ANC logo (fair use image)
The ANC likes to frame its support for Hamas and Palestinian militant groups as a natural extension of its own liberation struggle.
That comparison is not just wrong…
It is morally bankrupt!
Umkhonto we Sizwe was the armed wing of the ANC, but it was nothing like Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.
During apartheid, the ANC’s armed struggle was directed overwhelmingly at the state and its instruments of oppression…
Not at civilians.
Not at children.
Not at random people going about their daily lives.
I know this. Not from theory…
But from experience.
I grew up “white” in apartheid South Africa. I went to traditionally white schools. I lived in a traditionally white neighborhood.
My friends did too.
None of our school buses had bullet proof windows.
None of our schools had armed guards.
Not one of our restaurants had armed guards.
None of our old aged homes had armed guards.
Not one of our music festivals had armed guards protecting the revelers.
Not one of our places of worship had armed guards.
Despite an active armed struggle against the apartheid regime, there was no expectation…
Not one single expectation…
NONE!
That white civilians, children, festival goers, worshippers, would be targeted simply for being white.
Why did we take our safety as children…as the elderly…as the vulnerable…and as “whites”, for granted?
Because that was not how the ANC conducted its struggle.
That was not its morality.
That was not its value system.
Today, as a Jew….as Jews…irrespective of the color of our skin, our country of residence or our political views…our children attend schools with armed guards, we shop in places with armed guards, and our faithful pray behind armed guards.
Not because of occupation. Not because of borders…
But because the extremist threat, veiled as anti-Zionism, is intentionally directed at civilians, at children, at the vulnerable.
That is the defining difference!
Hamas, and their sympathizers, do not merely tolerate civilian death…
They seek it. They celebrate it. They weaponize it.
That was never the ANC’s struggle, and it is grotesque to pretend otherwise.
For the ANC to now call these groups “brothers and sisters” is not solidarity…
It is a confession.
A confession that the movement has abandoned the very moral framework that once earned it global (and my) respect.
Uri Marks grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, with his wife and three children. He continues to grow up, but now in Israel. He is an arm-chair Zionist and laid back Jew, and is very opinionated on both topics.