Synopses & Reviews
“Hugely impressive . . . [Polakow-Suransky] probes in groundbreaking detail the illicit relationship Israel maintained with South Africa.”
—Dan Ephron, Newsweek
“The best-documented, most thorough, and most credible account ever offered of the secret marriage between the apartheid state and Israel . . . Polakow-Suransky is no knee-jerk critic of Israel, and he tells his story more in sorrow than in anger . . . [an] important new book.”
—Glenn Frankel, Foreign Policy
“[I]mportant, provocative, and occasionally disturbing.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A meticulously researched book that reads like a spy thriller . . . Polakow Suransky spent seven years on his project, conducting interviews with key players from Israel and South Africa, mining South Africa’s apartheid-era archive and resurrecting documents and articles that the Israeli Foreign Ministry would prefer remained forgotten. Rich with intrigue and shocking details but written without a trace of stridency, The Unspoken Alliance is the most authoritative account to date of Israel’s scandalous dealings with the apartheid regime of South Africa.”
—Max Blumenthal, The Nation
“Sasha Polakow-Suransky does an impressive job uncovering untold elements about the level and details of the South African and Israeli relationship . . . We should read this book, if only to see yet another example of the interconnectedness of our geopolitical affairs.”
—CSIS.org (Center for Strategic and International Studies)
“A deft, pacy and revealing account . . . admirably dispassionate.”
—The Economist
“In this path-breaking book, Sasha Polakow-Suransky traces the evolution of the alliance between Israel with apartheid South Africa from its murky beginning to its inglorious end following the transition to majority rule. The book is based on the most meticulous archival research supplemented by remarkably revealing interviews with decision-makers in several countries. It is a wise, elegantly written, and strikingly fair-minded book which deserves the widest possible readership.”
—Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations, Oxford University and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
“The Unspoken Alliance is interesting, unique and telling. Its lesson is very clear: Doing the right thing may also be the best political option. It also tells us that sometimes we need others to save us from ourselves.” —Yossi Beilin, former Israeli Minister of Justice and Director General of the Foreign Ministry
“This is a major, long overdue study of the rise and demise of one of the most intriguing alliances of our time, Israel’s hidden partnership with white South Africa. Dr. Polakow-Suransky has written a masterfully researched history that reads like a thriller unraveling the secrets of an alliance between two embattled societies under siege. Weaved into the author’s fascinating narrative lies the disturbing debate about the degree of moral end political congruence that might have existed between the two allies, Israel’s political and defense establishment on the one hand and the Afrikaner ‘master race’ on the other.”
—Shlomo Ben-Ami, Foreign Minister of Israel, 2000-2001
“An intensely observed, eye-opening book.”
—Kirkus
Synopsis
A revealing account of how Israel’s booming arms industry and apartheid South Africa’s international isolation led to a secretive military partnership between two seemingly unlikely allies.
Prior to the Six-Day War, Israel was a darling of the international left: socialist idealists like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir vocally opposed apartheid and built alliances with black leaders in newly independent African nations. South Africa, for its part, was controlled by a regime of Afrikaner nationalists who had enthusiastically supported Hitler during World War II.
But after Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, the country found itself estranged from former allies and threatened anew by old enemies. As both states became international pariahs, their covert military relationship blossomed: they exchanged billions of dollars’ worth of extremely sensitive material, including nuclear technology, boosting Israel’s sagging economy and strengthening the beleaguered apartheid regime.
By the time the right-wing Likud Party came to power in 1977, Israel had all but abandoned the moralism of its founders in favor of close and lucrative ties with South Africa. For nearly twenty years, Israel denied these ties, claiming that it opposed apartheid on moral and religious grounds even as it secretly supplied the arsenal of a white supremacist government.
Sasha Polakow-Suransky reveals the previously classified details of countless arms deals conducted behind the backs of Israel’s own diplomatic corps and in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews with former generals and high-level government officials in both countries, The Unspoken Alliance tells a troubling story of Cold War paranoia, moral compromises, and Israel’s estrangement from the left. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Israel’s history and its future.
About the Author
Sasha Polakow-Suransky is a senior editor at Foreign Affairs and holds a doctorate in modern history from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar from 2003 to 2006. His writing has apeared in The American Prospect, the International Herald Tribune, The New Republic, and Newsweek. He lives in Brooklyn.