Israeli racism, part 7: The South African connection

A very strange comment appended to my previous story leads me to believe that the "megaphone" students are still looking over this material. Excellent. The kids writing this stuff probably aren't a bad lot; they're just naive, as are most young people. Seems to me that this series is a great way of getting some young Israelis to look at a few aspects of history they probably never learned in school.

Our subject today is apartheid.

In a debate over Carter's book on Democracy Now, Zionist Professor Gil Troy stated a theme often sounded by Carter's critics:

He calls his title “provocative.” I call it offensive. It’s offensive to South Africans, because to use the word “apartheid,” which is about white supremacy and a systematic approach of discrimination and racism, demeans the very difficult struggle and the odious examples of South African oppression.

Later, he adds:

And the community of nations -- it took them decades, but the community of nations justifiably said this is so odious that we want to kind of vomit out -- and I use the term advisedly -- vomit out South Africa from the community of nations, because they're so despicable.

Disgustingly, Troy neglects to tell his audience that South Africa's biggest supporter in the days of apartheid was Israel.

A number of books published during the 1980s made that very the point, as did innumerable magazine articles and opinion pieces published at that time. One such volume was Israeli Foreign Policy, by the highly respected author Jane Hunter, published in 1987 and excerpted here:

Israel's ties with South Africa seem to be especially disturbing to many who follow Israel's international activities. Perhaps it is natural that Israel has been castigated more harshly for its arms sales to South Africa than for its sales to other countries: first, because there has been for a decade an arms embargo against South Africa; and second, because of the unsurpassed criminality of the white regime and the uses to which it puts the Israeli-supplied weapons.

And:

"The most powerful reason for Israeli willingness to bear the undesirable consequences of expanded and more open trade with South Africa may be her desire to acquire material necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons," wrote a military analyst in 1980.'

Yep, Israel helped to give apartheid South Africa the bomb. The following (from 1997) comes from Los Alamos National Laboratories:

Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad confirmed for the first time that a flare over the Indian Ocean detected by an American satellite in September 1979 was from a nuclear test. This statement was confirmed by the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, as an accurate account of what Pahad officially acknowledged. The article said that Israel helped South Africa develop its bomb designs in return for 550 tons of raw uranium and other assistance.

I recall the controversy over the mystery blast. Although, at the time, everyone more or less knew (or suspected) that a nuke had been tested, the Carter administration insisted on labelling the flash a freak of nature. Of course, only a cynic or a bigot would suggest that political pressures forced the White House to ignore the scientists.

Back to Jane Hunter::

In 1984, the Financial Times (London) wrote of "joint Israeli-South African support for Unita forces." Other sources also report the transfer of Israeli arms and financial support to Unita.

In 1983, Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos told Berkeley, California Mayor Eugene (Gus) Newport that an Israeli pilot had been shot down during a South African attack. The Angolan President showed Newport pictures of captured Israeli weapons. The following year, Luanda reported the capture of three mercenaries who said they had been trained by Israeli instructors in Zaire.

I'll trust a source like Hunter over a guy like Troy any day of the week.

And that's the truth, kids. Wake up and smell the apartheid.