Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria

[Violet_Crumble]

Tuesday February 7, 2006
Chris McGreal


Part 1 was posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x115269

During the second world war the future South African prime minister John Vorster was interned as a Nazi sympathiser. Three decades later he was being feted in Jerusalem. In the second part of his remarkable special report, Chris McGreal investigates the clandestine alliance between Israel and the apartheid regime, cemented with the ultimate gift of friendship - A-bomb technology

Several years ago in Johannesburg I met a Jewish woman whose mother and sister were murdered in Auschwitz. After their deaths, she was forced into a gas chamber, but by some miracle that bout of killing was called off. Vera Reitzer survived the extermination camp, married soon after the war and moved to South Africa.

Reitzer joined the apartheid Nationalist party (NP) in the early 1950s, at about the time that the new prime minister, DF Malan, was introducing legislation reminiscent of Hitler's Nuremberg laws against Jews: the population registration act that classified South Africans according to race, legislation that forbade sex and marriage across the colour line and laws barring black people from many jobs.

Reitzer saw no contradiction in surviving the Holocaust only to sign up for a system that was disturbingly reminiscent in its underpinning philosophy, if not in the scale of its crimes, as the one she had outlived. She vigorously defended apartheid as a necessary bulwark against black domination and the communism that engulfed her native Yugoslavia. Reitzer let slip that she thought Africans inferior to other human beings and not entitled to be treated as equals. I asked if Hitler hadn't said the same thing about her as a Jew. She called a halt to the conversation.

Reitzer was unusual among Jewish South Africans in her open enthusiasm for apartheid and for her membership of the NP. But she was an accepted member of the Jewish community in Johannesburg, working for the Holocaust survivors association, while Jews who fought the system were frequently ostracised by their own community.

Many Israelis recoil at suggestions that their country, risen from the ashes of genocide and built on Jewish ideals, could be compared to a racist regime. Yet for years the bulk of South Africa's Jews not only failed to challenge the apartheid system but benefited and thrived under its protection, even if some of their number figured prominently in the liberation movements. In time, Israeli governments too set aside objections to a regime whose leaders had once been admirers of Adolf Hitler. Within three decades of its birth, Israel's self-proclaimed "purity of arms" - what it describes as the moral superiority of its soldiers - was secretly sacrificed as the fate of the Jewish state became so intertwined with South Africa that the Israeli security establishment came to believe the relationship saved the Jewish state.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1704037,00.html

[cali]

1. Tragic story

that tells us a lot about human nature, and how we fail to make crucial connections. The only thing I find disturbing about it is this:

Yet for years the bulk of South Africa's Jews not only failed to challenge the apartheid system but benefited and thrived under its protection, even if some of their number figured prominently in the liberation movements.

Transpose American Jews for South Aftica's Jews, and you could make the same claim about the bulk of American Jews failing to challenge Jim Crow laws and racism here. As the article noted some Jews were prominent in the liberation movement, just as some Jews here were prominent in the civil rights movement. The truth is that most people, not directly impacted by social injustice within their societies, simply try to keep their heads down and go about their lives. That may be an indictment of human nature, but it's not particular to the Jews. This article made it into an indictment of Jews living in South Africa.

[Tom Joad]

5. who could forget people like Michael Schwerner & Andrew Goodman?

http://www.africanamericans.com/CivilRightsSlaying.htm

Among many others, no doubt, who risked so much.

I think many of the heirs of their commitment to human rights and solidarity with all are now going to join protesters at the Annexation Wall in Bil'lin, working with Jeff Halper, and all the rest.

Such courage is rare, and that goes for any people, but it is real and it may save all of us.

We can look at White society as a whole, both in South Africa and the United States, stood (and stand) on the sidelines, if not worse. Again, our only hope comes from the few who dare to join in a quest for social justice.

[cali]

7. Agreed, it is rare,

and that was precisely my point. The article seemed to brush off the Jews that fought apartheid, and indict those who just went along with their lives, suggesting that because they were Jews they should have been more involved. Sadly, that's just not the way human nature works most of the time.

[Tom Joad]

9. More interesting is the policies formulated by the US and Israeli

governments. Both gave some lip-service to opposing "discrimination" but in reality did all they could to prop up the South African regime. Israel did go so far form an alliance with the apartheid regime, "cemented with the ultimate gift of friendship - A-bomb technology."

That is not so much about Jewish people or White people but about what our governments are doing, the kinds of crimes they should be held accountable for, at least in history books.

People who think the US or Israel have always acted as beacons of democracy in this world need to take a close look at history, that tells a very different story.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cali]

3. Exactly what

are you suggesting? That Israel plans to round up all the Palestinians and exterminate them? It's hard to draw any other conclusion but that from your rather terse comment. It's an inflammatory remark, and doesn't further the discussion in a helpful or positive manner. Remarks like that one, whichever side they come from, are the primary reason I"m often hesitant to venture on these threads.

[Tom Joad]

4. Just a few months ago, Italy's political heirs to Mussolini were feted in

Jerusalem. Maybe now Gianfranco Fini wants to exert the "Final Solution" on Arabs instead of Jewish people.

[cali]

6. How is your

comment pertinant to the posted article?

[applegrove]

8. America & Britain were just a complicit with Pretoria. They could

not put the idea of democracy ahead of stability - in stabilizing the area. So they helped Apartheid de-stabilize the whole sourthern half of the continent. Very sad.

[Coastie for Truth]

12. US and Britain complicit in Saudi Arabia human rights crimes

See, for example, Craig Unger, "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties". And then, just Google "Salem bin Ladin" for more US - Wahabi complicity.

[RJnAbbysNana]

10. Thanks for posting this, VC.

It, along with part 1, has been quite an eye-opener for me and explained a lot of the actions taken by the Israeli government and military regarding inhumane treatment of the Palestinians.

It's tragic that history has to repeat itself in this manner and that people can't learn from their own experiences how to treat others.

Regards,

RJnAbbysNana

[Violet_Crumble]

11. No worries, Nana...

Like bemildred said in the thread on the first article, it makes a nice change from the usual rubbish posted here :)

Violet...

[Englander]

13. Improve the image

By Aluf Benn

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni says that today's UN would not pass the November 29, 1947, decision that called for the partition of the Land of Israel and the establishment of the state of Israel. Livni is pointing to a genuine problem: Israel is struggling to maintain its existential legitimacy as the Jewish state. The question is what the foreign minister and her colleagues in the government are doing in the face of the danger.

The British Guardian published two lengthy articles this week comparing Israel to the former apartheid regime in South Africa. It was not pleasant reading, a listing of Jewish Israel's sins against its Arab citizens and the Palestinians in the territories: discrimination, separation, hatred and occupation. The troubling problem is not the presentation of the facts but the unwritten message: if Zionism is the same as apartheid, than it can be deemed as worthy of eradication as apartheid.

In 2006 an ideological alliance has emerged between liberal circles in Europe and the conservative, fire-breathing Iranian president. Both describe Zionism as a European effort to get rid of the hated Jews of the old world at the expense of the Palestinians; both accuse Israel of exploiting the European Holocaust (which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies ever took place) to oppress the Arabs; and both would like to see it eliminated. The only difference is that the Iranian president proposes to the Europeans that they take back the Jews, and the European liberals prefer a Jewish minority in an Arab Palestine (as "a state for all its citizens").

Israel usually writes off such views as expressions of anti-Semitism. But even if that is true, the problem remains just as bad: Israel is losing its grip on important, influential parts of public opinion in the West, and is being shoved into the corner with rightist, Christian groups that preach in favor of a war of civilizations with Islam.

As a result, there is a growing gap between the Israeli interpretation of reality and the way Israel is perceived in the world. Moves that appear to Israelis as withdrawal and compromise - starting with the separation fence and the disengagement from Gaza - are interpreted overseas as exercises in perpetuating the occupation and annexation. The boycott the Olmert government has declared against the Palestinian Authority in response to the Hamas victory is presented as a defensive measure against a murderous enemy. But overseas it will be perceived as subversion of democratic elections, with the goal of avoiding negotiations and expanding settlements. The BBC will show Olmert touring the fence and promising to annex the settlement blocs and Jordan Valley, juxtaposed against Hamas leaders' proposals for a cease-fire, and images of the growing distress in the territories as a result of closed border crossings and the freeze in fund transfers.

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/683434.html

[Behind the Aegis]

14. Do read...

'Why depict Israel as a chamber of horrors?'