Mandela and Arafat

The world mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela as well it should.  He freed his black county men from their apartheid rulers and did so in a manner that made possible a reconciliation between blacks and whites.  While the reconciliation wasn't perfect, it was better than could have been expected.

I find, however, one short coming in the vision of Mandela and that is in his inability to distinguish between personal relationships and national interests.  Three of Mandela's greatest friends were Arafat, Gadhafi, and Castro.  And, those personal affinities are perfectly understandable.

Mandela's friendship to Gadhafi is the easiest to understand.  Providing Mandela with his greatest support were the Soviet Union and the Arab states.  But, among these states, it was Gadhafi who probably supplied the most money needed to wage the war against apartheid.  Of course, Gadhafi also supplied funds to other Africans such as Zimbabwe's Mugabe.  It was part of Gadhafi's plan to create a united Africa.  The fact that Gadhafi ran a dictatorship, or that he supported the likes of Mugabe didn't matter.  And, that's understandable.  Upending a state, as entrenched as was the apartheid state of South Africa, isn't easy.  When a friend like Gadhafi shows up, you don't check too carefully as to how he runs his country.  In Mandela's own words, "We have no time to look into the internal affairs of other countries."

And that pretty much explains his relationship to Castro.  This was a time of the cold war and Mandela's support came from the Soviets and their allies.  Castro's entry into the Angola conflict is also relevant.  Here the fight was between U.S. and South African backed proxies and Russian backed proxies.  Ultimately, the Cuban military forces and the South African military forces left Angola to the Angolans.  The South Africa of that time was the apartheid South Africa, so one begins to understand Mandela's warm relationship with Castro.

As to Arafat, he served as the man representing Arab interests.  That was after Nasser of Egypt made him the official spokesperson and leader of the Palestinians.  And, that was after Egypt's defeat in the Yom Kippur War.  With Arab support for Mandela, Arafat emerged as one of his best friends.  There were both similarities and sharp differences in the nature of these two men.  Both struggled against superior forces and both were designated as terrorists.  However, it should be noted that Mandela was seeking equal treatment within his country.  South Africa was to remain South Africa.  It was only apartheid that was to be removed.

In the case of Israel, its place among nations had been established by the UN with positive votes cast by a majority of nations, including the Soviet Union.  Efforts to have Israel live in peace with the Palestinians failed only because of the refusal of Arab nations to recognize the new state.  And, indeed, they launched several wars against it..  Only after the Arab nations conceded the defeat of their armies did they hand over to Arafat their continuing  effort to destroy Israel.

It is clear to any objective observer that the failure of the Palestinians to gain statehood has been entirely of their own doing.  By now, working in harmony with all their neighbors, including Israel, Palestine might have become a prosperous and advanced nation.  It's not the Jews who held them back, but rather their allies in the Muslim world who find working with Jews to be an anathema.  How sad when one considers that in Israel, street signs are written in both Hebrew and Arabic.

What the Arabs are now trying to do is conflate the Palestinian desire to bury Israel with Mandela's work in eliminating apartheid.  But, in fact, there is no apartheid in Israel for anyone to eliminate.  Israel's protective barrier the Palestinians argue hems them in.  But clearly it has kept terrorists from blowing up Israeli busses and killing members of the Israeli public.  Had the Palestinians made peace with Israel, there would have been no need to erect this barrier.  It's in Gaza and the West Bank with its family clans that establishing a peace with the Jewish State of Israel seems a bridge too far.