Israel and Apartheid: The Jewish State's Unspoken Alliance with Apartheid South Africa
A lecture by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Senior Editor, Foreign Affairs
Thursday, October 21, 2010
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
From 1973 until the early 1990s, Israel maintained an intimate and lucrative military relationship with the apartheid government in South Africa involving extensive trade in everything from aircraft and ammunition to nuclear technology. This lecture will address a number of vexing questions: What drove the leaders of the Jewish State to forge an alliance with a regime run by former Nazi sympathizers? Did the U.S. government enable and encourage this alliance of pariahs? Did pressure from the global anti-apartheid movement, the moral outrage of the Israeli left, and the imposition of sanctions bring the relationship to an end? And finally, does the controversial apartheid analogy apply to contemporary Israel and, if not, is it only a matter of time before it does?
Sasha Polakow-Suransky holds a D.Phil in Modern History from St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar from 2003-2006. He has written for the American Prospect, the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, Haaretz, and the Jerusalem Post. His book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, was published by Pantheon in May.
For more information please contact
Johanna Romero, Center for Near Easter Studies
Tel: 310-825-1455
romero@international.ucla.edu
www.international.ucla.edu/cnes
