My understanding is Mandela was a respected leader who was willing to play ball and facilitate a peaceful transition where the white leadership got to keep all their property. That's why there's still massive economic inequality in SA today. Not to say Mandela wasn't admirable or that he didn't suffer, but it was a conscious choice to avoid outright military conflict at the cost of preserving an implicit racial hierarchy.
There wasn't any international pressure. There was a withdrawal of the continual and embarrassing support from Britain and the US, the only people other than Israel who hadn't been overly troubled by Apartheid. First from Britain, because as bad as she was, Thatcher was nauseated by Apartheid, then from the US who would have had to actively intervene (as they are right now in a similar context) in order to preserve Apartheid. This was only 25 years after the US had ended its own legal Apartheid.
The US political class was largely indifferent to Apartheid (aside from periodic expressions of mild disapproval of both sides and condemnation of Communist-backed terrorism), so when they saw how the wind was blowing within SA ("fear of a civil war"), and that individual domestic politicians could be damaged or gain politically through their actions towards SA, the US supported the "coup" (as always) so they could keep doing business without interruption.
So I'd instead say popular pressure among citizens of the US and Britain against their own politicians, and the resulting withdrawal of Anglo-American support. Everything else but "international pressure" I agree with totally.
In particular:
- There's no racial segregation laws; an Arab-Israeli can travel anywhere a Jewish-Israeli can. In fact, Arabic is an officially recognized language by the state of Israel, and throughout the country, every public service has signs in Arabic alongside Hebrew.
- Jews are not a minority in Israel, they comprise 78% of the population.
That is simply not true. E.g. The city of Hebron is segregated by religion - see https://youtu.be/Z42HhaywhGQ?si=bTBhEFi5lgBJQX9v
According to Human Rights Watch[1], Amnesty International[2], and many other human rights organizations, the regime in Israel today is in fact recognized as a system of apartheid. Mandela himself shown a lot of solidarity to the palestinian cause[3].
[1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2022/02/qa-israel...
[3] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nelson-mandela-30-years-p...
So demanding that settlers who illegally occupied land is “ethnic cleansing”? And you seem to be ceding my point and agreeing that it is apartheid, but justified.
> The Israeli government is obviously not perfect, but Arab citizens of Israel are generally treated way better than Jewish citizens of Muslim countries.
Whataboutism and irrelevant.
One comment ago you were saying it’s “”Palestinian apartheid”, now you are saying that it may be apartheid but it’s justified and so what, other countries are worse. I’m sorry but this I’m not going to engage any further with this type of discourse.