Was America Really Against Mandela?

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One of the treasures in my study is a letter from Menachem Begin. He wrote on the letterhead of the prime minister of Israel to thank me for sending the published copy of an interview two colleagues and I had conducted with him in July 1982 at Jerusalem. It had been his first since invading Lebanon, and appeared on page one of what he called the “very friendly” Wall Street Journal.

He did have one quibble: Our reference to the fact that many — not everyone, but many — had considered the Irgun a “brutal and terroristic” organization. “I can assure you,” Begin wrote, “that as far as I have studied history, there never was a more humane underground liberation struggle than that fought by the Irgun Zvei Leumi.” The letter has often reminded me to be careful about labeling someone a terrorist.

It came to mind as I was reading the Left’s tirades about what people thought of Nelson Mandela in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Suddenly our Leftists are unhappy that, in the wake of Mandela’s death, so many on the Right are saying such nice things about him. After all, during the years that he lay on Robben Island, or before, the Right was out of the fight against apartheid. Many on the right — not all, but many — talked about him as a terrorist.  . . . 

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