My friend Dan Swanson wrote a book about South Africa called Freedom Rising. It came out in the mid-80s, and ten years later, apartheid ended in South Africa, in good part because of U.S. sanctions, which leftists and blacks here had agitated for.
Here is an important story about South Africa. In 1963, a black South African poet and activist named Dennis Brutus was imprisoned by the government on political charges, for 18 months. My friend Dan interviewed Brutus, and he tells me that a guard who became friendly to Brutus took him aside one day. "You’re a smart, well-spoken educated guy," the guard said. "Why don’t you give up this protest and do something productive." Or words to that effect. And Brutus said he was committed to a just cause, one he believed in. "But you will never win," the guard said. "The United States is on our side."
That was in 1965, Swanson says; and the guard was right. It took nearly 30 years for American attitudes to shift. A lot of the tumult in the intellectual community over Israel/Palestine over the last year–from The New Republic decrying the delegitimization of Israel, to the effort to smear Walt and Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter, to Bill Kristol blurting at Yivo that "Israel needs" the Christian right–a lot of the tumult reflects the anxiety in the pro-Israel community that a 30-year South Africa clock is ticking away. The bloc is being attacked, it is showing cracks. As Kristol said, wisely, at Yivo, constituencies and demographics change. The coalition that Israel has depended upon in the States may loosen. Why, even the left wing of the Israel lobby may finally break loose, and flap a little, and even call for sanctions (as Dan Fleshler hints, here)…
