Undercutting Sanctions: Israel, the U.S. and South Africa

By Jane Hunter. Washington, D.C.: Washington Middle East Associates, 1986. 68 pp. $5.00.

Reviewed by Mark C. Dressler

The past year has witnessed an upsurge of activity in opposition to U.S. ties with South Africa, and a veritable deluge of publications examining in minute detail various aspects of our relationship with the Apartheid State. Relatively unexplored, however, are South Africa's economic and military connections with other states. This is especially true in the case of Israel, where a generalized defensiveness within liberal circles about discussing the Jewish State has stifled critical inquiry into the nature and extent of the Israel-South Africa partnership. Indeed, in the past decade, only a handful of authors have dared tackle the subject, most notably Abdelwahab Elmessiri in Israel and South Africa: The Progression of a Relationship (1976), Rosalynd Ainslee in Israel and South Africa: An Unlikely Alliance (1981), and James Adams in The Unnatural Alliance (1984).

Thanks to the timely publication of Undercutting Sanctions: Israel, the U.S. and South Africa, we can now add Jane Hunter to that list. Like her predecessors, Hunter's first concern is to clear the air of Israeli disinformation, a task for which her editorship of the Oakland based newsletter Israeli Foreign Affairs has prepared her well. Citing U.N. and other non-Israeli sources, she makes mincemeat of official Israeli statistics that register only minimal trade with South Africa. And for the coup de grace she quotes straight from the horse's mouth: extensive South African radio and newspaper sources boasting of Israel's high level of investment in South Africa's economy and military.

Letting in the Trojan Horse

But, as its title suggests, Undercutting Sanctions is out to do much more than merely document the existence of South Africa's Israel Connection. It's a blueprint for severing it, and a call to action to campus and community activists concerned about Israel's unique ability to render meaningless U.S. and international sanctions against South Africa. Hunter argues that Israel's preferred trade status with both the European Economic Community and the United States allows it to peddle South African goods with a "Made in Israel" stamp in both European and U.S. markets. The formal basis for this, she notes, was developed under the U.S. Israel Free Trade Agreement of 1984, which accords duty free entry to virtually all Israeli industrial and by 1990 agricultural exports.

Hunter brings her point home in a chapter (appropriately entitled "The Trojan Horse") mapping Israel's manifold potential for engaging in backdoor trade for South Africa. There she notes that "anything Israeli that comes in a tin can is partly South African, because Iskoor [a joint IsraeliSouth African steel company] operates the only tin can factory in Israel." And that's only the tip of the iceberg. South Africa provides most of Israel's steel, timber, tobacco, hides, wool, sugar, foodstuffs and paper products. All are goods Israel sells on the U.S. market.

Undercutting Sanctions does not stop short at economic considerations, but goes on to explore the deadly implications of Israeli South African collaboration. It scrutinizes a 1979 nuclear explosion in the South Pacific, widely believed to be a demonstration of South African nuclear weapons capability, for signs of Israeli involvement; and detects a South African hand in Israel's efforts, with U.S. assistance, to build the Lavi combat jet. The problem with such research, of course, is that the key material is usually guarded by the wall of secrecy which springs up around military relationships, making it extremely difficult for the researcher to ferret out reliable firsthand information. Hence, Hunter constructs a case which combines strong circumstantial evidence with leaks from government officials. This, admittedly, is the best that can be done, but it does leave the book raising more questions on the military connections than it can definitely answer.

A Call to Action

There are no such gray areas in Hunter's last chapter: her call to action to anti-apartheid activists and her well wrought plan of action for restoring the efficacy of U.S. sanctions against South Africa. "Me question for Americans should be simply whether we are doing all that we can to end apartheid," she writes. "If we find, therefore, that the 'special relationship' between the U.S. and Israel spills over into South Africa, then issues like the level of American aid to Israel, the role of U.S. firms in three way trade, and U.S. diplomatic attempts to cover up this involvement cannot be ignored."

Undercutting Sanctions is certain to generate debate and discussion in the anti-apartheid movement in the months ahead. It may also prove to be this year's most valuable handbook for concerned American citizens who want to make the U.S. movement against South Africa as consistent and effective as possible.

Mark Dressler, of Washington, D.C, writes frequently on public affairs for the Dearborn based Arabic English newspaper Sada Alwatan and the New York newsweekly The Guardian.