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Chapter 1

AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE

Within four days at the end of April 1948, more than 1,100 Palestinian refugees arrived by sea at the Egyptian city of Port Said. Many of them were women and children, travelling on ‘small steamers, fishing smacks, rowing boats and caiques’.¹ Coming from the coastal towns of Haifa and Jaffa, they were fleeing the violence that had erupted between Zionist and Palestinian armed groups after the UN General Assembly in November 1947 voted in favour of dividing Palestine into two independent states: one Jewish and one Arab. Most of the Palestinians who fled to Egypt were hosted in designated camps, but some of those who arrived early were able to settle in urban areas. On 16 May 1948, Hala Sakakini, the daughter of the Palestinian writer Khalil Sakakini who fled Jerusalem with her family, wrote in her diary that Cairo’s neighbourhood of Heliopolis ‘has become a Palestinian colony. Every other house is occupied by a Palestinian family’.²

By the time the Israeli–Arab war was over, more than 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced or expelled, primarily to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, rather than to Egypt. For them, these events marked ‘the catastrophe’, or in Arabic, al-Nakba. Israelis, however, remember 1948 as their ‘War of Independence’, as it marked the establishment of the Jewish state. For them, the return of Palestinian refugees was, and remains to this day, unacceptable. When the war ended, there were some 156,000 Arabs and 716,000 Jews in Israel.³ Allowing 700,000 Palestinian refugees to return to their homes would have threatened the Jewish demographic majority. A moment of liberation for the Jewish people and a disaster for the Palestinians, the violence of 1948 resulted in one of the world’s greatest and most protracted refugee crises and led to one of its most persistent and politicised conflicts – both of which are yet to be resolved. It established a set of facts that continue to shape Israel’s domestic and international politics today and have been a defining factor in the history of its engagement with Africa as well.

It did not take long for the impact of Israel’s independence and the 1948 war to be felt in Africa beyond Egypt. The Arab League – comprising at the time Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria – refused to recognise the new Jewish state and boycotted it. Egypt argued that it had the right to ban Sudan, then under a joint Anglo-Egyptian government, from trading with Israel as well. Israel, however, saw in trade with colonial Sudan an opportunity to undermine the Arab boycott. Some Israeli officials even entertained the idea of seeking ties with the country, but this was never seriously pursued.⁴ With its independence in January 1956, Sudan joined the Arab League. Over the next two years Israel tried to appeal to Washington and Paris to extend their political and financial support to Khartoum in order to keep it out of Egypt’s sphere of influence, but its efforts did not bear fruit.⁵ To find allies in Africa, Israel had to look further afield.

Israel turns to Africa

Histories of Israel’s engagement with Africa most commonly begin a few years after 1948, with the resounding diplomatic shock of the Bandung Conference. In 1955 Israel was excluded from the first Asian–African Conference, which was held in Bandung, Indonesia, and brought together 29 young nations to discuss issues of mutual concern and political and cultural cooperation. From the African continent, Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Sudan all participated. Israel was not only left out of this forum, but the participants formally expressed their support ‘of the rights of the Arab people of Palestine and called for the implementation of the United Nations Resolutions on Palestine and the achievement of the peaceful settlement of the Palestine question’.⁶ Similarly excluded from the conference was white-ruled South Africa – hardly a country Israel wanted to be associated with at the time.

A united Afro-Asian ‘Third World’ appeared to be emerging as a promising new force in the international sphere, and Israel was being branded as its enemy. The country’s foreign policy strategy, it became clear in Jerusalem, had to be reconsidered. Since independence in 1948, Israel primarily focused on strengthening its relationships with Western countries, with the view that strong ties with North America, Europe and the Soviet Union would guarantee its existence and support its economy.⁷ Otherwise, Israel’s diplomatic efforts in Asia in the early 1950s were limited, and largely unsuccessful. Israel had a friendly relationship with Burma, one of the organisers of the conference in Bandung, but failed to establish close ties with any of the region’s key powers, which all sided with the Palestinians. By the second half of the 1950s covert ties were also established with Turkey and Iran, the most significant aspect of which was a trilateral mechanism for intelligence sharing.⁸

‘I used to look around me at the United Nations in 1957 and 1958 and think to myself: “We have no family here”’, Golda Meir, Israel’s foreign minister at the time, recalled.⁹ Born in Russia in 1898 and educated in the US, in 1921 Meir migrated to British Mandate Palestine, where she joined the Histadrut, the Jewish General Federation of Labour in Palestine, and later Mapai, the Israeli Labour Party, which dominated the Israeli political landscape in the country’s first decades of independence. In 1956, Ben-Gurion appointed her as foreign minister, a position she would hold for almost a decade. She had never visited Africa before and her knowledge of the continent was basic at best when she first stepped into her new office in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in June 1956.¹⁰ Little did she know that by the time she left the ministry, she would have become the politician most strongly associated with Africa in Israel’s history.

Besides exclusion from the rising club of young postcolonial non-aligned states, another reason that Israeli attention turned to Africa in the late 1950s was the opening of the Red Sea for Israeli shipping. The right of Israeli ships to travel freely to and from Eilat, Israel’s sole port on the Red Sea, through the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits of Tiran, has been a matter of dispute between Israel and Egypt. In late October 1956, Israel invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, supported by Britain and France. This quickly led to a political crisis, and both the US and the Soviets demanded that Israel withdraw from the Egyptian territories. The Soviets threatened Israel with a military intervention, and the US with cutting aid. Israel withdrew, but was able to pressure Egypt to open the Straits of Tiran for Israeli shipping in return.¹¹ A military invasion into a neighbouring Arab country in cooperation with two colonial powers certainly did not help Israel’s reputation among young Afro-Asian states, but it did guarantee its access to the Red Sea and therefore to Ethiopia (then united with today’s Eritrea), the East African Coast and southern Africa.

Formally, Israel had low-key diplomatic ties with both Liberia and Ethiopia by the mid-1950s,¹² but it was its relationship with Ghana that marked the beginning of its extensive diplomatic efforts in Africa. A consulate in Accra was established in 1956, prior to Ghana’s independence, and was upgraded to an embassy upon independence in 1957. Ehud Avriel, Israel’s first ambassador to Ghana, recounted that at independence Kwame Nkrumah presented the Israeli delegation with ‘the same list of urgent requirements he expected from other older states’, and within a year ‘every single requirement on Nkrumah’s list had become a subject for intensive cooperation between Ghana and Israel’.¹³ As Levey writes, ‘Avriel’s objective was to turn Ghana into a showcase of Israel’s aid in Africa’s development’. He had three key aims:

First, the ambassador worked to gain both Prime Minister Nkrumah’s confidence and influence over him. Second, he broadened the scope of Israel’s economic ties with Ghana. Third, he initiated a defense connection with Ghana that created a precedent for Israel’s military ties with other African states.¹⁴

A series of bilateral initiatives were soon developed. The Israeli water planning authority (Tahal) assisted with water infrastructure development, the Israeli Histadrut’s construction firm Solel Boneh helped establish the Ghana National Construction Company, and a Ghanaian–Israeli shipping company was established – the Black Star Shipping Line – 60% of which was owned by the government of Ghana and 40% by the Israeli shipping company Zim. Israel sold light arms and provided training to the Ghanaian army, and in 1958 the two countries signed a trade agreement and Israel extended Ghana a $20 million loan.¹⁵ Israelis, including military officers, also assisted with the establishment of the Ghanaian Nautical College and the Flying Training School, which trained pilots for the Ghana Air Force and Ghana Airways.¹⁶ One Israeli expert even assisted with the establishment of the National Symphony Orchestra.¹⁷ Ambassador Avriel became a close confidant of Nkrumah, who was able to facilitate contact with other African leaders.¹⁸

Following the experience in Ghana, a decision was taken in Jerusalem to pursue ties with other African nations before they gained independence, in order to curb Arab influence as early as possible.¹⁹ Israel began sending envoys to African countries to court those local leaders who were expected to lead their nations after independence, promising technical assistance and military training. These initiatives had to be negotiated with Paris and London but were not always pursued with their approval. Both France and Britain were often concerned that allowing the establishment of official Israeli representations would lead to similar Arab demands. For this reason, for example, France opposed the opening of an Israeli consulate general in Dakar,²⁰ and Britain refused to allow Israel to open a consular office in Lagos.²¹ When the British similarly refused to let Israel send a consul to Dar es Salaam, Israel went ahead and sent a delegate without informing the British about the political nature of his mission. The British later threatened to deport him.²² Similar threats were made in Kenya, after the Israeli representative Asher Naim – who also travelled to Kenya after the British objected to the appointment of an Israeli consul general – met Jomo Kenyatta while the latter was under house arrest.²³

As far as establishing diplomatic ties was concerned, the Israeli strategy proved successful. The growth in Israeli presence on the continent during the years of African independence was extraordinary, especially given the fact that Israel was a small, young country, whose ties in Africa did not build on any existing diplomatic networks from the colonial period. By 1963, Israel had 22 embassies in Africa, and by the late 1960s, it had established ties with 33 countries (34 if South Africa is included).²⁴ While some countries clearly had greater geostrategic importance than others, Israel was still unconstrained by an alliance with either side of the Cold War in the early 1960s. It tried to reach out to as many African countries as possible. The only two countries that achieved independence at the time south of the Sahara and did not establish ties with Israel were Mauritania and Somalia.

Official visits of high-level Israeli politicians to Africa and African leaders to Israel became common. Golda Meir first travelled to Africa in 1958, visiting Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, and returned to the continent four more times by 1964, for extensive visits. Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi travelled to West Africa in 1962 and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in 1966.²⁵ African heads of states and government officials also visited Israel frequently, where they were regularly presented with the country’s development achievements. Africa quickly occupied an important place in Israel’s international strategy. Israel succeeded in showing the world – and primarily its Arab neighbours – that it was not ostracised or isolated but rather recognised and warmly welcomed by a considerable number of young post-colonial nations. Despite its size, limited economic capacity and young age, in Africa Israel became well-known for its military support and technical assistance programmes.

Seeking allies in the Horn

Across Africa, Israeli initiatives sought to consolidate political alliances and curb Arab influence. But while in West Africa Israeli interests were primarily diplomatic, the dynamics of East Africa and the Horn of Africa were viewed as part of the Middle Eastern conflict and Israeli military and intelligence objectives in these regions played an important role. The war of 1948, after all, did not end with peace but rather with a series of armistice agreements, and Israeli leaders were preparing for what some of them viewed as an inevitable ‘second round’. To counter its rivals and as part of a strategy that came to be known as the ‘periphery doctrine’ or the ‘alliance of the periphery’, Israel attempted to establish ties with the countries that surrounded its hostile Arab neighbours – to encircle its enemies with a ring of powerful, non-Arab, friends.²⁶ Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia all fell squarely within the scope of this strategy and became Israel’s satellite allies to its east, north and south. The Mossad was the main institution 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 violence along the country’s frontiers – a phenomenon that few African countries, 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 Conference of Independent African States, which was held in Accra in April 1958, adopted a rather neutral statement on the Israeli–Arab conflict, calling for a ‘just solution of the Palestine question’.⁶⁰ At the first conference of the All-African Peoples Organisation, which convened in Accra in December the same year, the Israeli–Arab conflict was kept off the agenda, to Israel’s relief. At this point, some argue, Israel still benefited from the ‘rivalry for continental leadership’ between Nasser and Nkrumah.⁶¹ When the Second Conference of Independent African States was convened in Addis Ababa in June 1960, it merely expressed its ‘concern’ that the Bandung and Accra declarations and the UN resolutions on Palestine were not implemented.⁶²

But it was not long before Israel was embroiled in continental power struggles that it initially wished to avoid. In January 1961, the leaders of Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Morocco and the United Arab Republic (comprising of Egypt and Syria) convened in Casablanca against the background of the political crisis in Congo. Israel already had formal relations with Ghana, Mali and Guinea at the time. At Egypt’s behest, one of the topics discussed in Casablanca was the Israeli–Arab conflict, and the leaders adopted a resolution in which they denounced ‘Israel an instrument in the service of imperialism and neo-colonialism not only in the Middle East but also in Africa and Asia’.⁶³

As a response to the so-called ‘Casablanca Group’, Senegal, Nigeria and Togo sponsored a conference in Monrovia in which 20 African states participated. The ‘Monrovia states’ were not necessarily more pro-Israel (among them were Somalia, Libya and Mauritania, none of which had relations with Israel) but at the conference they avoided the Israeli–Arab issue altogether for the sake of African unity, a position that ultimately served Israel. Due to the opposition of the Monrovia group, the issue also remained largely off the agenda of the OAU – established in Addis Ababa in 1963 – in its early years.⁶⁴ By delicately avoiding the Israeli–Arab issue, non-Arab African leaders could maintain ties with both sides and often benefit from both sides’ assistance.

Keeping the OAU unconcerned with the Middle East conflict was useful for Israel, but it was at the UN that its battle for legitimacy mattered the most. Israelis did not hide the fact that they needed African votes at the UN and that they expected African leaders to support them on the diplomatic Israeli–Arab battlefield. On this front, however, Israeli efforts in Africa had mixed results, and whether or not they can be seen as a success depends very much on how one defines success in this context. African countries as a unified bloc never fully backed Israel, and the support of many of Israel’s friends in Africa usually did not extend beyond a polite abstention in votes on Israel-related resolutions. But the existence of a significant number of states that were not necessarily allied with the Arab side still strengthened Israel’s position and allowed it to obstruct Arab initiatives and, in particular, to undermine Arab attempts to pressure it by promoting the right of return of Palestinian refugees.⁶⁵

In many cases, however, Israel found that strong influence over leaders in Africa did not necessarily translate into diplomatic support from the representatives of these leaders in New York. African delegates at the UN were not necessarily acting under clear orders from the political leadership back home and often decided how to vote independently.⁶⁶ This did not serve Israel well, given the Israeli focus on fostering close ties with local elites in Africa. Moreover, support for Israel had to be balanced with support for Arab states, some of which were also members of the OAU, and the assistance Israel offered African countries was never significant enough to convince them to abandon their commitments to these countries or to stand in direct opposition to them. Ultimately, even those countries that enjoyed the greatest amounts of Israeli support were reluctant to stand by Israel at the UN.

But just as African countries were balancing their support for Israel with support for the Arab world, so Israel was trying to balance its support for African countries with support for the West. Its voting record in the UN therefore often placed it in opposition to African interests and undermined its efforts on the continent. In November 1959, for instance, Ghana initiated a UN resolution requesting France to refrain from conducting nuclear tests in the Sahara. Israel was already developing its own nuclear programme at the time, and France was its main ally and arms supplier. It voted with France, and against several African nations.⁶⁷ During the political crisis in Congo in 1960, Israel again stood with the West, despite opposition from some Israeli diplomats in Africa who warned that this would have damaging consequences.⁶⁸ As Ali Mazrui observed, ‘Israel, sometimes genuinely interested in identifying with the liberation forces in Africa, nevertheless found herself supporting those against whom African fighters were waging a struggle’.⁶⁹

The main exception in this context was Israel’s position on South Africa. During the 1960s Israel was vocal and consistent in its opposition to apartheid. Along with African governments, it repeatedly condemned Pretoria at the UN, and made sure that its position on the matter was known to its African allies. More discreetly, so as not to damage its relationships in the West, Israel also established ties with, and extended symbolic assistance to, African liberation movements from southern Africa and the Portuguese colonies, including the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of South Africa, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO).⁷⁰ While many Israeli politicians genuinely opposed apartheid and colonial rule on moral grounds and invoked the long Jewish history of marginalisation and discrimination as a justification for this position, Israel also hoped that its vocal opposition to South Africa’s policies and low-key support for African liberation movements would convince African leaders that Jerusalem was, after all, on their side.

An African adventure

The decade of 1957 to 1966 has often been described as the ‘honeymoon’ or ‘golden age’ of African–Israeli relations. And the strategic and material interests that were the driving force behind this romance notwithstanding, one reason that this period was cherished in Israeli memory is that Israeli engagement with African countries was closely linked to the urge of the Zionist elites to reimagine their own identity vis-à-vis their surroundings and neighbours. On the one hand, Israeli rhetoric in Africa portrayed Israel as a postcolonial nation and Zionism as a liberation movement, associating Israel with other young nations of the ‘Third World’ and rejecting the comparison between Zionism and imperialism. On the other hand, as Yacobi and Bar-Yosef argue, Zionist perceptions of Africa were heavily influenced by late colonial ideas about progress and civilisation and consistently stressed the differences between Israel and African countries.⁷¹ Israel’s position as a ‘donor’ and a model not only highlighted the inequality between Israel and African countries in terms of development and wealth but also positioned Israel as part of the ‘modern’ world, in contrast to Africa.⁷²

In terms of the Israeli institutions involved, a major role was played by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israeli security agencies (the military and the Mossad) and companies that took part in joint ventures with African governments. Israeli engagement therefore not only focused on state-building and state-led development but was also of a highly formal and state-centric nature. By the second half of the 1960s, tensions and disagreements between Israeli civilian institutions, private entrepreneurs and security agencies emerged, as diplomats began to feel that the activities of the latter two groups of actors were getting out of control. ‘With no objective justification, a security empire has been erected in Africa’, an Israeli official protested in 1966 to Abba Eban, then Israel’s new foreign minister. ‘This interferes with work, foments turmoil, and creates great political risk.’⁷³ In the following years, however, events in the Middle East and Africa slowly shifted the balance of power much further away from the state’s civilian institutions and into the hands of both formal and informal security and business entrepreneurs.