Don't Forget This Axis of Evil: USA, Israel & Apartheid South Africa

This is an interview from the RT network with Sasha Polakow-Suransky of the Council on Foreign Relations discussing his revelation that Israel tried to sell nuclear weapons to the white racist apartheid regime of South Africa in 1975. Polakow-Suransky details the relationship that began under the Peres-Rabin Labor government in Israel and deepened during the subsequent Likud government. His information is detailed and fairly nuanced; he does not suggest that in the end South Africa purchased the nukes. Of course Israel is denying these reports.

But something needs to be said that seems forgotten these days. At the height of apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s, South Africa had two main allies and defenders, and they were the State of Israel...and the United States of America.

I found this 1986 column from Carl Rowan: "The more President Reagan talks about South Africa, the clearer it becomes that his heart and mind are with the white minority that is holding power through brutal oppressions. During his Tuesday press conference in Chicago, it became obvious that Mr. Reagan could not have been a blinder ally of the Afrikaners if he had been a puppet with Pretoria's President Pier Botha pulling the strings. There was Both Tuesday afternoon telling the congress of his ruling National Party that communism is at the root of all the evils and woes of South Africa. Then came Mr. Reagan that same evening asserting that the Communist Party of South Africa 'joined with and just moved into, the African National Congress...And right now...the ones we're hearing from and that are making the statements, are the members of the African Communist Party." President Reagan tried to veto sanctions against apartheid South Africa; basically called Nelson Mandela a terrorist, and spent millions backing South Africa's proxy wars against Cuban/Soviet backed governments in Mozambique and Angola. Meanwhile South Africa became the star client of Israel's armaments industry, purchasing billions of dollars worth of hightech weapons and fighter jets. In return South Africa supplied uranium to Israel's nuclear power plant.

The United States sacrificed the black majority in South Africa to its cold-war strategy. Ironic, of course, since apartheid was US-style Jim Crow segregationism taken to dramatic new levels. All the separation laws of the American south and its defacto deprivation of rights for black people were made government policy in South Africa. It was racial separation writ large and legal. Eventually the South African regime set up puppet black microstates in tribal areas as showcases of plausible deniability that everything they did was motivated by racism. The truth is that the spirit of Apartheid is kept alive today in one place and that place is Israel. The Arabs in the so-called occupied territories are subject to separation and deprivation of rights...and once again, despite its occasional protestations, the main backer of the new apartheid regime is the USA.