In October and November 2025, two charter flights carrying hundreds of Palestinians from war-torn Gaza landed in Johannesburg, South Africa. The passengers had been evacuated through an opaque transit scheme orchestrated by a virtually unknown organisation, Al-Majd Europe.
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, said the people appeared to have been “flushed out” of Gaza and promised an investigation. While Israel initially declined to comment, reporters quickly discovered that the operation would have been impossible without Israeli coordination and that the Al-Majd network had a deeply suspicious digital footprint.
This report reconstructs the story using open-source journalism, blockchain analysis and eyewitness accounts.
- Secret charter flights moved Palestinians from Gaza to South Africa under an Al-Majd Europe scheme.
- The “NGO” front relies on AI-generated identities, a hollow website and crypto payments.
- Blockchain analysis shows hundreds of thousands of USDT being funneled into a personal wallet.
- Israeli officials have acknowledged the operation was coordinated with the Israeli army.
A mystery plane and growing suspicions
On 28 October 2025, a charter flight carrying 176 Palestinians from Gaza arrived in Johannesburg without prior notification. Two weeks later another charter plane landed with 153 Palestinians, who were held on the tarmac for around twelve hours because their passports lacked Israeli exit stamps.
South African authorities eventually allowed them to disembark after a local humanitarian group, which requested anonymity, guaranteed accommodation for those wishing to stay. But by then, questions were multiplying.
“It was a trip of suffering. We only learned we were bound for Johannesburg when we were already in Nairobi.”
Passengers later described the journey as a “trip of suffering”. One evacuee, travelling with his family, explained that they left Gaza without knowing their final destination; they only learned they were bound for Johannesburg when boarding a connecting flight in Nairobi. His spouse had registered the family on an Al-Majd Europe form shared via social media.
According to multiple accounts, each passenger was charged US $1,400–$2,000, with parents paying the same fee for children or babies. Israeli security clearance was required before any names were approved.
Who or what is Al-Majd Europe?
Public façade
Al-Majd Europe (sometimes rendered Al-Majd or Al Majid Europe) describes itself on its website as a humanitarian organisation founded in 2010 in Germany and based in Jerusalem. It claims to provide aid and rescue efforts to Muslim communities worldwide. The site boasts thousands of meals and medical treatments delivered.
Yet there is no verifiable evidence for any of this. The website lists no phone numbers or physical address. The section claiming to work with “15 international agencies” displays only a “will be announced soon” placeholder. In mid-November 2025, the site carried an Arabic warning that people were impersonating Al-Majd representatives and demanding money or cryptocurrency (USDT) from Palestinians seeking to travel.
AI-generated faces and a hollow website
Our investigation found that Al-Majd Europe claims to have been founded in 2010, yet public domain records show the site was only registered at the start of 2025. The entire website is built from AI‑generated components, including its staff images, impact photos and even certain interface elements. The site is so poorly constructed that its donation system is not properly configured—and in some cases, the payment button does not function at all.
The organisation did not respond to questions about its structure or funding. A Gaza-based correspondent described Al-Majd Europe as “full of smokescreens” and noted that no office exists at the address it claims. The site looks professional at a glance, but closer inspection shows almost no real-world footprint.
Another report cited an Israeli military official who confirmed that Al-Majd had arranged the transit and that the organisation had publicly advertised safe passage from Gaza. The Palestinian embassy in South Africa later described Al-Majd Europe as an “unregistered and deceptive organisation” that exploited desperate families, collected money and facilitated irregular travel.
Inside the evacuation scheme
How candidates were selected
Passengers interviewed by journalists say that Al-Majd Europe encouraged families with children to register online through a simple form. Applicants needed a valid Palestinian travel document and Israeli security clearance.
Successful applicants reportedly received around one day’s notice. They were told not to carry luggage aside from essential documents. Buses transported them from Rafah to the Kerem Shalom crossing, where they passed into Israel and travelled under escort to Ramon Airport. From there, they boarded charter flights to Johannesburg.
Upon arrival, 130 passengers remained in South Africa while 23 travelled onward to other countries. Many had no clear plan for where to live or how to support themselves.
Fees and funding
Multiple evacuees said they paid between US $1,400 and $2,000 per person – the same price for adults, children and infants. Families had to raise thousands of dollars under wartime conditions, often relying on relatives abroad.
Independent reporting highlighted that the evacuees moved entirely through Israeli-controlled territory, with the Israeli military facilitating their transfer. The Palestinian embassy characterised the operation as a profit-driven scheme that “duped families” and turned their desperation into revenue.
Following the money: Blockchain analysis
The Palestinian Observer’s analysis of Ethereum transaction records, based on public on-chain data, exposes a financial network underpinning Al-Majd Europe that further undermines its humanitarian credentials. The pattern can be summarised as follows:
Source wallet – multimillion-dollar address
0x74aa…6828 is a large wallet holding significant amounts of stablecoins. Between August and October 2025 it sent multiple payments ranging from roughly 80k to 98k USDT to a cluster of intermediate wallets.
Staging wallets – temporary conduits
Three key staging wallets act as conduits:
- 0x659f…8c91
- 0x987e…4b56
- 0xb8df…0018
These addresses do not hold funds for long. On 13 October 2025, wallet 0x659f…8c91 forwarded 150k USDT to an “Al-Majd Europe” wallet, 0xb67b…d56d. On 17 October, wallet 0x987e…4b56 sent two transactions totalling around 100k USDT to the same address. Wallet 0xb8df…0018 sent 25k USDT directly to a personal wallet, bypassing the Al-Majd Europe entirely.
Al-Majd Europe wallet – pass-through account
The wallet 0xb67b…d56d has been promoted as an emergency “aid” fund. In reality, it behaves like a pass-through account. It receives roughly 250k USDT from the staging wallets and then, in short order, transfers about 169k USDT to a personal wallet, 0xe7dc…361d.
On-chain behaviour shows little evidence of this wallet making donations or distributing funds to multiple beneficiaries. Instead, the majority of inflows are consolidated and sent to a single destination.
Personal wallet – cashing out the “aid”
The wallet 0xe7dc…361d accumulates the bulk of the funds. It receives the 169k USDT from the Al-Majd Europe and 25k USDT directly from a staging wallet. From there, transactions move towards exchanges, strongly suggesting that the funds are being converted or cashed out rather than used for humanitarian purposes.
This flow reveals that a single wealthy sponsor appears to fund the entire scheme and that the supposed Al-Majd Europe transmits most of its receipts to a personal account. The inclusion of multiple staging wallets and the short time between deposits and withdrawals is characteristic of layering, a technique used to obscure the origin and destination of money.
Links to Israel: coordination and suspicious funds
There are several compelling links between the shadowy evacuation network and Israel:
- An Israeli official has acknowledged that the evacuations were organised with Israel’s cooperation, including the escort of buses carrying evacuees from Gaza to the Kerem Shalom crossing and onward to Ramon Airport.
- Moving people from Gaza to an Israeli airbase is impossible without direct coordination with the Israeli army. Even without the public admission, this alone would make state involvement a certainty.
- Rights groups and observers have warned that such flights risk functioning as a mechanism to quietly push Palestinians out of Gaza – an effective population transfer under the cover of “humanitarian” evacuations.
- The crypto-funding pattern – one large wallet, multiple intermediaries, rapid pass-throughs and consolidation in a personal account – mirrors practices associated with covert or intelligence-linked operations that require plausible deniability.
Taken together, the on-chain evidence and the acknowledged military role strongly suggest that Al-Majd Europe is not an independent charity acting alone, but part of a broader, state-coordinated extraction network that uses crypto and digital smokescreens to hide both funding sources and objectives.
Why hide the money trail?
The combination of covert evacuations, AI-generated organisational façades and opaque financing points toward deliberate obfuscation. Several motives stand out:
Masking state involvement
Israeli officials can downplay or deny direct responsibility while security forces escort evacuees through Israeli territory. A front organisation and crypto payments provide layers of separation between a controversial policy and those implementing it.
Evading sanctions and scrutiny
By routing payments via USDT and staging wallets, organisers make it harder for regulators and investigators to follow the funds or apply conventional anti-money-laundering tools. It also complicates efforts to determine who really profits from the scheme.
Manufacturing a humanitarian cover
Presenting as a European NGO with slick branding and emotional messaging allows Al-Majd Europe to attract trust at a glance. AI-generated staff photos, vague impact numbers and a “Jerusalem office” that does not exist all contribute to the illusion of a broad donor base and grassroots legitimacy.
Pushing displacement
Rights groups fear that these evacuations align with longstanding proposals to permanently remove Palestinians from Gaza. If so, the financial and organisational smokescreens help conceal a policy that would raise serious concerns under international law.
Conclusions and implications
The Al-Majd Europe story is not simply about a sketchy non-profit; it illustrates how state actors, private benefactors and digital tools can combine to reshape a conflict in the shadows.
Credible reporting and on-chain analysis show that:
- The evacuation flights occurred with clear Israeli coordination.
- Al-Majd Europe lacks transparency, operates a website built on scripts and AI-generated images, and offers no verifiable partners, offices or phone numbers.
- Passengers paid four-figure sums, were told not to bring belongings, and in many cases did not know where they were being taken until the final leg of the journey.
- Blockchain analysis reveals that funds labelled as “aid” largely flowed from one wealthy wallet, through intermediaries, into a personal account rather than being distributed to actual humanitarian work.
Taken together, these findings suggest that Al-Majd Europe functions as a sophisticated cut-out: an AI-wrapped shell used to collect money, launder funds and facilitate population transfers with state backing.
The case raises urgent questions for governments, regulators and human-rights bodies:
- Legal accountability: Does the coordination of secret evacuations undermine Palestinians’ right to remain in their homeland?
- Financial oversight: How can regulators prevent crypto-based aid programmes from becoming conduits for money laundering and covert operations?
- Digital deception: What safeguards are needed to stop AI-generated NGOs from exploiting people in crisis zones?
- Humanitarian protection: How can the international community provide safe, transparent evacuation and medical routes that do not depend on opaque intermediaries?
The world learned of the Gaza flights only because confused passengers ended up stranded on an airport tarmac. Without persistent journalism and digital sleuthing, the Al-Majd Europe operation might have remained hidden. In an age of crypto and AI, new forms of secrecy are emerging – but so are new tools for exposing them.
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