Jewish Ideas Daily has been succeeded and re-launched as Mosaic. Read more...

South Africa


The Halakhah of Selling Arms The Halakhah of Selling Arms
Tuesday, February 5, 2013 by Shlomo M. Brody | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Jewish law prohibits individuals from selling weapons to irresponsible or violent customers.  But how does this apply to Israel's arms sales to foreign governments?
Editors' Picks
Looking for Apartheid in All the Wrong Places Benjamin Pogrund, Guardian. Israel’s move to the right leads some people to charge that it is nearing South African-style apartheid.  These people have no idea of what real apartheid was like. 
After Apartheid David Hazony, Forward. While many South African Jews actively opposed apartheid, post-apartheid South Africa has not proved entirely hospitable to the Jewish community.
The Forgotten Firebrand Sue Vice, H-Net. Appalled at the secularism of inter-war Anglo-Jewry, poet Izak Goller bemoaned “the gods of the shops and the warehouses / Hollow papier-mâché imitations of the Golden Calf of our ancestors!”
The New South Africa? Ben Levitas, Jerusalem Post. While the South African government regularly accuses Israel of oppression, it remains on good terms with Mugabe, Omar Bashir, and Assad.