Mandela’s Hamas-supporting grandson to join Gaza flotilla, says Palestinians’ plight worse than apartheid

Nelson Mandela’s grandson — a supporter of the Hamas terror group — says Palestinians’ lives are worse than anything Black South Africans experienced under apartheid, and urges the global community to come to their aid.

Mandla Mandela, 51, speaks ahead of boarding a flight to Tunisia to join a flotilla of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activists aiming to deliver food and humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

“Many of us that have visited the occupied territories in Palestine have only come back with one conclusion: that the Palestinians are experiencing a far worse form of apartheid than we ever experienced,” Mandela says.

“We believe that the global community has to continue supporting the Palestinians, just as they stood side-by-side with us.”

Israel rejects comparisons between the lives of Palestinians and the apartheid era in South Africa.

Mandela is joining a group of 10 South African activists in the Global Sumud Flotilla, which includes dozens of boats and hundreds of people from 44 countries including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

South Africa’s African National Congress says their mission “echoes our own struggle for liberation.”

Israel and Egypt have imposed varying degrees of blockade on Gaza since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007 in a violent coup. Israel says it is necessary to limit Hamas’s ability to smuggle in arms. Critics of the blockade say it amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinians.

Food experts warned earlier this month that Gaza City had fallen into famine, and that half a million people across the Strip were facing catastrophic levels of hunger — claims that were swiftly rejected by Israel.

Mandela emphasizes that, when apartheid ended in 1994, it was after intense pressure and sanctions from other nations.

“They isolated apartheid South Africa and finally collapsed it. We believe that the time has come for that to be done for the Palestinians,” he says.

Last year, Mandela said the UK government denied him an entry visa because of his support for the Hamas terror organization.

The letter from the UK Home Office denying him entry pointed out several of Mandela’s posts on Instagram in which he voiced his support for Hamas, including one showing him with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in an explosion in Tehran last July.

It also noted that Mandela attended Haniyeh’s funeral, having met him twice earlier in the year, and posted a photo of himself with a senior Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal.