The Real Mandela--No Peacenik
Sat Sep 22, 2007 at 08:20:14 AM PDT
Chaoslilliths diary on "Great People Who Have Changed" http://www.dailykos.com/...prompted this response, too long for a comment. In thinking of people cemented by past attitudes and words, the situation in Israel immediately came to mind.
I recently finished "Long Walk to Freedom," Nelson Mandela's autobiography, in which he chronicles the development of his own political thinking. What struck me is that the tragedy in MOST political thought is people refuse to change, to develop, to open their minds to their opponents' views (no matter how offensive their past language and behavior) so dialog and meaningful change can occur.
Mandela came to believe violent resistance was necessary against the white government. He says nonviolent resistance was always a tactic. On some level he knew that if the ANC finally concluded it wasn't having an impact, they would have to escalate. In one of his trials, "They insisted that the ANC must renounce violence...before the government would agree to negotiations...Their contention was that violence was nothing more than criminal behavior that could not be tolerated by the state."
"I responded that the state was responsible for the violence and that it is always the oppressor, not the oppressed, who dictates the terms of the struggle. If the oppressor uses violence, the oppressed have no alternative but to respond violently."
After decades of nonviolence, Mandela founded the military wing of the ANC, and established a heirarchy of violence, ranging from sabotage to terrorism. He saw terrorism as a last resort, because he knew it would alienate the white population blacks hoped to have as allies and knew they would have to live with after freedom came. But there is never any doubt in his thinking that his people's freedom is worth what it eventually will cost.
It's a fascinating read, from a very deep thinker, and it gave me food for thought re the situation in Israel. Mandela speaks about how the government attempted a divide and conquer aproach to the blacks, into "good" (ie, homeland tribal chiefs and some nonmilitant black political groups) and outlaw blacks, in order to break the power of a unified black resistance. Mandela describes how for the most part blacks were able to resist this fragmenting (not all), seeing in it the weakening of the overall struggle.
Looking at the Hamas- Fatah fracture and the horrifying result, one wishes that the leadership of both those groups had understood how vital to the progress of their people's freedom their ability to maintain a unified front would be. Fatah got a few hundred of its political prisoners released--now they can watch as the entire Gaza strip is left to dangle for water, electricity, etc because it is Fatah run and therefore "enemy of Israel."
I am saddened at the failure of both groups' leadership in this matter. They should have read Mandela's book, as Mandela read Moshe Dayan about his days as a freedom fighter? terrorist? for understanding about tactics.
Reading Mandela's book, you can't help thinking: Don't the whites know change is coming, has to come, must come? Why persist with this brutality and the skewed court system for the decades that roll by? Mandela understands: The whites are scared, just like the Israelis are scared. Neither group wanted to face that it had overreached.
But look at the progress South Africa has made now that it can focus on moving forward. No heaven on earth, but progress. Why can't the same happen in Israel?
Fear. On NPR (?) the other day, someone mentioned that the solifying into secatrian groups was propelled by the lack of security in Iraq after the fall of Saddam--in other words, if there had been massive security, a unified country could have confronted its problems more quickly. But for protection against the lawlessness (much of it criminal, not politicaly motivated), the turning to local militias occurred.Golda Meir was once quoted as saying " There is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab nation. Palestine is a name the Romans gave to Eretz Yisreal with the express purpose of infuriating the Jews." (Jerualem Post, November 15, 1995).
Scores of supporters of Zionism perpetrated the fiction that Israel was relatively empty desert peopled only by Bedouins before the Jews came back and "reclaimed" the land in more ways than one. (A fascinating "polemic" about Arab [what a book is labeled when it concentrates on its own writer's side of the story] about Arab and Jewish population levels and land ownership is "Palestine: A Personal History," by Karl Sabbagh. For a polemic, written in temperate style and well sourced to the latest hsitorical research by people of all backgrounds.)
No doubt members of the ANC, and even some of its leadership, said all whites should be expelled from South Africa at some point or another, just as the white leadership made infuriating claims about blacks' inferiority.
But in the end, people have to live together. They put the past behind them and don't hang onto inflammatory hooks.
So I am driven to almost madness when I hear the refarin, "But he said Israel should be wiped off the map!"
God forbid we ask, "When did he say it? What do his actions today show in terms of his intentions? What are the political realities this person works under? was working under?"
I am by nature a right/wrong, black/white purist. So it has been a struggle for me to understand the need to accommodate to the realities of life; to focus on moving ahead, and not focus on "justice" for the past. Instead of massice trials of the Afrikaans police force, South Africa instituted the Truth and Reconciliation commission. They moved on. Instead of focusing on the Moshe Dyan Quote in which he called Arabs "animals" or the years'-old quotes of this or that Palestinian leader as to how Isreal should be wiped off the map or even the Iranian president's denial of the Holocaust (great way to solidify the base!), can we try to appreciate the backroom realpolitik that must occur for real change to take place?
The end of "Long Walk to Freedom," in which Mandela relates the secret meetings that took place between himself and de Klerk are some of the most fascinating in the book. If anyone had a right to rage or revenge, it's Mandela, and yet he coolly negotiated the end to white majority rule with a hated enemy.
Begin, with Sadat, spoke about the future of their grandchildren, the commonality of most people's aspirations. They set past violence and violent rhetoric aside and shaped a new reality.
Change=good.
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