4.1) Toward Arms Self-Sufficiency
In addition to permitting South Africa to build its systems under license, Israel has given South Africa direct assistance in the establishment of its arms industry: The Haifa shipyard helped establish South Africa's virtually non-existent shipbuilding industry by supplying personnel to the Sandock-Austral yard [in Durban] and advising on the organization of an efficient production line.
Representatives of Israel's major military electronics producers, Tadiran, Elbit and IAI helped South Africa establish its own electronics sector. South Africa now produces-and smugly claims credit for developing-a range of military communications gear. As it is clear that in their daily routines the South African police and military, the enforcers of apartheid, benefit directly from state of the art Israeli electronic technology, it is equally clear that the so-called "dual-use" communications gear used by the police and military must be included in the category of military goods that should be denied to South Africa (by both the U.S. and Israel).
Many of the 20,000 Israelis now living in South Africa-a number that has increased from 5,000 in 1978-are believed to be involved in the high tech and military sectors. In 1981 South Africa began recruiting Israeli engineers, and electronics and computer specialists.
From surrounding a township to mounting an invasion of Angola, the white government has had the advantage of sophisticated and secure communications. In May 1985 a South African commando captured by Angolan troops while preparing to bomb the Gulf Oil installation in the enclave of Cabinda explained how an emergency escape into neighboring Zaire would have been handled: If the situation arise that we have to go to Zaire, then by means of that radio over there, we can talk to Pretoria, who will then exactly tell us which people will meet us there.
South Africa's capacity for havoc and destruction is underscored by continuing speculation that a sophisticated decoy radio signal was responsible for the crash of the airplane carrying Mozambican President Samora Machel from Zambia to Mozambique on October 19, 1986 at 9:15 in the evening. Coming in for a landing at Maputo, the plane instead flew into a mountain just over the South African border.
Machel, revered within and far beyond his own nation, lay dying in the wreckage, while South African police and soldiers, who arrived immediately after the crash, drove off medical volunteers and prowled through the wreckage, trampling bodies, searching by flashlight for documents (the South Africans later displayed notes from the meeting which they said discussed a plan to overthrow the government of Malawi, where South African backed mercenaries attacking Mozambique have found refuge) and asking "Where's Samora?"
The foreign minister himelf, Pik Botha, came to the crash site. Later, recounted one of the passengers who lay in the wreckage with both legs broken, South African vehicles and helicopters arrived. The vehicles ringed the crash site and then turned off their headlights, their drivers joining the search with flashlights. It wasn't until the following morning that the first survivors were taken to a hospital. Later the South Africans would say that Machel's heart and brain were "not present due to the violence of the accident."
Amidst a consensus that South Africa was generally to blame according to President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia "because apartheid is responsible for all our distress in this region" - it was quickly established that South Africa had the ability to send decoy radio signals. Careful studies of the flight's last moments led analysts to believe that a decoy beacon from South Africa led it astray. The South Africans themselves said that the pilot was "disoriented" by a powerful omnidirectional beacon transmitting from Swaziland, a nation completely in the thrall of South Africa (and also a country where Israelis are made to feel at home).
It is also, perhaps, worth noting that Zairian President Mobutu was at the meeting Machel was attending on the southern shore of Lake Tanganyika, in a remote area of Zambia. Mobutu's personal guard has been trained by Israelis. And what the South African Foreign Minister said the day of Machel's funeral, as he expressed regret that in possible lawsuits, not to mention "hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs in Israeli military industries", Israel's friends raised questions in the press about whether Congress might accept the continuation of licensing deals and sales of "semi-military" items." With a deafening silence from both the White House and Capitol Hill, Israel decided on a: "deprofilization" of [its] presence in South Africa. In other words, the special relationship between the two nations particularly in what is called "strategic affairs"-will continue, but in a much less visible manner and with less direct involvement of the military so as not to clash with the will of Congress.
Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was dispatched to South Africa the South Africans were threatening to "tell all" about some yet undisclosed aspect of Israeli collaboration-where he gave reassurance and urged the Beers to keep their heads down. Shamir told U.S. reporters that Israel would keep its "commitments" to South Africa.
The impression was left floating-through intentional news leaks that Israel might phase out existing agreements and not enter into new ones, but there was no evidence of any intention to put that offer into effect. Moreover, six weeks before the report was due to be submitted to Congress it was clear that Congress would not cut off Israel's $1.8 billion annual military aid, and Israeli officials had begun concentrating on preventing political backlash [that] could nonetheless be very damaging. Shamir and his colleagues hope that both the Reagan Administration and Congress will stop short of any public condemnation of Israel based on assurances that it will gradually end its military relationship with South Africa.
Was Israel to end its nuclear collaboration with South Africa "gradually"? Before Section 508 of the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 fortuitously pried out the information that Israel did hundreds of millions of dollars per year of military business with South Africa, Israel always denied any arms dealings at all. What assurance is there that Israel is now accurately portraying the extent of its trafficking, not just half or one quarter? The assertion of Defense Minister Rabin, that "whatever happens Israel has to maintain its credibility with the U.S. and Israel has never played tricks with the U.S.," is less than satisfying after the Iran-contra revelations and the Pollard spy case.
There was no voice in Congress to question Israel's word, much less to wonder aloud if the people of Southern Africa were not owed some kind of reparations from the people of the U.S., whose client Israel has contributed so greatly to their death, suppression and suffering. Instead, Israel's efforts to keep the lid on its continued lethal supply lines to South Africa and Congress' efforts to keep its own dereliction of duty out of the minds of its constituents are both greatly assisted by the almost blanket censorship imposed by the South African government.
The notion of South Africa's "self-sufficiency" should not obscure the degree of integration between the two arms industries. Adams calls it their "joint arms industry." Iskoor, the steel partnership, is one example of this integration. A joint Scorpion helicopter operation involves initial construction in South Africa at the Cape Town firm of Rotoflight Helicopters and then final assembly at Israel's Chemavir-Masok- Yet another example is Israel's permitting South Africa construction companies to bid on a military complex in the Negev Desert.
The integration of military industries also appears to have led to some degree of integration of foreign operations. Tadiran and the South African firm Consolidated Power have established an electronics enterprise in Guatemala.
It seems the two might also be coordinating their weapons exports to a certain extent. A 1982 report noted that South Africa was delivering rush orders of parts for Israeli Gabriel missiles and the Nesher (an early version of the Kfir) to Argentina, then engaged in the Malvinas/Falklands war with Britain.
Although the full extent of coordination between Tel Aviv and Pretoria is impossible to know, both Israel and South Africa have been supplying arms to the governments of Sri Lanka.
There is an international embargo on oil shipments to South Africa, and Israel has often used violations of the embargo by Middle East governments to support its claim that it should not be singled out for its dealings with South Africa. Although many of the shipments to South Africa that originate in the Gulf are purveyed to the apartheid regime by private dealers such as fugitive Jewish financier Marc Rich, it appears (although the news accounts seem mainly to emanate from the London newsletter Euromoney Trade "Finance Report that Iran and Iraq are directly involved in such deals.
Visitors to the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic have seen South Africa weapons which the Polisario Front has captured from Morocco in its battle for control of the formerly Spanish Western Sahara. Polisario also charges that South Africa is training Moroccans. Following a visit of Prime Minister Shimon Peres to Morocco in July 1986-described in terms of the (interminable) "peace process"-Israel reportedly pledged to provide Morocco with sophisticated arms and training. In the past, Israel has sold Morocco tanks and armored personnel carriers. Israeli officers have been sighted near the wall King Hassan II is building to try to maintain the fiction that he controls the territory claimed by the SADR, and taking part in the "African Eagle" military exercises staged by the U.S. and Morocco in November 1986.
Discouraging as these developments may seem to advocates of sanctions against South Africa, our continued efforts to curtail the flow of military technology to Pretoria still matter: preventing the white regime from producing state-of-the-art weaponry will make its export offerings less attractive, hence depriving it of further income to pursue its aggressive domestic and external policies.
4.3) Southern Africa: After the Israeli Model
In these foreign operations, which strengthen both countries and challenge the confines of their international isolation, Israel has generally been the facilitator, possessing the entre to such adventures as Guatemala and Sri Lanka. As it came snarling and hissing into the 1980s in its own region, South Africa has also looked to Israel for help and inspiration.
Many parallels in the tactics and strategies employed by Israel and South Africa have been noted. Partly this is a result of collegiality: the military attaches of Israel and South Africa "consult frequently on counterinsurgency tactics." Yet there is an unmistakable teacher-student pattern m the communication of the very techniques which have brought down international critcism on both. As in the direction of the technology flow between the two nations, the imparting of repressive techniques usually casts Israel in the mentor's role.
The South Africans greatly admired the Israeli raid on Entebbe airport. "South African generals now consciously emulate the flamboyance of the Israeli generals," wrote a specialist on the South African military." Even before 1976 South Africans had looked to Israel for techniques they might adapt. Describing the lecture given by Air Force General Mordechai Hod during his 1967 visit to South Africa, a member of the select military audience said, "It was an intensely interesting lecture, which made it apparent that the tactics employed by the Israeli Air Force were brilliant. The Israelis seem to have been as clever as a cartload of monkeys.
The South Africans began teaching the lessons of Israel's 1967 war at their maneuver school," and Israeli advisers began teaching the Boers the arts of suppressing a captive population and keeping hostile neighbors off balance. In the Vorster agreements discussed earlier, Israeli advisory services for South Africa were institutionalized.
Senior army officers in Israel have confirmed that IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] personnel have been seconded to all branches of the South African armed forces, and according to senior sources in the Israeli defense establishment, there are currently some 300 active Israeli servicemen and women on secondment in South Africa. These include army, navy and air force personnel who help train the South Africans, border security experts...counter intelligence experts... and defense scientists who cooperate on the development of new weapons systems. In addition, there are several hundred South Africans in Israel at any one time, being trained in weapons systems, battle strategy and counterinsurgency warfare.
The white government's practice of domestic counterinsurgency combines outright military brutality with the extensive use of informers and collaborators. It is impossible to know how many refinements of these age-old techniques have been borrowed from the Israelis' occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. The Israeli system of village leagues is obviously comparable to the hated town councils imposed on segregated townships by the apartheid government. The collective punishment employed by the Israelis, such as the destruction of a whole family's home when one of its members is arrested as a suspect in an act of resistance, has lately been matched by the recent South African practices of sealing off townships, and assaulting entire funeral processions. What is perhaps more salient is the South African victims' perceptions of Israel's involvement in their oppression and how readily that perception is communicated . At a party in Santa Cruz, California, a South African student passes around a photograph of a street scene in Soweto, the large black township outside Johannesburg. Somewhat reproachfully he calls attention to the white policeman in the picture and the Uzi he's holding.
Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was more direct when he told guests at a San Francisco breakfast sponsored by the American Jewish Congress that he was troubled by reports of Israeli collaboration with South Africa, "with a government whose policies are so reminiscent of Nazis. (While quick to point out the contributions of individual Jews to the struggle against apartheid, Tutu has in the past lambasted Israel for its "monopoly on the Holocaust.")
Even those South African blacks willing to cooperate with Israel have publicly called on Tel Aviv to stop selling arms to South Africa. Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, a great favorite of Israel, told reporters there that he favored an international arms embargo against South Africa.'" One member of a group of black South African "activists" brought to Israel for a training program (see below) told the press that Israel was "among the countries that sell weapons to South Africa, which kill [sic] blacks with them, including three-year-old children."
"Israel," wrote a reader to the City Press a black South African paper, "has chosen to support the South African Government-thereby sanctioning the brutal suppression of our people."
It should also be noted that South Africans-with other people around the world-regard the activities of Israel as an extension of U.S. policy.
If Israel's role in the internal repression meted out by South Africa (including the active Israeli role in the bantustans-see below) is a matter of perception, evidence is accumulating, despite strenuous attempts to maintain a lid of secrecy, of Israeli involvement in South Africa's foreign aggressions against Namibia and the Frontline states.
Israeli specialists have been "permanently based" along South African border areas for over a decade. Numbering "more than fifty" in 1984, their assigned task is to advise the South Africans on preventing cross-border infiltration. In the late 1970s, uniformed Israeli soldiers were reported active in Namibia, the former colony of Southwest Africa which South Africa has refused to relinquish, against fighters for SWAPO, the South West Africa Peoples Organization, which has an extensive following in Namibia. One of these reports noted that uniformed Israelis had been seen in the capital, Windhoek, and that "they were constructing an electrified barrier the length of the [Namibian] frontier with Angola."
In 1981, Ariel Sharon, at the time Israel's Minister of Defense, spent 10 days with South African troops in Namibia on the Angolan border. Uri Dan, a close associate of Sharon who accompanied him on that visit, wrote of his experience: 36-year-old Col. Lamprecht does not talk as an army man, but as someone in charge of civilian administration in an area under military rule...When I look at the South African officers, talking Afrikaans or English, and during operations, I get the feeling that they will soon begin giving orders in Hebrew. Their physical appearance, their freshness, their frankness, their conduct on the battlefield, remind one of Israeli officers. And I didn't say this about the American and South Vietnamese officers I met 11 years ago in Vietnam..."Don't underestimate the influence the example of the Israeli army as a fighting army has on us," a senior officer told me in Pretoria."
In the guise of development assistance, Israel has also helped the South Africans establish control of the long-suffering population of Namibia.
In 1984, at a time when even South Africa's staunchest Western supporters took a hands-off position in response to a South African challenge to take Namibia off its hands the Israeli Ambassador to Pretoria went to Windhoek and told South African radio that "Israel would not insist on a precondition that the territory first become independent before agreeing to help it in its economic development."
In response to the ambassador's invitation a team of high ranking officials of the South African colonial government paid a twelve-day visit to Israel the following April. They were there to look at what Israel had to offer in the field of "agriculture, water management and water supply, community development and regional planning."
A second visit to Israel the following year brought the puppet go vernment's Health and Education ministers to Israel. They is sued a long report when they returned to Namibia, prattling on about Israeli integration of peoples from "non-industrial cultures into an industrial and technical culture, including the accompanying social, language and unemployment problems" and the Israeli labor unions and health systems. Their report promised specific proposals for Namibia. Namibian recruits were taking courses in Israel at Histadrut's Afro-Asian Institute in early 1986.
The true definition of "community development" programs in contested areas is, of course, "pacification," as practiced unsuccessfully by the U.S. in Vietnam-and as practiced with increasing effect by Israel. As elsewhere, the object of these programs in Namibia is to destroy indigenous and/or revolutionary forms of social organization and to construct a repressive, regimented system that monopolizes provision of social services and compels participation"winning hearts and minds," it is called-and thereby establishing political control.
In the case of Namibia, much of which is under a dusk-to-dawn curfew and occupation by more than 100,000 South African troops (compared to a white Namibian population of 76,000) the benefits to South Africa of long-term control of the population are obvious. South Africa, which established a puppet regime in Namibia in June 1985, clings to the former German colony both for its wealth of natural resources and as part of its drive for dominance over Africa.
Israel's doctrine of pre-emptive attack has served as a model for South Africa. Its 1982 invasion of Lebanon-Israeli officers briefed the Afrikaners on their operations there -inspired South Africa to attack Mozambique in 1983 and to invade Angola in 1984. A somewhat imprecise term, "invade," as South Africa has occupied part of Southern Angola almost constantly for the last decade. (As with Israel's wars, South Africa's constant aggressions have enabled officials to boast that their export weapons are "battle-tested.")
The South Africans noted that their May 1983 aerial attack (dubbed "Operation Shrapnel") on Mozambique's capital, Maputo, was analogous to Israel's attack on Beirut the previous summer. One analyst, Joseph Hanlonl believes that one of South Africa's objectives in the attack was to see how its version of events would play in the media. It was received very well indeed, according to Hanlon, with the Western press accepting South Africa's claim that its attack was in "retaliation" for an ANC attack and that ANC "bases" were hit.
Instead, the South African Air Force hit a childcare center and private houses with "special fragmenrarion rockers," leaving 6 dead and 40 wounded. This follows the Israeli practice in Lebanon of speaking about PLO installations while civilians are the actual targets, and attacking with particularly heinous anti-personnel weapons-cluster bombs and phosphorous bombs.
The victims of South Africa's angst are not blind to the similarity of attacks-or motives.
President Samora Machel likened the Israeli Government to the Pretoria regime. He said that because of its inability to contain the fury of the Palestinian people led by the PLO, the Zionist regime Is trying to transfer the war to other regions.
So reported Mozambican radio shortly after Israeli aircraft bombed PLO headquarters in Tunisia in October 1985.
The model provided by Israel, which punishes every internal act of resistance and violent act outside its jurisdiction with a bombing raid on Palestinian targets In Lebanon-almost always refugee camps cynically identified by the Israelis as "terrorist bases" or "headquarters"-has served South Africa well. In January 1986, the white government's radio delivered a commentary on "the malignant presence" of "terrorism" in neighboring states and said "there's only one answer now, and that's the Israeli answer." Israel had managed to survive "by striking at terrorists wherever they exist."
In May 1986, South Africa demonstrated that it had assumed the right to attack its neighbors at a time and on a pretext of its own choosing. The chosen time was during a visit by the Eminent Persons Group of the Commonwealth of Nations, which was attempting to establish negotiations between the apartheid regime and its opposition. The victims, Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, all Commonwealth members were chosen for their alleged harboring of "terrorists"; the real victims were South African exiles and an employee of the government of Botswana. The South Africans said they had attacked "international terrorism" and compared their raids to the Israeli attack on Tunisia and the U.S. attack on Libya in April 1986.
The attack was similar in style to Israel's 1985 attack on Tunisia. Initially, the Israelis had been threatening Jordan and perhaps because King Hussein of Jordan was at the time on an official visit to the U.S., the Israelis chose to take revenge for the killing of three Israelis (believed to be top Mossad agents) in I,Larnaca, Cyprus on the PLO in Tunisia.
Two weeks after its three-pronged attack on its Commonwealth neighbors, South Africa attacked the Angolan harbor of Namibe, firing their version of the Israeli Gabriel missile.
Israel has also been connected with the mercenary forces deployed by South Africa against Angola and Mozambique. In the 1970s Israel aided the FNLA (Angolan National Liberation Front) proxy forces organized and trained by the CIA to forestall the formation of a government led by the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-now the ruling party of Angola). John Stockwell, who ran the CIA operation against Angola, recollected three arms shipments Israel made in cooperation with the CIA: a plane full of 120 mm shells sent via Zaire to the FNLA and Unita; a shipment of 50 SA-7 missiles (all of which were duds); a boatload sent to neighboring Zaire in a deal that the Israelis had worked out with President Mobutu, even though the Zairian strong man had broken ties with Israel two years earlier.
When Israel reestablished relations with Zaire (in 1982) and began to train Zairian forces in the Shaba border province, Angola had cause for concern. The leader of the FNLA had been Holden Roberto, brother-in-law of Zairian president Mobutu, Israel's new client. In 1986, it would be established that Zaire acted as a funnel for "covert" U.S. military aid for the Unita forces of Jonas Savimbi.
In 1983, the Angolan News Agency reported that Israeli military experts were training Unita forces in Namibia. Since Zaire began receiving military aid and training from Tel Aviv, Angola has been ill at ease. Its worries increased after discovering that:
Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was personally involved in the organization, training and equipping of "commando" units of the army of Zaire, especially organized for missions along the borders of the RPA [Angola].
In 1984, the Financial Times (London) wrote of "joint Israeli-South African support for Unita forces." Other sources also report the transfer of Israeli arms and financial support to Unita.
In 1983, Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos told Berkeley, California Mayor Eugene (Gus) Newport that an Israeli pilot had been shot down during a South African attack. The Angolan President showed Newport pictures of captured Israeli weapons. The following year, Luanda reported the capture of three mercenaries who said they had been trained by Israeli instructors in Zaire.
Israel has also been involved with the Mozambican "contras," the South African-backed MNR (Mozambique National Resistance or "Renamo"), which has brought great economic and social distress to Mozambique. Rename has a particular reputation for ideological incoherence, being regarded by most other right-wing insurgents as a gang of cutthroats. For several years there have been stories coming from Southern Africa of captured mercenaries of Renamo, who say they were trained in neighboring Malawi-one of the four nations to maintain relations with Israel after the Organization of African Unity (OAU) declared a diplomatic embargo in 1973-by Israelis. And more than one reporter has told of "substantial Israeli aid" to the MNR, thought to have been funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia as well as South Africa and former Portuguese colonialists.
In late 1986, "intelligence reports" from Southern Africa confirmed the reports of Israeli training and attributed the MNR's "greatly improved tactics" to the Israeli trainers. Around the same time, found among a number of white men left dead after an attack on Zimbabwean troops on duty in Mozambique was a man wearing a Star of David.
There are at least two earlier reports of Israelis captured in Mozambique. One, a pilot captured in the late 1970s, might have been included in an east-west spy swap in 1978. The other, 27-year-old Amikam Efrati of less certain occupation, was held for three months by Mozambique and released after Israeli Laborites asked members of the French Socialist Party to intervene. A warm welcome was prepared for Efrati on his Golan Heights kibbutz.