“What must Israel do? Let it happen? Let their citizens be killed by a bunch of people who are clearly hell-bent on violence? Tell me how that’s an equal situation for both sides. It really isn’t,” Cliff said.

By: United with Israel Staff

South African radio personality Gareth Cliff declared that Israel is entitled to protect itself from Palestinians rioting on its border, whom he called “clearly hell-bent on violence.”

Cliff’s comments caused a stir in South Africa, which is notoriously pro-Palestinian.

On his Cliff Central online radio show, he also slammed the South African media for “complete bias” in the way it has reported and interpreted the past two plus months of Hamas-led violence on the Gaza border.

“I looked at what was going on over there and I have done quite a lot of reading with quite a lot of the news articles from around the world and this claim that Israel shot demonstrators is just a blatant lie. It’s an absolute falsehood,” Cliff said.

An in-depth analysis by terrorism experts of the Palestinian casualties shows that vast majority of them were Hamas terrorists or Palestinians affiliated with terrorism.

“This was an attempt to invade a sovereign nation and border communities to indiscriminately slaughter civilians,” Cliff charged.

A successful breach of Israel’s border would have resulted in “real carnage on both sides,” Cliff explained.

Cliff’s conclusions are supported by the statements of a Hamas leader who openly stated that characterizing the violence on the border as peaceful protests is “misleading,” as the events were intended to facilitate an armed attack on Israel

Cliff vividly depicted the result of a possible breach of Israel’s border by Hamas, saying that thousands of Palestinians would have streamed through the fence “and there would have been fires set, communities would have engaged in war”.

“What must Israel do? Let it happen? Let their citizens be killed by a bunch of people who are clearly hell-bent on violence? Tell me how that’s an equal situation for both sides. It really isn’t,” he declared.

While some Twitter users applauded Cliff for sharing his views, many criticized him for siding with Israel, which is not the favored side in South Africa.

While many responders’ knee-jerk reaction was to label Cliff, who is white, as a racist, one tweeter commented, “It seems anyone who challenges a black opinion or speaks uncomfortable truths is labeled racist.”

South Africa is infamously anti-Israel and has even chosen to suffer a drought rather than use Israeli water technology.

The African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party, has repeatedly called for boycotts of Israel, accused it of apartheid, and has even fostered ties with the Hamas terror group.