When Bush was promising to liberate Iraq’s people, Mandela said, “All that he wants is Iraqi oil.” When Bush claimed Iraq wanted nuclear weapons, Mandela reminded him that the US was the only country that actually used them and that Israel already had them.

The US media will be lionizing and sanitizing Mandela and will ignore his criticisms of US war policies, especially over nuclear weapons, aggression against Arab countries and support for apartheid regimes. Two articles, the first from 2010 and the second from today’s sources remind us about the real Mandela:

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Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons

Exclusive: Secret apartheid-era papers give first official evidence of Israeli nuclear weapons

Chris McGreal in Washington 

Follow @chrismcgrealFollow @guardian

The Guardian, Sunday 23 May 2010

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence.

The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.

They will also undermine Israel's attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a "responsible" power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted.

A spokeswoman for Peres today said the report was baseless and there were "never any negotiations" between the two countries. She did not comment on the authenticity of the documents.

South African documents show that the apartheid-era military wanted the missiles as a deterrent and for potential strikes against neighbouring states.

The documents show both sides met on 31 March 1975. Polakow-Suransky writes in his book published in the US this week, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. At the talks Israeli officials "formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal".

Among those attending the meeting was the South African military chief of staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong. He immediately drew up a memo in which he laid out the benefits of South Africa obtaining the Jericho missiles but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.

The memo, marked "top secret" and dated the same day as the meeting with the Israelis, has previously been revealed but its context was not fully understood because it was not known to be directly linked to the Israeli offer on the same day and that it was the basis for a direct request to Israel. In it, Armstrong writes: "In considering the merits of a weapon system such as the one being offered, certain assumptions have been made: a) That the missiles will be armed with nuclear warheads manufactured in RSA (Republic of South Africa) or acquired elsewhere."

But South Africa was years from being able to build atomic weapons. A little more than two months later, on 4 June, Peres and Botha met in Zurich. By then the Jericho project had the codename Chalet.

The top secret minutes of the meeting record that: "Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available." The document then records: "Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes. Minister Botha expressed his appreciation and said that he would ask for advice." The "three sizes" are believed to refer to the conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons.

The use of a euphemism, the "correct payload", reflects Israeli sensitivity over the nuclear issue and would not have been used had it been referring to conventional weapons. It can also only have meant nuclear warheads as Armstrong's memorandum makes clear South Africa was interested in the Jericho missiles solely as a means of delivering nuclear weapons.

In addition, the only payload the South Africans would have needed to obtain from Israel was nuclear. The South Africans were capable of putting together other warheads.

Botha did not go ahead with the deal in part because of the cost. In addition, any deal would have to have had final approval by Israel's prime minister and it is uncertain it would have been forthcoming.

South Africa eventually built its own nuclear bombs, albeit possibly with Israeli assistance. But the collaboration on military technology only grew over the following years. South Africa also provided much of the yellowcake uranium that Israel required to develop its weapons.

The documents confirm accounts by a former South African naval commander, Dieter Gerhardt – jailed in 1983 for spying for the Soviet Union. After his release with the collapse of apartheid, Gerhardt said there was an agreement between Israel and South Africa called Chalet which involved an offer by the Jewish state to arm eight Jericho missiles with "special warheads". Gerhardt said these were atomic bombs. But until now there has been no documentary evidence of the offer.

Some weeks before Peres made his offer of nuclear warheads to Botha, the two defence ministers signed a covert agreement governing the military alliance known as Secment. It was so secret that it included a denial of its own existence: "It is hereby expressly agreed that the very existence of this agreement... shall be secret and shall not be disclosed by either party".

The agreement also said that neither party could unilaterally renounce it.

The existence of Israel's nuclear weapons programme was revealed by Mordechai Vanunu to the Sunday Times in 1986. He provided photographs taken inside the Dimona nuclear site and gave detailed descriptions of the processes involved in producing part of the nuclear material but provided no written documentation.

Documents seized by Iranian students from the US embassy in Tehran after the 1979 revolution revealed the Shah expressed an interest to Israel in developing nuclear arms. But the South African documents offer confirmation Israel was in a position to arm Jericho missiles with nuclear warheads.

Israel pressured the present South African government not to declassify documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky. "The Israeli defence ministry tried to block my access to the Secment agreement on the grounds it was sensitive material, especially the signature and the date," he said. "The South Africans didn't seem to care; they blacked out a few lines and handed it over to me. The ANC government is not so worried about protecting the dirty laundry of the apartheid regime’s old allies."

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American Studies Association endorses academic boycott of Israel

by Renee Lewis December 5, 2013 1:14PM ET

Organization says Israeli academic institutions 'complicit in oppression that denies Palestinians rights'

Topics: Education Israel Palestine

The executive body of the American Studies Association (ASA), the nation’s oldest and largest association of scholars of American culture and history, on Wednesday endorsed a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, calling them complicit in a "multi-tiered system of oppression that has denied Palestinians their basic rights." The American Jewish Committee (AJC) denounced the boycott decision as "despicable."

The resolution to shun Israeli academic institutions was approved unanimously by the 20-member national council, which has urged the ASA's 5,000 members to adopt it as policy.

“This complicity has been extensively documented, and manifests through direct research and production of military technologies — as with the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion)’s partnerships with Israeli weapons manufacturers … and Tel Aviv University’s development of weapons systems used by the occupation army in committing grave violations of human rights,” the ASA wrote in a news release.

While the movement to use boycott tactics to pressure Israel on Palestinian rights has considerable support in Europe, it has been largely opposed by major academic institutions in the U.S. until now.

The ASA, in its explanation of the decision, also accused Israeli universities of discriminatory treatment of Palestinian students by cracking down on Palestinian cultural events and political protests and spying on Palestinian student activists.

But the AJC countered that it was the ASA's council that was guilty of discrimination.

“Treating Israeli academic institutions in a way no other universities are treated anywhere else in the world is discrimination pure and simple,” said Kenneth Stern, the AJC’s director on anti-Semitism and extremism.

Stern assailed what he called the "factually inaccurate and vile language" the ASA had used to describe Israel.

“The ASA’s 'Frequently Asked Questions' accompanying the boycott resolution claims Israel practices 'apartheid' and that Israel itself is a 'Zionist settler-colonialist project,'" Stern said.

The campaign to boycott Israeli academic institutions is one arm of a global movement known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which began in 2005 and seeks to rally international pressure on Israel similar to that mustered against South Africa under minority rule. Campaigners have also petitioned musicians to cancel tours of Israel, and to boycott products produced by Israeli companies in occupied territory.

US support for Israel

The AJC said the academic boycott “contravenes the most basic values of academic freedom,” and questioned why an association dedicated to the study of American culture and history would get involved.

For its part, the ASA said on its website that it is supporting the boycott because “U.S. tax dollars fund the occupation, colonization, and apartheid that daily violates Palestinian academic and other freedoms,” and because Washington routinely uses its veto in the U.N. Security Council to international action in response.

The ASA said it is committed to the pursuit of social justice and to the struggle against all forms of racism — including anti-Semitism.