By Anastasi Mokgobu.
International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor has criticised academic institutions and international media for their perceived silence on the banning of Al Jazeera in Israel.
The Qatar-based station was taken off air in Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government voted on Sunday to shut it down over its coverage of the Gaza war.
Pandor delivered the second annual Shireen Abu Akleh Memorial Lecture at the University of Johannesburg on Wednesday.
The lecture is in memory of Shireen Abu Akleh, a renowned Palestinian journalist who was killed by the Israeli armed forces amid the ongoing Palestine-Israeli conflict.
Pandor said, the targeting of journalists in Gaza and the West Bank is part of a pattern to silence free press.
“To my mind, this lecture occurs against the troubling backdrop of an evident decline in media freedom, with suggestions of complexities by practitioners who were previously fighters for free media and expression.
“Just imagine if South Africa were to ban the SABC, the whole media would be on us, but what are they saying today about what Israel has done to Al Jazeera?
“The targeting of journalists in the Occupied Territories is part of a pattern of silencing the free press and is an outright contravention of international law.
“International human rights law obligates an occupying power to allow for freedom of expression and protests.
“The ability of journalists to cover events as they take place is essential, and efforts to intimidate and assassinate members of the media should not be allowed to continue with impunity.
“If Shireen were alive today, she would have been in the trenches in Gaza, reporting day and night on the atrocities taking place in the hopes that the world would take notice and show their solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Pandor said, very little has changed in the war between Israel and Hamas, despite the recent ruling by the International Court of Justice.
“The Israeli state has continued its murderous assault on the people of Gaza with impunity, killing more civilians, maiming thousands of others, continuing the bombing of homes and other buildings and infrastructure, affecting every possible avenue of life of the residents of Gaza.
“This includes hospitals, ambulances, hundreds of schools, all 14 universities in Gaza, cultural and religious institutions and much more. The vast majority of the dead and injured are women and children,” she said.
At least 97 journalists and media workers have been killed since the war began, among them Palestinians, Israelis and Lebanese, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.