RAMALLAH, May 16 (JMCC) - A new book released on Tuesday,
The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, reveals in unprecedented detail the level and depth of the relationship between
Israel and Apartheid South Africa for over 20 years.
The publication by editor of
Foreign Affairs Sasha Polakow-Suransky, has brought renewed focus not only to Israel's ties to the now debunk state, but also to its own prevailing system of apartheid in the occupied
Palestinian territories. Journalist Glenn Frankel covers the sordid history of Israel's relationship in his most recent article in
Foreign Affairs.
History is a great teacher, but sometimes it packs a nasty sense of irony. A case in point: South African Prime Minister John Vorster's visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem in April 1976, where he laid a wreath to the victims of the German Reich he once extolled.
It's bad enough that a former Nazi sympathizer was treated like an honored guest by the Jewish state. Even worse was the purpose behind Vorster's trip to Israel: to cement the extensive military relationship between Israel and the apartheid regime, a partnership that violated international law and illicitly provided the white-minority government with the weaponry and technology to help sustain its grip on power and its oppression of the black majority over two decades.
Like many illicit love affairs, the back-door relationship between Israel and the apartheid regime was secret, duplicitous, thrilling for the parties involved -- and ultimately damaging to both. Each insisted at the time that theirs was just a minor flirtation, with few regrets or expressions of remorse. Inevitably it ended badly, tainting everyone it touched, including leaders of American Jewish organizations who shredded their credibility by endorsing and parroting the blatant falsehoods they were fed by Israeli officials. And it still hovers like a toxic cloud over Israel's international reputation, providing ammunition to those who use the comparison between Israel's 43-year military rule over Palestinians and the now-defunct system of white domination known as apartheid to seek to delegitimize the Jewish state...
Read the full article at
Foreign Affairs...