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by Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, April 24, 2001

Two weeks ago, the Palestinian daily Al Quds published a letter that Nelson Mandela sent to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in response to a March 27 Frideman column, dubbed "Memo to President Bush," which was particularly critical of Yasser Arafat.

"Dear Thomas, I know that you and I long for peace in the Middle East," starts Mandela's letter and immediately swings into an attack on Israel, comparing it to the white apartheid regime in South Africa. "The Palestinians are not struggling for a 'state' but for freedom, liberation and equality, just like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa," it goes on.

Here are some more quotes from the Nobel Prize winner's letter:

"Thomas, if you followed the polls in Israel for the last 30 or 40 years you clearly find a vulgar racism that includes a third of the population who openly declare themselves to be racist ... the so-called 'Palestinian autonomous areas' are bantustans ... restricted entities within the power structure of the Israeli apartheid system. The Palestinian state cannot be the by-product of the Jewish state just in order to keep the Jewish purity of Israel."

And so on and so forth.

The editor of Al Quds, Marwan Abu Zalaf, sent a copy of the freedom fighter's letter to Ha'aretz and suggested it be brought to the attention of the newspaper's readers. Just to be sure, we asked the South African Embassy in Tel Aviv check with Mandela's office that he indeed write it. It didn't take long for the truth to come out - the letter was a fake.

Mandela apparently first heard about the letter from a thank you message he received from Arafat, who apparently read his South African friend's "creation" in the Palestinian newspaper. It turns out that the letter was the initiative of a Palestinian living in Holland, who tends to sign various missives he sends out to the world signed with the names of famous people.

Abu Zalaf said yesterday that he had no idea it was a fake, and that one of his reporters found it on the Internet. He doesn't think that it's necessary to let his readers know that the newspaper misled them. He's certain that in any case everyone has already forgotten about the whole thing and there's no need to bring the matter up again.