WRMEA, August 2010, Page 61

Waging Peace

Speaking out on The Unspoken Alliance

AT A JUNE 4 event in Washington, DC hosted by the New America Foundation and moderated by the foundation's Daniel Levy, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, senior editor of Foreign Affairs and author of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, discussed the findings and implications of his new book with South Africa-born Tony Karon, an activist in the anti-apartheid struggle and currently senior editor of Time Magazine. Levy introduced the discussion by referring to a recent and very relevant issue: what he called an aggressive vilification campaign in Israel against Justice Richard Goldstone, a Jewish South African, following the release of the Goldstone report on Israel's 2008-'09 assault on Gaza. Goldstone was attacked for having worked within the system of South Africa's apartheid regime, even as Polakow-Suransky's book reveals that, during the 1950s and 1960s, Israel had developed strong ties to the apartheid government. By the 1970s, these ties had led to a degree of ideological affinity.

Despite the book's many revelations, it has not been covered well in the U.S. press. It has, however, received much attention in Israel, South Africa, Brazil, several European countries, and other "unusual places." As Polakow-Suransky pointed out, an important response to the book in the British newspaper The Guardian focused only on one of several "shocking revelations": a very narrow correspondence between officials from both countries allegedly discussing the transfer of nuclear weapons from Israel to South Africa—weapons which Israel has never confirmed it possesses. Other points of interest include the continued—even intensified—military cooperation between the two countries even after Israel officially joined the sanctions against the South African regime in 1987, as well as South Africa releasing the safeguard on 500 tons of yellowcake uranium supplied to Israel between 1961 and 1976 for Israel's use in its nuclear program.

While growing up in South Africa, Karon explained, one was vaguely aware of "bits and pieces" of the connection, but the full depth of the relationship between the two states was surprising, especially considering the anti-Semitic attitude held by the pre-apartheid South African regime in the 1930s. Apartheid has become a "synonym for that which is unacceptable," Karon noted, and the link between the two governments thus is "very uncomfortable" for Israel. Karon compared the situation of the Palestinians to an apartheid one, in which a population lives under Israeli rule without the democratic rights of Jewish Israelis. The wider political significance of the book right now, he added, is highlighted by the flotilla movement, which Karon saw as reminiscent of the anti-apartheid movement, in that the group forces a difficult issue onto the agenda. The Unspoken Alliance is available from the AET Book Club.

—Imaan Ali