Africa-Press – Mauritius. Reading the column in Kansas Reflector titled “Kansas history offers a warning on Gaza: Bipartisan consensus is often wrong” makes me angry and disgusted to see evidence of pro-Hamas sentiments gaining a foothold among young, impressionable Americans.
It is up to us to challenge mistaken understandings of history, tolerance of terrorism and argue against the blatant manipulation of terms like apartheid and genocide.
The author references a 1987 press release issued by then Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole about Nelson Mandela’s political party, the African National Congress. Vince Munoz says that the press release would shock us.
He writes “One day we will view the unconditional, bipartisan support for Israel the same way we now view Dole’s statements calling the ANC terrorists: a mistake.
” In the press release, Dole demands the following:
“1) The ANC must condemn terrorism, especially the barbaric practice of ‘necklacing,’ the method of murdering political opponents by placing burning auto tires around their necks; and 2) If the ANC refuses, then the US must make clear that it will oppose any ANC participation in the political future of South Africa.
“The question is not racism in South Africa — racism must go. The question is not apartheid — apartheid must go, too.
The question is terrorism, and whether the United States agrees that terrorism is a viable political tool. I don’t and I know the Senate will agree. ”
This is not a shocking statement. It is not a political statement. This is a moral statement. It is a defense of human life. And it holds up today. Neither was it a mistake.
In fact, South Africans agreed through their landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in operation from 1995 to 2007. Nelson Mandela, then president of South Africa, endorsed the commission and appointed Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu to chair it.
The TRC was created to investigate gross human rights violations during the period of the Apartheid regime from 1960 to 1994, including abductions, killings and torture.
Its mandate covered violations by both the state and the liberation movements, which included the ANC. When the TRC report came out in October of 1998, the state and, yes, the ANC were charged with gross human rights violations.
In a 2021 story on the life of Tutu, Forbes reported, “In 1985, when a woman was burnt to death with a tyre around her neck — a practice known then as necklacing — after being accused of being an “impimpi” (informer), he threatened to leave the country.
“ ’If you do this kind of thing,’ Tutu said, ‘I will find it difficult to speak for the cause of liberation.
If the violence continues, I will pack my bags, collect my family and leave this beautiful country that I love so passionately and so deeply. I say to you that I condemn in the strongest possible terms what happened in Duduza.
’ ” Dole was on the same page as Tutu and Mandela. The ANC’s other leadership condemned the use of these terrorist tactics themselves. The rhetoric of the ANC at that time is in great contrast to Hamas.
Hamas’ stated policy is that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. ” This is genocide.
The actions of Hamas on Oct. 7 were terrorism. For each day they keep the remaining 115 hostages and 20 bodies in captivity, the terrorism continues. In contrast to this cowardly attack, Israel has tried to minimize civilian casualties by directing civilian evacuations to the south and by sending in trucks of aid.
This is not genocide. Munoz writes, “But as a student of Kansas history I refuse to let the lessons of our past go unspoken. ” He didn’t understand the lesson.
As Dole was making a moral judgement about terrorism in 1987, all Americans should be making the same judgement of Hamas terrorists in 2023. No amount of oppression excuses the slaughter of innocents and the raping of women.
Veterans Dole and Dwight D. Eisenhower learned these lessons. A majority of Americans supported our nation’s positions on these matters because of our collective moral understanding of right and wrong, just as a majority of Americans support Israel today.
I fervently hope the campus protests and riots in support of Hamas’ terrorism are simply because American youths have not learned the lessons of history because the alternative, moral rot and anti-Semitism, is too terrible to contemplate.
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