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Comment by cook1929 | Hacker News Reader

cook1929

That's cute. Now find me one instance of the white apartheid government intentionally bombing innocent civilians like Mandela's ANC did.

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Well, when you control the police and the army, bombing innocent civilians is neither necessary nor logical.

If you can't find instances of the apartheid government intentionally doing terrible things to civilians all by yourself, then you don't deserve to be on the internet.

I can see how that kind of logic applies to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but to apply it in this case is horrible and racist. Shame on you.

Wait, it is racist to ask for one instance of white apartheid South Africans intentionally killing women and children like Mandela's ANC did repeatedly?

Well, golly. If you insist.

I was employing irony there, which can be a useful tool for those on the right of the political spectrum.

My issue is not really with whether Apartheid is great, or Israel is great.

What my post was about was the way people on the far left or far right get away with their views whatever they are, but people in the center are required to assert that Apartheid is evil, while Israel is OK. You literally cannot call yourself a moderate if you do not believe these two things. And yet Israel and Apartheid South Africa are not very different. Both commit human rights violations against the native population. Both have (had) no clear path for the native population to become politically independent. Both claimed to look after the native population better than they could look after themselves. Both justified the situation because it was necessary to preserve their cultural/ethnic identity, and by claiming their opponents were terrorists.

So I call myself a moderate, but because I cannot accept the discrepancy between the way people are expected to view Israel and Apartheid, I would probably be considered a racist (for thinking that Apartheid was partly understandable) and also and anti-semite (for thinking that the desire for a Jewish state is not different for the desire for a White state).

Both commit human rights violations against the native population.

You mean when Hamas or Islamic Jihad detonates a bus bomb in Tel Aviv?

To pretend that Israeli military and/or police action against the terrorist government in Gaza takes place in a vacuum, or that it is aimed principally at civilians, ignores the reason why Israel is so militarized in the first place - very real security threats against the Israeli people and state.

The South African resistance to apartheid also bombed civilians. And I suspect that they did not recognize the right of South Africa to exist as a White country.

Are you specifically interested in bombing as a method of killing innocent people, or are you more generally interested in the killing of innocent people, the method notwithstanding? Coz, surely, you're not implying that white, apartheid South Africans didn't kill innocent people, are you?

The Sharpeville Massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre

You're welcome.

16 JUNE 1976!

Cook1929, your name suits you as you are still trapped in the 1920s.

As a white South African who was born in apartheid I saw first hand just how evil the system was. As for your examples you are after with regards to " one instance of white apartheid South Africans intentionally killing women and children" here you go: 1.) Ruth First (Joe Slovo's wife) was killed by a parcel bomb in Maputo. 2.) Soweto Uprising in which about 170 to about 600 people (mainly children) were killed by police... oh and one of the first people to be killed there was not some older man, the poor person was Hector Pieterson, he was only 13.

I know that Nelson Mandela wasn't a saint, (even he said that). However he gave to South Africa what it really needed. Peace and reconciliation, something that is still sorely needed in this world.

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