A reprint of a conversation with Natan Sharansky about his meeting with Nelson Mandela on July 6, 1990.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFNatan Sharansky 521(photo credit: Reuters)
What made you decide to meet with Nelson Mandela after he declared the likes of [Fidel] Castro, [Yasser] Arafat and [Muammar] Gaddafi to be his friends? It was not an easy decision. Saying that those people he admires are our people’s arch-enemies would be an understatement.You did not mention [Leonid] Brezhnev, whose KGB put me in jail, whom he admires too. They, these friends of Mandela, are either totalitarians or people who wish to rid the world of Israel. But I could not help empathize with a persecuted, imprisoned idealist who fought all his life for what he believes in. I told myself that he could not be too choosy about his allies. A great friend of Israel, Charles Krauthammer, wrote in his Washington Post column that there are conditions when you embrace the devil. I suppose it’s like America allying itself with Stalin to fight an even greater evil.Did you know anything about Mandela’s attitude to Israel? That’s exactly what encouraged me.His support for Israel’s right to exist is unequivocal. No ifs, no buts, no conditions, no fudging. But of course there are many contradictions in his thinking.He can demand uncompromising, worldwide intervention with sanctions against South Africa while considering even the most timid questions about his totalitarian friends an unacceptable intervention in their internal affairs. But I could not believe he would have compared Arafat’s war against us to his own struggle if he knew the facts.Do you feel you convinced him of that at your meeting? I don’t know. He obviously wanted the meeting to be a chat between two veteran prisoners. And it started with prison talk. You know he is quite tall, about 1.90 meters, and he was obviously taken aback by the difference in our size. So I joked that in prison being small was an advantage because the sleeves of the prison clothing could cover the hands and protect them from the cold. And he said he knew all about my prison days because he read my book about it. [Anti-apartheid activist and politician] Helen Suzman brought it to him in jail. He said he felt there was a world brotherhood of political prisoners.Then he mentioned prisoners in the United States and England “and even in India”… which surprised me, to say the least. He said he thought I suffered much more than he did, even though he spent 27 years in jail to my nine, because I was isolated and he had 28 activists who were imprisoned with him and could continue his political life. His wife could visit him every month, while in my nine years in the gulag I had only four visits from my mother and brother.Did you talk about anything else? Of course. Just what he said about my being alone gave me the opportunity to tell him something about the support I got from the whole Jewish people, not just from [Sharansky’s wife] Avital, and explain what Zionism means to us. Then I shifted it to the current situation. I told him I understood his feeling of obligation to those who helped the ANC but I could not understand his comparing his struggles against racism and apartheid to our conflict with the Arabs. I mentioned that the one-man-one-vote principle he was fighting for was practiced in Israel since the birth of the state.Did he agree with you? He said only, “I support Arafat because all he wants is self-determination and a state for the Palestinians side by side with Israel.” He seemed surprised that the PLO charter called for the elimination of Israel. He said: “The whole world recognizes the rights of the Palestinians to a state. Why don’t you sit with Arafat and tell him what you don’t like about the charter?” I asked, “What’s the use of talking with anyone committed to your destruction?” but he did not respond.He obviously did not want to criticize anyone. Even the self-criticism now so fashionable and acceptable in the Soviet Union seems strange to him. He is a revolutionary leader in the old tradition.The revolution is king, not he.Did he say anything specific about Israel? He just repeated several times that his support for Israel’s right to exist is unconditional.He said he owed a lot to Zionism, that he studies the national liberation movement of the Jews, that his first and strongest supporters were Jews.But then he asked, “Why do you suppress peaceful demonstrations?” and since the time was drawing to a close I thought I would not continue the argument but ask him to come to Israel and see for himself.Did he accept the invitation? He said he could not answer on the spot, but that if he received an official invitation, he would most likely accept.Before leaving, I said: “You will see. Your present friends are not builders. When it comes time to build, it will be Israel, the Jews, who will come to your aid just as they have been doing in all of black Africa.” He seemed not to know about Israel’s aid to African countries.Do you think you got anywhere with him? What’s your general impression? I have no illusions. One conversation cannot make that much of a difference.But Mandela is a warm, brilliant, articulate man. A leader, perhaps the uncrowned leader, of the Third World.More than anything, he is a listener.I hope he listens. The rigid Marxists around him have painted the usual picture of an Israel-Pretoria axis, but he cannot forget his Jewish friends, the Jewish lawyer who have him his first job. He admires Helen Suzman even though she opposes sanctions, and he admires Zionism. Obviously, he is not easy to define.Are you happy you met with him? There are many among your friends who opposed your seeing him.As I said, it was not an easy decision.There is a big anti-Israel campaign in the world; it is really an anti-Semitic campaign which turns even the rescue of Jews into some kind of plot to displace Arabs.Every one of our sins becomes magnified out of all proportion. We seem to react in two ways: we either agree with ghetto mentality, to what is said about us, and become ashamed of ourselves and of Israel and our people; or we say it is not important what the world thinks of us, and leave the field to our enemies. I believe we should talk to those who really believe in our right to exist, in our right to Israel. We should keep our options open. Most of the world just does not know the truth.We must find a way to reach them.
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