Israel and the Bantustans

 

In the middle of August 1985, while the world was watching South Africa writhe in agony, the chief of the Zulus was taking a camel ride in Jerusalem. The chief, 55-year-old Gatsha Buthelezi, was on an official visit to Israel. That Buthelezi was also chief minister of the bantustan,** or "tribal homeland," of KwaZulu did not detract from the warm welcome he received from the Israeli government. Not since the 1976 visit of South African Prime Minister John Vorster had Israel given a South African official such a high-visibility reception.

 

The signal sent by Buthelezi's visit seems to be less clear because it occurred at a time when Israel was urgently casting about for a way to mend the damage to its image-particularly in the United States, its major ally- that has accrued during a decade of intimate commerce with South Africa. Buthelezi's visit must be considered in the context of those attempted repairs. Nevertheless, the Zulu chief left Israel with promises of aid for KwaZulu from both the Israeli government and the Histadrut labor federation. Thus, just when it was working seriously to address its image problem through a new public relations program, Israel became the only government in the world to render such aid to a bantustan. A brief look at the earlier years of the Israeli-South African relationship, followed by a more detailed review of events of the past year culminating in Buthelezi's visit, reveals the separate but tangled threads of Israeli policy.

 

Background

 

The precise contents of the agreements concluded during the Vorster visit of 1976 [1] have been carefully concealed from public view, but from the documentary evidence that has accumulated, the agreements appear to have been wide-ranging and substantial. A bilateral ministerial committee, charged with meeting annually, was created to oversee and foster the new arrangements. [2] 

 

This was not a new alliance, however. Although Israel and South Africa had brought their relations to the ambassadorial level only in 1975, the framework for cooperation had been in the building for many years.

 

Political ties predate the creation of the Jewish state, originating in the early years of the century in the friendship between British Zionist leader and later first President of Israel Chaim Weizmann and South African Field Marshal and later Prime Minister Jan Smuts. That friendship was instrumental in securing the issuance of the Balfour Declaration (1917), which supported in principle the creation of a Jewish national home. Smuts was also supportive at the United Nations during the discussions of the partition of Palestine, and South Africa was among the first governments to recognize the newly declared Jewish state.

 

It is worth noting that 1948, the year of Israel's establishment, also marked the accession to power of the Afrikaner-dominated Nationalist party, which immediately began to codify its laws of racial separation, or apartheid, and which has continued to rule South Africa until the present. Realizing the need for Western approval, upon taking office National party leaders-among them Nazi collaborators and acknowledged anti-Semites- articulated a policy of support for Israel and accommodation for South Africa's 120,000 Jews. [3] 

 

At various times during the 1950s and 1960s it was in the interest of either Israel or South Africa to keep the relationship quiet: in an attempt to offset the hostility of its Middle East neighbors, Israel was striving to develop friendly relations with the emerging nations of Africa, while South Africa was trying to build economic ties with Arab states. [4] However, as hopes of normalizing their foreign policies grew dim, the two states were drawn increasingly closer. Arms sales were a prominent aspect of the relationship, and the two countries began sharing military and intelligence information after Israel's 1967 war. This help later proved valuable to South Africa in its attacks on its neighbors. [5] To this day, Israeli officers lecture and train South Africans. [6] 

 

The two countries had helped each other circumvent the first United Nations arms embargo against South Africa in 1963 and French President de Gaulle's 1967 embargo against arms to Israel by supplying each other with Mirage aircraft and parts. Israel flew South African planes in the 1967 war, [7] and reportedly shared with South Africa the Mirage blueprints its intelligence service, Mossad, had acquired. [8] It also began to discuss joint aircraft production with South Africa. [9] 

 

Following the Vorster agreements, the flow of military trade between Israel and South Africa assumed a symbiotic form: technology and finished weapons from Israel were exchanged for raw materials and money from South Africa, a pattern that is also found in the economic relations between the two.

 

South Africa's acquisition of advanced Israeli weaponry began in the mid-seventies with the Gabriel ship-to-ship and Shafrir air-to-air missiles and antitank weapons. After 1976, Israel sold the apartheid regime a modern navy, including Reshef fast attack boats, Dabur patrol boats, radar stations, infiltration alarm systems, night vision apparatus, and electronic fences. [10] 

 

Most analysts brush aside Israel's frequent protestations that since the 1977 UN embargo on arms to South Africa it has only fulfilled existing contracts. In 1982, the Christian Science Monitor reported that South Africa was one of Israel's three largest customers, with Taiwan and Honduras completing the trio. [11] The following year, the London Telegraph reported that Israel's arms sales brought in over $1 billion a year and that "Argentina is second only to South Africa among Israel's top arms clients." Argentina had bought numerous Israeli aircraft both during and after the 1982 Malvinas/Falklands war. [12] 

 

More than the hardware itself, since the Vorster agreements, South African money and raw materials and Israeli technology have merged to create what James Adams, the author of the most definitive book to date on Israeli-South African relations, refers to as "the joint arms industry." [13] This industry includes Israeli weapons systems licensed for production in South Africa, joint projects-the most notable being helicopters-a scaled-down aircraft carrier, and armor-plating for tanks. [14] 

 

If Israeli arms sales to South Africa have actually diminished since 1977 it is only because South Africa, with Israeli help and lesser assistance from other European countries, has become a net arms exporter. One of its leading exports in this field is a mine-resistant armored vehicle. [15] (The Reagan administration recently issued an executive order banning the import of South African weapons.)

 

Since 1980 there has been persistent speculation that South Africa is a silent partner in building Israel's state-of-the-art jet fighter, the Lavi, which is presently in its prototype stage. The U.S. is also a partner in the Lavi; by 1987 it will have contributed $1.3 billion to the project, with $650 million of that sum earmarked for expenditure in Israel. [16] Should South Africa acquire the Lavi, the only significant achievement of the UN arms embargo-denying South Africa a modem fighter plane-will be negated.

 

Israel has helped South Africa's military sustain a counterinsurgency war against SWAPO (the Southwest Africa People's Organization) in Namibia, the former colony of Southwest Africa, which the UN has ordered it to relinquish. Indeed, former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was on the front lines in Namibia in 1981. [17] Israel has begun to assist the government installed by Pretoria in Namibia in June 1985 with what appears to be a long-term pacification scheme [18] along the lines of the one it has master- minded in Guatemala. [19] 

 

The ultimate, if at present less immediate, threat to South Africa's neighbors, and the overarching accomplishment of the expanding Israeli- South African collaboration begun in 1976, is the development of nuclear weapons. A major component of the 1976 agreements with Vorster was the "trade" of Israeli expertise for both South African uranium and great open land and sea spaces for nuclear weapons testing. [20] The test took place in September 1979 in the South Atlantic, at a time when Israel had a more highly developed nuclear potential than its partner, South Africa. [21] South Africa has since developed apace.

 

David Fisher, a former South African diplomat who also served for a time as assistant director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the international nuclear regulatory body, has just written that Pretoria is capable of manufacturing two nuclear bombs a year. In an article in the South African magazine Optima, Fisher states that South Africa's Valindaba experimental reactor near Hartebeesport Dam in Transvaal Province-an installation not subject to IAEA inspection-is capable of producing sufficient enriched uranium for the manufacture of several nuclear devices. [22] 

 

Following the Vorster visit and subsequent visits by the finance ministers of both countries, [23] Israeli economic relations with South Africa increased significantly. Although Israel and its supporters persist in arguing that trade with South Africa is "minuscule," as early as 1979 the respected South African newspaper Financial Mail said that "if uncut diamonds and undisclosed defense force purchases are taken into account, Israel is already one of South Africa's biggest trading partners." [24] A recent calculation has determined that by adding only those two uncounted items, trade between Israel and South Africa would total $1,361,000,000. [25] 

 

And two-way trade is only the beginning of a complex interdependency, geared more to deal with the specific political problems of each country than with the simple accumulation of wealth. South Africa and Israel have collaborated in a number of joint ventures-a shipping company called Zimcorn, a fishing company, and a steel company, to name a few. Each country also has extensive investments in the economy of the other. South African investments in Israel are particularly notable and are spread throughout the Israeli infrastructure.

 

Israelis have also begun investing in South Africa. [26] A sense of the magnitude of the relationship can be gained from recent figures which acknowledge the presence of 20,000 Israelis-some emigrants, some businessmen-in South Africa. [27] 

 

At the present, while intensive international efforts are under way to apply economic pressure on South Africa to force it to begin to dismantle apartheid, Israel's economic dealings with South Africa have the potential to undercut those efforts.

 

As more Western nations begin to terminate sales of advanced technology to South. Africa-the U.S. has already curtailed sales of computers to the military and to agencies which administer the pass laws and movement control of apartheid-its trade with Israel will become more crucial. Recently, the director of South Africa's Trade and Industry Department said that Israel could provide much of the high technology needed by South Africa. [28] 

 

Perhaps of greatest concern in the West, where trade unions, activists, and even some governments have mounted efforts to boycott South African goods, is the deliberate arrangement between Israel and South Africa to sneak South African goods past tariffs and boycotts into Europe and the U.S. Begun in 1978 and discussed quite openly in South Africa, this practice has been called "springboarding" or "backdooring." South African raw materials or semi-finished goods (produced by South African blacks) are sent to Israel, where they are further manufactured or assembled until the legal minimum of value has been added; then, with a "made in Israel" tag, these goods are exported to the European community, where Israeli industrial goods enter duty free, and to the U.S., where under the recently signed U.S.-Israeli Free Trade Agreement, they also enter duty free. [29] 

 

On 5 November 1985, an increasingly desperate South African government announced that it was opening an office to handle "unconventional trade," to channel its exports through "other countries." [30] With the exception of some private American and European companies, Israel is the only commonly known pass-through point for South African goods. Further implicating Israel in this plan is the 3 June 1985 report by the South African publication Business Day that:

 

An Israeli businessman plans to act as a middleman in channeling S. A. exports to European and American markets. Entrepreneur Amnon Rotem said the S.A. Department of Trade and Industry was keen on the idea. He added: "The project is ambitious and it will require a large investment by the S.A. government.... We intend to add value to S.A. goods and reexport them duty-free to the European and American markets."

 

Needless to say, the prospect of serving as the last remaining outlet for South African trade has tremendous potential for the failing Israeli economy.

 

However, just as this opportunity began to develop, South Africa exploded in strife and government repression. At the same time, the Israeli government was becoming aware that its South African connection was not merely an inconvenient side issue in its dealings with its Western allies. Because of the violence in South Africa and the large number of news stories about Israeli links with South Africa in the Western press, the connection gradually became a greater concern for Israel than it had formerly been.

 

In late 1984 two stories embarrassing to Israel emerged almost simultaneously: the visit to Israel of South African Foreign Minister Roelof (Pik) Botha, and the "twinning" of the West Bank settlement Ariel with Bisho, the "capital" of Ciskei, one of the South African pseudo-states. The incidents came just as mention of Israel had been dropped from a resolution in the UN Decolonization Committee condemning arms sales to South Africa, [31] and called into question the condemnation of apartheid which Shimon Peres, the prime minister of the newly installed Labor-Likud "national unity" government, had uttered during an early October visit to Washington. (Peres had called apartheid "an idiotic system." The South African Foreign Ministry later requested "the exact wording" of his remarks.) [32] 

 

Just as Pik Botha's ministry was able to make such a request, Tel Aviv- although it feared damage to Israel's reputation and to its chances under the new government of restoring diplomatic ties with sub-Saharan African countries[33]-tried but was unable to deny the minister himself the visit he requested. [34] Botha wanted to meet the new government, and Israel apparently had no choice but to assent, with the proviso that the visit be characterized as private. [35] 

 

Botha was the highest-ranking South African to visit Israel in some time, and his visit was anything but private. His stay was lengthened from the initially agreed upon one day to three; and Botha, according to Le Monde, "insisted upon-and received-from his hosts all the courtesies usually accorded ministers on "working visits." [36] These included a "red carpet at the airport," [37] a personal airport welcome from alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, [38] and "a series of warm meetings" with Shamir, who also held a formal reception for the South African. [39] While Prime Minister Peres and most other Labor officials avoided the reception, the U.S. ambassador to Israel attended. [40] Botha was hosted for lunch by Abba Eban, the former Labor foreign minister and present chairman of the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee. [41] Labor Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin-it was during his tenure as prime minister that the pivotal Vorster visit had taken place-also had a meeting with Botha, which "Mr. Rabin attempted in vain . . . to keep out of the limelight." [42] Protests from left opposition parties in the Knesset only increased the exposure of the visit.

 

The "twinning" of Ariel and Bisho was quite disturbing to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which dissociated itself from the whole matter. Present at the 31 October ceremony, however, along with the "president" of Ciskei, Lennox Sebe, were three Likud MKs and Nat Rosenwasser, one of Ciskei's representatives in Israel and a member of the central committee of the Herut party, the major component of the Likud coalition. Rosenwasser's partner Yosi Schneider justified the twinning of the two towns on the grounds that no country but Israel recognized "Judea and Samaria," just as no country but South Africa recognized Ciskei. [43] Rosenwasser and Schneider kept the story alive for months, first with a parliamentary junket to the opening of Ciskei's "parliament," [44] and later with a scandal (see below).

 

The government of Israel had always stressed its nonrecognition of the "homelands," to which South Africa has removed a large part of its black population. However, government ministers have met with visiting bantustan officials; [45] the Begin government sold planes to Ciskei; [46] and Agridev has agricultural development projects underway there. [47] Moreover, the bantustans of Transkei and Bophuthatswana are listed among the other nations in the international dialing section of the directory of the government-run telephone company. [48] 

 

Israelis serve as guards in several of the homelands, protecting the leaders of the Ciskei bantustan and keeping order at the gaming tables in casinos in the Sun City resort area of Bophuthatswana. It is not altogether clear whether these Israelis, who previously served in elite combat units, are free-lance mercenaries or have been officially dispatched by some official Israeli agency. [49] 

 

However, the most visible Israeli activity in the bantustans is the involvement of Israeli entrepreneurs, among them a number of sitting and former members of the government who have found irresistible the temptations of Pretoria's "decentralization concessions." These concessions are wage refunds paid by South Africa through the bantustan administrations to encourage the hiring of unskilled black labor away from the urban areas. By inflating wage reports, employers are often able to recover more than they have paid.

 

So rapacious was the activity of some of these Israeli entrepreneurs that the South African Foreign Ministry called in the Israeli ambassador and "unofficially" warned him that Pretoria would not make good bad debts of Israeli entrepreneurs in the "homelands." The South African government was particularly annoyed, the Jerusalem Post said, with the sixty Israeli entrepreneurs who persuaded Ciskei to indulge in "excessive spending on luxury schemes, causing the shelving of more urgent development projects." [50] In July 1985 Ciskei expelled a number of them; representatives Schneider and Rosenwasser were fired as a massive scandal unfolded. [51] 

 

For the most part though, Pretoria has been irked with Israel's nonrecognition of the bantustans. In 1983, Israel's ambassador to South Africa felt compelled to explain to a reporter that what South Africa perceived as an Israeli sellout on the subject of the bantustans was in reality dictated by his government's decision not to buy more trouble for itself at the UN than it already had. [52] 

 

Following the Pik Botha visit and the bantustan-settlement twinning ceremony, on 13 December 1984 the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 39/72 C on "Relations between Israel and South Africa." The resolution "again strongly condemned the continuing and increasing collaboration of Israel with the racist regime of South Africa, especially in the military and nuclear fields."

 

The Case of Dennis Goldberg

 

Another embarrassment soon after attracted attention worldwide. A committee whose members included a number of Israeli officials and Knesset members of both major blocs succeeded in a two-year project to free from a South African prison African National Congress (ANC) activist Dennis Goldberg. [53] President Herzog himself was said to have lent a hand. [54] Goldberg, who is Jewish, was among the defendants in the 1964 Rivonia trial, which resulted in the incarceration of top ANC leaders, among them Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. Convicted of plotting the violent overthrow of the government and sentenced for life, Goldberg had been in jail for twenty-one years.

 

The Israeli rescue effort was spearheaded by Herut Lapid, a member of the kibbutz on which one of Goldberg's daughters lived and a man who specialized in the rehabilitation of prisoners on kibbutzim. (Lapid has also negotiated the release of Israelis held by foreign governments on criminal charges.) [55] When the South African government, in response to persistent demonstrations in the United States and Europe, announced it would release Nelson Mandela and other imprisoned ANC leaders if they would sign an undertaking "renouncing violence," the Israelis' goal was suddenly within reach.

 

The only problem was convincing Goldberg to break solidarity with his comrades of a quarter century and sign the government's paper. Nelson Mandela's well-known response to this offer was that the white minority regime should first renounce its own violence, evidence of which had been clearly demonstrated to the world in daily broadcasts from South Africa which showed police beating and shooting unarmed demonstrators. Goldberg also refused to sign the statement of renunciation required by the government.

 

Although members of the star-studded Israeli committee and the Israeli ambassador to South Africa all worked to persuade their contacts in the Nationalist government to be satisfied with a substitute statement drafted by Goldberg, and succeeded in having the terms of the government-authored statement eased, Goldberg continued to resist signing it. (It is unlikely that South African authorities would have considered altering its terms unless they believed that by releasing him they would be driving a psychological wedge between various sets of ANC constituencies-black, white, Jewish, and Communist.) For his part, Goldberg suspected that Lapid had been sent by the Pretoria government. [56] 

 

Lapid was determined to have Goldberg. He flew in Goldberg's brother and sister-in-law, who had not been allowed to visit the prison for many years, as well as a friend who had been Goldberg's only regular visitor over the past sixteen years. According to the Jerusalem Post Magazine:

 

By all accounts, it was a painful, even brutal, encounter. Lapid makes no bones about the fact that he was prepared to "rape" Goldberg into signing. "Herut intended to get me out, even if it meant killing me," Goldberg says. With the women crying and Lapid browbeating him, Goldberg signed the undertaking at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, February 20. [57] 

 

Of the brother and the sister-in-law, Lapid said, "I commanded them to weep." [58] Lapid also recounted that he heckled Goldberg about his scruples: "I shouted at him about Zionism, love of Jews and of the Land of Israel." [59] 

 

In Israel, Goldberg wasted no time in silence. New York Times reporter Moshe Brilliant, who interviewed Goldberg on 3 March, three days after his arrival wrote:

 

Mr. Goldberg said he did not want to settle in Israel. He said he deplored Israel's support for South Africa . . . and he charged that Israel tended to consider national security to be so important that it sacrificed principles. [60] 

 

Goldberg spoke more specifically about the Israeli-South African alliance to the Jerusalem Post, saying that Israel was

 

actively supporting the continued existence of an oppressive regime. ... For Israel to find itself in an alliance with the likes of South Africa, Chile, Paraguay and Taiwan says a good deal about its lack of caring for the consequences of its policies. [61] 

 

A week later he said that he saw "many similarities in the oppression of blacks in South Africa and the oppression of the Palestinians." [62] Goldberg later departed for London, leaving a renewed awareness of the interconnection between Tel Aviv and Pretoria, an awareness heightened by the increasing preoccupation of the world with events unfolding in South Africa.

 

The Maccabiah Games

 

Another serious incident, which jeopardized the status of Israel's Maccabiah Games [63] with the International Olympic Committee, occurred in the summer, at a time when the implications of its South African policy were becoming painfully clear to the Israeli government.

 

Even though the UN call for a ban on sports contacts had gained wide compliance, Israel maintained its sports ties with South Africa by sending official teams to play' against all-white South African teams. [64] South African teams competed in the 1973, 1977, and 1981 Maccabiah Games- in fact they were among the largest contingents each time and won a good share of the medals. In June 1985, however, Canada and a number of other countries objected to the inclusion of a South African team. An official of the South African Zionist Federation said he was astonished to hear of the objections and pointed out that every previous competition had produced new South African immigrants for Israel. In Israel, Michael Kevehazi, the director of the Maccabiah organizing committee, said, "It is most regrettable that international politics should intrude into sport." [65]

 

On 18 June, Kevehazi announced that the South African Maccabiah Federation "had decided not to enter the games, so as to avoid serious problems for athletes from a number of participating countries." But he carefully said, "South Africa, as such," and hinted that something would "happen" to let South Africans participate in the games. [66] 

 

And it did, almost immediately. The Israeli consul in Pretoria issued 200 "potential immigrant" visas to South African athletes. A potential immigrant visa is usually given to a person who means to try out life in Israel with possible permanent residency in mind. The quasi-governmental Jewish Agency had registered the South Africans as "temporary residents." [67] In Israel, it was announced that South African athletes would be part of a special team of immigrants who had been in Israel less than six months. The South Africans filled 200 places on the 220-member team. No flags were to be used in the proceedings. [68] The day before the conclusion of the games, the truth surfaced when one of the squash players blurted out that he did not intend to stay in Israel. His teammates tried to silence him. But it soon became clear that the special arrangements had been decided upon during a 1984 meeting of the event's organizers. [69] 

 

Rising Criticism

 

In Nairobi, Kenya, where the Israeli delegation to the UN End of the Decade on Women Conference concentrated on deflecting criticism about the oppression of Palestinians, the subject of Israeli ties to South Africa was raised at a press conference. Not having a prepared position, Sara Doron, the Knesset member who led the delegation and who as a cabinet minister had met with bantustan officials, [70] ad-libbed an official response deploring apartheid. [70]

 

By July, criticism was being leveled at Israel from all directions: from domestic critics responding to the carnage in South Africa, and from both the Jewish and black communities in the U.S. It was the concerns of these last two which were particularly alarming.

 

An alarm bell had rung as early as 1 April, when Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, never before a vocal critic of Israel, had taken the Senate floor to reproach Israel for selling $350 million worth of arms annually to South Africa. Proxmire couched his words carefully in praise for Israel, which he called "the kind of friend this country values because it is no wilting violet. It is no wimp." But he asked, "What would be the reaction in this body if the United States were selling $350 million in weapons to South Africa? There would be outrage." He also entered in the Congressional Record the 22 March Washington Post article from which he had drawn his information. [72] 

 

A World Jewish Congress survey of members of the Congressional Black Caucus then underway (but not released until after the Buthelezi visit) was revealing that black congressional representatives and their constituents believed that Israel was one of South Africa's main allies and that neither Israel nor the American Jewish community was truly opposed to apartheid. [73] This survey was one among many efforts made by Jewish organizations and institutions to analyze and ease the strained relations between blacks and the Jewish establishment in the U.S.

 

Just as the 1984 Jesse Jackson campaign for the presidential nomination (with its almost unprecedented boldness on the Middle East) was perceived as a serious threat to Zionist preeminence in the Democratic party, the growing movement against South Africa threatened to affect other areas of U.S. political life of concern to Israel.

 

Michigan Congressman John Conyers had held a press conference on 21 May 1985 to announce the release of a report on the 1979 Israel-South Africa nuclear test, compiled from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. [74] On 11 July, he offered an amendment to the 1986 Foreign Aid Authorization bill, which began "United States foreign assistance may not be provided to any country having a nuclear relationship with South Africa." In the several paragraphs of legal language that follow and in the Congressional Record's rendition of Conyers' brief remarks in support of the amendment, Israel is never mentioned. But the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Africa, Howard Wolpe, another Michigan Democrat, a leading anti-apartheid activist in the House, and an ardent supporter of Israel, commended Conyers for his leadership in exposing South Africa's nuclear program and jumped quickly into the breach:

 

I have some concerns about the amendment as it has been drafted; if I understand it correctly it could result in the cutoff of cash sales, military equipment to some U.S. allies and NATO, for example, France for example, if they have a nuclear relationship.

 

Wolpe urged Conyers to drop his amendment and bring the matter up at hearings he would hold later. [75] At this writing (February 1986), the hearings are still in the preparatory stage.

 

Another significant problem, especially for U.S. Zionist organizations, has been the logical integration of the issue of Israeli-South African ties into the burgeoning campus anti-apartheid movements. College campuses provide the most important recruiting ground for such organizations as B'nai B'rith and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is Israel's registered U.S. lobby and which exercises considerable power among organized U.S. Jewry. Moreover, there is great concern that if unchecked, the anti-apartheid movement's discussion of Israel's relations with South Africa-and the inevitable progression to a discussion of Israel's treatment of Palestinians under occupation-"may bring harm to the pro-Israel consensus in America." [76] 

 

Israel also had to cope with the black community, which it was keenly aware was the least likely to remain supportive on Middle East issues if it became too alienated on the issue of Israeli-South African relations. During the summer, Willie Brown, speaker of the California Assembly, addressed a Jewish audience and urged them to pressure Israel to stop arms sales to South Africa. [77] 

 

Related to Israeli concerns about the black community were concerns about U.S. Jewish discomfort over the same issues. An old contradiction was resurfacing: while there are exigent reasons for Israel to seek to move Jews as an ethnic bloc to the political right (basically these follow from the reasoning that a promilitarist Jewish constituency is the best guarantee of continued U.S. support for a hawkish Israel), there are equally compelling reasons to support continued Jewish participation in the Democratic party, where Jews have a power base far beyond their numerical strength. Continued Jewish participation in Democratic party politics is greatly dependent upon black-Jewish relations.

 

This fact was somewhat obscured during the Jackson presidential campaign, as pro-Israel forces mounted a bruising offensive that succeeded in large measure in depriving Jackson's forces of any meaningful role in the final months of Walter Mondale's presidential campaign. Mondale's humiliating loss, combined with continuing antagonisms within the party, prompted some more reflective Zionist leaders to urge rapprochement, pointing out that blacks and other minorities were likely to play an increasingly important role in a viable Democratic party. [78]

 

As far as South Africa is concerned, organized Jewry in the U.S. is in a particularly vulnerable position. Jewish liberals want to follow their hearts and participate fully in the movement against apartheid. (This is equally true of the movement to give sanctuary to Central American refugees.) Many synagogue boards and local Jewish federations have voted to divest themselves of stock in companies doing business in South Africa. Many Jews speak of rediscovering what they perceive as a black-Jewish partnership of past decades. Yet Jewish Americans have sometimes been thwarted and surprised to discover how pervasive the sentiment is in the anti-apartheid movement-which is overwhelmingly black-led-that Israel, and, because of an extension carefully forged over the years by Israeli leaders, the U.S. Jewish community are prime supporters of the white minority government in South Africa. Some American Jews have expressed their distress with this state of affairs to the Israeli government. [79]

 

During the spring and summer of 1985 it became painfully clear that even with its access to the U.S. media, Israel's options for placating both the black and Jewish communities on the issue of South Africa were- barring a renunciation of its alliance with South Africa-extremely limited. Israel's supporters could continue to tell blacks that Israel's military relations with South Africa were false rumors, that Israel scrupulously abides by the UN embargo on arms sales to South Africa, and that Arab governments and black African states have greater trade relations with South Africa than Israel does, even though none of these reassurances was grounded in truth. [80] Small groups of influential blacks could be taken on visits to Israel. At least one such trip included a seminar on Israel's relations with South Africa. "They had all kinds of experts telling us that it really wasn't any big thing," reported one visitor who attended the seminar.

 

But as Western governments began to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, and the South African police killed unarmed children, it became clear that this approach was not winning adherents. In the many articles, pamphlets, and letters to the editor churned out by an alarmed pro-Israel apparatus, there was no new quote from a recognized black leader to replace the ubiquitously cited 1979 Andrew Young quote, "It's unfair to link Israel to South Africa. If there is a link, you must compare Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States. . ..”

 

The American Jewish community presented a slightly different problem. Israel had to reassure its Jewish supporters who were expressing concern, and enlist Jewish support in refuting the surfacing stories about Israeli links with South Africa. As of July, except for the news that the Jewish Board of Deputies (the official umbrella organization of the South African Jewish community) had made its first ever declaration against apartheid, [81] and a reiteration of its frequently stated position that concern for South Africa's Jewish community dictated continuing Israeli ties with South Africa, neither Israel nor its U.S. spokespersons had anything new or convincing to offer in this regard. Further compounding the stress on Jewish organizations was pressure on American Jews by supporters of South Africa.

 

Pretoria has dispatched prominent South African Jews to the United States to try to diminish Jewish participation in the anti-apartheid campaign. Sol Kreiner, the former mayor of Cape Town, sought to convince American Jews that South Africa was really instituting reforms. Harry Schwartz, a Jewish member of South Africa's parliament, challenged U.S. Jews to show more concern for their Jewish brethren in the apartheid republic. [82] This theme was repeated by a former chairman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Dr. Israel Abramowitz, when he addressed a B'nai B'rith forum in Washington in July. Abramowitz said that the South African Jewish community thought there was an "obsessional preoccupation" with South Africa in the United States, and he wanted to know why American Jewish organizations are "literally falling and stumbling over themselves in their zeal and enthusiasm to get on the bandwagon of condemnation and protestation," when the fate of South African Jews was tied up with that of the larger white community. [83] 

 

The U.S. Jewish community has also been targeted by South Africa's Washington embassy in a search for previously untapped reservoirs of support for its embattled government. The basis of the South African approach has been "to play on the close economic, political, and military ties between Israel and South Africa as a basis for rethinking traditional attitudes" and to point out that South Africa "has become one of the few friends Israel can count on, apart from the United States, and so Israel's supporters here should think about reciprocating." [84] 

 

In late June, some U.S. supporters of Israel, alarmed by what one called "a lot of misperceptions" about Israel's links with South Africa, attempted to effect some minor alterations in the reality of Israeli-South African relations. In an initiative put together by California State Assemblyman Tom Hayden-Hayden is the former radical who is now married to actress Jane Fonda-and UCLA professor Steven Spiegel, encounters were arranged between authentic black leaders in South Africa and an Israeli professor. This effort was notable in that those who publicly defended Israel against charges of consorting with the masters of apartheid expended a great deal of energy to correct a situation the existence of which they denied.

 

With Hayden acting as what his aide termed a "catalyst," money was raised by the Center for Foreign Policy Options, a little-known organization which an aide to Hayden described as a bipartisan effort within the Jewish community. An Israeli professor was selected to go to South Africa.

 

The aide to Hayden explained that Hayden and Fonda were longtime friends of South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize. It was this friendship that facilitated the arrangement of a number of meetings between the Israeli professor, Shimshon Zelniker, a department head at the Labor party's college, and prominent leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. [85] 

 

In South Africa, Zelniker had a five-hour meeting with Tutu and also met with other important figures in the orbit of the United Democratic Front (UDF), the major legal, multiracial, and anti-apartheid organization in South Africa. As a moment of truth, Zelniker's encounter is probably unsurpassed in the annals of Israeli-South African relations. When he returned to Israel he told the Jerusalem Post that

 

the level of hostility to Israel of South African blacks had reached "unbelievable heights." On the moral level, the black leaders he spoke with were unable to understand Israel's insensitivity to apartheid, which they see in the same terms as Nazism. Practically, they lambasted Israel's "collaboration" with South African government (sic).

 

Zelniker also said that blacks had "criticized the behavior of South African Jews towards blacks," particularly the "abuse of their domestic help," and that "Tutu and his colleagues also drew the analogy between the racial situation in South Africa and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank," [86] which is, of course, the ultimate analogy.

 

Tutu, according to Zelniker, had stressed his "abhorrence of the Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust," juxtaposed as it was with what Tutu termed Jewish inability to understand the correlation of fascism and apartheid, which he said was also leading to a Holocaust.

 

According to the Jerusalem Post, Zelniker's interlocutors told him that the Israeli embassy in Pretoria had cut contact with them. Even so, some expressed their willingness to visit Israel and accept Israeli assistance in the establishment of urban cooperatives and training for labor and women activists. [87] The aide to Tom Hayden said that the first group would go to Israel in March for courses at the Afro-Asian Institute in Tel Aviv. [88] Bishop Tutu himself has consistently declined invitations to go to Israel, giving as a reason Israel's arms sales to the white minority government. [89] 

 

Shimshon Zelniker's trip had the approval of the top leadership in the Israeli Labor party, and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. [90] Moreover, U.S.- based backers of the initiative further supported the project with a U.S. speaking tour for Zelniker (his appearances were limited almost entirely to Jewish community groups here) and continued fundraising for the Israeli training program. [91] Nevertheless, there is little chance the initiative will reverse the trend of Israeli collusion with the white minority regime.

 

To begin with, it is very dubious that the South African government, which has jailed the UDF's top leaders on capital treason charges, would permit the extensive training in Israel of individuals connected with that organization unless the expected outcome was co-optation. Nor is it likely that the Histadrut, the Israeli labor federation, will, as hoped, be able to establish meaningful relations with authentic black leaders in South Africa. [92] Although the Jerusalem Post's assertion that the Histadrut "has consistently refused to have any dealings with the South African regime" [93] may be true in a narrow, technical sense, several companies owned by the Histadrut are very prominent in Israeli-South African economic relations. Koor, the giant conglomerate owned by Histadrut, is a 51 percent partner in Iskoor with the South African Steel Corporation. Among other steel products it manufactures, Iskoor makes armor plating for tanks.

 

Besides, soon after Zelniker completed his mission to South Africa, the Histadrut joined the Israeli government in setting an entirely divergent course for Israeli policy toward South Africa by investing heavily in the political fortunes of a bitter rival of Tutu and the UDF: Gatsha Buthelezi, chief minister of the KwaZulu bantustan.

 

Buthelezi, who is also the hereditary chief of the Zulu tribe, arrived in Israel on 11 August, just when the eyes of all the world were on South Africa and expectations were rising over the possible announcement of major reforms during a speech scheduled for 15 August by the country's president, P.W. Botha.

 

It was not clear at the time-and conflicting stories continue to circulate-as to whether Buthelezi's visit was intended to undercut any understanding Zelniker may have reached with UDF-affiliated leaders. Nor, for that matter, was it clear exactly who had arranged the Zulu chief s visit. The New York Times said Israel had invited him two years ago; [94] according to the Washington Post, Buthelezi asked to go to Israel and arranged the visit in April. [95] The Israeli embassy in Pretoria was also given credit. Other sources reported that the Israeli Foreign Ministry was taken by surprise by Buthelezi's arrival and had to arrange a hurried briefing. [96] 

 

On his arrival, Buthelezi made clear that he was after Israeli support. He asked that Tel Aviv pressure Pretoria to abolish apartheid, and while he spoke against economic sanctions, he did call for an arms embargo against South Africa, casting doubt upon Israeli protestations that arms sales to South Africa ended after the orders received before the UN 1977 embargo on arms to South Africa were filled and delivered. [97] 

 

That was the only point of contention. During the course of Buthelezi's visit, the government grew ever more cordial. Buthelezi was scheduled for meetings with a number of government officials, including Prime Minister Peres and Foreign Minister and alternate Prime Minister Shamir, both of whom he asked for educational, agricultural, and technological aid for KwaZulu. Abba Eban, a foreign minister during the former Labor government and now chairman of the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, hosted a lunch in Buthelezi's honor. [98] Later, Buthelezi had a second, unscheduled meeting with Peres. [99] Afterwards, Prime Minister Peres escorted Buthelezi to his car-a courtesy the Israeli prime minister normally extends only to heads of state. [100] 

 

To the Israeli public, Buthelezi was never properly introduced, beyond the fact that he was the fifty-five-year-old hereditary chief of the Zulus; that he was adamantly opposed to apartheid; and that Buthelezi's Inkatha organization (see below) and his following among the six million Zulus, South Africa's largest ethnic group, was an important stabilizer. "Were they to throw their lot in with any revolutionary movement, the country would go up in smoke. It is Buthelezi who had kept them from doing so," said one newspaper account. [101] Most importantly, Buthelezi was presented as different from the other bantustan leaders in that he had not "accepted independence" from Pretoria. However, according to several South African journalists and a number of South African analysts in the U.S. that claim is patently untrue: KwaZulu is most definitely a bantustan, and Buthelezi is its chief minister. [102] 

 

The facts about the man the Israelis soon took under their wing are not well known outside of South Africa. In the West he is usually termed a "moderate," anti-apartheid tribal leader. Occasionally it is written that the ANC and the UDF, which, it is widely agreed, have the allegiance of the vast majority of South Africans across racial and tribal lines, consider Buthelezi a stooge of the white authorities.

 

It is not quite so simple. A longtime friend of Buthelezi says his main ambition is to be the top leader in a reformed South African government. There is no question that as an ambitious black, Buthelezi should be taken at his word when he says he is opposed to apartheid. However, to achieve his ambition, Buthelezi must prevail over the ANC and the UDF. His only available allies are one or another group of whites and whatever support he can gamer abroad.

 

Although Buthelezi's frequent trips abroad to argue against the imposition of sanctions against South Africa make him appear to be a messenger of the ruling Nationalist government, in actuality, he has been at odds with the state president for the past five years. The break came when Botha asked Buthelezi not to release an aide memoire reporting on a meeting of homeland chiefs, and Buthelezi, offended when the president waved a finger in his face, defied him. [103]  

 

At the moment, Buthelezi is aligned with the Progressive Federal party (PFP), which has long been the parliamentary opposition and, like Buthelezi, is anti-apartheid. The partnership began in 1983 when Buthelezi teamed up with the PFP to oppose a referendum on the government's proposed constitution which provided for parliamentary representation for Asians and the mixed-race group called "coloreds," with no participation extended to the black majority, which comprises 70 percent of the population. White voters passed the referendum, but the newly enfranchised minorities overwhelmingly boycotted the elections to their new (advisory) house of parliament. Many credit the reaction against the government's constitution, especially in the black community, as a major cause of the intensified popular struggle against the present order.

 

Like the National party, the PFP has argued in the West against economic sanctions, saying the same things as the government-that sanctions will hurt blacks first-but saying them with a bit more sincerity. Although South African observers say it is pointless to speculate on future political developments in their country, there is unanimity that Buthelezi is viewed by more than one group of whites as a reassuring alternative to rule by a black majority. Both Buthelezi and his current PFP allies oppose universal suffrage. A majority of South African Jews are in the PFP camp.

 

A fourteen-page memorandum which Buthelezi handed Peres presented the Zulu chief s arguments for the aid he sought: the development of a black economic base would strengthen blacks' participation in South Africa's economy and thus their bargaining position. This, according to Buthelezi's paper, would steer a course away from South Africa's present violence. [104] It is the old idea of creating from among an oppressed population a middle class wealthy enough to identify with the ruling power as its protector and large enough to stave off rebellion from below-but no larger.

 

Point for point, it is in direct contradiction to the ANC's platform, which calls for the scrapping of apartheid in favor of a democratic, nonracial state with universal suffrage. The ANC promises land reform and nationalization of South Africa's principal sources of wealth-the mines and the monopoly industries. (The state already owns a number of industries, including steel, weapons production, and nuclear power.)

 

Besides being hypocritical (Buthelezi's Inkatha has a particularly bloody history of battle against anti-apartheid demonstrators), Buthelezi's call for nonviolence is completely at odds with the ANC's three-phase strategy for a "people's war." The first and current phase is an "ungovernability" campaign which, dovetailing with spontaneously rising discontent in black areas, is aimed at making "the urban townships and later the rural homelands ungovernable by attacking black police officers and administrators who refuse to resign." These officials, it is often pointed out, are essential to the administration of apartheid. The second phase calls for killing white soldiers and policemen, whose numbers in the black townships have increased along with the mounting strife, and for taking the struggle into white areas. The third phase, which may still be years away, will be the strangulation of the economy led by labor unions. Black trade unions were only legalized in 1979, and they are still in an early stage of organization. [105] 

 

Even observers opposed to black majority rule, however, say that there can be no settlement of the ongoing crisis in South Africa without the participation of the ANC and the UDF. An attempt by Buthelezi (immediately after his return from Israel) and the PFP to forge a "convention alliance," or a broadly-based coalition to negotiate a new constitution for South Africa, was stillborn because the ANC and the UDF refused to participate in anything in which Buthelezi is involved. To them, Buthelezi is a bantustan chief. They point out that his vaunted, million-member Inkatha organization is not at all the mass, democratic organization Buthelezi claims it to be but a gang of thugs, almost exclusively Zulu, bound together in a reversion to tribalism and firmly committed-whatever their leader's motives-to the side of the South African government in the current battle. A number of Africa analysts contend that membership in Inkatha is often a prerequisite for a job or a place to live. Buthelezi may be somewhat better than the other bantustan chiefs-a notoriously corrupt lot-but his rule may hardly be called enlightened.

 

Although an admirer of his maintains that Buthelezi fought the creation of his pseudo-state and that his hand was forced by his followers, as chief minister of KwaZulu-a disjointed sprinkling of areas in Natal province that the government has designated as the tribal homeland of the Zulus- Buthelezi has done quite well for himself, with a cabinet drawn from the ranks of Inkatha, a budget regularly supplied by the authorities in Pretoria, a basic annual salary from South Africa of 39,525 rands (until recently the rand was on a par with the dollar), a small supportive black bourgeoisie clustered around the KwaZulu Finance and Investment Corporation, and a bullet-proof BMW. [106]

 

Buthelezi has made his homeland a haven for foreign investment. There is a labor bureau in KwaZulu and a Labor Relations Act to guide it in setting minimum wages and working conditions. However, the average KwaZulu employee working for a foreign concern makes about 100 rands a month, and those who complain to the labor bureau are blacklisted, effectively barred from any future employment. According to the Paris-based biweekly magazine Afrique-Asie, the stated policy of the Buthelezi government is not to interfere with the business practices of companies established in the bantustan. [107] 

 

In a new South Africa, Buthelezi would not be the man to lead his people to economic justice; he is too involved in the current exploitative business sector-which also suggests why he is an outspoken foe of economic sanctions. When the government's Commission for Cooperation and Development released a plan to "consolidate" KwaZulu by moving 42,000 blacks out of surrounding "black spots" and by mandating the incorporation of Lamontville township outside Durban into the KwaZulu pseudo-state, Buthelezi resisted, saying, "I and the KwaZulu legislative assembly will have nothing to do with the commission." Buthelezi was supported by some of the major Natal business interests as well as his allies in the Natal Progressive Federal party (PFP).

 

Industrialists and agricultural interests warned the Pretoria government that pressing forward with consolidation of KwaZulu would increase "unrest." The sugar cane industry in particular was interested in peace. [108] The $300 average annual wage paid to sugar workers [109] would surely be challenged-as would the conditions leading to the 50,503 cases of cholera reported in Natal and KwaZulu in 1982- [110] if "unrest" and the trade unionism that has been a hallmark of the popular movement in the last few years in South Africa gained a foothold in Natal.

 

Lamontville is already a bastion of the United Democratic Front, which opposes the town's annexation into KwaZulu. [111] Even several years before South Africa's black townships exploded, Lamontville was embroiled in resistance to being joined with KwaZulu. Buthelezi and his PFP partners, whose plans for a multiracial arrangement for KwaZulu and Natal province are central to their bid for power, are evidently not eager to see the UDF put to this challenge. [112] 

 

The founding of the UDF in August 1983 presented Buthelezi with a new challenge. Unlike the outlawed and underground ANC, with which the fight was a war of words and political maneuvering, the UDF was publicly active. Within months it claimed 1.6 million adherents, surpassing Buthelezi's Inkatha. Buthelezi began to defend his position and his interests militarily.

 

In October 1983, five University of Zululand students, who witnesses said were connected to the UDF, were killed and one hundred badly injured by men wearing the Inkatha uniform. In April 1985, Inkatha impis (as these Zulu warriors are traditionally called) fought on the side of the police, leaving several dead in the violence that wracked Vitenhage. [113] 

 

Although they were presented to Western audiences-along with the highly evocative sight of the torched home of Mohandas Gandhi-as blacks attacking the peaceable Durban Indian community, the convulsive riots in that city in early August 1985 appear to have been exacerbated-many say instigated-by Buthelezi's Inkatha. On 9 August, the New York Times reported that "in one Durban township, hundreds of people of Indian descent fled their homes as young Zulus [Inkatha impis] stormed shops and homes, putting them to the torch."

 

The fighting was a direct consequence of the murder of Victoria Mxenge, an attorney representing UDF officials charged by the government with treason. The assassination was carried out shortly before their trial was to begin. The ANC has charged Buthelezi and his followers with the murder of Mxenge and other leading activists. [114] 

 

According to the UDF, the fighting began on 7 August when "Zulu impis, under the banner of Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, killed twelve people in Umlazi township on Wednesday, during a memorial service in a movie theater for Mrs. Mxenge. [115] The fighting reached its peak as KwaZulu chief and Inkatha leader Buthelezi headed for Israel. Buthelezi insisted that his visit to Israel would not elicit criticism from South African blacks. In contrast to a report by a South African Zionist official that "the black community in South Africa has been influenced by Arab propaganda and frequently criticizes the Jewish community for its strong ties to Israel," [116] Buthelezi downplayed the significance of such antipathy to the Israeli government. [117] 

 

On 11 August, the day Buthelezi was photographed astride a camel in Jerusalem, [118] Victoria Mxenge was buried and the impis, "armed with spears, knives and clubs, took to the streets of one township." Inkatha leaders said they had taken the law into their own hands to "restore order."

 

In KwaMashu township, government police stood by and watched one thousand impis charge, "signifying an implicit approval withheld from the United Democratic Front." [119] At the end of the week, sixty-six blacks had been killed; the police admitted to having shot thirty-six. The other thirty "died in less clear circumstances, stabbed and mutilated." [120] 

 

The South African embassy in Tel Aviv called around to the Israeli media and asked them to treat Buthelezi kindly. [121] While the Hebrew-language press was fairly indifferent, the Jerusalem Post responded. "Last year the wrong South African black leader received the Nobel Prize for peace," blared the lead of a feature article. That "wrong" South African is Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, whom the writer accused of "having made his reputation advocating a simple minded solution to the racial problems in South Africa." [122] Along with his Nobel Prize, which he accepted on behalf of all South Africans, Bishop Tutu has won universal respect for coupling his insistence on full equality for blacks with his commitment to nonviolence.

 

"The real peacekeeper in South Africa is Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, now visiting Israeli" continued the writer, Daniel J. Elazar, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and head of the Institute of Local Government at Bar-Ilan University. Elazar has counseled South Africans on structural reforms that would avoid universal suffrage and he claims authorship of Buthelezi's plan for a unitary Natal province. [123] 

 

Buthelezi's arrival was well timed: the Israeli government was setting itself for action on South Africa. On 2 August, a long opinion piece by a former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry appeared in the Jerusalem Post. Shlomo Avineri argued strongly that Israel should bring its policy on South Africa more in line with those of other Western countries. On the face of it, this was not such a quantum leap, as ail of the Western countries have been guilty of sustaining apartheid. Interestingly, whereas North American and European governments had been pushed to act against South Africa by citizen activism as well as by events, Avineri's words served as a reminder that Israel lacked a fully-developed grassroots anti-apartheid campaign. (Recently there have been attempts to organize such a movement to call the government to account.)

 

Avineri spoke as a sympathetic insider, saying that diplomatic ties should be left in place. However, he urged that Prime Minister Peres make a statement because

 

at a time when the socialist government of France is withdrawing its ambassador and its investments from South Africa and the United Nations Security Council is strongly condemning the present state of emergency imposed by Pretoria, Israel cannot afford to remain silent...

 

Israel should speak out against racial repression in South Africa. It will not hurt our commercial and technological dealings with South Africa. Bluntly, they need us more than we need them...

 

The point is that when enlightened, liberal public opinion in the West- that public opinion which voted against the equation of Zionism with racism- speaks out against racism in South Africa, our voice has also to be heard. [124] 

 

On 5 August, Prime Minister Peres assured Congressman Howard Wolpe, chair of the Subcommittee on Africa of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, of Israel's opposition to apartheid. [125] As noted above, it was Wolpe who had deflected the attempt by Congressman Conyers to amend the foreign aid bill to penalize nuclear relations with South Africa. On 6 August, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, under the leadership of Abba Eban, had a spontaneous discussion and expressed "shock and apprehension at the current disturbances in South Africa." [126] Both actions preceded Buthelezi's arrival.

 

During Buthelezi's visit, Peres made his major statement, telling a cabinet meeting, "The Israeli government unconditionally disassociates itself from South Africa's apartheid government. " [127] Later, in a speech, the prime minister said, "We are serious, we are definite, we are determined not to accept the policy of discrimination under any circumstances." [128] The statement was broadcast two weeks in a row by the government's made- for-export, English-language "Israel Magazine." [129] 

 

In the U.S., where President Reagan and supporters of his policy of ''constructive engagement" toward South Africa had been denouncing apartheid for months, these denunciations were reported in a less enthusiastic manner than Israel might have anticipated. "Israel has always walked a tightrope with South Africa," wrote the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, "condemning its racial policies but quietly engaging in millions of dollars of economic and military trade annually." [130] 

 

The Washington Post was even harsher, leading its 12 August story with this paragraph:

 

The Israeli Cabinet officially and "unconditionally" condemned apartheid today for the first time, but ministers said the government would make no move to sever diplomatic ties or end the commercial and arms trade between the two countries.

 

The Post also noted the explanation, given by Amnon Rubenstein, a Labor Cabinet minister, of why Israel would not condemn South Africa's 21 July declaration of a state of emergency. Rubenstein said nations had to be careful in judging other nations; "Israel, too, has emergency regulations, but has not used anything like the ferocity used in South Africa." [131] 

 

The Israeli government proceeded to mild diplomatic action. Foreign Minister Shamir said he would postpone the scheduled departure of Israel's newly appointed ambassador to South Africa, David Ari'el, until the outgoing ambassador has returned to Israel and reported on the situation in South Africa. [132] Israel's state-run radio said that the ambassador would not depart until after the expected fall UN debate on the situation in South Africa. But then the radio proceeded to say that the decision was made because it was felt that "Israel should not send its ambassador at this time, when other countries are recalling their ambassadors from Pretoria. [133] 

 

At the same time it was decrying apartheid, the Israeli government was making its momentous decision to give overt aid to Buthelezi's bantustan. Perhaps those who made the decision to aid KwaZulu thought the one move might enhance or detract from the other. The government made only a feeble attempt to pretend that KwaZulu was not a bantustan. On its taped international broadcast, the announcer read this statement:

 

Even during the latest rioting, Buthelezi has worked against apartheid peacefully within the system, earning the ire of more extreme black activists. But he has proven that he is more than a puppet.

 

While he accepted the chief ministership of the KwaZulu homeland, he refused to have it declared independent like Ciskei or Bophuthatswana, which would have meant the loss of South African citizenship for the Zulu. Buthelezi has declared repeatedly he will ultimately settle for nothing less than full power sharing for the blacks. As head of the largest black nation and its political organization Inkatha, Buthelezi has a formidable power base and will undoubtedly play a major role in any future multiracial arrangement-if, as he hopes, it is achieved without a revolutionary bloodbath. [134] 

 

Power sharing is the current euphemism for reform that stops short of universal suffrage. Buthelezi has often said that in a negotiated settlement he will not insist on one person-one vote. [135] 

 

The most striking aspect of the move to aid KwaZului was the active and apparently wholehearted support of officials who had long been identified as opposed to, or at least uncomfortable with, Israel's relations with South Africa. Effectively, the Histadrut and the Israeli Foreign Ministry have now become open benefactors of one of the cruelest institutions of apartheid, the tribal reserves.

 

Yehuda Paz, director of the Afro-Asian Institute of Israel's Histadrut labor federation, met with Buthelezi and together they concretized plans to maintain contact between the Histadrut and the labor unions affiliated with Buthelezi's Inkatha organization. [136] (The Inkatha unions are not counted among those in the progressive black union movement.) Buthelezi also met with Shimshon Zelniker, [137] who had returned from South Africa to report that Bishop Tutu and other legitimate black leaders were willing to establish ties with Israel. There was no report about the outcome of Zelniker's meeting with Buthelezi.

 

Perhaps most important of all, Buthelezi met with David Kimche, the director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, and won Kimche's support for aid to KwaZulu. [138] The Labor-connected newspaper Davar reported that Kimche and Buthelezi "were in complete agreement" in their opposition to economic sanctions against Pretoria. [139] 

 

For Kimche to agree to go along with the prevailing fiction that the object of the aid, KwaZulu, was something other than a bantustan is extremely significant. Kimche's career, first as a Mossad officer and then as a career Foreign Ministry official, has been wrapped up in building-and after 1973, when all but four African governments upheld an OAU (Organization for African Unity) resolution and broke relations with Israel, in rebuilding-Israeli ties with black African nations. He has always cautioned against overt ties with Pretoria and has bitterly criticized Israeli industrialists for their heavy and ostentatious involvement with the bantustans. [140] In July, Kimche justified his continued and patient efforts to overcome the hostility with which most developing countries regard Israel by telling a Jerusalem symposium on Israeli-third world relations that "it is certainly an Israeli interest not to be barred from the third world, not to be transformed into a Taiwan or a South Africa, and it's certainly an Israeli interest to have economic relations with third world countries." [141] Of all the present Israeli officials, Kimche is the one most closely identified with the rebirth of Israeli development programs, an accomplishment that was soon put to use in an Israeli propaganda campaign (see below).

 

Further confirmation of Kimche's shift on South Africa came two weeks later when the South African ambassador to Israel handed him a document setting forth what the Israeli state radio called "South Africa's position on the separation of races." "The document," continued Israeli radio, "states that South Africa shares the view of those countries which object to separation on the basis of race considerations." Pretoria had drawn up the document to placate the European Community, three of whose ministers had visited South Africa in August. The radio said that Kimche "expressed his satisfaction with the points raised in the document, which are compatible with Israel's position-a position deploring and criticizing the policy of apartheid-which has been voiced in international forums." [142] 

 

The actual language of the South African document reads "if by 'apartheid' is meant: political domination by any one community of any other; the exclusion of any community from the political decision-making process; injustice or inequality in the opportunities available for any community; racial discrimination and impairment of human dignity, the South African government shares in the rejection of that concept." [143] According to the Jerusalem Post, Kimche was "pleased" with the document.

 

Whatever the underlying reasons may have been, Kimche accepted Buthelezi's promise-either at face value or because he had no choice-to open "a new door into African development." [144] On 21 August, the Israeli radio reported that Israel would "probably participate in the development of various projects in the Zulu homeland, particularly in the water and education spheres." [145] The Jerusalem Post called the aid that economically pressed Israel would provide "significant," and said it would include agricultural assistance as well as "leadership and trade union training in Israel, and assistance for women's organizations and cooperatives." [146] 

 

As he was leaving for South Africa, Buthelezi announced that teams of Israeli experts would soon visit KwaZulu to determine likely areas for Israeli assistance. With this assistance, Buthelezi told the Jerusalem Post, "Israel's links with South African blacks could be developed concurrently with its diplomatic ties with the white regime." [147] Israel, then, has a new South Africa policy: a rejection of apartheid coupled with, or alongside of, an embrace of a bantustan.

 

Why has Israel done this? A number of explanations may be offered, none of them completely satisfying. It may have been for simple domestic reasons; as the government radio said, "Buthelezi's visit will give a boost to Israelis who would like to criticize apartheid without breaking off political and diplomatic relations with Pretoria." [148] But considering Israel's radical shift on the bantustans, the prospect of a larger payoff than pleasing the Israeli left would seem logical.

 

Does the friendship with Buthelezi connote any real policy changes? Only to the extent that the Israeli agreements with Buthelezi might put Tel Aviv into actual conflict with Pretoria-and that, at the moment, is only a matter for conjecture. The Israelis may have read some "wall writing" about the demise of the Nationalist government and may be positioning themselves on the right side of what they presume to be its likely successor. They may be thumbing their noses at the present South African government. Or their accord with Buthelezi may have been entered into in collusion with the Botha government for the purpose of splitting the KwaZulu chief from his PFP allies and bringing him into some kind of partnership with the Nationalists.

 

When Buthelezi said the Israeli plans to help develop the Zulu "homeland" would provide Israel with links to South African blacks to be "developed concurrently with its diplomatic ties with the white regime," [149] was he, with his customarily careful and eloquent use of the English language, implying that Israel's links with the white minority government were to develop further than they already have?

 

Whatever the answers to these questions may be, it can safely be said that Israel's great concern is not in diminishing its relationship with the apartheid government but in preserving and ensuring it at a time when the South African government's tenure is beginning to be in doubt. Whatever the strategy involved in aiding KwaZulu may be, all of the contacts leading up to Buthelezi's visit support this conclusion.

 

That said, one must examine how this new policy will affect Israel abroad-assuming that was foremost on the government's mind when Buthelezi walked into the picture. Israel clearly expects to benefit from its new arrangements. It is likely that Israel hopes its "new" position on South Africa, i.e. its denunciation of apartheid, may further its efforts to have Resolution 3379 put up before the UN for reconsideration. The resolution, in addition to condemning Zionism as racism, compares it to apartheid. It may be realistic for Israel to count on gaining support for its battle against the resolution among those who already sympathize with its cause- provided too many of them don't mind that KwaZulu is a bantustan (or don't know what a bantustan is). Israel has begun a concerted propaganda campaign in the U.S., and at least one publication directed at Zionist audiences has stressed the connection between Israeli relations with South Africa and UN Resolution 3379. [150] 

 

However, it is unlikely the "new" position will win Israel new supporters for its UN effort-not as long as its military, economic, and political relationship with Pretoria remains intact. Moreover, making friends with Buthelezi will not endear Israel to many African governments at the UN; support for the ANC runs strong throughout Africa and beyond. Nor will it help that Israel's policies toward the Palestinians under occupation- which, after all, are the policies that inspired the resolution's comparison- have hardened in the aftermath of Israel's retreat from Lebanon.

 

But it does not appear that Israel seriously believes it will make new friends at the UN. In late October, when the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations took his turn at denouncing apartheid and told the General Assembly that "the Arabs" have greater links with South Africa than Israel, the statement seemed to lack its usual vehemence. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted that the UN would soon begin consideration of a resolution including Israeli-South African nuclear collaboration. [151] 

 

Zionist audiences, especially liberals, however, are likely to appreciate the sense of movement that the Israeli government is projecting. Intense outreach to Zionist audiences began even before Buthelezi left Israel. AIPAC's Near East Report broke the news of Israel's bantustan venture, telling of Israeli plans to "improve the lives of black South Africans through cooperative ventures" and of Buthelezi's praise for the "complete abhorrence which . . . the Israeli people have for apartheid, and the commitment of the Israeli people to its destruction." [152] Reassurances were given that reports of a major alliance between Israel and South Africa were simply stories "that have been widely circulated by Israel's most active opponents in the U.S." [153] "It is unfortunate," Near East Report commiserated with its readership, "but Israel's enemies are now using the struggle against apartheid as a pretext for attacks on the Jewish state. On campus, in particular, it is common to hear South Africa and Israel castigated in conjunction." [154] 

 

During the week of Buthelezi's visit to Israel, AIPAC devoted more than half its weekly newsletter to South Africa. It reported the Israeli Cabinet's 10 August "unconditional" condemnation of apartheid, it reviewed for readers the arguments and statistics which Zionist organizations have been providing for their members to refute news stories about Israel's close ties with South Africa, [155] and it ran a feature by a South African university student who argued that although Jews were scattered across the South African political spectrum, their political options in South Africa were extremely limited. On the right were the latently anti-Semitic National party and Afrikaner conservatives, while on the left, in the struggle against apartheid, was solidarity with the Palestinian cause; and

 

Jews who relate to the subtle, yet distinct anti-Zionism of the South African left are generally individuals suffering from Jewish guilt and anxious to prove their commitment to the liberal cause. [156]  

 

The right-wing Jewish Press in Brooklyn, New York noted that "in their zeal to appear 200 percent faithful to democratic ideals, [U.S. Jews active against apartheid] ignore the ominous threat that hovers over Israel," which was, according to the paper, the threat that "should South Africa fall, the next target of the Council of Churches, the radical black militants, the ultra-liberals and the college demonstrators will be Israel." [157] 

 

A great part of the American Jewish community, especially the more progressive elements, will not find the answer to their concerns in any of this. Nor will their efforts to achieve a closer partnership with black organizations be helped by another current tack of Israeli propaganda – reiteration of the theme of black African incompetence. Along these lines a September article in Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee, argues that South Africa is a "typical" African country, tribalized (in South Africa's case the two largest "tribes" are the Zulus, followed by the whites), quickly urbanizing, and thus "violence-prone" and subject to government repression. Apartheid is equated with other twentieth century African social philosophies, "the local expression of the African ideological personality." South Africa's "free press" simply affords more information about its evils. Where South Africa is different from the other African countries is its wealth, and that, it is argued, would only be destroyed by divestment. How, then, is there such widespread revolt? The author explains it in terms of a "terror campaign" waged by the ANC, "strongly reminiscent . . . of the efforts by the Grand Mufti [of Jerusalem] and his killers to destroy the forces of Arab moderation in prewar Palestine." [158]

 

Long a staple of Israeli statements on South Africa, concern for the South African Jewish community remains a constant theme. Israel's contention that it is concerned for the South African Jewish community certainly has some elements of truth. Many of the Nationalist leaders in Pretoria have a past connection with Nazism; they only "reformed" in 1948 to win international acceptance. If they should become completely isolated from the world, they may indeed revert and add the anti-Semitic component to their already repressive regime. The South African Jewish community also gives the highest per capita donations to Israel, the total second only to American contributions. Yet past Israeli actions-particularly during the "dirty war" in Argentina-cause some Israeli analysts to doubt the sincerity of Israel's concern. [159] At present, Israel is leaving no stone unturned in efforts to lure South African Jews to emigrate to Israel, although many prefer the U.S., Canada, Britain, or Australia. [160]

 

Nonetheless, Foreign Minister Shamir cited this concern when he told the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a group representing the spectrum of organized Judaism in the U.S., that Israel had no intention of following the lead of the U.S. and Europe and applying economic sanctions against South Africa. "We are not going to change the character of our relations with South Africa," Shamir said. [161] According to the New York Times, Shamir told the presidents that the South African Jewish community was "a primary concern in maintaining ties." (Added the Times, "There is also considerable trade between the two countries.") [162]

 

Black leaders in the U.S., of course, will not be impressed to hear of Israel's aid to Buthelezi, but Israel has come up with a new twist to deflect potential criticism from that part of its South Africa policy. Foreign Minister Shamir tried out this new approach during another New York address. The audience included prominent black and Hispanic leaders and a variety of New York City and State elected officials invited by the Jewish Community Relations Council. First Shamir gave a heartfelt pronouncement on South Africa: "To be a Jew means to be against apartheid," he told the notables. Shamir asserted that Israel had been ahead of all other governments in condemning apartheid.

 

Responding to a question posed by Wilbert Tatum, publisher of the weekly Harlem-based Amsterdam News, Shamir said that the main reason Israel has diplomatic ties with South Africa is, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "to maintain contact with the Jewish community in South Africa which has clearly stated its opposition to apartheid." Other ties, he said were "constrained and very reduced." Then, incredibly, he shifted gears and told Tatum that, he, Shamir, was even more disturbed by the inadequacy of international aid to cope with the famine in Africa, "after peace, the most important problem in the world." Shamir called attention to the intensive technical cooperation using Israeli technology and irrigation techniques with which Israel helped black African countries acquire an agricultural infrastructure. [163]

 

This was not a shot in the dark. Zionist publications have recently been touting Israel's development aid. B'nai B'rith has just published a new pamphlet which has received great attention. On 10 November, "Israel Magazine" ran a long feature on Israeli agricultural and technological training programs in the third world.

 

While one of the motives for promoting its development programs may have been to justify the special funding Israel has received from the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), [164] the timing of the promotion suggests it is following the old adage of "accentuating the positive" and is more connected with Israel's plans to aid Buthelezi than an attempt to justify its U.S. AID programs. Moreover, if Israel wanted more money for something, it need not have hinted so delicately.

 

How much of Israel's propaganda campaign will be believed remains to be seen. It will also be difficult to gauge, given the widespread reluctance to criticize Israel in this country. That no one of stature in the U.S. has yet taken Israel to task for helping to develop the pseudo-state of KwaZulu, or for the contrast of its empty statements against apartheid with its significant relationship with the white minority government of South Africa, does not signify that Israel has been believed.

 

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Jane Hunter is the publisher of Israeli Foreign Affairs, an independent monthly research report, and the author of Undercutting Sanctions-Israel, the U.S. and South Africa (Washington, D.C.: Washington Middle East Associates, 1986). 

** A bantustan is an area designated by the South African government as the native country of a given tribe of blacks, usually austere and far from employment. Through forcible removals of blacks, the government is reducing their presence in white areas and around urban centers; four bantustans have already been declared independent countries, and South Africa's intention is for all the pseudo-states to do likewise.

1. See Richard P. Stevens and Abdelwahab M. Elmessiri, Israel and South Africa: The Progression of a Relationship (New York: New World Press, 1976), Section 2, "Documentation," 148-67, for a collection of contemporary news articles on events surrounding Vorster's visit. There were other reasons for raising the level of relations, including the seating of the PLO at the UN in January 1976, Secretary of State Kissinger's encouragement of Israeli help for South Africa's invasion of Angola, and the Ford administration's "reassessment" of its Middle East policy.

2. "Hands Across Africa," South African Digest, 23 April 1976, in Stevens and Elmessiri, 149-50.

3. Richard P. Stevens, "Smuts and Weizmann," Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn 1973, in Stevens and Elmessiri, 22-44; and James Adams, The Unnatural Alliance (London: Quartet, 1984), 4-5.

4. Rita E. Hauser, "Israel, South Africa and the West," Washington Quarterly, Summer 1979, reprinted by permission in South Africa International, October 1980.

5. Adams, 32.

6. Rand Daily Mail, 7 July 1975, and Washington Post, 8 July 1975, in Abdelkader Benabdallah, L'Alliance Raciste israelo-sudafricaine (Montreal: Les Editions CanadaMonde-Arabe, 1979), 184; Adams, 93 and passim.

7. Adams, 32.

8. C.L. Sulzberger, "Strange Nonalliance," New York Times, 28 April 1971.

9. Adams, 34.

10. Very complete reports of Israeli arms sales to South Africa are to be found in Steve Goldfield, Garrison State (San Francisco: Palestine Focus Publications, 1985), 27-28; Rosalynde Ainslee, Israel and South Africa, An Unlikely Alliance? (New York: UN Centre Against Apartheid, #8411821, 1981), 7-14; Adams, passim; Benabdallah, 179-85.

11. Paul Quinn-Judge, "Israel sells arms to Asia discretely, even secretly," Christian Science Monitor, 27 December 1982.

12. A.J. Mcllroy, "Israel: Arsenal of the Third World," Sunday Telegraph, 28 August 1983.

13. Adams, 86. Adams, who is defense editor of the Sunday Times, states that "the arms trade between Israel and South Africa now runs into hundreds of millions of dollars and is rising each year."

14. "The Israeli Connection," The Economist, 5 November 1977; Jonathan Broder, "Israel grows sensitive over links to South Africa," Chicago Tribune, 2 April 1977; James Adams, "Strangers and Brothers," Sunday Times, 15 April 1984.

15. Paul Johnson, "The Race for South Africa," Commentary, September 1985.

16. Jane Hunter, Undercutting Sanctions-Israel, the U.S. and South Africa (Washington: Washington Middle East Associates, 1986).

17. Drew Middleton, "South Africa Needs More Arms, Israeli Says," New York Times, 14 December 1981.

18. "Namibia Rulers to Israel," Israeli Foreign Affairs, October 1985. See also "An Israeli Bid for Namibia," Israeli Foreign Affairs, December 1984.

19. Cheryl A. Rubenberg, forthcoming article on Israel and Guatemala in MERIP Reports 140 (May/June 1986). Also Jane Hunter, forthcoming book on Central America.

20. Adams, 180-81; Major Gerald J. Keller, USMC, "Israeli-South African Trade: An Analysis of Recent Developments," Naval War College Review, Spring 1980.

21. Ronald Walters, "The September 22, 1979 Mystery Flash: Did South Africa Detonate a Nuclear Bomb?" (Washington Office on Africa, 1985). Author's interviews. A full development of the assertion that Israel, not South Africa, had the weapon to be tested is in Jane Hunter, Undercutting Sanctions.

22. OPTIMA, no date given, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 2 October 1985, U 17.

23. Ainslee, 18-23, has a thorough history of trade relations up to 1980. For more recent activity see "Israel: A Survey," supplement to the Financial Mail (Johannesburg), 11 May 1984; and Hunter, Undercutting Sanctions.

24. Financial Mail (Johannesburg), 14 September 1979, in Ainslee, 20.

25. Israeli Foreign Affairs, June 1985.

26. "Israel: A Survey."

27. Judy Siegel, "Plans launched for absorbing South African Jews," Jerusalem Post, 20 August 1985.

28. Macabee Dean, "South African blacks and whites all in the same boat," Jerusalem Post, 24 October 1985.

29. This system was laid out in detail in 1978 by Zoram Shapiro, "A Study of Some of the Factors Influencing the Use of Israel as a Springboard for South African Exports," MBA Thesis, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town. See also "Israel: A Survey"; and Hunter, Undercutting Sanctions.

30. BBC World Service, 5 November 1985, reported at 0505 and 0605 hours. Heard on KXLR-AM, San Francisco.

31. "Israel and US cut from UN slam of S. Africa backers," AP, Jerusalem Post, 28 October 1984.

32. Ma'ariv, 21 October 1984, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 22 October 1984, 1 12.

33. Although great efforts were exerted to this end by the Begin and Shamir governments, only Zaire and Liberia, neither well regarded by other African governments, restored relations with Israel; the Tel Aviv-Pretoria connection was a major dissuasive factor to others, Nigeria in particular.

34. Ma'ariv, 21 October 1984.

35. Jerusalem Domestic Service in Hebrew, 1345 GMT, 22 October 1984, in FBISMiddle East and Africa, 23 October 1984, 17.

36. Jean-Pierre Langellier, "La visite du chef de la diplomatie sud-africaine illustre lesrelations etroites entre les deux pays," Le Monde, 6 November 1984.

37. Peter Allen-Frost, "Pik Botha's visit to Israel goes smoothly-but worriesome," The Star (Johannesburg), 12 November 1984.

38. Langellier, op. cit.

39. "Botha visit row," Jewish Chronicle (London) 9 November 1984.

40. "Some snub S. African," Jerusalem Post International Edition, week ending 17 November 1984.

41. Jerusalem Domestic Service in Hebrew, 1133 GMT, 5 November 1984, in FBISMiddle East and Africa, 5November 1985, I 7.

42. "Botha visit row."

43. ITIM (Tel Aviv) in Hebrew, 1950 GMT, 30 October 1984, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 31 October 1984, I 6.

44. Jerusalem Post, 7 April 1985, in Israeli Foreign Affairs, May 1985.

45. Joshua Brilliant, "West Bank City Linked with Ciskei Capital," Jerusalem Post, 29 October 1984, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 31 October 1984, I 5, I 6.

46. Keesings Volume XXX, February 1984, 32661; Davar, 19 August 1984, in FBISMiddle East and Africa, 21 August 1984, I 16; SWB/Monitoring Report ME7274/ii, 5 March 1983.

47. Roy Isacowitz, "Aridor involvement in Ciskei 'likely to harm Israel,' " Jerusalem Post, 20 June 1984.

48. Photocopy of telephone directory and related documents courtesy of Progressive List for Peace.

49. Business Day (Johannesburg), 4 September 1985; African National Congress News Summary. 

50. Hyam Comey, "SA upset by Israel ties with black homelands, Jerusalem Post, 2 July 1984.

51. "Petty Crooks and Grand Apartheid, Israel and the Bantustans," Israeli Foreign Affairs, December 1985 contains a full account of this scandal.

52. "Face to face: Eliahu Lankin, About Israel and SA," Financial Mail (Johannesburg), 16 December 1983.

53. Roy Isacowitz, "Longtime Pretoria political prisoner arrives here," Jerusalem Post, I March 1985.

54. Roy Isacowitz, "Herzog aided prisoner Goldberg's release," Jerusalem Post, 4 March 1985. This article also notes that

the notables involved in the Goldberg effort were angry that they were not credited for their efforts by Herut Lapid; see following paragraph.

55. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Released apartheid foe attacks Israel's ties to South Africa." In These Times, 22-28 May 1985.

56. Roy Isacowitz, "What price freedom?" Jerusalem Post Magazine, 8 March 1985.

57. Ibid.

58. Davar, 3 March 1985, trans. by Israel Shahak, summer 1985 collection.

59. Aharon Dolav, "He will yet repent . Ma'ariv, 8 March 1985, trans. by Israel Shahak, summer 1985 collection.

60. Moshe Brilliant, "Freed South African Explains Why He Took Botha's Offer," New York Times, 4 March 1985.

61. Roy Isacowitz, "Ex-prisoner denounces Israeli ties with South Africa," Jerusalem Post, 3 March 1985.

62. Roy Isacowitz, "Cohen: 'Goldberg should be expelled for pro-terror opinions,' " Jerusalem Post, 8 March 1985.

63. The Maccabiah Games, or "Jewish Olympics," is a quadrennial event that brings to Israel a number of national teams of Jewish competitors in a variety of sports.

64. Ainslee, 5; Benabdallah, 123-26.

65. Jack Leon, "S. Africa may be kept out of Maccabiah," Jerusalem Post, 9 June 1985.

66. Jack Leon, "S. Africa out of Maccabiah," Jerusalem Post, 19 June 1985.

67. Jack Leon, "S. Africa Maccabi visa ruse?" Jerusalem Post, 17 July 1985.

68. Jack Leon, "Facing up to the Maccabiah problems," Jerusalem Post, 12 July 1985.

69. Letter to the Jerusalem Post, 25 August 1985 from Hanna Foighel, whose information on the 1984 meeting came from members of the Danish Maccabiah team.

70. Joshua Brilliant, I5 and 16.

71. Asher Wallfish, "Knesset uinit scores apartheid," Jerusalem Post, 7 August 1985.

72. Congressional Record, 1 April 1985, S3772-3. It was not until 7 June that Proxmire was forced to retract and apologize for his speech (Congressional Record 7 June, in Yosef I. Abramowitz, Jews, Zionism and South Africa (Washington: B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations, 1985). The Washington Post article, by Daniel Southerland, was based on a pre-publication interview with Aaron Klieman, whose Israel's Global Reach (New York: Pergamon, 1985) is strongly and protectively pro-Israel.

73. Wolf Blitzer, "Unclear On Apartheid," Jerusalem Post, 16 August 1985.

74. In its tiny report from UPI on 22 May 1985, the New York Times included this statement from State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb (whose appointment to the post was hailed by a number of Zionist newspapers): "[The State Departmentl has no reason to change the U.S. Government's 1980 verdict that the case for a bomb test has not been proven." The report is the Walters Document.

75. Congressional Record, 11 July 1985, H5469.

76. Abramowitz.

77. Israeli Foreign Affairs, October 1985.

78. Jewish literature has abounded with debates on this issue and the related one of Jewish-black antagonism. See for example "The New Christian Right," Present Tense, Winter 1985, a collection of essays from various viewpoints; Earl Raab and Seymour Martin Lipset, The Political Future of American Jews, (New York: American Jewish Congress, 1985), which argues that Jews must seek coalitions and that that is impossible if their political focus is on a single issue, Israel; also "As Blacks See It," Moment, October 1984.

79. Blitzer, "Unclear On Apartheid."

 

80. In the latter case, except for a few reactionary African governments, most of the trade carried out by independent African states with South Africa is not by choice. Infrastructure inherited from colonial days and the decisions of multinational corporations are responsible for a great deal of that trade; South Africa's sabotage of its neighbors' infrastructures accounts for still more, especially for landlocked nations of Southern Africa.

81. Moment, July-August 1985, 2, has a short column on the Board of Deputies resolution.

82. Sanford Ungar, "South Africa's Lobbyists," New York Times Magazine, 13 October 1985, 112.

83. David Friedman, "S. African Jew fears backlash from apartheid protests in US," Northern California Jewish Bulletin, 19 June 1985.

84. Ungar.

85. Telephone interview with aide to Assemblyman Tom Hayden, 8 January 1986.

86. Roy Isacowitz, "S. Africa blacks want ties with groups here," Jerusalem Post, 26 July 1985.

87. Ibid.

88. Telephone interview with aide to Assemblyman Tom Hayden.

89. Feature on Israeli-South African relations, Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 13 January 1986. Transcript in supplement to Israeli Foreign Affairs, February 1986.

90. Isacowitz, "S. Africa blacks .

91. Telephone interview with aide to Assemblyman Tom Hayden.

92. Ibid.

93. Isacowitz, "S. Africa blacks .

94. Thomas L. Friedman, "Zulu Leader Sets Primary Demands," New York Times, 14 August 1985.

95. William Claiborne, "Israel Condemns Apartheid; Buthelezi Arrives for Visit," Washington Post, 12 August 1985.

96. Jerusalem Post, 23 August 1985.

97. Jerusalem Domestic Service, 0700 GMT, 11 August 1985, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 13 August 1985, 1 7.

98. T. Friedman, "Zulu Leader .

99. Roy Isacowitz and David Richardson, "More help to South Africa's blacks likely after Zulu chief's visit," Jerusalem Post, 15 August 1985; "Shamir meeting in Tel Aviv," IDF Radio in Hebrew, 0753 GMT,

12 August 1985, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 13 August 1985, 1 7.

100. "Zulu chief gets Israel backing," Jerusalem Post, 13 August 1985.

101. Daniel J. Elazar, "Ideas for Pretoria," Jerusalem Post, 16 August 1985.

102. Only Buthelezi (and maybe some Israelis) accept the distinction that KwaZulu is not a full-fledged bantustan because he has not "accepted independence" from Pretoria, ("a meaningless distinction," a South African journalist visiting the U.S. told the author, a remark that was echoed by several other South Africans and Africa specialists). The New York Times often refers to ZwaZulu as a "homeland," e.g. "the biggest of South Africa's 10 so-called homelands," on 14 August 1985.

103. Rand Daily Mail, 19 June 1984, in FBISMiddle East and Africa, 20 June 1984, U 6.

104. David Richardson and Roy Isacowitz, "Focus" article in Jerusalem Post, 16 August 1985.

105. Mike Calabrese and Mike Kendall, "The Black Agenda for South Africa," The Nation, 26 October 1985.

106. Christine Abdelkrim, "Pretoria: le montage Buthelezi," Afrique-Asie, No. 358, 7 October 1985.

107. Ibid.

108. Johannesburg, SAPA in English, four transmissions, 23 September 1985: 0820 GMT, 0825 GMT, 0945 GMT, 0901 GMT, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 23 September 1985, U 8-10.

109. William Allan, "South African peaches peddled," People's World, 2 November 1985.

110. Keesings.

111. New York Times, 29 September 1985.

112. See note 106.

113. Abdelkrim.

114. Addis Ababa Radio Freedom in English to South Africa, 1930 GMT, 27 August 1985, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 29 August 1985.

115. Alan Cowell, "Violence and Apartheid," New York Times, 15 August 1985.

116. D. Friedman, "S. African Jew fears backlash..." 

117. Richardson and Isacowitz, "Focus" article.

118. The photo appeared on the front page of the Jerusalem Post on 12 August and in the New York Times the following day.

119. Alan Cowell, "Violence Erupts at Black's Rites in a 'Homeland' " New York Times, 12 August 1985.

120. Cowell, "Violence and Apartheid."

121. Unpublished interview with Israel Shahak by Steve Goldfield of Palestine Focus, 19 September 1985, Berkeley.

122. Elazar.

123. Ibid.

124. Shlomo Avineri, "Speaking out on apartheid," Jerusalem Post, 2 August 1985.

125. Jerusalem Domestic Service in Hebrew, 1600 GMT, 5 August 1985, in FBISMiddle East and Africa, 6August 1985, I 1.

126. Asher Wallfish, "Knesset unit scores apartheid," Jerusalem Post, 7 August 1985.

127. JTA, Northern California Jewish Bulletin, 16 August 1985.

128. Claiborne.

129. "Israel Magazine," half hour news and features program of the Israeli government, heard 18 August and 25 August 1985 at 10:00 p.m. PDT, on KQED, San Francisco.

130. Friedman, "Zulu leader ..

131. Claiborne; in this article the Washington Post restates-with considerable expansion-the figures from its 22 March article which Senator Proxmire cited and was then forced to retract.

132. Yedi'ot Aharonot, 15 August 1985, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 15 August 1985, I 1.

133. Jerusalem Domestic Service in Hebrew, 0400 GMT, 20 August 1985.

134. "Israel Magazine."

135. Right after his trip to Israel, Buthelezi gave a delegation of EEC foreign ministers a memorandum saying, "We can compromise on the one-man, one-vote system of government in a unitary state because God did not ordain the Westminster model as the only model acceptable. We can compromise with paralyzing white fear by providing more than entrenched protection of individualiberties and rights. We can negotiate about the protection of group rights, but we cannot retain the race classification laws of this country as the only foundation on which constitutional development can be built." Johannesburg, SAPA, 2026 GMT, 30 August 1985, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, U 7.

136. Isacowitz and Richardson.

137. Ibid.

138. Ibid.

139. "Agricultural Aid Promised to Zulu Chief Buthelezi," Davar, 15 August 1985, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 16 August 1985, I 4.

140. Jerusalem Post, 7 April 1985.

141. Jerusalem Domestic Service in English, 1000 GMT, 13 July 1985, in FBIS-Middle East and Africa, 15 July 1985, I 6.

142. Jerusalem Domestic Service in Hebrew, 1100 GMT, 3 September 1985, in FBISMiddle East and Africa, 4 September 1985.

143. Jerusalem Post, 6 September 1985.

144. Richardson and Isacowitz, "Focus" article.

145. Jerusalem Domestic Service in Hebrew, 1100 GMT, 21 August 1985.

146. Isacowitz and Richardson.

147. Isacowitz, "Israelis to study aid projects

148. "Israel Magazine," 25 August 1985.

149. Isacowitz, "Israelis to study aid projects

150. Abramowitz.

151. Yitzhak Rabi, "Israel Denounces Apartheid, JTA, 31 October 1985.

152. Near East Report, 19 August 1985.

153. Blitzer, "Unclear On Apartheid."

154. M.J. Rosenberg, "Israel and South Africa?" Near East Report, 30 September 1985.

155. "Israel condemns apartheid," Near East Report, 19 August 1985.

156. Lorraine Bernstein, "South Africa: No Place to Hide," Near East Report, 19 August 1985.

157. Julius Lieb, "No Sanctions Against South Africa," Jewish Press, 30 August 1985.

158. Johnson, "The Race for South Africa."

159. See, for example, Edy Kaufman, "View from Jerusalem," Washington Quarterly, Fall 1984; also "Argentina-hard to get close to," Israeli Foreign Affairs, April 1985.

160. "[Israel'sI emissaries to South Africa, both diplomats and persons sent by Zionist organizations, privately preach the imminent fall of the white regime and encourage the Jews of South Africa to 'come home.' " From Peter Allen-Frost, "South Africa and Israel: an alliance of pragmatism," Christian Science Monitor, 25 September 1985. See also Siegel, "Plans launched for absorbing South African Jews. "

161. Walter Ruby, "Shamir has 'no plans for moves against S. Africa,' " Jerusalem Post, 29 September 1985.

162. David Bird, "Israel Won't Act Against Pretoria," New York Times, 27 September 1985.

163. "Shamir categorique contre l'apartheid," Jewish Telegraphic Agency (Paris), 10 October 1985, #8951.

164. Interview with Allan Kellum, Israeli Foreign Affairs, February 1985; also "Israel's own USAID Program," Israeli Foreign Affairs, June 1985. Also, see note 19. There is also danger lurking for Israel in this gambit, as its development assistance may be identified with the infamous Guatemalan rural resettlement program, or its current efforts along the same lines in Namibia.