Ever since the UN’s John Dugard issued a report slamming “Israeli apartheid,” the op-ed pages of South Africa’s Business Day have become quite a battleground.
Last week, editor Karima Brown’s commentary quoted Dugard like gospel. Then, Joel Pollak exposed how a letter ostensibly written by Nelson Mandela was actually penned by Electronic Intifada co-founder Arjan El Fassed. This “letter” was quoted by—among others—Jimmy Carter and various Palestinian supporters. Today, Fassed responded in a letter to the editor that the “Mandela letter” was written as a satire:
In a clearly labelled spoof, under my byline, I published a mock memo from Mandela to Friedman on March 27 2001. Unfortunately, someone forwarded it on the internet without my byline, as I explained to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.
The point is: although the Mandela memo was only a piece of satire, it is not necessary to believe it to understand the Israel-apartheid comparison is grounded in an ugly reality.
Here’s a copy of the spoof letter with Fassed’s name on it.
We don’t have a problem with satire per-se, and Carter’s research was clearly shoddy. But something clearly stinks when the humor is so “grounded in an ugly reality” that people take it seriously.
© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
