B.J. VORSTERA digression: I’ll admit that growing up as a Jewish liberal in South Africa, I somehow managed to convince myself that apartheid had nothing to do with us, that Jews were somehow automatically in the anti-apartheid column — it was a lot easier to do this in light of the rabid anti-Semitism of the ruling National Party, whose leaders had actively sympathized with the Nazis. Even then, it wasn’t true; evidence to the contrary was everywhere: Israel was, together with Pinochet’s Chile, the closest foreign ally of the regime, and in 1976, it welcomed the unrepentant Nazi, Prime Minister John Vorster (who had spent time in an internment camp during the war after being captured running sabotage operations under the direction of the Nazi intelligence service) on a state visit, and even took him to Yad Vashem! Activists of my wing of the Zionist youth movement, the socialist-inclined Habonim, protested, and were told to shut up by the senior leadership of the SA Zionist Federation. The following year, one of the leading lights of the Likud-aligned Revisionist bloc that dominated the SAZF, Abe Hoppenstein, stood for parliament on the National Party ticket.
