ANC is no Hamas

SIR — Paul Trewhela, editor of Umkhonto we Sizwe’s underground newspaper, Freedom Fighter, and a political prisoner from 1964 to 1967, has published a very interesting comparison of the Hamas and African National Congress (ANC) charters in the Daily Dispatch.

The Freedom Charter, adopted by the ANC in 1955, states that SA “belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people”.

The charter does not allow for the domination of one group over the other, but says: “… black and white together, equals, countrymen and brothers”.

In contrast, the Hamas charter states unequivocally its aim of murdering Jews and annihilating Israel. “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”.

Article 7 goes on to say: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing Jews), when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say: ‘O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’.”

Mr Trewhela explains that Hamas “seeks the dictatorship of an extreme version of one religion, Islam, across the world, under rule by Sharia law, to be imposed by force through Jihad”. The Freedom Charter, on the other hand, welcomes all religious groups in the form of a democracy.

It is incomprehensible to me that a journalist of Allister Sparks’s knowledge and standing is not aware of these fundamental differences (Slaughter in Gaza makes no difference to region’s politics, August 13). I am sure he is. But were he to admit it, he would not be able to repeat the Israel-Palestine narrative he frequently disseminates.