![[Skip to Page Content]](graphics/skip_sliver.jpg){kind=small}
|
       |
 
 |
About That Word Apartheid
June 1917: London. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, future first president of Israel, and Gen. Jan Christian Smuts, future prime minister of South Africa, meet to exploit British imperial interests for their own purposes. Weizmann argues that a Palestine opened for Jewish settlement will help England safeguard its Middle East interests. Smuts sees the wisdom of supporting the Zionist enterprise, as Jews in South Africa, by the end of World War I, constitute per capita the wealthiest Jewish community in the world. Later, he will tell the Anglo American Committee of Inquiry that he was “one of those who in 1917 took an active part in the planning of the Balfour Declaration.” Two years following his death in 1950, Israel will dedicate the Smuts Forest in the Judean Hills, overlooking the Weizmann Forest. May 1948: Prime Minister Jan Smuts extends de facto recognition to the newly established state of Israel. Days later, Smuts’s party loses to the apartheid Nationalist party, many of whose members had backed Adolph Hitler. 1949: Daniel F. Malan, the new South African prime minister, who in 1938 had led the opposition to Jewish immigrants from Nazi Germany to South Africa, extends de jure recognition to the Jewish state. July 5, 1950: West Jerusalem. Israel enacts the Law of Return by which Jews anywhere in the world, that is, by virtue of being born of a Jewish mother or being a convert, have a “right” to immigrate to Israel on the grounds that they are returning to their own state, even if they have never been there before. 1951: Pretoria. Prime Minister Daniel Malan introduces the Bantu Authorities Act, which sets aside 13% of South Africa’s poorest land to establish “homelands” for the different black ethnic groups. The remaining 87% is reserved for the white population. The idea is to co-opt local black tribal leaders to run the Bantustans, thereby creating a ruling black elite with personal and financial interests in maintaining the separateness. July 14, 1952: By putting into effect the Citizenship/Jewish Nationality Law, Israel becomes the only state in the world to grant a particular national-religious group—the Jews—the right to settle in it and gain automatic citizenship. 1953: West Jerusalem. South Africa’s Prime Minister Daniel Malan becomes the first foreign head of government to visit Israel. He returns home with the message that Israel can be a source of inspiration for white South Africans. 1955: Military cooperation begins with Israel’s delivery of Uzi submachine guns to South Africa. By 1971, South Africa will be manufacturing the Uzi under a license arranged with Israel through Belgium. 1958: South Africa. Hendrik Verwoerd, editor of the virulent anti-Semitic newspaper Die Transvaler, becomes prime minister. During his tenure, Nelson Mandela is tried for treason, the African National Congress banned, the Sharpeville massacre perpetrated, and the “grand apartheid” plan introduced. 1959: Pretoria. The Self-Government Act is passed granting the homelands self-governing, quasi-independent status. Ten “homelands” will eventually be created, each comprising broken tracts of eroded land incapable of supporting their large designated populations. Only two will be totally coterminous, the others will be scattered blocks, some widely dispersed. November 6, 1962: New York. When Israel supports a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning South Africa’s policy of apartheid, South African prime minister Verwoerd declares that Jews “took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree with them, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” Despite its U.N. vote, Israel remains one of South Africa’s chief trading partners. Reflecting on this contradiction, the former Israeli ambassador to Pretoria Alon Liel will later acknowledge, “At the U.N. we kept saying we are against apartheid … but our security establishment kept cooperating.” 1963: Israel sells Centurion tanks to South Africa, while South Africa, which has the fourth largest uranium reserves in the world, ships ten tons of the material to Israel for use in its Dimona nuclear reactor. On August 7, the U.N. Security Council imposes its first arms embargo on South Africa and calls on all states to comply. Later, Israel provides South Africa with technological training, anti-tank rounds, and natural uranium rods. . In August, the U.N. Security Council imposes its first embargo on arms to South Africa and calls on all states to comply. Later, Israel will provide South Africa with technological training, anti-tank rounds, and natural uranium rods.
Next Page
|
 |
Special Reports:
|
Printer Friendly Version of this Article