Third Rail

Israel and South Africa: A review of, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa

By Michael Miley

      In his new book, Sasha Polakow-Suransky explores the deep relationship between Israel and apartheid South Africa; starting in the late 1960s, and lasting until the very end of the apartheid regime. The book uses a variety of sources -- from oral interviews with former South African and Israeli officials, as well as de-classified documents from the South African archives, but official sources from the Israeli government in the book are close to nil (since Israel is still keeping a lid on information regarding the close military relationship between them and the apartheid regime). Polakow-Suransky manages to keep the editorial voice to a bare minimum, and focuses on the idea that Israel is an apartheid state (more on that below). It is important to remember that such discussion is not the purpose of this book; it needs to be stressed that the book is an exploration of the military ties between Israel and apartheid South Africa -- a relationship the author describes as "a marriage of interests and ideologies [wherein] Israel profited handsomely from arms exports and South Africa gained access to cutting-edge weaponry at a time when the rest of the world was turning against the apartheid state."

      The book starts off by exploring the fascist roots of the South African National Party in the years before the Second World War and its' support of the Nazis against the British. It then moves on to discuss the aftermath of the war, and the creation of the State of Israel. Israel's initial moral foreign policy towards Africa rejected co-operation with Apartheid South Africa, and embraced the increasing number of free African states in order to get support in the United Nations; a move intended to counter the increasing anti-Israeli arguments coming from Arab nations. It also explores the actions of the Defense Ministry, and its' creation of a shadow foreign ministry that ran counter to the policy of the official Foreign Ministry. We see the start of this in the early 1950s, when Shimon Peres, then the Minister of Defense, began conducting secret arms deals with the French behind the back of Golda Meir, the Foreign Minister at the time. Peres went so far as to proclaim "the conduct of foreign policy cannot be left to the foreign office alone." Later, it would be Peres who would be instrumental in forming the close relationship between Israel and South Africa.

      What begins to turn Israel away from 'Black Africa', and into secretly supporting the apartheid state, is the exact same event that turned Israel from the darling of the left into the pariah that it is today; the Six Day War. Following the occupations of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula in 1967, many in the African countries began to associate Israel with being a western Imperial power. Though the African nations were weary of Israel, they were still supporters. In reacting to the criticism of the independent African nations, Israel, with support of many in the Labour government, began to move towards South Africa as an ally. What is most disturbing about the alliance is the nuclear secrets shared between the two governments. The South African government was desperate to obtain an atomic device; ostensibly under the auspices of the "peaceful" nuclear explosion programs that were en vogue during the Cold War.

      In the mid 1960s Israel achieved its' nuclear ambition, but to this day they are still vague about it; taking the line that they will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. South Africa was of the notion that "the Israeli model of nuclear ambiguity coupled with covert weaponization was enticing. In order to gauge what it could get away with down the road, Pretoria was watching developments in the Middle East closely and, more important, observing the reactions of the superpowers." The nuclear co-operation between the two countries became so close that, in the mid-1970s, South Africa lifted all safety inspections on Israel of yellowcake (an intermediate form of uranium powder); of which they already had 500 tons, and, in return for another 100 tons of yellowcake, Israel agreed to supply South Africa with thirty grams of tritium (which can be used to increase the explosive power of atomic weapons). There was also the 1979 Vela incident; in which all evidence suggests that an Israeli atomic bomb was tested in the Southern Indian Ocean with the aid of South Africa. In the latter part of the 1980s, when South Africa was mired in the Angolan Civil War, they began to co-develop a medium rage ballistic missile with Israel.

      The Labour government of Israel saw the need for an alliance with South Africa as a necessity, even if they disagreed with the policy of apartheid. However, following the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the right-wing Likud party came to power and fully embraced South Africa. The entirety of chapter six left my jaw agape, as it described how closely high ranking members of the Likud party identified with the "plight" of the white South Africans. In all truthfulness; words cannot describe this chapter, or how utterly horrifying the information inside it is.

      The book ends with the fall of the Apartheid regime and the exposure of the alliance between Israel and South Africa. Attempts were made by Israel to discredit the truth of exactly how close the relationship was; while defending, if only indirectly, the apartheid regime. It also covers the friction that resulted from the creation of the shadow foreign ministry. Those in the actual foreign ministry began to reach out to black South African leaders, and eventually Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. But the Defense mission, which bisected the Israeli consulate in Pretoria tried to hold up the Apartheid regime, going so far as to say that there was another twenty or thirty years left in the system (actually, as history would turn out, there were less than half a dozen). The book's epilogue then briefly touches on the notion that Israel is currently an apartheid state. What Polakow-Suransky argues here is that while there are criticisms against that notion, the hard-line defenders of Israel aren't doing any good by their knee-jerk reactions, nor by repeating twenty year old propaganda. While arguing that Israel isn't an apartheid state (just yet), citing the growing Arab population, and the desperate need of many far-right Israeli's to maintain Israel as a Jewish state, leads to Israel being no different than de Klerks South Africa. With that in mind, I leave you with the closing conversation between Polakow Suransky and the former Israeli ambassador to South Africa Elazar Granot.