‘The Palestine Laboratory’ sheds light on how close the political, ideological and military relationship was between Israel and South Africa.
This extract from the book, ‘The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World’, sheds light on how close the political, ideological and military relationship was between the two countries.
But Israel’s advocacy was not due to a love of African self-determination, but was rather a calculated decision to gather support in Africa against what it perceived as Arab and communist “defamation”. Israel was also interested in exploiting Africa’s natural resources and immediately set about building relationships with pliant leaders in the Central African Republic after it declared independence from France in 1960.
The apartheid regime in Pretoria took power in 1948 and soon put in place Nazi-style restrictions on non-whites, from forbidding marriage between the races to barring blacks from many jobs. The South African Jewish community was strongly pro-Israel and became its biggest financial backer per capita after 1948.
One of the prominent Jewish dissidents was Ronnie Kasrils, who served as the minister of intelligence between 2004 and 2008 under an ANC government. He told The Guardian that the comparison between the two nations wasn’t accidental.“Israelis claim that they are the chosen people, the elect of God, and find a biblical justification for their racism and Zionist exclusivity,” he said.
A few months after Vorster’s visit, the South African government yearbook explained that both states were facing the same challenge: “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.” “After 1976, there was a love affair between the security establishments of the two countries and their armies. We were involved in Angola as consultants to the army. You had Israeli officers there cooperating with the army. The link was very intimate.”
Washington was initially not fully aware of the extent of Israel’s nuclear collaboration with South Africa, and Israel’s secretiveness continues to this day – its nuclear facility at Dimona has never been inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Israel is presumed to have more than 200 nuclear weapons.
South Africa’s Bantustans, areas where black residents lived without autonomy, inspired many in the Israeli elite as a viable model for Palestine. This was the desire to isolate “undesirable” Palestinians in noncontiguous enclaves, Bantustans cut off from the rest of the country – in other words, like today’s West Bank, where 165 Palestinians “enclaves” are strangulated by Israeli colonies, the Israeli Defense Forces and violent settlers.
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