ANT KATZ

The above, uncut version of the first half of the Town Hall interview, when viewed alongside the crudely cut-and-pasted version of the same interview, SEE BELOW, clearly indicates how effectively this strategy can be used

Putting the record right

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The SA arm of the US-based NGO Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (Israel), BDS-SA, used Jewish Report Online last week to disseminate to our readers an edited version of a video of a Mandela interview – which was re-contextualised in exactly the same way that the original story had clearly indicated had been done to a speech.

The organisation posted links to its edited version of a video as a comment on the Jewish Report story, What Madiba said & meant. Jewish Report’s user comment guidelines lay out our policy which is not to restrict or censor information flow – and so the website’s moderator, quite correctly, left the links on the website.

RIGHT: A screen grab from the 1990 interview

However, as much as Jewish Report has allowed the use of its comments section to dispel this message, the website must ensure that our mostly Jewish and Zionist users around the world are not misled by this somewhat crudely cut-and-paste version of the video which, by commission or omission, misleads the viewer about Madiba’s policy regarding Israel.

The BDS-SA edited version gives the viewer the impression that the newly-released Nelson Mandela, in a 1990 town-hall format Ted Koppel interview, supported the PLO over Israel. That was not the case.

The entire interview is over an hour long and both cumbersome and mostly not relevant. Jewish Report has, therefore, chosen to publish an unedited version, above, of Part One of the interview, which covers the piece in question. Users can follow the guide below and then compare on the short edited version published by BDS-SA what has been removed to re-contextualise what Madiba actually said.

24 MINUTES into the unedited video, above, Mandela is asked about earlier statements he had made about ANC Struggle supporters like the PLO, Cuba and Libya.

A candid Mandela says, among other things: “One of the mistakes which some political analysts make is to think that their enemies should be our enemies.”

Show host Ted Koppel then all but suggests that Madiba’s remarks show him to be politically naïve – which earns him a tongue-lashing from Madiba.

27 MINUTES into the video, Henry Siegman, then-executive director of the American Jewish Congress, questions Madiba. This is the crucial part which seems to have been subjectively extensively edited in the BDS-SA version. Siegman refers to an earlier meeting in Geneva where US Jewish organisations had made clear that US Jewry was committed to the struggle against apartheid and racism in SA and that their support for Madiba was unconditional.

But, said Siegman, he had been disappointed at Mandela’s comments at 24 minutes in that he felt the comments suggested a level of amorality in that it suggested to him that Madiba was suggesting that what Gaddafi, or Castro do in their own countries is totally irrelevant as long as they supported the ANC. “I hope that is not what Mr Mandela meant, and I would hope that he would clarify that issue further,” said Siegman.

Mandela’s reply was emphatic: The ANC was a liberation movement, he said, which is fully involved in a struggle to emancipate its own people. “We have no time to be looking into the internal affairs of other countries. It is unreasonable for anybody to think that this is our role.” Madiba refused to be drawn into the subject of internal affairs of Libya and Cuba.

But he did speak on the PLO.

AT 31 MINUTES into the video, above, Mandela said that as far as Arafat was concerned, the PLO was also fighting for self-determination. But, Madiba added: “That support for Yasser Arafat does not mean that the ANC has ever doubted the right of Israel to exist as a state legally. We have stood quite openly and firmly for the right of that state to exist.”

That last statement is excised in the BDS-SA edited version, as is Madiba’s reference to the fact that, in the ANC, “we have Jews. In fact Mr Gaddafi would not allow us to open an office because we have Jewish members.”

Madiba says that the ANC stuck to its guns until Gaddafi gave in and allowed them to both have Jewish members and an office in Libya – the only organisation that was allowed to.

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Related read on Jewish Report Online

Jewish Report Chairman Howard Sackstein was vice-chairman of “Jews for Social Justice” (the Jewish anti-apartheid movement).

LEFT: A youthful Howard Sackstein with Madiba in Brussels for a meeting Howard had engineered with European Jewish leaders 

READ HOWARD’S STORY which is full of amusing anecdotes such as his parents, Maurice and Helen, offering their home as the venue for an early, legal meeting between the community and the newly-unbanned ANC.

“My memories of the evening are, however, marred by our family dog trying to bite Terror Lekota upon his arrival,” writes Howard.

For the rest of the evening, the dog and his parents were banished to the bedroom as the parties met.

This is a riveting must-read…