6.1) Friends Hunt "Authentic" Blacks for Israel
In Los Angeles in 1984, a gathering at the home of Tom Hayden, former Chicago Seven radical, currently a member of the California State Assembly, and his wife, actress Jane Fonda, left a bitter taste. Guest of honor Bishop Desmond Tutu had lambasted Israel that night for its support of South Africa and Jewish guests took issue with his remarks.
Afterwards, a "deeply disturbed" Tom Hayden consulted Prof. Steven Spiegel, a Middle East specialist at UCLA about a remedy for "an ever deepening antagonism of South African blacks towards Israel."
Four years earlier Speigel had started a think tank, the Center for Foreign Policy Options (CFPO), but in 1986 it was virtually unknown to the foreign affairs community in Los Angeles. After talking to Hayden, Spiegel went to Israel, spoke with a variety of leaders, and developed a plan. He selected Shimshon Zelniker, a professor at Beit Berl, the Labor Party's college, to be "field director."
After strenuous attempts, Tom Hayden persuaded then-Bishop Tutu to meet with Zelniker, whose way the CFPO then paid to South Africa. There, in June 1985, Zelniker met with Tutu and a number of his associates. They were harshly critical of Israel. The Nobel laureate who would later be appointed Archbishop of Cape Town accused the Israelis of having a "monopoly on the Holocaust" that is, ignoring or down-playing the sufferings of other peoples. Ultimately Zelniker was able to sell the group on CFPO's idea of bringing groups of black South Africans to Israel for what might loosely be called leadership training. Bishop Tutu refused to become involved.
In January Shimshon Zelniker went back to South Africa to select trainees. It proved difficult to recruit black leaders whose authenticity was widely recognized in their communities. Not one of the nine men and eleven women Zelniker signed up would admit to membership with the legal and mainstream United Democratic Front. Yehuda Pat, Director of the Histadrut's Afro-Asian Institute which ran the program, called them "leaders in the struggle against apartheid." Pat and Zelniker, it should be noted, had also met with Chief Buthelezi when he was in Israel.
In April 1986, the trainees arrived in Israel to take part in a workshop, which, given by Histadrut, was entitled "The Role of People's Organizations in Community Building and National Development." According to Israeli officials it was designed to provide the students with skills they would need in the event of a transition to black rule in South Africa. Oblivious-or antagonistic-to the rapidly developing South African trade union movement, the training program Histadrut devised for the visitors "focus[edl on unionizing the country's 12 million black laborers."
Meanwhile, Tom Hayden and CFPO's fundraiser had been promoting the project in Israel. They gained the endorsement of the Israeli government and the Israeli foreign ministry defrayed part of the expenses of one of Shimshon Zelniker's trips to South Africa. CFPO also brought Zelniker to the U.S. to describe his work to Jewish organizations.
While the CPFO planned to spend $1 million over a period of two years on the transportation, living expenses and training programs in Israel For 6 to 12 additional groups of South African trainees, many questions remain unanswered about the project's relationship to the South African government especially since part of its function appears to be to propagandize for South Africa in the U.S.
In addition to Prof. Spiegel, CFPO's members include Edward Sanders, an adviser on Middle East and Jewish affairs to President Carter, Osias S. Goren (CFPO's chairman and chief fundraiser), who headed Jewish efforts for President Reagan's 1980 and 1984 campaigns, and Maxwell F'. Greenberg, honorary chairman of the ADL, which has so reviled the ANC.
Tom Hayden's role is also puzzling. Hayden, whose first foray into California electoral politics was a losing primary race against Sen. John Tunney (ironically, a leading foe of South Africa, whose defeat in the general election was partly attributed to South African contributions to his Republican opponent S.I. Hayakawa), revealed in 1986 that during his anti-war activities in the 1960s, he had cooperated with U.S. intelligence agents and had had intensive talks with CIA agents.
During his three terms in the California state legislature, Hayden has gradually eased away from his left-liberal identification. In 1986, he dissolved his Campaign for Economic Democracy (funded by the profits from Fonda's fitness video royalties, it had, charged many critics, become simply an electoral vehicle for "Tom") and set up a new personal organization called Campaign California.
Well ahead of his metamorphosis, Hayden had established himself as a leading promoter of Israel. I)during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, he and his wife visited Israeli troops on the front lines. This maneuver, during Hayden's first assembly campaign, was intended to appeal to the great numbers of Jews in his district.
Hayden's involvement with the recruitment of black South African trainees for Israel is not, however, the kind of activity designed for mass voter appeal. It seems more in the nature of a quiet favor.
There is no question that the Israeli government would be pleased with CFPO's project; it was a propaganda success, with all the major North American newspapers covering it extensively and favorably. Through their Histadrut instructors, Israel could establish and maintain contact with the trainees-useful in the event that the minority government Is overthrown, and also useful for sharing intelligence with the minority government.
Was Pretoria well served by the Histadrut endeavor? That the white regime did not lift the passports of the attendees prior to their departure suggests that the project enjoys at least benign indifference, if not Pretoria's actual support.
It was obvious that Israel had to tread carefully. During the mid-June 1 986 state of emergency in South Africa, when Israel was casting about for ways to Portray itself as opposed to apartheid, some of the Israelis involved with the project:
"were wary of recommending that Israel adopt any "crisis approach" or abrupt break with Pretoria; the white govern ment's retaliation might mean an end to the new ties with Black organizations before they were properly off the ground.
As the interactions with Buthelezi and the "leaders in the struggle against apartheid" who came to Israel for training indicate, the exact nature of the political linkage between Israel and South Africa, the ties that bind over and above the military and economic quid pro quos, is concealed, left to be deduced by the observer. That those ties are close and rich can be gauged by the sports, cultural and diplomatic exchanges countenanced by Israel.
6.2) Breaking the Sports and Cultural Blockade
Israel has made a practice of ignoring international boycotts against South Africa. Since the late 1960s a steady stream of athletes and performers have gone from Israel to South Africa. According to a report issued by the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid in 1979, the continuing sports contacts had "strong encouragement by the Government of Israel." In fact, this report chronicled a revealing episode of Israeli policymaking concerning sports and apartheid.
On January 21, 1979, amidst rumors that the Soviet Union might try to block Israel's participation in the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics, the presidium of the Israeli Olympics Committee voted unanimously to cut off sports exchanges with South Africa "at least until after the Olympics.'' The committee told the Israeli gymnastics team to cancel an upcoming visit.
Two days later at a plenary session-with the director of the government's sports authority in attendance-that decision was overturned and it was further decided that any Israeli sports boycott of South Africa would be limited to compliance with the rules of international sports organizations, which have always lagged behind the efforts to isolate South Africa undertaken by many athletes and anti-apartheid organizations. Several days later a representative of the Foreign Ministry told the Knesset that the decision to boycott had hurt Israel's relations with South Africa.
Disagreement on policy on sports exchanges with South Africa has continued to the present, with Israel displaying a considerable degree of ambivalence-or, alternatively, making a show of opposition to sports contacts for the benefit of its anti-apartheid supporters.
On the one hand, in its own struggle to gain access to international sports, Israel has made a great effort to conceal its sports exchanges with the apartheid regime. Israel itself has been barred from participation in, among others, the European soccer confederation and the Olympic Council of Asia, an exclusion made all the more bitter by the admission to that body of the Palestine Olympic Committee.
On the other hand, Israel must apparently continue to cater to South Africa. In one 1985 instance, the Maccabiah Games (the quadrennial "Jewish Olympics," which brings national Jewish teams to Israel), these two exigencies clashed, then merged in a clever piece of duplicity. South African teams had been among the largest contingents in the 1973, 1977 and 1981 Maccabiah Games.
In 1985, however, Canada and some other countries objected to participating along with a South African team. After the South African Zionist Federation and the director of the Israeli Maccabiah Committee mounted a vigorous protest of this instance of mixing politics and sports, the South Africans abruptly withdrew "so as to avoid serious problems for athletes from a number of participating countries." In announcing the South Africans' withdrawal, the Israeli Maccabiah director hinted that something would "happen" so that they could attend the games after all. That something transpired in the form of 200 "potential immigrant" visas issued by the Israeli consul in Pretoria to the South African athletes. On the strength of these documents, usually issued to people who want to try out life in Israel, the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency registered the South Africans as "temporary residents." They were then, with legitimate immigrants, formed as a special team of newcomers to Israel.
It was not until the games were almost at an end that one of the phony immigrants blurted out the truth. By the time the ruse had hit the press, the games were over. Only later did it become known that the organizers of the games had plotted the whole subterfuge during a meeting in 1984.
Yet another sports encounter had all the earmarks of a well-rehearsed "good cop/bad cop" routine. In November 1986, Israel's top three male tennis stars-its national Davis Cup team-went to compete in the South African Open. It was their second trip there in 1986, and their names had been on international boycott lists long before that. One of the three, the young and rising Amos Mansdorf, won the tournament.
Almost immediately the Foreign Ministry sent a "reprimand" to the Israel Tennis Authority. The head of that body retorted that the International Tennis Federation's rules concerning South Africa only apply to to teams, not individuals, and that the Israeli players had gone as individuals.
The ministry hit back with phone calls from the political director general, reminding the heads of sports organizations about Israel's "opposition to 'all participation' by Israelis in South Africa." and suggested that private trips in the future should be "coordinated" with the foreign ministry. In an editorial called "The hypocrisy syndrome" the Jerusalem Post wondered why the foreign ministry had professed surprise to discover the tennis players had been to South Africa.
The true surprise is to learn that it is now national policy to keep contracts with South Africa down to a minimum.
If the government, of which the foreign ministry and its officials are presumably a part, wants to shift Israel's policy on South Africa, let it say so. If not, then the foreign ministry has ample other targets in that increasingly queer contrivance called Israel's foreign policy, on which to direct its self-righteousness.
It is more likely that, with all the bases covered-to metaphorically mix sports there was satisfaction all around.
Meanwhile, the flow of Israeli entertainers to South Africa has continued unabated, suggesting that Israel really can't say no. A list of 24 of these cultural emissaries covering the period between August 1981 and April 1985 tops by one a similar list of performers from West Germany, one of South Africa's major trading partners and a nation with a population of 61 million, compared to Israel's 4 million.
After 1984, when the international cultural boycott against South Africa became highly effective, Israel continued to supply diversions to the apartheid state. In April 1985 Yardene Arazi, a popular Israeli singer, went to South Africa to organize a celebration of Israel's independence day.
Most tellingly, in July 1986-one month after South Africa had clamped down a brutal state of emergency-Israeli Foreign Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir cleared the Israel Chamber Orchestra for a tour of South Africa. Shamir also recommended that two South African choirs be allowed to take part in a song festival in Israel. One of the South African choirs was a white boys' ensemble; the other was a black group from Bophuthatswana. The festival organizers had urged the decision on the government in advance of the South Africans' request to come to Israel. According to the festival manager, the decision was based on a variation of the old South African standby: "no room to mix music and politics".
The following month South Africans also participated in a puppet festival in Jerusalem.
More intimate than players on the field or stars on stage, Israeli-South African relations also proceed along that corridor established by governments for people-to-people contacts by their citizens. In late 1984, a Ben Gurion University organization called the Associates of South Africa drew attention for its active promotion of cultural and scientific exchanges. Haifa and Cape Town are sister cities, and there are frequent exchanges of various sorts between the two cities and their universities. (People must renounce this sister city status)
Israeli tourism in South Africa has defied international trends, growing 50 percent between 1981 and the end of 1985, and rising by 12.5 percent during the first six months of 1985 alone. This was undoubtedly providential, as tourism to South Africa had just about dried up, with 1985 hotel occupancy reaching an eleven-year low. South Africa was the first government to establish a tourism office in Israel, but it is quite likely that the tone established by the government in Tel Aviv is equally responsible for the high rate of Israeli travel to the apartheid state. (Pretoria is fond of nabbing tourists for interviews on its external radio service; all these visitors swear that they've had a fine time and weren't even aware that there was anything unpleasant going on.)
The 1986 tourism event of the year had to have been "Malchi's dream holiday on board the luxurious cruise ship Achille Lauro to South Africa," which sailed November 26 from the Israeli port of Ashdod. A year earlier the Italian liner had been hijacked on the way to Ashdod, an event resulting in the murder of a disabled American, Leon Klinghoffer; the U.S. hijacking of the plane on which the ship's hijackers were traveling to their negotiated freedom; and the fall of the government of Italy, where the plane was forced down. (Another casualty of that week was Alex Odeh, Southern Regional Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, killed by a bomb, planted by the Jewish defense League fanatics, the morning after a television appearance during which he had stressed the desire for peace of PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat.) Malchi Shipping Tours and Travel Ltd. of Haifa promised stops in the Seychelles and Durban and a tour through Kruger Park, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Sun City, the notorious entertainment complex in the bantustan called Bophuthatwana. "World known Italian cuisine," enticed Malchi's advertisement, "more surprises every day!" The advertisement bore the logos of SATOUR, and SAA, the South African government's tourism agency and its airline.
There was also a 30 percent increase of South Africans traveling to Israel between July and September 1986. In October 1986 (when detentions under the state of emergency were being estimated in the thousands), the Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Tourism made a secret trip to South Africa. Rafi Farber "met important South African travel agents and discussed with them the possibility of increasing bilateral tourism through a public relations and marketing campaign." Farber also wanted South Africa to increase its investment in Israel's tourist sector.
It is possible that a series of articles, "South Africa Without Prejudice," extolling South Africa-with all the usual phrases about the rapid pace of "reform" underway in South Africa and the "complexities" of the situation there that appeared in the Jerusalem Post's weekend magazine in November and early December 1986 were one result of those talks.
How exactly do the citizens in question regard their governments' moves to bring them together? Strongly enough-on both sides to come out and demonstrate. The Mapam Party has picketed a performance by visiting South African entertainers.
Israeli supporters of South Africa among them many immigrants from the Soviet Union-have also come out to wave their banners proclaiming that "South Africa Has Been Israel's Ally." In late 1985 after Israeli leftists had mounted several attention-getting demonstrations protesting the assignment of a new ambassador to South Africa, 60 supporters of the white government met in the presence of the South African ambassador to Israel and formed an Israeli-South African Friend-ship League.
What exactly does Israel get out of its alliance with South Africa that it is willing to spit in the face of the very international community it is trying to beguile? This question is likely to provoke the snap response that Israel and South Africa have so much in common, from their militarism to their racism to their intransigence and thus their consequent isolation from the main current of the human family. Or, it might be offered, Israel is eager to have its cake and eat it too-a feat which it car, accomplish as long as its appetite and its tenacity do not impede its relations with its main protector, the United States.
Another possibility is that Israel's involvement in Muldergate went much father than has yet been revealed and includes various manipulations of the U.S. media and the electoral process. A hint of such a South African hold on Israel came in October 1984 when an Israeli paper, Ma'ariv, noted that Pretoria had requested the Israeli Foreign Ministry to "provide the exact wording" of a statement about apartheid Prime Minister Peres had made during a visit to the U.S. Press accounts of the remarks credited Peres with calling apartheid "a stupid system.
6.4) The Link Feeds on U.S. Tolerance
There was really no "South Africa problem" for Israel as long as Washington was willing to declare in the face of damning evidence that the white regime was reforming itself, just as there was absolutely no problem for Israel as long as an avowedly anti-apartheid Congress continued simply to mumble its self-imposed collective ignorance of Israel's dealings with the apartheid government, and was willing to accept without challenge the Carter Administration's short-circuited investigation of the 1979 Israeli South African nuclear weapons test.
In late 1986, however, its indissoluble bonds with Pretoria began to give Israel moments of profound discomfort. Ronald Reagan's supportive policy of "constructive engagement" was wearing thin, as South Africa declared its cataclysmic June state of emergency and jailed thousands of its critics, while escalating its attacks on neighboring countries. Before the year was over, Congress, motivated by an almost unanimous citizenry, would pass its first real anti-apartheid legislation-and. then pass it again over the President's veto.
A little noticed Section 508 of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 contained language that demanded a White House report to the House and Senate within 1 80 days of the legislation's passage "containing a detailed assessment of the economic and other relationships of other industrialized democracies with South Africa."
This amendment authored by retiring Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Charles McC. Mathias-was "clearly a threat to Israel,'' according to the Jerusalem Post, raising the possibility of a cutoff of Israel's U.S. military aid. It came on the heels of another jolt, a decision by the European Community (EC) to impose an array of limited sanctions on South Africa.
Previously, Israel had temporized on the possibility of sanctions, but the government had frequently alluded to Israel's conformity to the (dastardly) positions of the Western powers: ''keeping in line with what the Western countries are doing, no more no less" was how a senior Israeli diplomat phrased it in July 1986. The West African nation of Cameroon had just been persuaded to establish formal diplomacy with Tel Aviv, and Israel, making urgent efforts to engineer a domino effect, was working hard to convince African countries of the sincerity of its opposition to apartheid.
Taking all these factors into account, it apparently became expedient to order a "reassessment" of Israel's South Africa policy. In late August "a special internal discussion"on Israeli ties to South Africa was convened by the Director-General of the Foreign Ministry David Kimche. Kimche, who had always been a public critic of ostentatious contacts with South Africa and the bantustans, warned that Israel must prepare for the possibility that the West would impose stringent sanctions on South Africa." Out of these discussions came a reaffirmation of the policy of "staying in line with the Western democracies." A large loophole was left, however, because of Israel's "special" concern for the South African Jewish community.
This concern has frequently been debunked as "patent nonsense" and "inexcusably shortsighted"-during one heated round of discussion on the validity of using South African Jews as an excuse, a former director of Israel's foreign ministry noted that the South African Jewish community itself was "compromised...by passive collaboration with the evil of apartheid" but it remains Israel's second line of defense after its ritual denunciations of apartheid.
Another Israeli concern about sanctions is that once a precedent is established, Israel will also be subject to an international attempt at behavior modification. "We have no reason to highlight our relations with South Africa, but we have no wish to join sanctions either, the likes of which have often been employed against Israel," said Prime Minister Shamir.
Rita E. Hauser, an influential figure in the U.S. Jewish community, embedded the identical point in a more sophisticated rationale for a hands-off policy toward Israel and South Africa:
The sense of embattlement and isolation felt by these two Western-oriented nations comes in no small part from the policies of the Western Alliance. The United States and its NATO allies, in recent years, have not been able to separate clearly the pressures put upon them by black Africa and the Arab states with respect to the internal policies of South Africa and Israel from the external, geopolitical situation now operative in the Middle East and southern Africa. Even if they are correct in the conviction that Israel must yield control over the West Bank to some form of Palestinian nationalism and that South Africa must devise a method of sharing power with the blacks, there is no justification for policies which isolate and weaken these two countries to the detriment of vital Western interests.
After a time that reassessment was forgotten, only to emerge again with a spurious offer to phase out military contracts with South Africa over the coming years several weeks before the April 1 date set for the submission of the report stipulated by the 1986 anti-apartheid act. The U.S. followed the EC with the imposition of even stiffer sanctions and the world learned that Israel had supplied South Africa with refueling aircraft.
Some day, maybe not until the next century, someone will talk about what it was that kept Israel dancing to the apartheid government's tune. At present it is very clear that Israel will not have to exert itself very hard to convince Congress that it has stopped dealing with Pretoria (a poignant task, since Israel has never officially admitted its military and economic sanctions busting). Should the moment come, Israel will have to employ all its wiles to buttress what will predictably be Congress' easy credulity against an outcry from activists.