel’s historical role as a key ally of apartheid South Africa and withholding these services from occupied Palestinians.

Israel provided the apartheid regime with military technology, arms, intelligence assistance, and economic support during its period of global isolation.

MRN asserts that this assistance materially strengthened a system responsible for violence and oppression against black South Africans, and cannot be obscured by present-day public diplomacy efforts.

There are racialised or abusive practices in Israel’s contemporary conduct. These include the coercive administration of Depo Provera to Ethiopian Jewish women to sterilize them, as well as extensive destruction of medical infrastructure in Gaza, attacks on hospitals, killings of healthcare workers, and the detention or torture of medical personnel.

We bring to the public’s attention that some Israeli physicians publicly endorsed the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals in 2023.

MRN concludes that Israel’s engagements in the Eastern Cape serve a political, not humanitarian, objective and calls for their immediate cessation, accountability for facilitators, and the termination of Israel’s diplomatic presence in South Africa.

Issued by:

Dr Ahmed Jazbhay

Executive Member

Media Review Network

South Africa

Johannesburg

0848710966

 

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