Detroit Free Press
Nelson Mandela forced people to face the truth. Israel and Palestine must do the same.
Opinion
Keith A. Owens
Tue, January 23, 2024
It was more than three decades ago that Nelson Mandela was finally freed from a South African prison, after nearly the same amount of time spent behind bars for his active resistance to the oppressive South African apartheid government that treated Black people as less than human.
Mandela’s struggle while imprisoned, and refusal to bow down to white supremacy, became a worldwide symbol of resistance against racist brutality. As the world’s most well-known freedom fighter, he became a hero and inspiration to millions — but especially to Black people.
Reflecting on that struggle made me wonder what Mandela might make of the current Israeli/Palestinian situation, particularly as someone who supported the Palestinian cause — but who also supported the right of Israelis to have their own state — and what Mandela would have thought last week, when South Africa accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians at the United Nations’ International Court of Justice.
After regaining his freedom in 1990, Mandela visited the U.S. and other countries, stopping in Miami, Detroit and other American cities. Back then, I was a journalist at the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, about an hour away from Miami.
Mandela was a hero of mine, just as he was to so many other African Americans. After witnessing his triumphant release on TV, broadcast in real-time from South Africa, I was thrilled to see him in person. Not surprisingly (I didn’t think), my opinion column about Mandela’s appearance was supportive.
For at least a week after my column ran, the heated response flooded my voicemail, reaching my boss, the editor of the editorial page, and the editor of the newspaper.
That response, largely from members of South Florida’s Jewish population and the Cuban population in Miami, was extremely negative: How dare I support Nelson Mandela, because didn’t I know he had given PLO leader Yasser Arafat a bear hug after he was released? Didn’t I know how repulsive Yasser Arafat was to the Israelis? Didn’t I know that Mandela also embraced Fidel Castro, at that time still Cuba’s leader? And didn’t I know or care how much the Cuban community in America reviled Castro?
Yes. I knew. I also understood some of the arguments as to why Mandela’s closeness with those two leaders was so upsetting to so many.
But I had to wonder why those who found my opinion so revolting weren’t equally revolted by Mandela’s 27 years of imprisonment by a white nationalist government that believed it was OK to torture and kill its opponents.
And I had to wonder if they knew that Israel had been one of the primary suppliers of military hardware to the apartheid South African government. Hardware that was used to brutalize and murder Black South Africans.
Mandela embraced Arafat and Castro upon his release because they had stood by him, supporting his cause throughout the entire 27 years of his imprisonment. His cause was their cause.
The Israeli government did not see it that way — nor did my own U.S. government, which did next to nothing in support of Mandela, instead staying on cozy terms with a racist, oppressive and murderous apartheid regime until the pressure from enraged American citizens — white and Black — got to be too much.
When he was released, Mandela didn’t forget those who stood by him, regardless of how it looked or how it played politically.
What those angry letter writers (in those days people still wrote letters) and callers were saying to me was that Mandela should have shoved his pain and suffering into a box, and placed their grievances above his own by denouncing Castro and Arafat.
To them, the truth was one thing, and it was defined on their terms. But most of us tend to behave this way, to some extent, when it comes to hot-button issues where the hot part of the button burns us personally. We’re much more sensitive to what pisses us off than what pisses the other guy off, and we don’t have much patience for any lengthy fact-based explanation about why.
But sometimes those explanations matter. A lot.
On Oct. 7, the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas perpetrated the bloodiest and most brutal attack on Israel in the nation’s history. More than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed, including babies reportedly murdered and beheaded. There are now verified reports of horrific incidents of rape, as well. It was sickening, and the details are near impossible to imagine or envision.
And yet, since Oct. 7, more than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military response to the horror of that attack, most of them women and children, Palestinian authorities report. In a brutally painful letter to the New York Times, representatives from the world’s largest relief organizations say it is unlike anything they have ever seen, and they have seen it all:
“Among leaders in Washington, there is constant talk about preparing for the ‘day after.’ But if this relentless bombardment and siege continue, there will be no ‘day after’ for Gaza. It will be too late.”
Israel, as Mandela believed, has a right to defend itself. But too many of those now defending this brutal response talk about that right in a vacuum, as if Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has nothing to do with what happened – as if there is no causal link between history and present.
Understanding the root cause of an event is not the same thing as assigning blame. But understanding the history behind traumatic events can sometimes shine a light, however feeble, on the way out of the darkness.
One truth is that the creation of a brazenly discriminatory apartheid regime similar to what was finally dismantled in South Africa planted the seeds of a festering resentment – bordering on hatred – directed towards Israel by the Palestinians. The response to the attack of Oct. 7 won’t change that.
Another truth is that Hamas’ long held goal is to destroy the state of Israel by any means necessary, and that they have never hesitated to target civilians. Amnesty International and others have proclaimed their actions as crimes against humanity.
The longer a particular wrong is allowed to go unacknowledged — or even sanctioned — the easier it is for an equal and opposite wrong to draw breath and rise on the other side of the fence.
The horrors of the Holocaust were a major catalyst behind the creation of Israel in the first place; to give a home to a terrified people who had witnessed 6 million of their own murdered simply for being Jews.
But the other half of that truth is that the Palestinians were forced out of their own land to pave the way for that home — and the Palestinians have not forgotten that.
That the tragedy and injustice of one group of people who had endured more trauma than any group of people should be expected to bear created another injustice against another group of people. Anyone who understands the nature of trauma can almost see how this response might be both understandable, and objectionable, at the same time.
Because in Israel, just as in South Africa, the only way out of this is through the whole truth. In South Africa, with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mandela was at least trying to force the white people of his native land to face the truth of what had been done to Black South Africans — and the repercussions of that apartheid brutality.
The report was presented to then-President Mandela in October of 1998. Twenty-five years later, not quite half the length of the apartheid government, South Africa is hardly a shining city on a hill. But documenting the truth and making it a matter of record was something no other government had even tried, and it was not just a good start, it was the right thing to do.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: South Africa continues Nelson Mandela's support for Palestine
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