The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa

Front Cover
Jacana Media, 2010 - History - 324 pages
A revealing account of how Israel's booming arms industry and apartheid South Africa's international isolation led to a secretive military partnership between two seemingly unlikely allies.
Prior to the Six-Day War, Israel was a darling of the international left: socialist idealists like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir vocally opposed apartheid and built alliances with black leaders in newly independent African nations. South Africa, for its part, was controlled by a regime of Afrikaner nationalists who had enthusiastically supported Hitler during World War II.
But after Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, the country found itself estranged from former allies and threatened anew by old enemies. As both states became international pariahs, their covert military relationship blossomed: they exchanged billions of dollars' worth of extremely sensitive material, including nuclear technology, boosting Israel's sagging economy and strengthening the beleaguered apartheid regime.
By the time the right-wing Likud Party came to power in 1977, Israel had all but abandoned the moralism of its founders in favor of close and lucrative ties with South Africa. For nearly twenty years, Israel denied these ties, claiming that it opposed apartheid on moral and religious grounds even as it secretly supplied the arsenal of a white supremacist government.
Sasha Polakow-Suransky reveals the previously classified details of countless arms deals conducted behind the backs of Israel's own diplomatic corps and in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews with former generals and high-level government officials in both countries, "The Unspoken Alliance "tells a troubling story of Cold War paranoia, moral compromises, and Israel's estrangement from the left. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Israel's history and its future.


"From the Hardcover edition."

 

Contents

South Africas Jews in the Shadow of Nazism
13
Israels Honeymoon in Africa
22
The IsraeliSouth African Nuclear Connection
39
The Yom Kippur War and Israels
53
A Military Alliance Is Born
75
Likud Apartheid and the Quest for Minority Survival
105
Nuclear Diplomacy and the Fall of Vorster
118
South Africa Joins the Nuclear Club
136
Israel Apartheid and the Splintering
171
Domestic Debate and Diplomatic Schizophrenia
190
South Africas Transition to Democracy
214
Epilogue
233
Acknowledgments
243
Bibliography
295
Index
309
Copyright

Propaganda Denial and the Concealment of the Alliance
154

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