Crime activist Yusuf Abramjee is known for sharing breaking crime reports, but he was harshly criticised for his comment calling on the government to immediately close down the Israeli Embassy in Pretoria.
Abramjee, using social media platform X, further urged the government to expel all officials, and let them take the first flight out of South Africa. He also urged X users to retweet to support the call to expel Israeli diplomats from South Africa.
The post was shared late last night.
Abramjee has a following of over 700 000 followers on X, and after his post, a number of people threatened to block his page. He was responding to a post shared by The Spectator Index, which reported Colombia expelled Israel’s ambassador over the war.
“Let me repeat … If South Africa is serious about the Middle East situation, it should close the Israeli embassy in Pretoria immediately and expel all the officials and let them take the first flight out of our country. We cannot sit back and see the atrocities continuing. The world must now stand up and take a stand,” said Abramjee.
He added: “We’re witnessing Israeli genocide of Gaza. Civilians including children and women are being killed in their hundreds. Supply of food, water & electricity to Gaza has been stopped. Israel is demanding ‘evacuation’ of over 1-million Gazans from the North to South Gaza, while bombing them along the way. Eight journalists killed so far by Israel. Hospitals are coming under attack. White phosphorus, a chemical weapon, is being used by Israel.”
The post was viewed about 255 000 times and reposted 492 times.
X user by the handle of Kwena Molekwa wrote: “Stick to crime reports, though you are still biased there we can excuse you.”
Another user, Nicole Barlow, wrote: “And what do you hope to achieve by doing that? Again, I say, what do you hope to achieve? Do you think Israel cares about what we (SA) thinks of them?”
Seleka Michele, who is an X user too, advised Abramjee not to share such tweets because he is a public figure.
“In my opinion statements like this one should be uttered by individuals like myself and not somebody who is a public figure like yourself because any statement you utter in the future will be classified and even true statement subject to unnecessary scrutiny?” said Michele.
Another user by the name of Ishmael wrote: “At this point the best thing to do is to block your bias page.”
Link
https://x.com/abramjee/status/1713991417121374303?s=46&t=oeMLeLVU-0aswZe6EmGwPA
https://x.com/nicky_mitchell2/status/1713998328730419235?s=46&t=oeMLeLVU-0aswZe6EmGwPA
https://x.com/mr_shimmy/status/1714125489885856191?s=46&t=oeMLeLVU-0aswZe6EmGwPA