S. Africa newspaper cancels pro-Israel group’s Hamas ad

South Africa’s Sunday Times this week rejected an ad sponsored by a pro-Israel organization two days before it was due to run.

The fully paid ad was canceled by the Times 48 hours before its print date of Nov. 1, the South African Zionist Federation said in a post on its Facebook page.

“These are the facts that they did not want their readership to know about Hamas,” the federation said in the post about its ad.

The Times notified the federation about the cancellation at 3 p.m. Friday.

The ad, titled “According to Hamas, Jihad is the only way to achieve ‘Peace’ — and it gets worse,” offers facts about Hamas, which has been declared a terror organization in the United States and elsewhere.

Last month, on a visit to the country as a guest of the ruling African National Congress party, Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal told a government-endorsed rally in South Africa that the wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israelis would continue.

Referring to the terror attacks as “the Jerusalem intifada,” Mashaal told a crowd of several hundred supporters waving Hamas’s white-and-green flag in Cape Town that “the uprisings shall continue until freedom is achieved and the land is for Palestine and its people.”

He compared the Palestinian cause to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.

“South Africa, you have achieved your freedom, the people of Palestine are aspiring to attain their freedom,” he said. “Do not expect that they should stop with the uprising, do not expect that they should stop with the resistance.”

AFP and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.