For those with long memories, the seed of South Africa’s case against Israel—accusing it of genocidal acts in the Gaza Strip—might be traced to a spring day nearly 50 years ago. On April 9, 1976, South Africa’s white supremacist prime minister, Balthazar Johannes Vorster, was welcomed with full red-carpet treatment to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
The moment, for those who knew the prime minister’s past, was incongruous. A former Nazi sympathizer who had proudly declared in 1942 that “we stand for Christian Nationalism, which is an ally of National Socialism,” bowed his head, knelt, and laid a wreath in memory of Adolf Hitler’s victims before his diplomatic entourage whisked him away to more important meetings.
Vorster was not in town to make amends for his Nazi past. He was there to cement arms deals with the Israeli government, which had, since 1974, become one of the apartheid regime’s most significant suppliers of military technology. In the years that followed, as many other nations imposed sanctions and distanced themselves from Pretoria, Israel drew closer—supplying the regime with bombs and artillery shells, aircraft components, military training, and more while cooperating on the construction and testing of missile
