This is the second of two articles.

WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE of the fact that Israel and South Africa share such close economic and military ties? In the United States, potential lines of political battle have been drawn, with many Black Americans and Jewish Americans choosing up against each other. The claim of some Blacks--as is frequently reflected in Black newspapers such as The Amsterdam News and The Black American--is that Israel, acting both in its own interests and as a surrogate for the United States, is an active participant in the maintenance of apartheid.

The existing evidence for this claim is abundant, and certain incidents keep the flame of protest especially high. In December 1981, for instance, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon spent 10 days in South Africa, and traveled to "operational areas" in Nambia, the place from which South Africa was launching attacks on Angola. (1) The more ordinary reports on Israel and South Africa are equally disturbing, such as the help Israel has provided South Africa in building huge electrified fences as an "anti-guerrilla" measure. (2)

Defenders of the Israeli alliance with South Africa charge that Israel is unfairly singled out, particularly by African and Arab nations who also trade with South Africa and countenance serious human rights abuses in their own countries. Moshe Decter in December 1976 wrote an American Jewish Congress study called "Arms Traffic with South Africa: Who is Guilty?" The report is useful because, although almost nothing is said about Israel, Decter details the economic and military collaboration of many other countries and concludes that compared with some other places, "Israel's military relationship with South Africa pales into insignificance."

Not so, Far from overshadowing Israeli ties, the links of the Western nations with South Africa show only that if enough attention is focused on the various culpable parties, they will expose each other in the hope of getting away scot free.

The more serious defenses of Israeli-South African ties deserve analysis. One argument is that Israel, isolated in the world, has no place to turn but to South Africa. The corollary of this view holds that, as Irving Howe put it, Israel's isolation in the world community is the result of anti-Semitism and the "skillful manipulation of oil" by Arab nations. (4) A similar view is advanced by the authors of the Ford Foundation's excellent study, South Africa: Time Running Out:

When the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), as part of its opposition to Western support of Israel, instituted its oil embargo against the West, it sought support from other international groups. An informal working alliance developed in the United Nations between anti-Israeli Arabs and the anti-apartheid forces of Black Africa. The result was a two-pronged attack against Israel and South Africa...Throughout the 1960s Israel pursued an active policy of friendship with Black Africa, and offered technical and economic aid...After the emergence of the alliance between Black Africa and the Arab world in 1973, however, many African nations broke off relations with Israel. (5)

THERE ARE SERIOUS flaws in the reasoning of both Howe and the Ford Foundation. First, the chronology is just plain wrong. Black African countries and movements were expressing a degree of opposition to Israeli policies long before oil politics became a factor. As far back as 1968, for example, Amilcar Cabral, an influential revolutionary from Guinea-Bisseau, had this to say:

We lament profoundly what the Nazis did to the Jewish people, that Hitler and his lackeys destroyed almost six million during the last World War. But we do not accept that this gives them the right occupy a part of the Arab nation. We believe that the people of Palestine have a right to their homeland. (6)

Even as far back as 1965, the position of Cabral's anti-colonial African movement was that

We are on the side of the Palestinian refugees and we support wholeheartedly all that the sons of Palestine are doing to liberate their country, and we fully support the Arab and African countries in general in helping the Palestinian people to recover their dignity, their independence and their right to live. (7)

The vehemence with which some African nations attack Israel in the U.N., then, is not simply a product purchased with Arab petrodollars. Perhaps a good deal of it is authentic disgust at Israeli policies toward Palestinians in the occupied territories, and at the South Africa connection.

But the vital question remains: is Israel being unfairly singled out for chastisement regarding its links with South Africa? In the end, the answer is probably "no."

The criticism that comes from Black African nations deserves special attention, given the fact that many of these nations conduct trade with South Africa themselves and do not allow important personal freedom to their own citizens. That such countries would attack Israeli support of the apartheid state season hypothetical at first glance. There are, however, a great many differences between their behavior and that of Israel.

No Black African nation comes close to Israel in the quantities of arms exported to South Africa. Between 1970 and 1979, Israel exported more major weapons than any other Third World country. And 35 percent of those weapons went to South Africa.