THE REAL LESSONS FROM THE DEATH OF NELSON MANDELA
John Chuckman
The press has echoed for days with admiration for Nelson
Mandela and his genuinely heroic fight against the apartheid government of
South Africa. There have been many recollections of the brutal quality of that
government, all perhaps carrying an unstated sense of how could people live
that way?
As I listened on the radio, I couldn’t help thinking of the common
human frailty which sees us caught up in gasping over and memorializing what is
past while ignoring much the same thing that is present, as on what is called
Remembrance or Armistice Day, we’ve recalled for the best part of a century the
terrifying experiences of a war which was to end all war, while yet marching on
to even more brutal and murderous conflicts. This seems contrary to logic, and it
certainly works against the interest of institutionalizing and making permanent
what it is that we praise, but it remains a conflicting duality of thought we
find almost universally established. After all, it is so much safer and easier
to praise heroism once the threat it struggled against has faded into history. And,
sad to say, but history does tend to support the idea of most people behaving
like cowards while they sing the praises of heroism.
We have no less an authority than Nelson Mandela himself, in
an opinion shared by the equally admirable Bishop Tutu, that the terrible
system of oppression against which they struggled in South Africa is very much alive
and flourishing in still another place today. That place is, of course, Israel
and its occupied territories.
No matter what past abuse by the former apartheid government
the newsmen and commentators may mention, there is an equal, or in some cases
an even greater, one not mentioned for Israel. For the Soweto and Sharpeville Massacres,
we have Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and the several invasions of Southern
Lebanon, the toll of these measured in thousands killed and thousands more
injured. For the many people, like Mandela, arrested for opposing oppression and
left to rot in prison, we have tens of thousands of illegal arrests by Israel
of people also left to rot in prison and often tortured there. For the secret murders
which South African security forces routinely carried out in the manner of the
Argentine Junta’s “disappearing” people, we have scores of assassinations of
Palestinian leaders, including not so very long ago Yasser Arafat. For the Bantustans South Africa created to pen
up millions of blacks, depriving them of access to most of the country, we have
Israel’s Wall, an armored fortress which snakes through the homes and farms of
countless people without regard for their welfare or rights and the utter isolation
of Gaza’s one-and-a-half million behind razor-wire fences with radar-controlled
machine-gun towers set at intervals and warships blocking the coast. For South
Africa’s two classes of citizenship with unequal rights and responsibilities,
we have Israel’s two classes of citizenship with unequal rights and
responsibilities plus the perpetual consignment of millions to a life of
occupation with no defined citizenship or rights.
And what actually brought down the oppressive South African
regime? Not really the bravery of the Mandelas and Tutus directly, but the
outside world’s gradually turning against that government’s excesses and
bringing the force of embargo and economic penalties. The United States was a
late-comer to the process – after all, it highly valued the anti-Communist
stance of the apartheid government in the Cold War, given its strategic
position on the Cape. But once the United States was turned by its own people
to join the boycott, apartheid’s days became numbered. And, happily, the end
came with remarkable peacefulness.
I have often said that only pressure from the United States will
correct the terrible abuses of Israel, but the United States shows few signs yet
of exercising that potentially decisive power for good. It is, first, in the
midst of another massive equivalent of the Cold War, its so-called War on
Terror. In this War, Israel plays the role South Africa once played in the Cold
War as occupier of a key strategic point. Israel also makes every effort to
have Americans and others see its brutalities as part of a shared battle, a
fight against terror, even though its struggles more closely resemble those of
the late South African government, a war against the rights and dignity of
millions of people with whom they do not want to live. And many Americans still
do not understand, being given every encouragement in their press not to
understand, that the War on Terror is blowback from Israel’s oppression.
Israel has another advantage it exercises to the fullest. American
elections have become utterly corrupted by special interests and money, so much
so that American democracy is, at best, described as on life support. This is
the work of Americans themselves, but Israel has cleverly devised an expert and
systematic way to exploit the corruption. Its lobby rewards with campaign funds
and good publicity those who support Israel’s interests, and it punishes those
who do not. Newly-elected officials are given the clearest set of guidelines
for what is expected of them with initial paid trips to Israel for every new
Congressman and regular consultation thereafter concerning issues on which they
are to vote.
I have to believe that ultimately the basic human impulse
for fairness – something we find remarkably in many people in many lands no
matter what kind of government they may live under – will prevail, but I have
no hope that can happen soon. In the meantime, maybe we can learn a little bit
about our tendency to sing praises with our eyes closed.
