Nelson Mandela Relatives Welcome Hamas Officials to 10th Anniv. Memorial

By Staff, Agencies

Senior Hamas officials on Tuesday joined the family of Nelson Mandela to mark the 10^th anniversary of his death and cast the spotlight on the “Israel”-Hamas war.

South Africa has strongly condemned the Zionist “Israeli” entity’s response to the unprecedented October 7 Hamas Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the occupied territories in response to the regime’s intensified violence against Palestinians.

Mandela, who died aged 95 in 2013, made a Palestinian state one of his main international causes when he became South Africa’s first black president.

On Tuesday, Hamas representatives were among Palestinians who laid a wreath when the Mandela family paid tribute at a giant statue of the anti-apartheid icon.

National assembly member Mandla Mandela, Mandela’s grandson, helped organize a two-day conference on the Palestinian-“Israel” conflict before the wreath-laying at the Union Buildings.

Basem Naim, a former Hamas health minister in Gaza, and Khaled Qaddoumi, the resistance group’s representative in Iran, were among Palestinians to visit for the conference and anniversary.

“We were waiting to gain first-hand experience of the daily atrocities that are being carried out in Gaza,” Mandla Mandela told national broadcaster SABC. “It was a real experience for them to be in South Africa and learn from our experience as we had to face one of the most brutal apartheid regimes on the continent and we were able to defeat it.”

He said his grandfather considered a Palestinian state “the great moral issue of our time” and added: “We are carrying on where he left off.”

Mandla Mandela is part of the ruling African National Congress, which last month backed a national assembly motion calling for the closure of the “Israeli” embassy and for a suspension of diplomatic ties in protest at the war.

South Africa has also officially called on the International Criminal Court to investigate what President Cyril Ramaphosa has called the entity’s “war crimes” in Gaza.

The “Israeli” entity started its war on Gaza on October 7 after resistance groups launched Operation al-Aqsa Flood in response to the regime’s intensified crimes against Palestinians.

The entity has also blocked supply of water, food, electricity, and medicines to Gaza, plunging the coastal area into a humanitarian crisis. The regime has been defying global calls for a ceasefire as well.

More than 16,000 Palestinians have been killed in the US-backed war, most of them women and children.