David Mihalyi

“It began at those very Shabbat meals in Cape Town, when I began considering the other people who were present. They hovered around the periphery, in the kitchen or the garden, doing the menial work. They were legally subordinate, which, I was told, was necessary. Because they would kill us if they could. Somewhere, their Black terror army was plotting to do just that. As I reached adulthood, that story collapsed. Apartheid ended. The army that had frightened so many whites disbanded once Black South Africans could express themselves with a ballot rather than a gun. Profound inequities remained; the country did not live happily ever after. Still, the story I heard constantly in my youth—that safety required supremacy—largely disappeared. It’s now an embarrassment. Barely anyone tells that story about South Africa anymore.”
― Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning