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Today you can watch much of the world praise the life and mourn the death of former South African President anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela. Scores of U.S. leaders and political pundits with platforms to reach millions of Americans are expressing admiration for Mandela today, but I have barely seen a single acknowledgement of the fact that the U.S. strongly opposed Mandela’s struggle and strongly supported the white supremacist apartheid system in South Africa. There has been almost no mention in the mainstream that Mandela remained on the U.S.’s terrorism watch list until 2008<\/a>. Mandela spent 27 years in prison, thanks in part to the CIA assisting<\/a>\u00a0the apartheid regime\u2019s secret police in his arrest.<\/p>\n This white-washing mostly occurs on television. Cable news is especially vapid. There are a few exceptions in print\/digital media. One comes from Peter Beinhart<\/a>:<\/p>\n In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan placed Mandela\u2019s African National Congress on\u00a0America\u2019s official list of \u201cterrorist\u201d groups<\/a>. In 1985, then-Congressman Dick Cheney\u00a0voted against<\/a>a resolution urging that he be released from jail. In 2004, after Mandela criticized the Iraq War,\u00a0an article in National Review<\/a>\u00a0said his \u201cvicious anti-Americanism and support for Saddam Hussein should come as no surprise, given his longstanding dedication to communism and praise for terrorists.\u201d As late as 2008, the ANC remained on America\u2019s terrorism watch list, thus\u00a0requiring the 89-year-old Mandela to receive a special waiver<\/a>\u00a0from the secretary of State to visit the U.S.<\/p>\n …In South Africa, for decades, American presidents backed apartheid in the name of anti-communism. Indeed, the language of the Cold War proved so morally corrupting that in 1981, Reagan, without irony,\u00a0called South Africa\u2019s monstrous regime \u201cessential to the free world.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Believe it or not, there is an aspect of this hypocritical praise of Mandela that is mentioned even less than the media coverage of his passing. That is the uncomfortable<\/a> similarity<\/a>\u00a0that Israel’s occupation of Palestine now has with the apartheid regime in South Africa.<\/p>\n