Why exactly? I'm genuinely curious.
>Israel is not an apartheid state. South Africa was.
We now have 3 major human rights organizations saying Israel is practicing apartheid against the Palestinians.
We also have former South Africans openly saying Israel's apartheid is actually worse than that practiced in South Aftrica. I would venture that these people would know:
"Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government."
"Observers in South Africa are preparing to mark "Israeli Apartheid Week" on Monday. Tutu, meanwhile, has declared his support for the use of boycotts and economic sanctions as a means to compel Israel to alter its policies."
https://www.jpost.com/diplomacy-and-politics/desmond-tutu-is...
As for Nelson Mandela, he clearly supported the Palestinian cause:
"We identify with the PLO because just like ourselves they are fighting for the right of self-determination," he said.
"Arafat is a comrade in arms, and we treat him as such." 'Our freedom is incomplete'
In a 1997 speech on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mandela reaffirmed his support for Palestinian rights.
"We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
(Very interesting 1 hour 13 minute video interview Town Hall with ABC's Ted Koppel from 1990) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcQIEIRLU1Y
I believe that people get angry about it because the human rights abuses have gone on for so long without any noticeable change in Israeli policy. Some of this is related to the myth of equating Zionism with Judaism and as the location of Mandatory Palestine as the mythical homeland for the "ancient" Children of Israel.
After1904, the fixation on Palestine as the only territory in which Zionism could be implemented was reinforced by the growing power of Christian Zionism in Britain and in Europe. They believe, and still believe, that "Jewish return” would herald the "end of time" and the return of the Messiah.
It represented a double gain: getting rid of the Jews in Europe, and at the same time fulfilling the divine scheme in which the Second Coming was to be precipitated by the return of the Jews to Palestine [1].
[1] Stephen Sizer, “The Road to Balfour: The History of Christian Zionism,” at balfourproject.org.
This is the prevailing narrative in the West (especially in the US). The counter narrative, and this has been promoted by the New Historians (Israeli's in the 1990s) and Arab historians (since the 1950s), has been that the formation of the state of Israel was primarily a settler colonial enterprise: immigration started ramping up from 1910-40 and completed with the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (from early 1948 to 1949) and the looting and destruction of their villages (both to prevent return and to erase any memory of the indigenous people (Arab Jews, Arab Christians and Arab Muslims) that inhabited Mandatory Palestine.
Not sure if that helps but it should give you a summary of the prevailing narratives.