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It is trite to say that truth is the first casualty of war but it’s both a truism and a constant. Truth is not just the first casualty but also the second, the third and an endlessly ongoing victim of propaganda when propagandists are at war.
So it is that the smears manufactured to discredit Dr Imtiaz Sooliman as anti-Semitic are part of an increasingly desperate strategy to turn back the wave of revulsion as the world realises that no amount of naysaying can undo Israel’s identity as a genocidal and warmongering state. All that is left is to smear high-profile figures as anti-Semitic when they speak an uncomfortable truth.
A letter signed by 300+ individuals protesting against the award of an honorary doctorate at the University of Cape Town (UCT) claims that Dr Sooliman is anti-Semitic but the “evidence” mustered against Dr Sooliman is so inconsequential as to be absurd. To have had someone stand behind you at a rally with a statement of support for Hamas is not an indicator of your support for Hamas. To infer such is simply guilt by visual association. I have participated in many protests where parties unfurl their banners. In 2017, I participated in a protest march to Parliament against then-president Jacob Zuma’s corruption. A Democratic Alliance (DA) banner was unfurled behind me. That doesn’t make me a DA supporter.
As for Dr Sooliman’s openly stated belief in God as his supreme guide, you can only turn that into an anti-Semitic statement if you twist that characterisation into a world view that all Islamic belief is fundamentalist and, by the interpreter’s definition, anti-Jewish. But we know that religious beliefs can still be entirely consistent with constitutional values, as seen in the tenure of Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng who initially alarmed some who worried that his openly Christian world view (“chosen by God”) would undermine the integrity of the Constitutional Court. His subsequent juridical performance was “unexpectedly successful” with strong independent decisions in politically sensitive trials. More recently, Gayton McKenzie, a minister in the South African government, stated that “My Bible commands me to stay with Israel”. So, for signatories of the letter of complaint, religion is no impediment if it is linked to pro-Israeli sentiments, but if the speaker is a person of colour who is Muslim and expresses views critical of Israel, their belief in God is proof of anti-Semitism. The racist double standard is explicitly clear.
Dr Sooliman’s priority is ‘human dignity’
Of course, if the signatories of the letter had bothered to find out first-hand what Dr Sooliman’s beliefs are rather than swallow the curated misrepresentation of what he believes, then they would realise that it is his mission to serve all persons irrespective of any religion, and that the human dignity of all persons is his priority. For example, in talking about the stereotyping of Muslims as fundamentalists, he says it’s a problem that “the same thing is happening to Jewish people, all over the world, they are looked at with bad eyes, but they are not the problem, it’s the Israeli government, some of them [politicians] inside there, the Zionists, but not the ordinary Jewish people, but they pay the price more than the people who perpetrated the action”. The distinction between Jewishness and Zionist power could not be clearer.
So, nothing claimed about Dr Sooliman is evidence of anti-Semitism. This illustrates why it is so important that, in 2024, UCT carefully considered the definition of anti-Semitism represented in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) (as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”) and rejected its formulation in favour of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), which defines anti-Semitism as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)”. By IHRA accounts, any “perception” of bias against Jews, whether plausible or not, is anti-Semitism and the signers of the letters do not have to do anything more than gang up on a humanitarian who is also a Muslim who speaks his mind about the atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli state.
The JDA would, in contrast, expect UCT to ascertain whether there is evidence of discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish). One of the reasons UCT has been taken to court is precisely over its adoption of the JDA approach to defining anti-Semitism, because Israel’s supporters do not want to be held to a standard that requires anything more than stating their perceptions as proof about Dr Sooliman. It would not be the first time that Zionist groups assign to themselves the entitlement to decide what is anti-Semitic and what is not, when such subjectivity is patently unscientific, unconstitutional and open to malicious weaponisation.
What is most disappointing is the alacrity with which many health professional colleagues who have signed the letter are willing to believe fabrications against a fellow health practitioner without question. Medical scientists who would otherwise rely on evidence to make decisions, simply abandon such filial commitments to seeking the truth when the matter of Israel’s actions is on the table. Whether it is an ideological bias or a panic prompted by an existential anxiety, there is no grounds for accepting any of this manufactured nonsense. It is, plain and simple, intellectual dishonesty.
As for the values to which the letter’s authors refer, what exactly are the values they wish UCT to uphold? UCT’s mission speaks to values of engaged citizenship and social justice with a vision to “unleash human potential to create a fair and just society”.
When Israel’s leadership and military has, inter alia, killed tens of thousands of children in violation of international law, carried out illegal extrajudicial killings with impunity, adopted and continues to implement measures that make life unliveable in Gaza, enables settlers to enact pogroms against Palestinians on the West Bank, rewarded soldiers who tortured and raped Palestinian prisoners and systematically targeted health facilities and health workers across the region, there is, if you are an engaged citizen, no alternative but to speak up for a fair and just society. That is what “principled leadership” and “moral seriousness” require, not the denial of war crimes and genocide.
That the letter has been given media attention under the notion of a “wave of backlash from some alumni, staff, students and donors” that has led “big names [to] turn on UCT” is laughable. Had you been at the graduation ceremony where the Honorary Doctorate was awarded, you would have seen a full hall of students, staff and parents spontaneously rise to give Dr Sooliman a standing ovation, even before the oration was read out, despite these efforts to manufacture a crisis. There is no “turning” on UCT because of Dr Sooliman’s award, only the persistent and increasingly desperate echo-chamber cacophany of those willing to defend Israel’s abominable human rights record at all costs.
Attacks on UCT are not new
The defamatory smears on Dr Sooliman are not new, as are the attacks on UCT sticking to principle over its Gaza Resolutions. In 2024, the Helen Suzman Foundation was also pressured to rescind an invitation to Dr Sooliman on the basis of misrepresentations similar to those in the letter to UCT, but the foundation rejected this bullying.
This hysteria is just more evidence of desperate efforts to create an impression of a serious crisis at UCT. Despite pontification that UCT’s research profile would be shattered and the university would collapse from donor withdrawal if it did not rescind its Gaza resolutions, the university has continued to go from strength to strength since 2023 when the resolutions were adopted. Its research grant and contract income in 2024 rose by 27% compared to 2023 and UCT’s position in the international university rankings rose in both the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings and the Times Higher Education rankings in 2025 compared to the previous year.
The real issue is revealed in one sentence in the letter, which states that UCT’s award of the honorary doctorate “causes deep distress among members of the UCT community who hold beliefs that have faced consistent attack from Dr Sooliman”. That is exactly the point, precisely because Dr Sooliman has consistently spoken truth to power and exposed injustice, which must be uncomfortable for some who believe Israel is untouchable and claim that to be their Jewish birthright. But their Zionist discomfort is neither shared by all Jews, nor can it justify bending the rules to accommodate their demands or give credence to a jumbled assemblage of incoherent sources in an effort to smear Dr Sooliman as anti-Semitic.
If that fearless willingness to criticise Israel for its barbaric war crimes is perceived as anti-Semitic, then I am 5,000% behind Dr Sooliman. Rather than hate, I choose the path of humanitarianism. DM
Leslie London is an Emeritus Professor of Public Health at the University of Cape Town and a human rights activist. The views expressed are entirely his own.