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| Mandela and Arafat on the sidelines of the OAU conference |
International Day for Nelson Mandela, who said, "Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
In the fall of 2009, the United Nations General Assembly declared July 18th Nelson Mandela International Day, in recognition of the former South African president's contribution to "a culture of peace and freedom."
The same day also marks the birthday of "Madiba," as Nelson Mandela was known in his country.
Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment. After 27 years in prison, he became the country's first black president and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
At the end of 2015, the General Assembly decided to expand the scope of Mandela International Day to "promote humane prison conditions, increase awareness of prisoners as part of society, and recognize the work of prison staff as a social service of particular importance."
Nelson Mandela's first engagement with Arab issues was in the 1950s, when he visited Algeria, which was still under French occupation, and Egypt in 1962 to meet with then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Mandela's engagement with Arab issues continued until the "Arab Spring" revolutions of 2011. He addressed the revolutionaries, urging them to be tolerant of supporters of the previous regimes, believing that intolerance could lead to the revolution being exhausted and plunged into pointless internal conflicts.
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Regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Mandela expressed his support for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. In February 1990, days after his release from prison after 27 years, Nelson Mandela warmly embraced Arafat. The gesture was controversial at the time, just as South Africa's support for the Palestinian side is controversial today, but Mandela ignored the criticism.
Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was a staunch supporter of Mandela's struggle against white minority rule.
In 1997, three years after his democratic election as president, the late leader said, "Our freedom is incomplete without freedom for the Palestinians."
Regarding Israel, Mandela noted that upon his release from prison, he received invitations to visit "from almost every country in the world, except Israel." When Israel began extending invitations to him during the 1990s, Mandela was in no hurry to accept them.
It is no coincidence that when he visited Israel in 1999, it was at a time when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak appeared to be on the verge of a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and Mandela likely hoped his presence would provide some sort of final push.
He was quoted as saying, "Talk about peace will remain hollow if Israel continues to occupy Arab lands. I understand very well why Israel occupies these lands. There was a war. But if we want to have peace, there must be a complete withdrawal from all these territories."
There was no doubt that Israel's ties to the apartheid regime had an impact on Mandela.
Alon Liel, the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, said, "Mandela was angry about that cooperation and said, 'We will never forget it.' But he said, 'If you change your attitude toward the Palestinians, we will open a new page with Israel.'"
Mandela knew how to balance personal and political matters.
There was no doubt that his heart was with the Palestinians as a people, but he fondly remembered the many members of the South African Jewish community who helped him through his difficult early years.
There was the man who gave him his first job as a lawyer, and Arthur Goldreich, the white Jewish activist in the ANC who hid Mandela while he was on the run.
As Mandela himself said, "I owe it to the Jews even if I sometimes make statements about Israel."
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