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Ha'aretz, Letters to the Editor, 30 April 2001

Regarding "Strong quote from Mandela" by Akiva Eldar (Ha'aretz, April 24, 2001)

I am the "Palestinian living in Holland" mentioned in Akiva Eldar's piece and I would like to clarify what happened.

[Eldar reported that a letter purportedly sent by Nelson Mandela to Thomas Friedman was "the initiative of a Palestinian living in Holland who tends to sign various missives he sends out to the world with the names of famous people."]

On 27 March 2001, Thomas L. Friedman published his column "Bush's First Memo" in the New York Times. As a response I adapted Friedman's style and wrote him a response. If you compare Friedman's "Bush's First Memo" and "Mandela's First Memo," then you'll see that I used the same style (and nobody ever blamed Friedman for using this style of writing).

However, the New York Times did not publish my response and so I sent it to MediaMonitorsNetwork which published my response on March 30, 2001.

Then it was posted, including the title "Mandela's First Memo to Thomas Friedman" and a byline saying "by Arjan El Fassed", on several mailing lists. However, and this is where the problems started, it was forwarded by someone, who deleted the byline (which stated that it was written by me), and so those who read it without the byline believed it was written by Mandela himself. Immediately, I sent an explanation and explicitly wrote that it was written by me. It was never my intention to make a fake or pretend it actually was written by Nelson Mandela. Not a lot of people seem to understand that it was a complete copy of the style Friedman uses.

Also the memo was posted on the Website "the Electronic Intifada" and it clearly states that it was written by me "in the 'mock memo' style that Friedman himself likes to use" and it was highlighted that it was "satire".

Moreover, on April 11, 2001, I wrote a second response to the New York Times, and again they didn't publish, and this time I wrote a memo from Mahatma Gandhi.

I intentionally choose Mahatma Gandhi, not in the first place, because he is no longer living. However, the problem with the whole thing is that some people have forwarded an email without source, without stating where they got it from, who was the author and where it was published.

People start forwarding and then it appeared translated in Arabic on the Internet, and then it was published by a newspaper, which didn't verified its source, and then today I see it again in Ha'aretz. As you can see, the problem is with the person who forwarded it without the byline and without stating that I was the author. I didn't have any ill intention with it, especially not causing harm to anyone.

What I intended with it, was to show Thomas Friedman that he was wrong with the contents of his column.

Arjan El Fassed
De Bilt, The Netherlands