Israel's Defense Partners

Last year Sasha Polakow-Suransky, an American Jew whose parents were from South Africa, published a book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, based on extensive interviews with Israeli and South African officials, generals and anti-apartheid activists. According to Polakow-Suransky the relationship, which began in 1974 and lasted until the early 1990s, was based largely on commercial considerations on Israel's part. In the early 1970s Israel had developed a major domestic arms industry as a result of France having suddenly cut its arms sales to Israel. Because of economies of scale it made more sense for Jerusalem to manufacture more than it needed for the IDF and sell the surplus abroad on the open arms market or through country-to-country arrangements. Jerusalem was also looking for a rich uncle that could subsidize its research and development efforts in certain key areas such as missile development. Israel had a deal with the Shah's Iran to co-develop a missile that abruptly ended in 1979 with the Iranian revolution. Pretoria was able to take up the slack.