PRESS STATEMENT

 

For Immediate Release

 

The Jamiatul Ulama South Africa notes with dismay the reports that the Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng had recently, during a webinar under the auspices of the Jerusalem Post, expressed his apparent support for Apartheid Israel.

 

The position taken by the foremost custodian of the country’s constitutional order, comes at a time when Israel is moving to annex illegally occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank.

 

Israel’s intentions of annexation of the West Bank is the latest in the regime’s sustained disregard for international law, covenants and global multilateral treaties with respect to sovereignty, rights of occupied people, refugees and warfare, just to mention a few.

 

In the long-continuing occupation, let alone well-documented war crimes, Israel tramples upon the rights of Palestinians, on whom it has routinely unleashed massacres, dispossession and detention of those who stand up against the injustices.

 

The Chief Justice Mogoeng’s apparent partiality towards the state of Israel which is supposed to be regarded as a pariah in the arena of human rights, calls to question his commitment towards South Africa’s foreign policy which is derived from the nation’s obligations, as a signatory to the conventions and legal instruments that have pronounced the illegitimacy of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

 

We call upon the Chief Justice Mogoeng, to walk back his remarks and instead, speak against the discrimination and oppression of Palestinian people, to whom we owe solidarity, for the dehumanising injustices and excesses they endure every day, for over seven decades.

 

Issued by:

 

E.I. Bham (Moulana)
Secretary General

 

04 Dhu al Qa’da 1441 / 26 June 2020