Israel in Africa. Yotam Gidron
in charge of cultivating these ‘periphery’ alliances and was therefore deeply involved in Israel’s diplomacy in East Africa.
In the early years of Israeli engagement with Africa, some saw a potential fully-fledged military ally in Ethiopia. It was not only located in a strategic spot, but also possessed one of the largest militaries in Africa and sought to contain Arab influence in the region. The fact that most of the waters of the Nile – Egypt’s economic lifeblood – flow from the Ethiopian highlands only increased the Israeli urge to gain a foothold in the country. When in 1963, Shimon Peres, then deputy minister of defence, together with Yitzhak Rabin, then deputy chief of staff, visited Ethiopia, they met with Emperor Haile Selassie, Prime Minister (and acting foreign minister) Aklilu Habta-Wold and military commanders, and were taken by their hosts on a small private tour to inspect the Blue Nile. ‘It is our goal to reach an alliance with Ethiopia – cultural, economic, and military. We must spare no effort and resources in working toward this aim’, Peres wrote following the visit.27
In fact, by 1963 there were already more than 30 Israeli experts working in Ethiopia, including university lecturers, doctors and engineers, as well as policemen who were advising and training the national police forces.28 The latter were also armed with Israeli Uzi submachine guns.29 A similar number of Israelis were attached as advisors to the Ethiopian army, working with each of its four divisions, the high command, the intelligence, the navy and the air force. As a memorandum prepared by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1963 explained, military assistance had to ‘be distributed widely and to the “depth” of the apparatus with a maximal emphasis on our role in the training of the senior command personnel’.30 Israeli intelligence agencies were working closely with their Ethiopian counterparts, training them, and using Ethiopia as a base for operations in other countries.31 The Israeli community in Ethiopia at the time already numbered more than 400 people.32
While much of Israel’s military assistance in the early 1960s was focused on the Ogaden region in southern Ethiopia, where the imperial government was facing a Somali nationalist rebellion, Middle East politics were most influential along the coasts of the Red Sea, in the context of the struggle over Eritrea. In 1950, the UN General Assembly – under US pressure – adopted a resolution federating Eritrea, which was previously an Italian colony, with Ethiopia. By 1960, this led to the emergence of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), a predominantly Muslim armed group that was first formed by Eritrean exiles in Cairo and, inspired by Nasser’s pan-Arab ideologies of the time, opposed Haile Selassie’s hegemonic aspirations in the region.33 Arab countries, primarily Syria, supported the ELF, while Israel viewed the possibility of an independent Eritrean state as a threat to its access to the Red Sea and backed Ethiopia, providing training to the elite units that fought the rebels.34
Ethiopia’s strategic importance also rendered Uganda, Tanganyika (later Tanzania) and Kenya a priority, though the first two were of greater concern for Israel because of their susceptibility to Arab and Soviet influence. Uganda also assumed strategic importance because of the White Nile, which flows through the country on its way to Sudan and Egypt. Following Uganda’s independence, President Milton Obote turned to Israel for military training and arms. Israelis were deeply involved in training the Ugandan army, and some Ugandans travelled to Israel for training as well. By 1967, it was estimated that Uganda purchased more than $12 million worth of arms from Israel, including a number of light planes, transport aircrafts and a dozen tanks, all second-hand.35 Meanwhile, in Tanzania, Israel trained hundreds of military officers, police maritime forces as well as a unit of ‘police paratroopers’ – a short-lived vanity project that apparently ended once it became evident that Tanzania did not possess any suitable planes to parachute the trained policemen.36
Israel as a developmental model
In Israel, as in most African states, the first decades of independence were characterised by an intensive process of state formation and state-led development. Being more than a decade older than most African countries, Israel positioned itself as a model: a young country that made the desert bloom, forged capable state institutions, and succeeded, within a short period of time, in creating a sense of national unity among its diverse population. The image of Zionist nation- and state-building that Israel projected in its early years had a lustre that spoke directly to African visions and aspirations of modernisation at the time. Drawing comparisons between the Jewish and young African states quickly became a central feature in Israeli–African engagements, with leaders highlighting Jewish and African histories of oppression and liberation and the supposedly similar challenges their countries faced. Both Israel and Tanganyika, Julius Nyerere wrote, faced ‘two major tasks: building the nation and changing the face of the land, physically and economically’.37
A distinct characteristic of the Zionist state formation experience was its salient reliance on the military. The seemingly successful deployment of the Israeli army for uniting the nation, reconfiguring the country’s social and physical landscape, making the state present in people’s lives and pursuing civilian tasks such as infrastructure development was seen as an inspiration for young African countries.38 Particularly appealing were the Israeli programmes of the Fighting Pioneer Youth (Nahal) and Youth Battalions (Gadna) which mobilised youths for paramilitary training, and, in the case of the Nahal, agricultural education and the development of new Jewish settlements. ‘In Israel I have seen youths trained so that they are a source of pride to the nation, and they are readily available for all sorts of national work programmes’, Tom Mboya, who visited Israel for the first time in 1962, later recounted. ‘We must plan this way.’39
Israel was not in a position to offer African countries financial support comparable to that provided by the US, the Soviets or even European states.40 The most celebrated aspects of its support were technical cooperation and training programmes. A section for technical cooperation was established in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1958, which was transformed into an independent department and came to be known as Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (or MASHAV, the acronym of its Hebrew name).41 Between 1958 and 1970 almost 2,500 Israeli experts were sent to Africa to provide training or support local development projects, and by 1972 more than 9,000 Africans had travelled to Israel for courses and training.42 These commonly focused on agriculture, rural settlement projects and youth organisations, but covered numerous other areas, from health, through education, taxation, law and administration, engineering, communication, social work, poultry framing, construction and architecture.43 And as much as the aim of Israel’s aid projects was to transfer knowledge from Israel to African countries, they often also represented an opportunity for Israelis to gain valuable experience and expertise.44
Government-led joint ventures in the fields of trade, farming and infrastructure development were another popular modus operandi. These initiatives were conventionally co-owned by Israeli companies (often but not always owned by the government or the Histadrut) and African governments and combined training of local African staff with what were supposed to be economically sound investments. The Ghanaian–Israeli Black Star Shipping Line mentioned above is one example of such a collaboration. Israelis initially occupied the main administrative and technical positions, but these were slowly transferred to local African staff, as African governments also assumed full ownership of the enterprise.45 Many of these collaborations left their mark on the urban landscapes of African capitals in the form of Israeli planned or constructed residential complexes, universities, hotels, government buildings and airports, some of which still stand and are in use today.
But as exported development models often are, many of the Israeli initiatives were wasteful and unrealistic. Israel and African countries had much less in common than political rhetoric suggested or than politicians or diplomats were willing to admit. While Israel was indeed a young country, the Jews in Israel were primarily settlers, immigrants and refugees, dominated by an educated European elite. The geographical and institutional conditions in Israel and in the African countries were also vastly different: Israelis inherited a far more developed state from the British than any African nation had.46 Moreover, the post-independence process of state-building in Israel took place against the background of ongoing