On October 23 and 24, 2025, the South African legal and academic communities will witness a pivotal moment as South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) seeks admission as amicus curiae in the Mendelsohn v UCT Council case. At the heart of this legal battle are two resolutions passed by the University of Cape Town (UCT) Council in June 2024—resolutions that have ignited fierce debate across South Africa and beyond. The case, brought forward by Professor Adam Mendelsohn, challenges these resolutions, which were adopted in direct response to the ongoing atrocities in Gaza, widely recognized by leading genocide scholars, United Nations experts, and prominent human rights organizations as constituting genocide.
According to SAJFP, Israel’s two-year military campaign against Gaza has resulted in some of the most egregious violations of human rights in decades. The destruction is staggering: most schools and all universities in Gaza have been obliterated, an act described as “scholasticide” without historical precedent. The suffering experienced by the Palestinian people, advocates argue, will echo for generations. The UCT Council’s resolutions, therefore, are seen by many as not only a reasonable response but also a morally responsible stance for a public university in South Africa to take, especially given the country’s own history of apartheid and solidarity with global struggles for justice.
This legal drama unfolds amid a broader, global pattern: as solidarity with Palestine intensifies, so too does the suppression of speech, research, and activism critical of Israel’s actions. Political lobby groups and wealthy donors have, according to critics, fueled a campaign that threatens freedom of expression, association, and academic freedom. The Mendelsohn case is emblematic of this tension, raising fundamental questions about the role of universities in responding to international crises and the limits of academic and political expression.
While the South African debate takes place in courtrooms and university halls, a parallel story of censorship and media complicity is playing out on the other side of the world. On Monday, October 20, 2025, American journalist Chris Hedges delivered a powerful speech in Sydney titled “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.” The speech, part of his Australian speaking tour, was originally scheduled for the prestigious National Press Club in Canberra. Yet, in a move widely condemned as political censorship, the event was abruptly cancelled. The cancellation, Hedges and his supporters allege, was a direct result of pressure from Zionist lobbyists, corporate sponsors, and the Australian Labor government—all eager to silence voices critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
What’s more, the Australian media establishment responded to this act of censorship with near-total silence. The only notable exception was a segment on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Late Night Live” radio program, which aired just hours after Hedges’ Sydney address. During that interview, host David Marr launched a combative line of questioning, challenging Hedges’ credibility and defending the media’s obligation to report official Israeli narratives—even when those narratives are demonstrably false. Marr’s approach, described by Hedges as a “lynching,” further underscored the hostility faced by those who dare to challenge the dominant discourse on Israel and Palestine in Australia.
In his speech, Hedges drew a sharp distinction between two types of war correspondents. “The first type does not attend press conferences. They do not beg generals and politicians for interviews. They take risks from combat zones. They send back to their viewers or readers what they see, which is almost always diametrically opposed to official narratives. This first type, in every war, is a tiny minority,” Hedges explained. In contrast, he described the second type as “the inchoate blob of self-identified war correspondents who play at war… They slavishly disseminate whatever they are fed by officials, much of which is a lie, and pretend it is news.”
Hedges reserved his strongest praise—and deepest sorrow—for the Palestinian journalists in Gaza. “The mortal enemy of these poseurs are the real war reporters, in this case, Palestinian journalists in Gaza,” he said. “They expose them as toadies and sycophants, discrediting nearly everything they disseminate.” The cost of such courage is devastating. “Since October 7th, Israel has killed more journalists than [died in] the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War—including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos, the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined,” Hedges noted, underscoring the unprecedented scale of the tragedy.
Among the most harrowing incidents cited by Hedges was the August 2025 killing of five journalists and 15 others at Nasser Hospital in a “double-tap strike designed to kill first responders following the initial strike.” The journalists—Hussam al-Masri, Mariam Abu Dagga, Mohammed Salama, Moaz Abu Taha, and Ahmed Abu Aziz—worked for international outlets including Reuters and Associated Press. Yet, as Hedges pointed out, even these organizations echoed Israeli official narratives in their headlines: “Israeli military says strikes on Gaza hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera,” reported Associated Press, while Reuters stated, “Initial inquiry says Hamas camera was target of Israeli strike that killed journalists.” In reality, the camera belonged to Reuters, and, according to Hedges, “Israel was fully aware they were filming from the hospital.”
Just two weeks prior, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and five other journalists were killed outside Al-Shifa Hospital by an Israeli drone. Again, international media coverage parroted Israeli claims: “German newspaper Bild published a frontpage story headlined, ‘Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.’” Reuters, too, reported, “Israel kills Al Jazeera journalist it says was Hamas leader,” despite Anas being a member of a Pulitzer Prize-winning Reuters team in 2024.
Hedges exposed the systematic campaign to delegitimize Palestinian journalists, stating, “the Israeli military has a special unit called the Legitimisation Cell, which carries out campaigns to portray Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives in an effort to justify their assassination.” He dismissed the notion that Western reporters would provide more objective coverage, calling it “risible,” and emphasized that many Palestinian reporters are, in fact, critical of Hamas but remain committed to honest reporting.
Reflecting on his own experiences, Hedges said, “In every war I covered, I was attacked as supporting or belonging to whatever group the government, including the US government, was seeking to crush.” He described the immense pressure on journalists to serve as part of the propaganda machine: “The decision by Western reporters to give credibility to these lies, to give them the same weight as documented Israeli atrocities, is a cynical game… Call those lies out, and you will swiftly find your requests for briefings and interviews with officials rebuffed… Your editors will terminate your assignment and maybe your employment. Your talks will be cancelled at press clubs. And this is not good for careers. And so the lies are dutifully repeated, no matter how absurd.”
For Hedges, this kind of reporting “violates a fundamental tenet of journalism, the duty to transmit the truth to the viewer or reader. It legitimises mass slaughter. It refuses to hold Israel to account. It betrays Palestinian journalists, those reporting and being killed in Gaza.”
As the Mendelsohn v UCT Council case unfolds in South Africa and the reverberations of censorship and propaganda are felt as far away as Australia, the intersection of academic freedom, journalistic integrity, and the right to dissent remains fraught and fiercely contested. These events serve as a stark reminder: the struggle for truth and justice, whether in courtrooms, classrooms, or newsrooms, is far from over.