The Israel-hating West will begrudge the plucky Jewish State its close relationship with the Old South Africa, but not Barely a Blog and friends. It is common knowledge that Israel worked closely to help South Africa develop a nuclear arsenal. A new book confirms as factual what was previously presumed.
My own book most certainly does not tell “a troubling story of Cold War paranoia, moral compromises, and Israel’s estrangement from the left” (OMIGOD), to quote from the Random-House blurb about one Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s new book “revealing the previously classified details of countless arms deals conducted behind the backs of Israel’s own diplomatic corps and in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews with former generals and high-level government officials in both countries.”
The South African documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky and published in today’s Guardian, include “top secret” South African minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries as well as direct negotiations in Zurich between Peres and Botha.
The South African military chief of staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong, who attended the meetings, drew up a memo laying out the benefits of South Africa obtaining the Israeli missiles – but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
Polakow-Suransky said the minutes record that at the meeting in Zurich on 4 June 1975, Botha asked Peres about obtaining Jericho missiles, codenamed Chalet, with nuclear warheads.“Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available,” the minutes said. The document then records that: “Minister Peres said that the correct payload was available in three sizes”.
The use of a euphemism, the “correct payload”, reflects Israeli sensitivity over the nuclear issue. Armstrong’s memorandum makes clear the South Africans were interested in the Jericho missiles solely as a means of delivering nuclear weapons.
The use of euphemisms in a document that otherwise speaks openly about conventional weapons systems also points to the discussion of nuclear weapons.
In the end, South Africa did not buy nuclear warheads from Israel and eventually developed its own atom bomb.
The Israeli authorities tried to prevent South Africa’s post-apartheid government from declassifying the documents.
The documents declassified in The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa have galvanized the festering “international community” even more against Israel. Whereas to me these secret agreements actually demonstrate how responsible both countries were with their arsenal; perceptions differ among UN functionaries, most of whom are either entirely sympathetic to or of the undeveloped world.
Israel will be made to pay for being friend to the ostracized country, as it pretended to abide international boycotts on South Africa. In an attempt to distance the adored Yitzhak Rabin from the deals, the author even floats the theory that Shimon Peres, who brokered the deal, was his own agent, working alone. Darn, those Israelis!
Thanks to Myles Kantor for sending the story, as it appeared in YNetNews:
According to the Guardian report, the documents indicate that the two sides met on March 31, 1975. Polakow-Suransky [“the American academic who uncovered the documents while researching a book on the military and political relationship between the two countries”] wrote in his book, which was published in the United States this week, “Israel’s secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. At the talks Israeli officials formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal.”
Among those who participated in the meeting was the South African military Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong, who prepared a memorandum that lists the benefits of acquiring Jericho missiles, but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
The memo, which was classified as “top secret” and dated the same day as the meeting with the Israeli officials, was exposed in the past, but its context was unclear, as it was unknown that it served as a basis for the Israeli offer made on the same day.
In the memo, Armstrong wrote:” In considering the merits of a weapon system such as the one being offered, certain assumptions have been made: That the missiles will be armed with nuclear warheads manufactured in RSA (Republic of South Africa) or acquired elsewhere.”
The documents published by the Guardian are of interest, although I find the greatest significance in this warm note Peres, who has always been a conservatively minded individual (most members of the Israeli Old Guard were tough and patriotic), pens to minister Eschel Mostert Rhoodie. In it Peres alludes to
the two countries’ shared determination to resist their enemies. He implies too that South Africa and Israel were both refusing to submit to the injustices against them.
This indeed is most revealing about the sympathy Israel harbored for South Africa. Having resided in both countries during those times, I can attest to the feelings of comity between the two countries.
Update I: Glisson is wrong (see Comments). The facts as they have emerged are significant—in as much as they cement what we know about a long-standing, close collaboration. Writes Jane Hunter, publisher of the monthly journal Israeli Foreign Affairs, in April of 1986:
“Essentially, the two nations pledged themselves to each other’s survival and freedom from foreign interference. Over the years this cooperation has taken on a symbiotic quality: from Israel South Africa gets advanced engineering, including military technology unobtainable elsewhere due to sanctions and embargoes; from South Africa Israel receives strategic raw materials and capital for a variety of purposes.”
Another “real event” ignored by our friend is the fact that, by the time this exchange occurred (1970s), Israel had already cobbled the weapons together. This is an infant country compared to the Afrikaner nation, which had settled the tip of the continent and forged an identity two hundred years prior.
Still, I must be one of the few Jews who’s proud of the fact that Israel, in the person of the tough, laconic Yitzhak Shamir (whom paleos are fond of calling a terrorist for fighting those wicked Britons—I bet a hate for the Brits was another Israeli and Afrikaner uniting factor), told the US it would take no part in its attempts to cripple South Africa:
Israel’s foreign minister, told a New York audience that Israel would not institute sanctions against South Africa. Instead, Shamir said, Israel would leave that task to the great powers and continue its “normal” relations with Pretoria.
Update II (May 26): Given Barbara’s prodigious knowledge and general fairness, I await a follow-up on what the Brits, not beloved by the Afrikaner and Israeli old guard, did to the Jews before they gained independence in Israel. Sink a ship with refugees from Nazi Europe? Quarantine them as the Americans did to the Japanese? Remove weapons intended for self-defense against Arab marauders? Have at it.
