June 6, 2010

Broadcast Date: 
Jun 6 2010

A conversation with Sasha Polakow-Suransky, author of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa; plus Free Gaza Movement's Huwaida Arraf on what happened when the Israeli Navy confronted the Free Gaza flotilla.

Episode segments
  • The Unspoken Alliance: Part 1
    Global Justice, International Politics, Israeli Politics
    Sasha Polakow-Suransky, author of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, is a senior editor at Foreign Affairs. 
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    For some twenty years the state of Israel secretly exchanged intelligence and traded arms and military,  scientific and nuclear know-how with apartheid South Africa. The product of six years of research into hitherto classified South African archives and interviews with former generals and high-level officials in both countries, The Unspoken Alliance reveals the full depth and intimacy of a relationship that was long suspected but always denied.  We talk with Polakow-Suransky about that relationship and how its full dimensions were kept secret not only from the rest of the world, but from many of Israel's own diplomats and supporters among the Jewish communities of South Africa and the U.S. (communities that continued defending Israel--citing the government's public statements opposing apartheid-- and vilifying the African National Congress, even as word of those ties began to leak out).

    Part l of our interview.               

  • The Unspoken Alliance: Part 2
    Global Justice, International Politics, Israeli Politics, Israel/Palestine
    Sasha Polakow-Suransky, author of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, is a senior editor at Foreign Affairs. 
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Part 2 of our interview with Sasha Polakow-Suransky

  • Free Gaza Flotilla
    Israel/Palestine, Occupation
    Huwaida Arraf is co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement and chair of the Free Gaza Movement.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Since August 2008, the Free Gaza Movement has been trying to break Israel's blockade by sending ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.  The latest effort, a flotilla of 8 ships, carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and 800 activists and politicians from 40 countries, was intercepted in international waters by the Israeli Navy in the predawn hours of May 31. On one of the ships, the Mavi Marmara, Israeli commandos killed at least 9 activists and wounded many others.  

    Despite Israel's efforts to take control of the narrative--communications were jammed, cell phones and video cameras confiscated-- the facts of the night-time assault on the ship are emerging and, as the world sees through the propaganda blitz, attention is being increasingly focused on what really matters--the cruel blockade and its effects on the 1.5 million residents of Gaza. 

    Huwaida Arraf, who was on the smallest of the flotilla's vessels, The Challenger, talks with us from Ramallah, about what happened that night, and about Israel's disinformation efforts.

    Additional Resources: 

    Israel claims the blockade of Gaza is necessary for its security, to prevent the entry of arms.  But, the actual list of prohibited items suggests inflicting pain on the civilians of Gaza is at least as important; read Richard Tillinghast's poem on What is Not Allowed.

    Long time Israeli activist Uri Avnery compares the Free Gaza flotilla to the Exodus in 1947, here.