:: Da' Militant One's Lair ::

:: Monday, July 24, 2006 ::

The Other Side to the "Sins of the Father" Post Below (You decide who is telling the truth)

Israel and South Africa Does Israel support the apartheid regime?

You have heard about the relationship between Israel and South Africa, and you may have reached the conclusion that Israel is the main support of the South African regime, its principal weapons supplier, most important trading partner, purveyor of atomic technology, and much more. And that apartheid — the odious suppression of Blacks — might cease if Israel were only to withdraw its support from South Africa.

What are the facts?

Israel is a multi-racial society. Its citizens, most of them "immigrants," or children and grandchildren of immigrants, come from all corners of the globe. More than 55% are what we would call "non-Caucasians." In the last few years, the government has expended much effort and money to in-gather the Black Jews of Ethiopia. The concept of apartheid, of race discrimination, is repugnant to Israelis and to the Jewish religion. Condemnation of apartheid has been publicly expressed by every Israeli Prime Minister, beginning with David Ben Gurion.
Israel is not a significant factor in the arms trade with South Africa. The main suppliers of weaponry to that country are France, Britain, Canada, West Germany, Italy, India, and the United States. But South Africa has its own arms industry. It entered into a $1 billion barter deal with Iran, by which it would supply weapons -- mostly light and heavy artillery and shells -- in exchange for oil, ironically, but not surprisingly, a similar barter contract for $750 million -- was signed with Iraq.Oil is the life-blood of South Africa's economy. All of it is imported, and not a drop comes from Israel, of course. Virtually every barrel of the approximately $2 billion of yearly oil import comes from the Arabs -- most of it from Saudi Arabia.

How about trade in general? The principal trading partners of South Africa in 1986 were in that order: U.S.A., $3.4 billion (exports and imports); Japan, $2.9 billion; Germany, $2.8 billion; U.K., $2.6 billion -- with Israel far in the rear with a total trade of $0.2 billion, less than 1% of South Africa's total trade. And what does not take into account South Africa's vast (unrecorded) trade with the Black African countries, its collusive trading relationships in diamonds and precious metals with the Soviet Union, and its huge barter trade for oil with the Arab countries and Iran.
The Arab countries (with the exception of Egypt) consider themselves to be in a state of war with Israel. They do not trade with Israel at all. Other major countries such as Japan, India, China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia do not trade with Israel either or only to a negligible extent. Israel, in order to survive, cannot be too choosy with whom to trade. But, in any case, political approval would not seem to be a requirement for trade. After all, the United States and other Western democracies deal with South Africa, with the Soviet Union, and with other countries of whose politics they disapprove.

Israel has been repeatedly singled out and condemned for alleged nuclear collaboration with South Africa. It is a charge that has no foundation and that Israel has denied categorically and constantly. The U.N. has recently published a document -- "South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Capability." It mentions certain countries in connection with nuclear collaboration with South Africa. Israel is not among them.

The facts are clear: Israel is a very minor player in trade and military relations with South Africa, has no nuclear cooperation, and has at all times condemned and denounced apartheid. In formulating policy towards South Africa, Israel, just as in its dealings with the Soviet Union, must take into account the vulnerable position of that country's large Jewish community. The perception that Israel has a particularly close relationship with South Africa is fostered by the Arabs, is based on distortion, and stems from hostility to Israel. A Congressional Committee and the Black Caucus of Congress has commended Israel for its government's resolution of March 18, 1987, regarding its relations with South Africa. Critics of Israel would also do well to judge its position on racism by its prodigious 20-year record of unprecedented development aid programs in 31 Black African countries.

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:: DM1 7/24/2006 11:04:00 PM [+] ::
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The Sins of the Fathers

Reposted From The World Traveler

Israel and South Africa

excerpted from the book "Israeli Foreign Policy"
by Jane Hunter South End Press, 1987

History

lsrael's ties with South Africa seem to be especially disturbing to many who follow Israel's international activities. Perhaps it is natural that Israel has been castigated more harshly for its arms sales to South Africa than for its sales to other countries: first, because there has been for a decade an arms embargo against South Africa; and second, because of the unsurpassed criminality of the white regime and the uses to which it puts the Israeli-supplied weapons.

It has also been said that those arms sales are understandable, given the striking similarities between the two countries in their day-to-day abuse and repression of their subject populations, South African blacks and Palestinians under Israeli rule; in their operating philosophies of apartheid and Zionism; and in their similar objective situations: "the only two Western nations to have established themselves in a predominantly nonwhite part of the world," as a South African Broadcasting Corporation editorial put it. That understanding, however, is somewhat superficial, and the focus on similarities of political behavior has somewhat obscured the view of the breadth and depth of the totality of Israeli-South African relations and their implications.

Israel's relations with South Africa are different than its interactions with any of its other arms clients. That Israel gave South Africa its nuclear weapons capability underscores the special nature of Tel Aviv's relations with the white minority government and begins to describe it - a full-fledged, if covert, partnership based on the determination of both countries to continue as unrepentant pariahs and to help each other avoid the consequences of their behavior.

Arms industry - Nuclear Apprentice

There are few areas where the respective needs and advantages of Israel and South Africa dovetailed so perfectly as in the field of nuclear cooperation. "The most powerful reason for Israeli willingness to bear the undesirable consequences of expanded and more open trade with South Africa may be her desire to acquire material necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons," wrote a military analyst in 1980.' To that must be added Israel's great desire to test the nuclear weapons it already had, and the attractions of South Africa's vast territory and proximity to even vaster uninhabited spaces-the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Then at the point in its nuclear development where it was fashioning sophisticated bombs (devices which use less nuclear material but have infinitely greater explosive force than the "primitive" bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima), Israel would find it particularly helpful to observe the performance, explosive force and fallout of a detonated weapon.

Since 1984, Israel had been operating a plutonium extraction plant in a secret underground bunker at Dimona in the Negev Desert. Built by the French in the late 1950s, the Dimona plant also included facilities for manufacturing atomic bomb components. At the time of the 1976 accords, Israel was preparing to build an adjoining plant for the extraction of lithium 6, tritium and deuterium, materials required for sophisticated thermonuclear weapons.
Israel's reasons for devoting what had to have been a significant portion of its scant resources to such an ambitious nuclear weapons program - nuclear experts have recently ranked it as the world's sixth nuclear power, after the U.S., the USSR, Britain, France and China - have been variously offered as the desire to develop a credible deterrent to attack by its neighbors and the desire to substitute that deterrent for at least part of the costly conventional arsenal that Israel, with one of the world's most powerful military forces, maintains, and also (with much less frequency) as an "umbrella" over a partial withdrawal from the occupied territories.


The South Africans began teaching the lessons of Israel's 1967 war at their maneuver school, and Israeli advisers began teaching the Boers the arts of suppressing a captive population and keeping hostile neighbors off balance... The white government's practice of domestic counterinsurgency combines outright military brutality with the extensive use of informers and collaborators. It is impossible to know how many refinements of these age-old techniques have been borrowed from the Israelis' occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. The Israeli system of village leagues is obviously comparable to the hated town councils imposed on segregated townships by the apartheid government. The collective punishment employed by the Israelis, such as the destruction of a whole family's home when one of its members is arrested as a suspect in an act of resistance, has lately been matched by the recent South African practices of sealing off townships, and assaulting entire funeral processions. What is perhaps more salient is the South African victims' perceptions of Israel's involvement in their oppression and how readily that perception is communicated...

The Frontline States

The South Africans noted that their May, 1983 aerial attack (dubbed Operation Shrapnel) on Mozambique's capital, Maputo, was analogous to Israel's attack on Beirut the previous summer. one analyst, Joseph Hanlon, believes that one of South Africa's objectives in the attack was to see how its version of events would play in the media. It was received very well indeed, according to Hanlon, with the Western press accepting South Africa's claim that its attack was in "retaliation" for an ANC attack and that ANC "bases" were hit.
Instead, the South African Air Force hit a child-care center and private houses with "special fragmentation rockets," leaving 6 dead and 40 wounded. This follows the Israeli practice in Lebanon of speaking about PLO installations while civilians are the actual targets, and attacking with particularly heinous anti-personnel weapons-cluster bombs and phosphorous bombs.

The victims of South Africa's angst are not blind to the similarity of attacks-or motives.
President Samora Machel likened the Israeli Government to the Pretoria regime. He said that because of its inability to contain the fury of the Palestinian people led by the PLO, the Zionist regime is trying to transfer the war to other regions. So reported Mozambican radio shortly after Israeli aircraft bombed PI headquarters in Tunisia in October 1985.

The model provided by Israel, which punishes every internal act of resistance and violent act outside its jurisdiction with a bombing raid on Palestinian targets in Lebanon-almost always refugee camps cynically identified by the Israelis as "terrorist bases" or "headquarters"-has served South Africa well. In January 1986, the white government's radio delivered a commentary on "the malignant presence" of "terrorism" in neighboring states and said "there's only one answer now, and that's the Israeli answer." Israel had managed to survive "by striking at terrorists wherever they exist."

In May 1986, South Africa demonstrated that it had assumed the right to attack its neighbors at a time and on a pretext of its own choosing. The chosen time was during a visit by the Eminent Persons Group of the Commonwealth of Nations, which was attempting to establish negotiations between the apartheid regime and its opposition. The victims-Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, all Commonwealth members-were chosen for their alleged harboring of "terrorists"; the real victims were South African exiles and an employee of the government of Botswana. The South Africans said they had attacked "international terrorism" and compared their raids to the Israeli attack on Tunisia and the U.S. attack on Libya in April 1986.

The attack was similar in style to Israel's 1985 attack on Tunisia. Initially, the Israelis had been threatening Jordan and perhaps because King Hussein of Jordan was at the time on an official visit to the U.S., the Israelis chose to take revenge for the killing of three Israelis (believed to be top Mossad agents) in Larnaca, Cyprus on the PLO in Tunisia.
Two weeks after its three-pronged attack on its Commonwealth neighbors, South Africa attacked the Angolan harbor of Namibia, firing their version of the Israeli Gabriel missile.
Israel has also been connected with the mercenary forces deployed by South Africa against Angola and Mozambique. In the 1970s Israel aided the FNLA (Angolan National Liberation Front) proxy forces organized and trained by the CIA to forestall the formation of a government led by the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-now the ruling party of Angola). John Stockwell, who ran the CIA operation against Angola, recollected three arms shipments Israel made in cooperation with the CIA: a plane full of 120 mm shells sent via Zaire to the FNLA and Unita; a shipment of 50 SA-7 missiles (all of which were duds); a boat-load sent to neighboring Zaire in a deal that the Israelis had worked out with President Mobutu, even though the Zairian strong man had broken ties with Israel two years earlier.

When Israel reestablished relations with Zaire (in 1982) and began to train Zairian forces in the Shaba border province, Angola had cause for concern. The leader of the FNLA had been Holden Roberto, brother-in-law of Zairian president Mobutu, Israel's new client. In 1986, it would be established that Zaire acted as a funnel for "covert" U.S. military aid for the Unita forces of Jonas Savimbi.

In 1983, the Angolan News Agency reported that Israeli military experts were training Unita forces in Namibia. Since Zaire began receiving military aid and training from Tel Aviv, Angola has been ill at ease. Its worries increased after discovering that: Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was personally involved in the organization, training and equipping of "commando" units of the army of Zaire, especially organized for missions along the borders of the RPA [Angola].

In 1984, the Financial Times (London) wrote of "joint Israeli-South African support for Unita forces." Other sources also report the transfer of Israeli arms and financial support to Unita.
In 1983, Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos told Berkeley, California Mayor Eugene (Gus) Newport that an Israeli pilot had been shot down during a South African attack. The Angolan President showed Newport pictures of captured Israeli weapons. The following year, Luanda reported the capture of three mercenaries who said they had been trained by Israeli instructors in Zaire.

Israel has also been involved with the Mozambican "contras," the South African-backed MNR (Mozambique National Resistance or "Renamo"), which has brought great economic and social distress to Mozambique. Renamo has a particular reputation for ideological incoherence, being regarded by most other right-wing insurgencies as a gang of cutthroats. For several years there have been stories coming from Southern Africa of captured mercenaries of Renamo who say they were trained in neighboring Malawi-one of the four nations to maintain relations with Israel after the Organization of African Unity (OAU) declared a diplomatic embargo in 1973-by Israelis. And more than one report has told of "substantial Israeli aid" to the MNR, thought to have been funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia as well as South Africa and former Portuguese nationalists.

:: DM1 7/24/2006 10:49:00 PM [+] ::
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An email I just sent to Chuck Hagel - Rep Senator, Nebraska


Dear Senator,

I hope this email finds you and your family in good health. I haven't contacted you for a while and I need to express some of my views on the state of our country. I believe now more than ever that your country needs your strong voice and competent leadership. I am always heartened to see you on the talk shows standing up for the republican wing of the Republican party. I am still out there trying to scare up converts to you and your ideals. I dare say that you remind me of the Eisenhower republicans of yesterday: strong abroad, compassionate at home, but always with enlightened leadership.

I don't know what it would cost, but if you could do a solid half hour of prime time to talk about your ideas and your plans for America's future, then I am positive that you would be elected in 2008 to lead our country and the world out of this darkness that now envelops us and into the light of a brighter future. I know that some of what I am wrinting sounds like political slogans and you are correct! I just want to let you know that once again you have a strong supporter and I will be with you to fight the good fight. Your character, integrity, and leadership are what the country needs.

You and your brother are heroes in my book. I know that you would disagree because you a humble man thankful just to be here. I heard you speak about your experience in Vietnam and I said that is the man for this job. Someone who will do the job with a modest demeanor, but a soaring spirit. I am very, very disturbed over the events overseas and the lack of leadership here at home. I also did four years in the Army (1981-1985) and thankfully never had to participate in combat. My purpose for serving my country was to physically protect my country if needed and to help preserve its values and ideals from harm. In no way did I imagine that the threat would also come from within.

We as a people are so much better than the situations that we currently face. The country needs a voice of hope and compasssion to calm the fears that have terrified us for the last five years. To be frank the United States is more than just a country. It is man's greatest experiment in the human condition. While we need to be ever vigilant, the country and its people could go away tomorrow, but our history is already written in the sands of time forever. My ancestors grew up on plantations and now I sit here a bank examiner for 14 years living the American Dream. When we actually do God's work with "peace on earth and goodwill towards men," then we as a people will get to the "promised land."

We owe it to all of those who came before us and all of those who come after us to take the country to a better tomorrow and a brighter future. Sorry for the long email, but I know that you understand. One more thing please call on the President to do all in his power to stop the madness in the Middle East and the tragedy in Iraq. Yours in the cause. Peace.

:: DM1 7/24/2006 10:12:00 PM [+] ::
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A Terrorist State is Born

The following is an excerpt from "The Modern Middle East and North Africa," a book by Lois A. Aroian and Richard P. Mitchell:

The time frame is early 1948

Page 245 -

"Perhaps the most famous and critical instance of brutality occured at the small village of Dayr Yassin west of and on the road to Jerusalem. The I.Z.L. aided by Palmach and Lehi, massacred some 254 men, women, and children although the village had deliberatelt refused to allow Arab troops to occupy it for fear of such an attack. In The Revolt: The Story of the Irgun, I.Z.L. leader Begin justified the massacre on military grounds and claimed that without it, the Jewish state would have been stillborn. Occuring as it did in early April 1948, the onslaught encouraged the exodus of Arabs. Villagers expected to face another Dayr Yassin if they refused to evacuate their villages when pressured by Jewish Forces. Even in Akka, an overwhelming Arab city allotted to the Arab state, Arabs were frightened into leaving. Based on preplanned movements, Jewish forces began moving into western Galilee, part of the proposed Arab entity. Entire populations had no choice but to leave so that even before the British had evacuated and the Jewish state had been proclaimed, some 300,000 Arabs had fled from their homes..."
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The Begin that the authors speak of is Menachem Begin, the late Prime Minister of Israel, who at the time was engaging in terrorist activities against Arabs throughout what is now Israel. And there lies the rub. Israel and the U.S. continue to refer to Hammas and Hezbollah as terrorists groups while conveniently not mentioning that the State of Israel was born of terrorist actions that killed hundreds if not thousands of Arabs. Basically, the "chickens are coming home to roost" once again. And let's stop with the "God's people" nonsense, no God that I pray to would ever condone what happened at Dayr Yassin. The crocodile tears that are being shed for all of the murdered Israelies at the hands of Arab terrorists are truly misplaced. The sons and daughters of Israel must accept the fact that their lives will forever be marked by war, terror, and death. You can not have it both ways. It was fine to engage in terrorist activities as long as it was for the establishment of a Jewish State, but now that Israel has laid claim to most of the biblical Holy Lands, it wants the terrorism to stop. Not going to happen. If only the Arab folks who were affected by the terrorism unleashed by the Jewish terrorists prior to the creation of the State of Israel had short memories. These are the cold hard facts and if it makes me anti-semitic to state the facts as they are and their ramifications so be it. The truth hurts, but until Israel admits that it was created as a result of Jewish terrorism and begins to accept the fact that a viable Jewish state in the middle of hundreds of millions of Arabs is not a possibility, the Middle East problem will never be solved.

:: DM1 7/23/2006 10:11:00 AM [+] ::
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I just sent this email to Sean Hannity:

You talk a lot about liberals and paint them as unpatriotic pansies. If that were true then this country would never have been established. I heard you on the air a while ago trying to explain why you never served in the military. You gave a weasely answer and told the caller who had inquired that you were not called to serve. You and I are the same age and you know as well as I do that all you had to do to enlist was go down to the nearest recruiting station. I did that and so did three of my closest friends. We all grew up in D.C. and did not have a lot of respect for the folks who were running the country. However, we knew that it was something we had to do. That right four young black liberal democrats volunteered, unlike you. When the caller called you on you response you stumbled and uttered some nonsense that I don't remember. You a patriot? Believe me, of us see you as a bully and a coward.

You and folks who think like you are the reason why a flawed ideology has enveloped this country and is sending us over a cliff. You talk very tough, but when it was your turn you passed. Growing up in D.C. could be a war at times. Guns, drugs and violence were always part of the equation, and still my friend and I volunteered. You claim to support the troops. Have you ever felt the impact of a grenade explode? Fortunately, I never had to serve in combat, but I have had the experience of feeling the impact of a grenade explode in basic training, and I was standing behind a concrete wall. The concussion was immediate and shook the area. a war plan should have a strategic focus with clear objectives that are well thoughout and reasonable given the specifics of the situation. The troops are in a meat grinder and no amount of rah! rah! is going to change that. The stories that I am hearing from the folks that have been over there are the opposite of the drivel that you spew daily. How about supporting the troops by requiring their leaders to lead? Leadership is more than just talking tough. It is also about being smart, pragmatic, and forward thinking. Bush posseses none of these qualities. Bush has shown himself to be very incompetent and incapable of effectively performing his duties.

This war was strategic mistake. This is why liberals and others don't support it. Those folks in Iraq have been fighting and dying for thousands of years. What arrogance that we think we know what's best for them. As bad as Saddam was, he was our hedge against Iran. The "hedge" is now gone, and you can see the results. If you remember when he gassed the Iranians, the U.S. government had nothing to say. The different groups that comprise Iraq hate each other and were waiting for a chance to settle old scores. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. One more thing, I worked in the RNC for three years after I got out of the Army from 1985 to 1988. As a computer programmer, I was responsible for processing voter lists and other data that helped spur the republicans to the majority statue they now enjoy. I have been a republican for 20 years. The current republican leadership and you have disgraced the party and its legacy for you have put emotion and ideology ahead of reason and logic.

:: DM1 7/15/2006 01:29:00 PM [+] ::
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Death in the Chow Line

In my previous post I referred to a death in a chow line from an earlier post. The blog didn't take. Anyway the skinny of the story is that I was watching the Kathy Griffin reality show (shows you how much cable sucks!). Kathy Griffin is a comic that has appeared on numerous shows including Seinfeld. She was invited to entertain the troops in Iraq a few months ago. While visiting a medic unit at a base in Tikrit, she came upon a soldier that had been wounded by mortar fire directed at the base by insurgents. He explained that his fiancee and his friend who were fellows soldiers and standing right next to him were killed. Do you understand? They were killed trying to get some crummy chow while fighting a crummy war. The a-sholes have the nerve to call those who oppose this insanity unpatriotic. Well if being unpatriotic means that I oppose anyone trying to destroy my country and what it stands for well then I am as unpatriotic as it gets! The country's legacy deserves better.

:: DM1 7/01/2006 08:39:00 PM [+] ::
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Lost for Words

I have stopped blogging regularly because at some point one must ask himself how much? How many times can you state the obvious without becoming boring and uninteresting? Bush is such a failure that flogging him is no longer an option. It's about the future of this Republic and our children, as hokey as that sounds. I haven't been this uncertain since 1968 as a six year old child living in south east D.C. The riots after King was murdered convinced me that things were never going to get better. Combine that with the Vietnam War. I remember a time in probably 1971 or 1972 as an elementary student at Andrew Jackson elementary. Now this is back in the day, but the little red brick schoolhouse is still standing at 35th and R Street N.W. in Georgetown. If you get a chance go see it because across the street is Montrose Park and to this day I still think that it is the best park in Rock Creek Park. Anyway, I'm playing in Montrose Park with my classmates and it was probably a day in May because when it got towards the end of the year our teachers would let us play in the park for the rest of the afternoon after lunch. A young black man who couldn't have been more than 23 or 24 came up to a group of us and started talking. Before you know it we were low crawling, throwing genades, and learning to aim rifles. Although we were using rocks and sticks at the time, the message was clear. Years later, I realized that the brother had probably been in Vietnam and had seen a lot of combat. They sent him back to the States and expected him to act as a normal human being when he had more than likely seen horrific acts of savagery and violence. Now they want to prosecute troops oin Iraq for acting like animals in a jungle. What are they supposed to do? Iraq is much like some of the streets of D.C. Only in D.C. you are not allowed to carry a gun to defend yourself. By the way the gun ban was passed in 1968. You know that we can't have a bunch of niggers with guns. Pretty soon they might try to defend themselves. Many of the soldiers came back to the States hooked on drugs, only knowing how to kill, and no other marketable skills whatsoever. So what did they do? Can you say "seed planters of the current destruction that is infesting black neighborhoods. " Look at the previous post. Folks are dying in CHOW LINE. What the F-ck is going on?

It's just very sad and I for one don't care if a democrat or republican is elected. Only that he or she is decent and honorable. Sh-t we are celebrating the 4th of July on Tuesday. Don't we owe it to those that came before us to be the keepers of the flame? Nixon might have been a crook, but he was not a stupid man, just paranoid. Bush has no intellectual qualities at all that prepare him for what he faces on a daily basis. You wanted an "average American" and you got him. The problem is the average American is ignorant of history both American and World. The average American is arrogant and thinks with his heart not with his head. He is God-fearing bless his heart, but he rarely practices what he preaches. And on and on. How about really rallying around the troops and getting them the f-ck out of Dodge? We owe them this much. Peace.

:: DM1 7/01/2006 08:36:00 PM [+] ::
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