A model of reconciliation

Editorial

It may be one of the truest measures of the person that was Nelson Mandela that he never held a grudge against Israel. Mandela passed away last week at the age of 95, leading to an intensive global consideration not only of the man and his life, but of the changed world he helped usher in from one of the saddest periods of 20th-century history.

There is a level of misunderstanding about Mandela’s relationship with Israel. This was exacerbated by a falsified statement that made the rounds, as things do on the Internet, pretending to be from Mandela and condemning Israel as an apartheid state.

Even when the memo’s author, Dutch politician Arjun el Fassel, acknowledged that he was the author, he still maintained that the memo reflected Mandela’s heartfelt views. Given that the anti-Israel movement co-opted the South African apartheid experience wholesale and debased it by applying it to Israelis and Palestinians, it should hardly surprise us that someone would have the chutzpah to pen something in the name of the anti-apartheid movement’s leader and then, when unmasked, claim to speak with Mandela’s legitimate voice – even as the man was still alive and fully capable of expressing himself.

What is notable is that Mandela approached Israel with equanimity, though he would have had every right to treat Israel with more disdain than the rest of the world routinely does.

The history of relations between Israel and South Africa is complicated and often unpleasant. South Africa was one of only four Commonwealth countries to support the Partition Resolution of 1947. But over the following years, as Israel became a leading supporter of post-colonial development in Africa, relations frayed with the settler regime in Pretoria. After 1967, and especially after 1973, Israel was the object of much of the world’s approbation and found itself isolated in the world arena in a fashion not dissimilar to South Africa’s. During this period – even as apartheid was in its death throes – Israel enhanced and broadened its relationship with the racist National Party regime. In 1976, the South African government’s official yearbook offered this race-based assessment of the relationship: “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.”

In retrospect, it might be pleasant to think that Israel betrayed the world’s near-unanimous front against apartheid out of nothing but strategic need and desperation for some bilateral fraternity with someone – anyone – that would have them. Regardless of motivation, however, it is a stain on Israel’s history that, at the time, it became one of the best allies of the regime, even working together on nuclear development and testing.

After Mandela was released from prison and then when he became president of his country, he could have become Israel’s most vocal critic – and his stature would have made him a more formidable foe than the rabble that routinely chants against Israel. But he did not.

According to Abraham Foxman, writing Monday in the Times of Israel, Mandela met with a group of American Jewish leaders and expressed his approach. Recognizing the disproportionate number of South African Jews in the anti-apartheid movement and among some of Mandela’s closest personal relationships, he told the delegation (according to Foxman): “I appreciate what the Jewish community has done for me. On the other hand, if the test of my friendship with you is that I have to be the enemy of your enemy, then I cannot be your friend.”

Mandela was a fervent supporter of Palestinian statehood, but just as he and his government undertook a process of reconciliation, rather than retribution, with the people who had imprisoned him for decades and oppressed the majority of his country, he appears to have taken a similarly forgiving approach to Israel. Mandela did not appear to harbor the vengeful attitude that might be understandable in his dealings with Israel.

Truth and reconciliation, in fact, is one of the most extraordinarily idealistic and beautiful manifestations of 20th-century humanity. While Mandela may not have been Israel’s greatest cheerleader, where lesser people might have resorted to reprisal, his approach was, in fact, a model of reconciliation and dialogue. An example to be emulated wherever there has been conflict.

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