Matthew Duss: Inconvenient Alliance ... Israel and South Africa
[Matthew Duss is a research associate with the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and a blogger at CAPAF’s Wonk Room.]
To say that Sasha Polakow-Suransky's new book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa comes at a particularly inconvenient time for the Netanyahu government would be an understatement. Israel is resisting calls for an independent investigation of the May 31 flotilla attack -- in which Israeli naval commandos killed nine activists aboard a Turkish vessel attempting to break the Gaza blockade -- while it continues to deal with the fallout from a previous United Nations investigation of its conduct during the 2009 Gaza War.
Those opposed to the Gaza investigation have even gone so far as to attempt to smear the author, Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who oversaw the report for the U.N. Human Rights Council. The report asserted evidence of possible war crimes by both Israel and Hamas and has been a source of serious concern for Israeli officials. In early May, the popular Israeli tabloid Yediot Ahronot published a "special investigation" of Goldstone.
Titled "Judge Goldstone's Dark Past," the Yediot article details Goldstone's career as a judge under South Africa's system of apartheid, during which he apparently sentenced some 28 black South Africans to death for various crimes. Though it contained little new information, the article was enthusiastically seized upon by Goldstone's critics. American law professor (and ubiquitous Israel defender) Alan Dershowitz dismissed Goldstone's excuse that he was bound by the (admittedly racist) laws of the time, telling Yediot, "That was what everybody said in Nazi Germany."
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also reportedly ordered the story to be distributed to Israel's diplomats around the world to help in the country's public-relations efforts. The irony of a racist ultranationalist like Lieberman -- who has advocated forcing Israel's Palestinian citizens to sign loyalty oaths to the Jewish state or face expulsion -- attacking Goldstone is overwhelming.
It's against this background that Polakow-Suransky presents his thoroughly researched account of the military and nuclear partnership between Israel and apartheid South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. Polakow-Suransky's book makes clear that Israel itself played an essential role in buttressing South Africa at a time when the apartheid state was earning its isolation and condemnation from the rest of the world.
Polakow-Suransky's book is the result of an extraordinary amount of research, carried out over six years and including a number of personal interviews with aging Israeli and South African sources. The author was also able to make use of newly available South African archives, many of which were declassified over the objections of the Israeli government. As Polakow-Suransky notes, the current government in Johannesburg was unsurprisingly not interested in covering up Israel's past support for apartheid.
Polakow-Suransky writes with a good deal of sympathy for Israel's international predicament in the 1970s, as Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was alienating supporters on the left, and the near-debacle of the Yom Kippur War had Israel feeling internationally isolated and vulnerable. A relationship with South Africa would both deliver a desperately needed ally, as well as boost the Israeli economy -- by the end of the 1970s, South Africa was Israel's single biggest buyer of small arms...
Read entire article at American Prospect
To say that Sasha Polakow-Suransky's new book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa comes at a particularly inconvenient time for the Netanyahu government would be an understatement. Israel is resisting calls for an independent investigation of the May 31 flotilla attack -- in which Israeli naval commandos killed nine activists aboard a Turkish vessel attempting to break the Gaza blockade -- while it continues to deal with the fallout from a previous United Nations investigation of its conduct during the 2009 Gaza War.
Those opposed to the Gaza investigation have even gone so far as to attempt to smear the author, Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who oversaw the report for the U.N. Human Rights Council. The report asserted evidence of possible war crimes by both Israel and Hamas and has been a source of serious concern for Israeli officials. In early May, the popular Israeli tabloid Yediot Ahronot published a "special investigation" of Goldstone.
Titled "Judge Goldstone's Dark Past," the Yediot article details Goldstone's career as a judge under South Africa's system of apartheid, during which he apparently sentenced some 28 black South Africans to death for various crimes. Though it contained little new information, the article was enthusiastically seized upon by Goldstone's critics. American law professor (and ubiquitous Israel defender) Alan Dershowitz dismissed Goldstone's excuse that he was bound by the (admittedly racist) laws of the time, telling Yediot, "That was what everybody said in Nazi Germany."
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also reportedly ordered the story to be distributed to Israel's diplomats around the world to help in the country's public-relations efforts. The irony of a racist ultranationalist like Lieberman -- who has advocated forcing Israel's Palestinian citizens to sign loyalty oaths to the Jewish state or face expulsion -- attacking Goldstone is overwhelming.
It's against this background that Polakow-Suransky presents his thoroughly researched account of the military and nuclear partnership between Israel and apartheid South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. Polakow-Suransky's book makes clear that Israel itself played an essential role in buttressing South Africa at a time when the apartheid state was earning its isolation and condemnation from the rest of the world.
Polakow-Suransky's book is the result of an extraordinary amount of research, carried out over six years and including a number of personal interviews with aging Israeli and South African sources. The author was also able to make use of newly available South African archives, many of which were declassified over the objections of the Israeli government. As Polakow-Suransky notes, the current government in Johannesburg was unsurprisingly not interested in covering up Israel's past support for apartheid.
Polakow-Suransky writes with a good deal of sympathy for Israel's international predicament in the 1970s, as Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was alienating supporters on the left, and the near-debacle of the Yom Kippur War had Israel feeling internationally isolated and vulnerable. A relationship with South Africa would both deliver a desperately needed ally, as well as boost the Israeli economy -- by the end of the 1970s, South Africa was Israel's single biggest buyer of small arms...