Nelson Mandela and the killers of children in Gaza

Mandela and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat take leave of one another after holding a meeting on the crisis in the Middle East in Pretoria, South Africa in 2001. Mandela had praised Arafat as ‘a fellow freedom fighter’. — Filepic/Reuters

WE know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” the late Nelson Mandela said in a speech after winning the first all-race South African presidential election in 1994, three years after he succeeded in eternally outlawing the apartheid system.

Now, the nation leads the global campaign to end Israeli’s devastation of Palestine. South Africa has brought Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to stop what it says are the genocidal acts committed by the Israeli military forces against the Palestinians in Gaza.