Polakow-Suransky’s Radioactive Thinking

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
27 May '10

Sacha Polakow-Suransky’s new book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa has a clear agenda: to argue that there is an ideological similarity between Zionism and Apartheid, and that today’s Israel is the heir of yesterday’s South Africa.

Polakow-Suransky’s book has been celebrated as a welcome eye-opener by Israeli journalists, scholars and politicians, such as Akiva Eldar, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Yossi Beilin, and Avi Shlaim. In truth, however, the book contains no historical revelation (not even the alleged nuclear cooperation between Israel and South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s). Nor is there anything new about the attempt to “prove” the ideological similarity between Zionism and Apartheid. Arab propagandists and European leftists have been playing this tune for over three decades (Jane Hunter’s book Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America [1987] comes to mind).

The story goes like this. Starting in the mid-1950s, Israel built diplomatic relations with the new African states, offering its know-how and help to peoples who had suffered from oppression just like the Jews. But then Israel became a colonial power itself in 1967, thus alienating its African friends. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was broke and couldn’t think of a better way of making ends meet than by selling weapons to South Africa. No wonder: since Israel became colonialist and racist after 1967, collaborating with South Africa was only natural. From alienated, African countries became furious and broke their ties with the Jewish state. Today, Israel is itself an Apartheid state and the only desirable outcome is for the Jews to follow the example of their Afrikaner brothers by rescinding power to the autochthonous and oppressed majority.

The true story, of course, is very different. The fact that Israel extended its borders in June 1967 as a result of a defensive war was not a source of outrage in Sub-Saharan Africa –on the contrary. During my frequent trips to Africa I have witnessed firsthand that Africans are still resentful of their former Arab enslavers. While they have no sympathy for the Arabs (including for the secluded Lebanese who control entire swaps of Africa’s economies), African Christians are staunch admirers and supporters of Israel.

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