Mourners carry the casket of martyred Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral in the Old City of Al-Quds, occupied Palestine, Friday, May 13, 2022 (AP)

The Israeli occupation police assaulting the funeral of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, whom they had killed just two days prior, is reminiscent of violence carried out during apartheid South Africa, the foundation of late Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Saturday.

"The scenes of members of the Israeli security forces attacking pallbearers at the funeral in [Al-Quds] of slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh yesterday were chillingly reminiscent of the brutality meted out to mourners at the funerals of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa during our struggle for freedom," Mamphela Ramphele, director of the Desmond Tutu Foundation, said in a statement.

Ramphele's words came in reference to footage of the Israeli occupation forces attacking people holding the coffin of Abu Akleh. The assault caused them to drop the coffin and reflected Israeli brutality that even the dead are not safe from.

Watch | The Israeli occupation brutally assaults the crowds at #ShireenAbuAkleh's funeral.#Palestine pic.twitter.com/TKTfwgLBLk
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) May 13, 2022

"As Archbishop Tutu taught us, the perpetrators of violence and human rights violations might think they are advancing their goals, but are in fact undermining their own humanity and integrity," Ramphele added.

She stressed that members of the Israeli occupation forces were "evidently responsible" for Abu Akleh being shot in the head on Wednesday while she was covering the Israeli occupation's brutality against Palestinians in Jenin, occupied West Bank.

"To further inflame the situation by attacking her funeral cortege is like seeking to extinguish righteous flames with a can of petrol," she underlined.

Many South Africans have joined the international outcry over the IOF's attack on the pallbearers on Friday.

Political analyst Eusebius McKaiser on Twitter said the violence was all too familiar for the people of South Africa who lived under the apartheid regime.

"South Africans have such memory. Apartheid police also liked attacking us at our funerals after murdering us," he wrote.

I see many tweets of the following kind, "I have never seen mourners carrying a casket being attacked by police as happened at Shireen Abu Aqla’s funeral in Jerusalem."
South Africans have such memory. Apartheid police also liked attacking us at our funerals after murdering us.
— Eusebius McKaiser (@Eusebius) May 13, 2022

The International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School has, in a recent report to the United Nations, joined the international community by recognizing that the Israeli occupation regime is one of apartheid.

The report sent to the UN Independent Commission investigating Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people in the West Bank highlights "Tel Aviv's" discriminatory laws and regulations, which the occupation has been using to systemically discriminate against Palestinians and suppress their civil and political rights.

Amnesty International also recognized the Israeli occupation's apartheid, saying the system was founded on "segregation, dispossession and exclusion", which amount to crimes against humanity, and its findings were documented in a report that shows the Israeli seizure of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcibly displacing people, and denying them citizenship.

The Israeli occupation has repeatedly rejected what it called "allegations" and accused the groups of bias.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Tutu passed away last year at 90 years of age after a lifetime of battling injustice. The late was a confidant and friend of South African leader Nelson Mandela.

He saw that the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation was similar to the liberation struggle against the South African apartheid government, comparing the two oppressive regimes, and taking a solid stance in favor of Palestine, which he eternalized in many of his addresses and articles throughout his life.

Tutu went as far as to urge the Episcopal Church not to invest in companies that support the Israeli occupation and asked for a global boycott of "Israel".