The Complicated History of Israel and South Africa's Anti-Apartheid Movement

What did South African anti-apartheid activists once think about Israel and Zionism? The answer is more complicated than most seem to think.

Dr. Asher Lubotzky, research fellow at the University of Houston's Department of Political Science, takes us through the extraordinary—and often surprising—relationship between the South African anti-apartheid movement and Israel, from the birth of both countries in 1948 through the Cold War, the end of apartheid, and into the present.

Lubotzky is the author of Shifting Solidarities: The South African Anti-Apartheid Movement's Perception of Zionism.

In the early years, some of the movement's most prominent activists actually supported Israel. Jewish and non-Jewish communists saw the new Jewish state as an anti-fascist, socialist project. African nationalists found parallels between Zionism and their own struggle for national liberation. And Israel itself was actively reaching out to anti-apartheid movements in Africa.

So how did that relationship turn into today's association of Israel with apartheid? The answer involves the Six-Day War, Israel's growing military ties with Pretoria, the Cold War, South Africa's Jewish community, and shifting ideas about colonialism and national liberation.

It's a fascinating history of how political alliances change—and how today's certainties can look very different when viewed through the lens of the past.