Apartheid

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diplomatic and ideological support by the USA is even more important for Israel. It is the duty
of the world community to prevent Israel from many of the human rights violations it
commits, including the theft of land, the settlements and the attacks on civilians. But through
diplomatic, political and ideological, as well as military and financial support, the US
effectively disables the rest of the world from carrying out this duty.) The grand total cost of
US state-supplied aid to Israel between 1949 and 1997 was $134,791,507,200.
Apartheid is very expensive. In South Africa, it was largely financed by profits made
from gold and diamond mining as well as by the white western or white South African
military and business powers. Its continued survival is largely financed by the world’s sole
superpower in Israel today. During the first 54 years of apartheid there, it was estimated (by
an Israeli newspaper) that more than half a trillion, i.e. 500 billion dollars from government
and private sources spent on its upkeep so far came from the USA. 263
Israel, however, is also a main producer and distributor of arms, including its own
infamous Uzi machine guns, Kfir jet fighters, and Merkava tanks. A considerable portion of
the South African apartheid government’s military hardware and technology was in fact
imported from Israel (but much of it also came from the USA, Europe and Taiwan). After
imposition of the UN arms embargo on South Africa in 1977, the imports continued illegally,
mainly from Israel and Taiwan. The very extensive military cooperation between Israel and
apartheid South Africa – in fact a military alliance, although most of it was covert – may also
have included joint tests of nuclear weapons. Israel might indeed have learned about specific
apartheid methods of oppression – such as (mainly) non-lethal, but debilitating and
humiliating violence against large groups of unarmed youths – directly from the South
Africans (possibly in return for the military hardware deliveries). Most likely, there was
reciprocal assistance, certainly also involving the USA, with both military technology and
‘counterinsurgency’ measures. Furthermore, there were massive separate and joint efforts to
keep both the alliance and the nature of the cooperation clandestine. 264
The South African and Israeli apartheid ‘Defense’ Forces, in fact: ‘Offense Forces’,
are more like internationally organized, and exceptionally brutal crime groups than defensive
in essence. They display remarkable parallels with regard to physical violence. They both
reveal paranoid streaks and resort to indiscriminate shootings of unarmed civilians, including
peaceful protesters, medical relief workers, and journalists. They even target, shoot, kill, and
torture unarmed indigenous children, whose only ‘crime’ is to protest against being treated as
second-, third-, or even fourth-class citizens.
Of course, white South African and Israeli Jewish civilians are and have been legally
armed to an exorbitant extent too, as opposed to the indigenous civilians once the invasions
263 N.N.: U.S. Financial Aid To Israel: Figures, Facts, and Impact, Summary, no date; Dubro: Payback Time,
2002; Judt: The Road to Nowhere, 2002; Goller: U.S. Asks Israel about Suspected Rights Abuses, 1998; Wright:
U.S. Goes Back into Israeli-Palestinian Talks, 2001; Scheer: Israel Economic Reform Stymied by U.S. Aid,
2002; N.N.: Israel Readying US Aid Request, No Iraq Link-Source, October 21, 2002; N.N.: US Promises Israel
$2.16 Bln Military Aid in 2004, November 21, 2002; N.N.: U.S. Will Seek $2.22 Bln Military Aid for Israel,
November 3, 2003; N.N.: US Congress Panel Halves a Bush Foreign-Aid Request, June 23, 2004. Edward Said
claimed that the US taxpayers were actually providing Israel with $5 billion a year. Said: Propaganda and War,
2001. He further estimated the entire input of US taxpayers’ funds into Israel at an unprecedented and
unparalleled $92 billion. See Said: A Vision to Lift the Spirit, 2001. The Palestinian human rights organization,
Miftah, refers to the additional $2 billion of which Said speaks as ‘federal loan guarantees’. See Miftah: US
Foreign Aid to Israel, 2002. Dubro writes that the combined public and private payments from the US to Israel
amount to over half a trillion US dollars. In Scheer’s article, a deflecting insult is levelled at socialism in the
following manner: ‘[W]hile politicians love the extra cash, and exert energy lobbying for U.S. aid, analysts feel
Israel relies too much on aid and that the infusion of money prevents the government from making much-needed
reforms to its socialist style economy.’ Needless to say, many ‘socialist style’ economies have managed perfectly
well for long periods of time without US-supplied tools of killing or any other kind of US aid, for instance
Sweden from the 1930s until the ‘80s.
264 Chomsky 2 1999: 21, 26, 35f, 464ff; Beit-Hallahmi: The South Africa-Israel Alliance, 1986-1988: Public
Relations and Reality, 1990: 57-66. See also Thompson 1990: 200.