20 Arriving for Training Today : Israeli Project Aims at Ties to S. Africa Blacks

It was the beginning of winter in South Africa, but it was hot in the Johannesburg residence where Bishop Desmond Tutu and three other black leaders were haranguing an Israeli visitor.

They said it was abhorrent for any state to have ties with the racist South African government, and doubly so for a state founded on the ruins of Nazi death factories.

The criticism seemed to be even heavier than the Israeli emissary, Shimshon Zelniker, had expected it to be. And as the diatribe continued, Zelniker recalled the other day, he sought solace in the thought that with his mission collapsing around him, he would at least have some free time to explore the country.

Shift in Mood

Then the mood suddenly shifted.

“After killing me for two hours,” Zelniker said, “they looked at me and said, ‘Now, what should we talk about?’ ”

And the conversation turned to how Israel could help South Africa’s blacks.

The first tangible result of that meeting, which took place on June 17, 1985, is expected this morning, when about 20 South African black leaders are to arrive in Israel to begin a month of technical, organizational and leadership training at the Afro-Asian Institute run by Histadrut, the Israeli trade union federation.

The training program is so sensitive that most officials here refused to talk about it for the record until after they were sure that the trainees were safely out of South Africa.

The story of how it evolved, as pieced together from conversations with several people who were involved, features a cast of characters that includes, in addition to Tutu and Zelniker, California Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), experts at a Jewish “think tank” in Los Angeles, two representatives of Prime Minister Shimon Peres, people from the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and an Israeli activist better known for her work on behalf of Soviet Jews.

The promoters have differing visions of how much they can accomplish. At the least, they hope, their efforts will lead to a dialogue between Israel and South African blacks, and in the process help to ease tension between American blacks and Jews.

Some see it as no less than the beginning of a major diplomatic shift in which Israel forges ties with the blacks, who they believe will inevitably emerge as the leaders of South Africa.

Hayden a Prime Mover

Hayden, who served as a catalyst to bring some of the participants together, said in a telephone interview that without a change in attitudes on both sides, “you’re going to see another situation where a major revolution occurs in which the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) is viewed as a friend and Israel as part of the enemy camp.”

“I don’t think that’s inevitable,” Hayden said. “But time is short.”

Israel’s relationship with the white minority government of South Africa, which lies at the heart of all this, is one of the oldest, most complex and most controversial of the Jewish state’s diplomatic ties.

The authorities in Pretoria were quick to recognize Israel after it was established in 1948, and in 1953, South African Prime Minister Daniel Malan made an official visit to this country, the first by a foreign head of government.

Relations began to cool in 1961, when Israel joined Britain and other countries in condemning apartheid, South Africa’s policy of racial separation. In 1963, Israel downgraded its diplomatic mission in Pretoria.

Arab Oil Pressure

Relations warmed again as criticism in black Africa and elsewhere mounted against Israel’s continuing occupation of the lands it captured in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. The trend was accelerated by the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the subsequent Arab oil embargo, which strained ties between Israel and the Western nations that were the core of its international support.

In 1974, Israel named its first full ambassador to Pretoria, and by 1976 it was absenting itself from anti-apartheid votes at the United Nations, according to Naomi Chazan, an Africa specialist at Hebrew University.

Today, Israeli officials regularly and publicly decry apartheid. But the Jerusalem-based government is nonetheless depicted by its enemies as an economic, military and spiritual ally of the white South African regime. They contend that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories is comparable with Pretoria’s treatment of the blacks.

It is a comparison that Israel’s defenders blast as “the big lie.”

Trade between the two countries grew thirteen-fold between 1970 and 1984, to a peak of $275 million, but this is still only a tiny fraction of each nation’s total trade.

Europeans Sold Much More

Aharon Klieman, a Tel Aviv University political scientist and expert on Israeli arms sales, writes in a new book, “Israel’s Global Reach,” that South Africa is believed to have been the largest single customer for Israeli arms in the 1970s, accounting for 35% of purchases. But these sales were minor compared to those of Pretoria’s principal arms suppliers--France, Germany and Britain.

There have been reports of nuclear collaboration between the two countries, but no hard evidence has ever been produced.

As critical as many Israelis and others are of government policies in the occupied territories, those who are familiar with South Africa insist that “it’s not apartheid.”

Although Israel is morally opposed to South African racial policies, it maintains formal ties for legitimate reasons of state, defenders of its South Africa relations say. For one thing, there is a Jewish community of more than 100,000 in South Africa, and Israel considers the welfare of these South African Jews at least in part its responsibility.

About 4,000 South African Jews left the country last year, but according to Israeli officials, only about 1 in 10 moved here. About 16,000 former South African Jews currently live in Israel, with many who emigrated earlier having moved back. A trickle are still returning each year, joining up to 20,000 former Israelis now said to live in South Africa.

A Function of Isolation

Those who defend recognition of South Africa argue that, as diplomatically isolated as Israel is, it is not in a position to reject recognition from a country that offers it. And they note that countries around the world have relations with countries whose values they condemn.

Israel’s friends bristle at what they see as the other side’s distortions of the Pretoria-Jerusalem link, but Harry Wall, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Jerusalem office, concedes that the relationship “is somewhat disquieting to supporters of Israel who are strongly anti-apartheid.”

It was this troubling ambivalence that became the backdrop for the black leadership training program.

The roots of the effort go back to a dinner in late 1984 at Hayden’s home in Santa Monica. The guests included Tutu and a number of American black and Jewish leaders.

“Quite spontaneously,” Hayden said, “in that dinner conversation there came to be a frank exchange about the question of Israel’s relationship with South Africa, which has been one of several thorns festering in the relationship between blacks and Jews in this country.”

Tutu’s Attitude Described

Hayden said he found Tutu “critical of Israel” and “skeptical about an improvement,” but “open to dialogue.” At a follow-up meeting in New York, Tutu agreed in principle to meet with an Israeli representative in South Africa.

To get Israeli agreement, Hayden said, he approached a friend at the Los Angeles-based Center for Foreign Policy Options, described as a Jewish think tank.

Given the sensitivity of the situation, the Israeli government has kept its official distance from the project. But sources said that a key Peres political adviser, Nimrod Novik, took up the cause. Novik and Zelniker were members of the transition team that drafted key position papers for Peres in the summer of 1984, just before he took office as head of an Israeli coalition government made up of Peres’ Labor Party and the right-wing Likud Bloc.

Hayden said he also discussed the subject of closer Israeli ties with South African blacks at meetings here last November with Peres and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Likud’s leader.

“I was convinced . . . it needed the full encouragement of the Israeli government,” he said, adding: “I got that encouragement from both.”

Trip Resulted

What came out of those early discussions--and follow-up work by a South African Jewish industrialist and an Israeli activist on Soviet Jewry living temporarily in Johannesburg--was Zelniker’s trip to South Africa last June.

At that meeting it was made clear that the black leaders were looking for concrete action and not just dialogue, Zelniker said. “I told them, ‘Look, I am not here in the belief that I can change (Israeli government) policy,’ ” he said. But he was authorized by Histadrut to offer training at the Afro-Asian Institute.

Over the last 15 years, the institute has given technical and leadership training to about 15,000 people, including 8,000 from black Africa. And it had two other selling points. It has no official government tie, and Histadrut has a long and vocal anti-apartheid record, including refusal to have any relations with South Africa’s white unions.

Zelniker and the head of the institute, Yehuda Paz, returned to South Africa in January to work out the final details of the program. The Jerusalem Post reported at the time that an unspecified Histadrut delegation was to meet with leading figures in the Congress of South African Trade Unions, a new black trade union federation.

The organizers refused to disclose the names of the prospective trainees or how they were chosen. But they said all are established community leaders. They include not only unionists but leaders from women’s, health, religious and educational organizations. Some have spent time in South African prisons, and the first group is said to be largely from Soweto.

Soweto Figures

South African sources Saturday identified two of those aboard the plane as Sally Motlana, president of the South Africa Black Housewives League, and Legau Mathabathe, former principal of a Soweto high school and one of those who participated in a mass resignation of black teachers after the Soweto uprising of 1976. Mathabathe is currently the only black director of Premier Milling Co., a large South African firm.

Tutu, it is said, is not involved in any details of the effort.

Each group of 20 to 25 trainees is expected to remain at the institute for a month, with her expenses paid by Histadrut and the Center for Policy Options. The Anti-Defamation League is also supporting the program, Wall said.