Israel in Africa. Yotam Gidron
if any, experienced.47 While in Israel the army fought external threats, in Africa it was utilised to distribute resources and consolidate state power or capture it from those who failed to managed it wisely.
The initiative that came to epitomise the naivety of Israel’s aspiration to transfer its nation-building experience to Africa was its aspiration to establish paramilitary youth organisations, which were loosely based on the Israeli Nahal and Gadna schemes. Israel assisted with the establishment of such youth programmes in more than 20 African countries,48 seeking to promote national consciousness, unity and discipline, ‘foster the spirit of national responsibility and pioneering among the youth and … educate them for good citizenship’.49 Assistance in the establishment of youth organisations was among Israel’s most popular and sought-after forms of support in Africa. But while in Israel these programmes were mythologised as the ultimate representation of Zionist state-building and pioneership, in Africa they achieved few if any of their imagined developmental goals and proved too expensive to sustain. Ethnic tensions, high desertion rates and the fact that fresh graduates moved to urban areas in search of jobs in the civil service (after participating in the programmes and acquiring agricultural skills) often rendered the initiatives rather futile.50
Propaganda, aid and their limits
Israel’s main objective in Africa was mobilising support for its position in the Israeli–Arab conflict. Along with direct assistance, therefore, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mossad invested a great amount of energy and resources in public diplomacy, propaganda and international reputation campaigns – hasbara (literally: ‘explanation’), as these activities are collectively known in Hebrew. Israeli officials and diplomats closely monitored media coverage of the Israeli–Arab conflict and meticulously collected newspaper articles and foreign propaganda publications they came across. They also regularly reached out to local media outlets in order to promote stories that served Israeli interests and showed Arabs in a bad light (as anti-African, racist or sources of destabilisation and violence), share materials they wanted published and ‘brief’ editors and journalists about the situation in the Middle East. Their adversaries, of course, were doing more or less the same.
The Israeli–Arab competition over influence was therefore, from its very beginning, also an aggressive war of propaganda: a battle over the international narrative about Israeli–Arab–African relations and about the events unfolding in the Middle East, fought with brochures, newspapers, images, films, exhibitions, lectures and cultural events. Even technical assistance programmes, it was discreetly acknowledged, facilitated ‘the dissemination of positive propaganda’, not least because they projected an admirable image of Israel as a generous and peace-loving young nation, thereby countering the Arab propaganda that portrayed Israel as a cruel and violent agent of Western imperialism and equated Zionism with colonialism.51 The fact that the Mossad was discreetly involved in Israel’s image management efforts is a testament to the strategic importance Israel accorded to this issue.
At an early stage, Israel also tried to compete with Egypt over East Africa’s airwaves and radio listeners. In late 1960, the Israeli public radio service Kol Yisrael (‘Voice of Israel’) began broadcasting a daily half-hour programme in Swahili. The initiative came as a response to the activities of Radio Cairo, which had broadcast Swahili programmes several hours a day since the mid-1950s, spreading anti-colonial and anti-Western ideas. Radio Cairo was particularly popular among Muslims in Zanzibar and along the Swahili Coast.52 The Israeli broadcasts were managed from Jerusalem by two Tanganyikan students who translated texts that Israeli officials wrote for them, but the initiative was discontinued rather quickly, as the radio signal proved to be too weak to allow decent reception in East Africa.53
In the African postcolonial political order dominated by strongmen and centralised power, however, propaganda and public opinion had their limits. To begin with, the political sphere was small and hardly extended beyond urban areas, while political influence was concentrated in the hands of the few. Public displays of friendship and support were always important for Israeli diplomats, but for their efforts in Africa to be effective they also had to be close to the centres of power and to keep those who held power happy. Political support only mattered if given by the ruling elites of each country, and therefore these were the individuals with whom ties had to be cultivated. Rafael Ruppin, Israel’s first ambassador to Tanganyika, recalled:
As my familiarity with Tanganyika’s elite deepened, it became apparent to me, that as far as foreign policy is concerned (and the position of the government of Tanganyika on the Israeli–Arab conflict is included in this area) ‘public opinion’ in Tanganyika narrowed down to no more than 300 to 400 people. The millions of citizens did not have an opinion on the matter, the issue was of no interest to them, and they had no tools to express their views or to influence policy makers. In an audience of this size one can deal with ‘personal hasbara’.54
It is therefore not surprising that in every country assistance was channelled through key individuals who were supposed to be convinced to support the Israeli position on the Israeli–Arab conflict. More than an official or stated policy, this was a natural reaction to the conditions on the ground and to the fact that Israel had limited resources and very specific political objectives. Having witnessed several African coups, by the second half of the 1960s Israeli officials also came to understand the vulnerability of diplomacy that is based on personal deals with leaders and realised that they needed to identify and befriend high-profile military officers as well, as they might end up in power at some point.55
Over time, however, Israel could not sustain its investments in aid and publicity in the race for influence in Africa. Like all foreign aid in the postcolonial period, Israeli support was easily used by African leaders to advance their local objectives. Youth training programmes suffered from local attempts to ‘transform them into personal political and patronage machines’, for example, while African students sent for training were often chosen based on their personal connections rather than merit.56 More problematic for Israel was the fact that the Israeli–Arab rivalry for African support gave African leaders great leverage vis-à-vis both sides, as they were always able to increase the price of their friendship by threatening, more or less explicitly, to strengthen their cooperation with the other side. Since technical cooperation and development aid emerged primarily as a tool for increasing Israeli political and ideological influence, it was often promised out of the Israeli urge to gain a foothold anywhere that would otherwise be occupied by the Egyptians or the Soviets.
Israeli attempts to convince Western countries, and primarily the US, to fund its aid operations in Africa were largely unsuccessful, and its economic problems at home made it increasingly difficult for it to expand or even maintain its operations in Africa.57 Meanwhile, the expectations Israel raised, the promises it made and the requests it received exceeded its capacity. By the mid-1960s it became clear that Israeli developmental models were not going to magically transform Africa any time soon, and the volume of Israel’s technical assistance began to decline. Many programmes had to be frozen, and Israel had to be more selective with its assistance and avoid expensive and wasteful initiatives such as the establishment of paramilitary youth organisations.58
The battle for diplomatic support
The challenges Israel faced in outmanoeuvring its Arab adversaries in the fields of propaganda and development aid were ultimately reflected in the Israeli struggle to secure African diplomatic support in multilateral fora. While the 1960s are often portrayed and remembered as a period of flourishing Israeli–African relations, Israel’s ability to leverage its warm relationship with individual African states into political support was limited. That new African states consistently recognised Israel and established relations with it was important in and of itself. But Israel also needed the public backing of these new countries in international fora to protect its interests at home, and this support was much more difficult to gain than it initially seemed.
Since Egypt, under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser, turned to Africa at the time as well and sought to curb Israeli influence,59 the Middle Eastern rivalry featured in all the pan-Africanist conferences leading up to the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The First