A lot of people are talking about this Chris McGreal piece in the Guardian on Israel’s sales of arms, including nuke materials, to South Africa during apartheid (notwithstanding the fact that a former South African PM they worked with, John Vorster, had been a Nazi sympathizer and fascist-party member during the war). The article is based on Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s new book.
Israel must feel like the walls are closing in these days. Everyone on the left is bashing them, everywhere, for stuff that happened a long time ago. Jeff Blankfort’s post on the big new Geoff Wawro book that says the US must redeem its own bad actions over decades, confirms that. My explanation of the trend is that the expression of long-pent-up negative feelings about the state is finally being licensed in part because of recent atrocities/conditions that are so blatant that only the U.S. establishment and lobby are willing now to ignore them. And the scales are falling from a lot of people’s eyes. I get emails about the refugee situation, the Peel Commission report, partition, etc. all the time. All historical issues. But they feel fresh. Even Jeffrey Goldberg is in the historical reframing mood, asking, Should the Zionists have gotten Bavaria? The west is in recovery from the special relationship and trying to figure out how we got here.
Before long there will be investigative pieces about AIPAC in the New York Times. Well– give that a few years, anyway!
