Sunday 27 January 2008

Why Can't the Israelis Behave Like Boers?

Remember this? It was the day in 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison in South Africa.

The US had withdrawn its support for the apartheid Afrikaaner government in South Africa, and Mandela, as part of the consequences, was released.

Within three years, elections were held, with full participation by the now properly-enfranchised black majority of the country, who won, hands down.

The Afrikaaner sate was gone, finished, dead. But the Afrikaaners themselves, many of whom had been settlers since the 18th century, and who had themselves fought (and lost) a war for independence, were not massacred, or 'pushed into the sea'.

Sure, their rights are now no better than anyone else's in South Africa, but they're still there, but not lording it over everyone else.

Why can't Israelis accept the same?

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