[News] South Africans in Israel: A home away from home for white colonialists

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-south-africa-home-white-colonialists>
South
Africans in Israel: A home away from home for white colonialists
Joseph Massad - October 20, 2021
------------------------------

More than 20,000 South African Jews
<https://telfedhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/70-Years-of-southern-African-Aliyah-Book.pdf>
have
moved to Palestine <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine>
since the 1920s and Israel <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel>
since 1948. The most famous was Aubrey Solomon
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abba-Eban>, who changed his name to
Abba Eban and became a prominent Israeli politician. Many of them live in
the wealthy
<https://ipfs.fleek.co/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/South_African_Jews_in_Israel.html>
South African colony of Savyon <https://yamm.finance/wiki/Savion.html>,
built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of al-‘Abbasiyah
<https://books.google.com/books/about/All_that_Remains.html?id=_By7AAAAIAAJ>,
whose Palestinian population was expelled during the 1948 Zionist conquest
of Palestine.

South African Jews continue to move to Palestine, where some consider
Israel a safer settler colony for white people than post-apartheid South
Africa

South African Jews continue
<https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/asia-and-australia/.premium-anxious-south-african-jews-are-planting-one-foot-or-two-in-israel-1.8473427>
to move to Palestine, where some consider Israel a safer settler colony for
white people than post-apartheid South Africa.

It is unclear, however, how many white Afrikaner Pentecostal Protestant
converts to Judaism are among them. But a recent report in the Haaretz
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-cleansed-by-the-torah-why-these-afrikaners-became-jews-and-moved-to-israel-1.10254835>
newspaper
claimed that such converts had been arriving in Israel in increasing
numbers since the end of apartheid in South Africa in the mid-1990s.

"From a former Pentecostal pastor to entire families, a growing number of
Afrikaners are converting to Orthodox Judaism and swapping South Africa for
Israel," wrote Haaretz's Judy Maltz, "and, in many cases, West Bank
settlements.”

Zionist officials in South Africa assert that the Afrikaner Protestant
emigrants’ “motivation is purely spiritual - which is why in many cases we
are seeing entire families converting”. The official added that as
emigration "from South Africa grows, so does the number of converts among
[them]".

They are said to already number several hundred immigrants. Haaretz added
that "like many Orthodox Jews, they also tend to be quite right-wing in
their politics. It is no coincidence then, that many have ended up living
in West Bank settlements. Indeed, one of their main strongholds - aside
from Ra’anana, which is popular among South African immigrants in general,
and more recently the rural community of Yavne’el in northern Israel - is
the settlement of Susya in the South Hebron Hills."

These emigrants may well be motivated by spiritual considerations. But
there is also a long history of connection between South Africa and Israel,
and their shared apartheid and settler history could well create a
comfortable environment.
Historical context

This emigration should be seen in the context of the long history of
collusion and collaboration between the two settler colonies. The Afrikaner
Jan Smuts, South African prime minister (1919-1924 and 1939-1948) and the
only person to sign both the treaty of Versailles and the UN Charter, was a
major supporter of Zionist colonisation of Palestine, so much so, that
socialist Zionist colonists in Palestine would later name a kibbutz, the
major institution of "master race
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Liberalism/2blvDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Domenico+losurdo&printsec=frontcover>
socialism", after him
<https://samilhistory.com/2017/05/13/a-kibbutz-called-jan-smuts/>.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-apartheid-long-making-news>

Israel has long been an apartheid state. Admitting it now is too little,
too late

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-apartheid-long-making-news>

Zionists believed that the Palestinians were not unlike Black African
natives, and especially those from the former German colonies, such as
Namibia, who Smuts had insisted had no rights to self-determination. Those
people were, Smuts said
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Indigenous_Peoples_of_the_British_Domini/qzIw-c1YOAIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=barbarians>,
“barbarians to whom it would be impracticable to apply any ideas of
political self-determination in the European sense”. These African settler
colonies would function as a model for the Zionists in Palestine.

Smuts
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Non_Jewish_Zionism/QiWSQgAACAAJ?hl=en>
had
declared: “I need not remind you that the white people of South Africa, and
especially the older Dutch population, has been brought up almost entirely
on Jewish tradition… the Old Testament has been the very matrix of Dutch
culture here in South Africa.” The Jewish people, Smuts said
<https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=NUYLAAAAIAAJ&q=The+Jewish+people+has+had+a+mission,+a+civilising+mission,+in+the+world,+second,+perhaps,+to+none&dq=The+Jewish+people+has+had+a+mission,+a+civilising+mission,+in+the+world,+second,+perhaps,+to+none&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjk0rrlvdPzAhXh5eAKHWiEAEkQ6AF6BAgFEAI>,
“has had a mission, a civilising mission, in the world, second, perhaps, to
none.”

The British cabinet offered
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/No_Enchanted_Palace/FGmYDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=smuts>
Smuts the position of first high commissioner of the Palestine Mandate so
that he "would civilise the Arabs as well as the Africans". He declined on
account of his commitment to South Africa, and the British Jewish Zionist
Herbert Samuel was appointed instead.

Smuts had also been initially selected by Prime Minister David Lloyd George
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/1917/fsFhYp6HQIUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=smuts>
to lead the 1917 British military expedition to conquer Palestine, but
Smuts preferred to serve in the imperial war cabinet. Lloyd George sent his
second choice to Palestine, General Edmund Allenby, who had himself served
previously in South Africa.
Torture of Palestinians

The South African white supremacist model inspired German Zionist Chaim
Arlosoroff as early as 1927, when he claimed
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Comrades_and_Enemies/OUfZdWktbTQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=bar>that
the need for the Zionists to overlook the welfare of Palestinian Arab
workers was right and necessary and not unlike what was unfolding in South
Africa.

White workers in South Africa had created a "colour bar
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Comrades_and_Enemies/OUfZdWktbTQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=bar>",
which excluded non-whites from skilled and well-paid jobs, something that,
according to Arolosoroff, Jewish colonists must implement in Palestine to
create a separate settler-colonial enclave. It was this policy of apartheid
that the Zionist leadership instituted throughout the British Mandate
period and later in Israel.

[image: Israeli soldiers and their dogs]
Israeli soldiers and dogs of the special canine unit during exercises in
Tel Nof army base, central Israel, 14 November 2012 (AFP)

The British, as the colonial sponsor of settler-colonialism in both South
Africa and Palestine, would borrow methods from one settler-colony and
apply them to another.

During the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936-1939, the British torturers
brought South African white-trained dogs
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=dogs>
which they flew to Palestine for the task of tracking the Palestinians, and
had them savagely attack Palestinian revolutionaries. The British military
and police torture of Palestinians was on such a scale that it would later
become the basis for Britain’s even more savage torture of Mau Mau
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Mau%20Mau>
guerrillas in the British settler-colony of Kenya in the 1950s.

Israel’s alliance and friendship with the apartheid South African regime
continued until the latter’s final days

By the 1970s, with the South African and Israeli alliance defying a
decolonising world, the Israelis helped the South Africans keep their
native people down, especially in occupied Namibia, and assisted with South
African aggression against recently liberated Angola.

Israeli General Ariel Sharon instructed his South African hosts on the best
military methods to achieve these objectives. Sharon’s adviser, the
journalist Uriel Dan
<https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Israeli_Connection.html?id=7v-g21ksdVsC>,
who accompanied Sharon to South Africa as they joined a South African
military unit attacking Angola, described his impressions: “When I look at
the South African officers, when they speak Afrikaans or English, and
during operations, I imagine that soon they will give orders in Hebrew.
Their physical appearance, their freshness, openness, their battlefield
behaviour, all remind me of IDF officers. And I never said that about the
US and South Vietnamese officers I met.”

Israel’s alliance and friendship with the apartheid South African regime
continued until the latter’s final days.
Irony

The irony today is that the type of South African who reminded Dan of “IDF
officers” have themselves joined
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/south-africans-serving-in-idf-wont-be-convicted/>
the Israeli army. As post-apartheid South Africa is no longer as secure a
place for white colonists, Israel joins the United States, Canada and
Australia in welcoming white South Africans who moved settler-colonies
after the fall of apartheid.

Is the continued movement of white South Africans to settler villages in
Palestine evidence that this ideological connection continues?

South African racist dogs may no longer be needed in Israel as the Israeli
army has its own well-trained anti-Palestinian "Oketz
<https://www.idf.il/en/minisites/oketz-unit/>" dogs, imported from the
Netherlands
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/adri-nieuwhof/dutch-supplier-israeli-attack-dogs-compensates-palestinian-victim>
(coincidentally the mother country of Afrikaner settler colonialism in
South Africa) to attack the Palestinian people.

Apartheid ideas and South African dogs were exported to Palestine during
the British occupation of Palestine. Is the continued movement of white
South Africans to settler villages in Palestine evidence that this
ideological connection continues? Or is it simply a long-standing cultural
and spiritual connection which draws newly converted Jews to the relative
safety of Israel?

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
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