ISRAEL – AFRICA RELATIONSFORGED IN TERRORIST FIRE

Ed Morgan

Henry Ojambo

Yesterday’s inferno at the Paradise Hotelin Mombasa, Kenya may have incinerated aresort and destroyed more than a dozen innocent lives, but it may yet represent the fire that forges a political relationship that has been simmering on a low heat. Africans and Israelis now share more than the experience of violent Middle Eastern politics; they have together suffered terrorism born of racial and ethnic hate.

For the second time in the past several years, Kenyans have been killed in the fallout of al-Qaeda’s wrath against others. In 1998, over 200embassy employees and local residents died in a blast that destroyed the U.S. embassy building in Nairobi. In the latest atrocity, at least 12 Kenyans, including hotel employees, guests, and a troupe of traditional dancers, died in a suicide bombing reminiscent of recent attacks in Israel. Although a previously unknown group calling itself the “Army of Palestine” has claimed credit, John Sawe, Kenya’s ambassador in Tel Aviv, lost no time in identifying al-Qaeda as the guilty party.

The apparent ease with which African lives are expended in these terrorist attacks has not been lost on the African public. Kenyan Vice President Musalia Mudavadi immediately linked the embassy and the hotel bombings as related tragedies. The overnight arrival of Israeli medical assistance has also not been lost on Kenyans. Nairobi’s leading newspaper reported that a team led by Kenya President Daniel arap Moi’s personal physician, Dr. David Silverstein, arrived in a jet packed with doctors and equipment. Whatever the twisted message may have been that the perpetrators wanted to send, the starkest image in the continent’s press is that of Islamic terrorists taking African lives and Jewish doctors saving them.

The other aspect highlighted by the attack is that the intended victims were targeted for no reason but who they are. Israelis apparently can be stalked and their children targeted whatever their politics and wherever they may be. Africans present so-called “soft targets” and are killed without a moment’s thought, and Israelis are victimized on the basis of their nationality or race.

All of this comes against a background of Israel-Africa economic relations which have been modest, but growing. The attacks against an Israeli owned hotel, of course, have highlighted Israeli investment in East Africa’s tourist industry. In addition, there are long standing economic ties in an assortment of sectors ranging from agriculture to construction. Israel’s investment in African development was this year further underlined by the visit of Israel’s Agriculture Minister, Shalom Simhon,to Uganda – the first Israeli cabinet member to do so since the end of the Idi Amin’s oppressive rule in 1979.

The strategic relationship between Israel and its relatively close neighbours in East Africais also worthy of note. The ties between Ethiopia and Israel, which started when the late Emperor Haile Selassie waited out Mussolini’s occupation of his Ethiopia while in exile in Jerusalem, have always been strong, with the exception of a brief interlude during the Soviet-backed Mengistu regime. Likewise, Israel and Uganda had close military relations until the early 1970’s; indeed, Idi Amin himself was prone to bragging about his early training as a paratrooper by the Israel Defense Forces.

Perhaps the most renowned example of Israel-African defense cooperation, however, came in the famous Entebbe raid of July 1976. The use of Africa as a base for Palestinian terrorism in the 1976 episode resulted in the death of dozens of Ugandan soldiers who had been left by Amin and thehijackers to guard the airport where the Israeli captives were held. The renowned Israeli raid freeing the hostages was accomplished with a stopover in Nairobi and Kenyan tactical support.

This combination of Israeli victimization by terrorists, and the African deaths that ensue, has left its mark on the continent’s collective memory as well as its strategic relations. Today, Ugandan television annually broadcasts Charles Bronson’s Raid On Entebbe as a means ofeducating new generations about the severe defects of the Amin regime and its alignment with world terrorism. The recent episodes in Mombasamay well serve to continue this mindset and political trend – an effect that should be noted in those Arab capitals where al-Qaeda and the like find their bases of support.

More than that, international terrorism committed in the name of Islamic radicalism has had a negative impact on African Muslim communities. The evidence has pointed to some collaboration in the embassy attacks by local Muslims, prompting Kenyan police to come down heavily on the country’s rather sizeable Muslim community. The repeated acts of terror, which prompt the inevitable police and military response, are altogether corrosive for African societies.

The Mombasa attacks demonstrate that it is incumbent on the world at large to unite against the type of violence that targets Israelis because of their nationhood and kills Africans as if they count for nothing at all. Perhaps more to the point, it is incumbent on the Arab and broader Islamic world to speak out against such atrocities committed against racially and ethnically identifiable victims. They gain nothing by their support or their silence.

Ed Morgan is a law professor at the University of Toronto. Henry Ojambo is a Ugandan lawyer and doctoral student at the University of Toronto.