Israel’s “pernicious” agenda in Africa
An antisemitic myth or accurate description of reality?
Preface:
On 10 August I published an article on the Medium platform, titled “Is Mandla Mandela an antisemite?” The present article is a sequel to that.
In March this year Mandela, who is the grandson of Nelson Mandela, called out Israel as an apartheid state with a pernicious agenda in Africa, that was having destructuve consequences on the lives of Africans. He effectively identified Israel as an enemy of Africa and its people. For this he was criticised in the South African Jewish Report (SAJR) in the same month, for being an antisemite.
My earlier article unpacked the liguistic coding that makes “Israel” equivalent to “Jew”, which lies at the root of Zionists’ definition of antisemitism. I argued that this coded equivalence was problematic because linguistic fields contain contradictory codes and there is no uiversal, immutable code equating “Israel” with “Jew”.
In addition the SAJR article claimed that his language about Israel’s practices in Africa was code for the view of Jews propagated in the document “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” — namely, Jews as being underhand, bribing and manipulative of Gentiles in order to take over the world and install a Jewish dictatorship. According the SAJR article and Merlin Shain, one of the antisemitism experts whom it quoted, Mandela’s language contained tropes that signified Jews as being hell bent on taking over African governments, and extracting resources and economic surplus from Africa and its people.
I also referred to the coding of scientific discourse, where propositional statements refer to an empirical datum in order to verify their truth value. I applied this to Mandela’s characterisation of Israel as an apartheid state, a point that another of the antisemitism experts opined was further proof of Mandela’s antisemitism. I noted that the empirical reality regarding this claim is international law and five human rights organisations’ reports that independently identified the Israeli state regime as apartheid.
We should take Mandela’s statements as being made in good faith and then assess their truth value against Israel’s historical and contemporary practices in Africa. Mandela’s claims about Israel’s practices in Africa can be deconstructed to a series of propositional statements, which can then be assessed as either “true” or “false”. This is not always feasible, governmental and business practices often not being formally recorded, and therefore difficult to verify. The bar that has to be met is demonstrating a reasonable chance that certain events took place, and establishing a reasonable basis for hypothesising the likely outcomes of these events.
The article explores the probable truth value of specific propositions by Mandela in his address, by examining the practices of Israeli businesspeople involved in the trading of weapons and arms and security services and also in minerals and raw material in 15 African countries for which the information has already been collected. The purpose of this is to enable an assessment of the accuracy of his key claims about Israel’s role in Africa, using the criterion of reasonable certainty or reasonable probability, as articulated above. The assessment is then done in the conclusion.
Israel’s Empirical Axes in Africa:
To present a counter semantic field (to the hegemonic Zionist one) is insufficient. One also has to demonstrate the extent to which the key terms of this field are true, or likely to be true. In this section I assess the coding inherent in Mandela’s descriptions of Israel’s practices in Africa. In particular I decode his terms and terminology, according to categories set by his Zionist critics, viz. the untransparent (and therefore underhand) nature of Israel’s relationships with many African states, its use of economic inducements to further its relationships with these states and the consequent destructive impact on the human rights and quality of life of the populations of these states. These referents are subcategorised under each of the 15 African states for which I have collected data.
Mandela referred to Israel’s pernicious agenda and its evil actions which it allegedly achieved through underhand methods, including getting access to African state decision-making structures, and by buying off those who are the decision-makers. According to antisemitism expert Shain this is code that signifies the antisemitism of the Protocols. But what is the risk that these alleged antisemitic cannards might be true?
Answers to this question were gleaned from Jeff Halper’s magisterial “War Against the People”, a recent study of how securitization works and Israel’s pivotal role in the process, and in respect of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola from the writing of my Palestine Solidarity Campaign Cape Town colleague Terry Crawford-Browne (“Eye on the Diamonds, Chapter Three”) as well as Keith Harmon Snow’s 2008 piece on Dan Gertler and a second 2008 piece on mortality in the Congo, both through the website Dissident Voice. I am also grateful to activist scholar Patrick Bond for providing me with news clippings about the largest African defence and aerospace business, based in South Africa, that has links with Zionists and trades in weapons with several African countries and others further afield. Beyond these sources I have followed hyperlinks to other websites, including those of some of the Israeli protagonists in this story.
Halper contextualised Israel’s weapons and arms and security services trading within what he calls securitisation processes. According to Halper securitisation represents the enforcement arm of transnational capitalism ensuring the smooth flow of capital and resources while addressing challenges to its hegemony.[1]
Halper describes the pacification industry that has arisen to implement the above securitization function. This industry provides both the tools and strategies for physical repression of social revolt as well as the ideological justification for this repression. In the chapters that I focused on, dealing mainly with Israeli engagement with African states, Halper’s principal sources of information include the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Jimmy Jonsson (a Detroit-based activist working on the arms industry), academic studies into the private Israeli security industry (e.g. Leila Stockmarr), Israeli journalists Yossie Melman and Sarah Liebovich-Dar, Andrew Feinstein’s “Shadow World” and Elisha Baskin (director of a critical arms monitor site).
In 2015 there were 6 784 Israelis dealing in security exports, representing 1 006 companies, and there were also 312 independent businesses and freelancers.[2] According to SIPRI businesspeople have played a key role in arranging arms and security deals in Africa for Israeli companies. According to the newspaper Haaretz all the businesspeople referred to below had served in mid-level ranks of the Israel Defence Force (IDF). It is these individuals who established relationships with African rulers in those countries where Israel appeared to have developed reciprocal relationships to the advantage of both the rulers and Israel.
Equatorial Guinea[3]
Boas Badikhi, a weapons and security systems dealer, is the son of Moshe Badikhi, an Israeli Air Force pilot who trained Idi Amin to establish the Uganda Air Force in the 1970s (and became one of Amin’s closest advisors).[4]
Halper related that in 2015 Badikhi was confidante to Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who then had been president of Equatorial Guinea for 35 years. Through Badikhi Israeli companies like Israel Shipyards Ltd and Israel Military Industries Ltd (IMI) sold arms and military infrastructure (including patrol, escort and missile boats) worth more than $100 million (the patrol craft sale was in 2008). In 2015 IMI were reportedly building a dockyard in the country and with another company, Aeronautics, were involved in a deal to build a fleet of drone vehicles.
Badikhi and Israeli security companies were contracted to train Equatorial Guinea’s elite Presidential Guard.
Yadenia Ovadia is an Israeli business woman commonly known as “the long arm of Obiang”, who advised the Equatorial Guinea ruler, Obiang, on the IMI/Israel Shipyards deal. An Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, closely associated with Jewish neo-con think tanks in Washington, brokered the reestablishment of relations between Equatorial Guinea and the United States (US), broken off in 1996.
According to Halper, in 2015 Obiang reportedly had some $700 million in a US bank account.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in 2015, and Amnesty International (Amnesty) reported in 2021, that corruption, poverty, and repression of civil and political rights (particularly freedom of expression and the right to a fair trial) continued to undermine human rights in Equatorial Guinea under Mbasogo, …… Vast oil revenues funded lavish lifestyles for a political elite, while little progress was made improving access to health care (mainly due to medicine shortages) and primary education.
According to the Borgen project, which focuses attention on extreme poverty, in 2014, despite being one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies and a major producer of oil, Equatorial Guinea’s poverty rate was high due to institutional weaknesses and corruption that restricted the country’s ability to provide basic services to its people. With a population of approximately one million people, Equatorial Guinea ranked 138 out of 188 countries in the Human Development Index for social and economic development, despite a per capita gross national income of $21,056, then the highest in Africa.
Sudan
According to Halper in 2015 Boas Badikhi was also selling arms to Southern Sudan together with David ben Uziel, nicknamed “Tarzan”, a former member of (previous Israeli prime minister) Ariel Sharon’s[5] notorious Unit 101, who personally trained Mobutu Sese Seko (long-time ruler of Zaire) when he won his paratroopers wings in Israel in 1963.
HRW reported that in 2015 Sudan’s government forces committed atrocities (described as “horrific abuses”) in the Darfur region of Southern Sudan, in egregious violation of both international human rights and international humanitarian law. In addition, Amnesty reported “entrenched repression” and attacks on freedom of expression and association in Sudan in 2015.[6] The Borgen project reported in 2022 that “round 80 per cent of the country’s rural population relied on subsistence agriculture. However, due to inconsistent rainfall and a lack of conservation measures, many of these vulnerable populations ended up landless and jobless due to desertification and flooding. As a result of these conditions, more than 2,7 million children were acutely malnourished. Further estimates determined that 5,8 million people in Sudan were food insecure.
Burundi
According to Halper, Gabi Peretz, a retired colonel from an IDF counter-terror unit, was in 2015 selling arms to Burundi, and was close to its president Pierre Nkurunziza.[7] In 2022 Nkurunziza’s net worth was estimated as being between $100 000 and $1 million.
Both HRW and Amnesty reported in 2015 that the Burundi state increased its repression of opponents and critics (including extra-judicial killings) ahead of the 2015 elections. HRW reported that by 2018 widespread human rights abuses included summary executions, rapes, abductions leading up to the constitutional referendum that extended President Nkurunziza’s term to 2034. According to Amnesty despite the lifting of some repressive measures by 2021 threats, intimidation, politically motivated prosecutions and attacks on women’s rights continued.
The Borgen project noted that Burundi, Rwanda’s southern neighbor experienced the same Hutu-Tutsi conflict in 1994, resulting in the deaths of around 300,000 civilians and the exile or displacement of 1,2 million. The fighting crippled its economy, especially agriculture, and left 80 per cent of Burundians living below the poverty line. Burundi ranked 185th out of 187 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index. Most Burundians are small scale farmers trying desperately to recover from the conflict, with high population growth, drought, illiteracy, and little access to health and education services exacerbating their woes.
Uganda
Halper identified Israeli Barak Orland as working the Uganda market for Israeli weapons and securitisation systems in 2015, and noted that he was close to President Yoweri Museveni. In 2015 Museveni, who had then served as President of Uganda since 1986, had an estimated net asset value of $13 billion.
HRW and Amnesty reported that in 2015 the Museveni government violated the rights of media freedom, freedom of expression and sexual orientation and gender identity, and showed a lack of accountability by failing to properly investigate the killing of at least 100 people by the security forces (these casualties appeared to be in operations against the Lord’s Resistance Army). HRW and Amnesty reported in 2021 a marked deterioration in Uganda’s human rights record including widespread electoral abuses, blocked social media access, illegal eviction of indigenous people from their lands, and the
continual criminalisation of same-sex relations.
According to the website Development Initiatives, in 2020 Uganda remained among the poorest nations in the world despite reducing its poverty rate. In 1993, 56,4 per cent of the population was below the national poverty line, but this decreased to 19,7 per cent by 2013. Although poverty rates overall fell between 1993 and 2016, they rose slightly between 2013 and 2016. While the proportion of people defined as ‘poor’ had fallen, the proportion of people who lived above the poverty line but remained vulnerable to falling below it had increased. This grouping — people who were not poor but were vulnerable to poverty — were most likely to fall below the poverty line due to negative shocks, such as the effects of Covid-19. Falling poverty at the national level masked less positive regional trends. Recent years had seen poverty headcounts increase in eastern, western and central Uganda.
Gabon
Halper identified Israeli arms businessman Yair Gaon as focused on the Gabon market. Amnesty reported on human rights in Gabon for 2017/2018, referring to the undermining of transparent governance in Gabon, through prohibitions of journalistic reports in the then new communication code. This was also linked to several arbitrary arrests and detentions in relation to unionists and members of the political opposition.
The Borgen project noted that in 2019 many Gabon citizens lived on less than $2 a day, with a third of the population living below the poverty line. This affliction sharply contrasted with the economic success of wealthier citizens. Gabon had a GDP per capita of more than $7,600, the fourth-highest on the continent. Oil was the top industry in Gabon: 80 per cent of exports were based on oil production, along with 45 per cent of GDP. But fluctuations in prices had the potential to significantly damage the Gabon economy. Oil dependence contributed to inequality: only 20 per cent of the population held 90 per cent of its wealth. Limited economic possibilities left approximately 400,000 people unable to find work.
Nigeria
Amit Sadeh, referred to by Israeli investigative journalist Melman as the face of “the ugly Israeli” arms dealers, was (in 2015) close to Yayale Ahmed, a former Nigerian defence minister, then serving as cabinet secretary. Sadeh brokered a $250 million sale of drones and unmanned boats to Nigeria, from Aeronautics Ventures.[8] Sadeh also brokered the sale of two Shaldag boats (from Israel Shipyards) to the Nigerian Navy for $25 million.
In 2015 HRW reported shocking human rights violations by both Boko Haram, an al-Qaeda ally, and the Nigerian security forces in the northeast of the country. Elsewhere there was also intercommunal and political violence, government corruption, etc. Amnesty corroborated this for the same period and additionally noted that “torture and other ill-treatment by the police and security forces were widespread. Demolitions of informal settlements led to the forced eviction of thousands of people. Death sentences continued to be imposed…”
The Borgen project reported that in 2014 with 166 million people, Nigeria was Africa’s most populous country and since 2011 had had an expanding economy, growing at rates between six to eight per cent of GDP per year. Its economy depended largely on oil and agriculture. Higher growth had not led to reduced poverty rates or greater employment.[9] The low employment prospects and dearth of economic opportunity have created a dire situation in Nigeria and then over half the population lived in poverty. Consequently, Boko Haram,[10], had increased its presence in Nigeria and caused mass turmoil, waging attacks on schools, religious structures and public institutions leading to massive tragedies such as the murder of 65 sleeping students at the agricultural college of Yobe state in September 2013.
Rwanda
In 2015 Hezi Bezalel was the dominant Israeli figure in Rwanda, according to Israeli military affairs journalist, Lieberman-Dar. Bezalel began his career in Uganda where he befriended Paul Kagame, the Rwandan Tutsi refugee who headed the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), that overthrew the Hutu government (with arms supplied by Bezalel) during the course of the Rwanda killing fields of 1994. Starting in 1992 Israel provided training and arms to the Hutu-dominated army and continued to do so during the killing sprees during the 1994 war.[11] By 2015 Bezalel was Rwanda’s honorary consul in Israel. Bezalel was also reported to be behind the deal to deport African asylum seekers in Israel (mainly from Sudan and Eritrea) to Rwanda and Uganda — the latter agreeing to take these in return for arms.
Kagame is a controversial figure in the recent history of Rwanda. Praised by the US, United Kingdom and Israel for ending the genocide of Tutsis in 1994 his RPF has also been identified as implicated in many — if not most — of the horrific killings [12] that engulfed this troubled country at the time. Since the ascension of Kagame and the RPF to political power there have been substantive indications of ongoing repression of political opposition in the country, extending to assassinations and attacks outside (including the killing of many Hutus who had fled in the aftermath of the RPF victory, to the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC]).
In 2015 HRW reported impressive progress in economic and social development indicators, but that the Rwandan government severely restricted freedom of expression and association, did not tolerate dissent, and limited political space, the media and independence of civil society. Real or suspected opponents inside and outside the country continued to be targeted — one, Patrick Kareyega, a former head of Rwanda’s intelligence services, was found murdered in a Johannesburg hotel. Detainees were held unlawfully for several weeks or months in police or military custody, in unrecognized detention centers. Dozens of people were reported disappeared. Some reappeared in prison after prolonged incommunicado detention, but others remained unaccounted for.
Borgen reported in 2016 authoritarian streaks, like the forced removal of “undesirables” into detention centers, burning of farmers’ fields because they did not grow their assigned crops and the stripping of villagers’ grass roofs as part of modernisation. Since 1996 Rwanda had an average annual GDP growth rate of seven per cent and an increasingly diverse economy (sectors, such as agriculture, services, electricity, infrastructure, construction and tourism sectors — the latter contributed 10 per cent of the GDP). Nevertheless, around 38 per cent of the population lived below the poverty line resulting from a poor education (68 per cent of first-graders ended up completing primary education), low domestic savings, and little rural disposable time and income.
Somaliland/Chad
Halper referred to an unnamed Israeli “defence consultant” who was indicted for trying to sell 6 000 AK47 rifles to Somaliland using a falsified end user certificate for Chad (June, 2010).[13] Somaliland had declared independence from Somalia in 1991 but as at 2010 had not been recognised as an independent state by any country and was not a member of the United Nations (UN).
HRW reported in 2010 that Somaliland’s own government posed a threat to human rights in that country, arising from its violation of electoral laws, replacing independent courts with military committees. The Borgen project reported on positive economic indicators for development in Somaliland in 2017 — small businesses from the diaspora as well as large corporations (like Coca Cola) were being attracted to invest in the country. The report commented favourably on Somaliland holding democratic elections consistently since 2000 and noted its relative political stability.
Zaire/DRC
Israeli involvement in the DRC commenced when it was still called Zaire.
Crawford-Browne notes that knowledge of the Congo’s vast diamond reserves went back a century. The acquisition of these drove the earliest colonial as well as the current neo-colonial conquests and subjugation of the inhabitants of central Africa. He argued that this was the underlying interest of the United States’ (US’s) Central Intelligence Agency plan to assassinate then Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba and to support the coup that brought Mobutu to power (1960s). Then, together with the South African company De Beers, US agencies secured diamonds from the country (then renamed Zaire). Israel’s role in the new scramble for Africa pivots around the extraction of diamonds, within the context of the current scramble for African resources particularly by the US and China. Harmon Snow notes that the import of rough diamonds and the export of polished diamonds have grown to be Israel’s top export item, and by 2007 its second largest industry with a value of $14 billion annually. Then Israel was buying more than 50 per cent of the world’s rough diamonds, two-thirds of which the US purchased.
Harmon Snow also noted that in the 1950s one Moshe Schnitzer, who participated in the Irgun Zwei Leumi during the 1948 Nakba, played a major role in the African diamond trade — in 1960 Schnitzer founded the Israel Diamond Exchange in Tel Aviv. Halper notes that during the 1960s Israeli Meir Meyuhas was a confidante to President Mobutu, officially his “business advisor”, and through Jewish members in the US Congress he functioned as a conduit between Mobutu and the US Congress. Meir arranged the secret 1981 meeting between Mobutu and Ariel Sharon which resulted in an agreement to train Mobutu’s Presidential Guard, restructure the 20 000 strong armed forces (to become a dissuasive force to intimidate the local population) as well as to intervene on Zaire’s behalf with the US government.
The Schnitzer family remained involved in diamond extraction from the Congo over the decades since the 1960s. Fast forward to 2007: Harmon Snow clarified that Schmuel Schnitzer — then vice-chairman of the Belgian-based World Diamond Council — was managing the original family business together with Asher Gertler (Moshe’s son-in-law). Asher’s son, Dan had by then become a significant player in Israel’s African diamond trade, having established Emaxon Finance Corporation with his spiritual mentor Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Leibovitch (a friend of Condoleeza Rice, then US Secretary of State during the George Bush presidency) — Emaxon secured a concession from the DRC state mining company, Societe Miniere de Bakwange (SMB). (See diagram below for opaque details of Emaxon business registrations).
Crawford-Browne noted that on Gertler’s instruction the Union Bank of Israel financed Laurent Kabila to take over the Congo when Mobutu sese Seko died in 1997. (Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001.) Using the concession and relationships with Kabila as a basis, Emaxon wrested dominant market share from its rivals (which included De Beers) by aligning itself with President Joseph Kabila (son of and successor to Laurent).
The deal between SMB and Emaxon conceded a diamond production and trade monopoly to the latter and 88 per cent of the proceeds, in exchange for Israeli military assistance. Much of the diamonds were — and still are — mined in the conflict-ridden eastern DRC. The deal fell through after the assassination but in 2003 a new company secured the right to become the leading exporter of diamonds (worth $1 billion annually). Israel’s Defence Export Organisation (SIBAT)[14] was part of the deal and Overseas Security Services (a company providing bodyguard services), run by Gertler and Belgian tycoon Phillipe de Moerloose, functioned to ensure the security aspect of the 2003 deal. (See diagram below for a graphic representation of the structure of Dan Gertler’s companies, including cross-cutting directorships).
Mobutu’s rule was characterised by dictatorship, misrule, corruption, his own lavish wealth (estimated at up to $15 billion at the end of his rule) and widespread and extreme poverty of the people of Zaire. This was acknowledged by the US which was a bulwark of support for his regime. The situation did not materially change after his overthrow. HRW and Amnesty reported in 2008 that people of the eastern DRC endured more armed conflict and related violations of international law in 2006 and 2007 — including murders, widespread rape, and the forced recruitment and use of child soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of people had been displaced in the previous 10 months. Abusive forces had not been disarmed, but on the contrary had consolidated their authority. The UN Human Rights Committee (UN HRC) reported in 2010 about the large scale killings that had taken place in the eastern DRC committed by a combination of forces: governmental (DRC, Rwanda and Uganda) and self-styled militias. The report listed eyewitness accounts of brutal killings of civilians, women and children and systematic rape of mainly women. A footnote in the report refers to an International Red Cross estimate of 3,8 million dead in the region between 1998 and 2004, but the UN HRC report does not appear to have its own estimates. It reflected on the possibility that genocide might have been committed. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) reported that there were 5,4 million deaths in the DRC mainly as a result of disease and malnutrition that resulted from war in the eastern DRC. Harmon Snow was critical of the HRC report and the IRC figures and put his estimate of the deaths between 1996 and 2010 at between six million and 10 million. He noted that the IRC estimate excluded the 1996 to 1998 period, during which he said there were at least 1,5 million Rwandan and Burundian refugees in eastern Zaire — the RPF shelled these refugee camps.
According to Crawford-Browne as many as 800 000 Congolese worked in alluvial diamond pits in circumstances worse than slavery. Young boys, displaced by the war, were the preferred labour. They were lowered down into 30 meter deep holes to dig around in the mud for stones and many drowned. A 2004 report by Global Witness and Partnership and Africa Canada analysed the dire situation of alluvial diamond miners in Africa who on average earned US$1 per day, showing specifically that the then estimated 700 000 alluvial diamond miners in the DRC produced 80 per cent of the wealth but lived desperate lives.[15] Notwithstanding Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada’s proposals for moving the alluvial diamond mining sector on to a development path, four years later the problems persisted. In 2008 Harmon Snow identified the following social problems emanating from the eastern Congo and Katanga mining belts:
- Racial discrimination.
- Slavery.
- Typhoid.
- Malaria.
- Tetanus.
- Polio.
- Malnutrition.
He also identified the following direct social costs of diamond mining to Congolese communities:
- Shootings at mines (to put down organised labour strikes and protests).
- Stolen land (taken from communities in terms of concessions to mining companies).
- Strikes crushed by security forces.
- Arrest and torture of opposition to the mining activities.
In 2017 Global Witness reported persistent corruption and mismanagement of revenues in the main state-owned mining company, Gecamines, resulting in 20 per cent of mining revenues not reaching the state fiscus. The government under Joeseph Kabila failed to fund schools, hospitals and roads, a cause of popular discontent that fuelled social conflict. While not paying the salaries of its own employees Gecamines nevertheless paid off huge loans to Dan Gertler. Judging from a June 2022 Borgen Project report on alluvial mining in the DRC, little has changed five years on. Young children are still involved in diamond mining which continues to cause harsh living conditions and poverty for DRC citizens. In 2022 an artisanal mining well collapsed killing six people and a toxic spill from diamond mining killed 12 people.
Cameroon
According to Halper, in 2015 Sami Meyuhas, who had inherited the position of his father (Meir) (referred to in respect of activities in Zaire) was described as one of the most influential Israeli “businesspeople”. Then he concentrated his activities in Cameroon. Sami was the confidante of Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya. He reportedly made 25 per cent on each arms deal that he brokered. Biya was assessed as being having a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars. There was an Israeli Defence Ministry delegation in Cameroon, which was later withdrawn as a response to the level of corruption of the Biya regime.
In 2016 HRW reported that the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) had remained in power since it was created in 1985. In 2011 CPDM leader Paul Biya was re-elected president (thereby commander-in-chief of the security forces), a position he had held since 1982, in a flawed election marked by irregularities, but observers did not believe these had a significant impact on the outcome. In 2013 the country conducted the first Senate elections and simultaneous legislative and municipal elections were held, mostly considered free and fair. Civilian authorities maintained some control over security forces, including police and gendarmerie.
Human rights violations like child soldiering, abductions, beheadings, and burnings of persons and property, by Boko Haram in the Far North Region, and security forces’ prolonged and sometimes incommunicado arbitrary detentions and denials of fair and speedy public trials, disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detention, life-threatening prison conditions, use of unofficial detention facilities, restrictions on freedom of expression, including detention and harassment of and violence against journalists, and restrictions on movement, continued. Corruption continued at all levels of government. Opposition and civil society activists were harassed, detained, and denied the right to assemble or operate by the government. Gender-based violence and discrimination, child abuse, and trafficking in persons remained problems, and harassment of and discrimination against members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex community, as well as the Baka and Mbororo minorities, continued. Violations of workers’ rights were recurrent, and child labour remained a problem, especially in the informal sector. The Amnesty 2018 report corroborated much of the human rights violations identified two years earlier by HRW.
According to the 2016 Borgen project report the poverty rate had dropped from 53 per cent in 1996 to 37,5 per cent in 2014. Many organizations continued to provide humanitarian aid to Cameroon.[16] The National Statistics Institute’s fourth Cameroon Household Survey, conducted in 2014, showed that of 21,65 million Cameroonians (2014), 37,5 per cent were poor (eight million people lived below the poverty line, 90 per cent of whom were concentrated in rural areas). Forty-eight per cent of them resided in households with more than eight persons. Poor people came from households within which the heads were farmers, fishermen and herders or worked in the informal agricultural sector.
Liberia
Liberian society and polity was characterised by violent upheavals starting in the early 1980s when Samuel Doe overthrew and killed then President William Tolbert. Doe himself was overthrown and killed in 1990 by Prince Jonsson, one of Charles Taylor’s allies.
According to Halper, from 1996 to 1999 Yair Klein, an ex-IDF colonel, provided material and training to Liberia’s Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU), of then Liberian President Charles Taylor’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF). The Klein-provided services formed part of a diamonds-for-arms operation that violated the then UN embargo on blood diamonds. Halper also pointed to Leonid Minin, a Ukrainean-born Israeli, and member of the “Odessa mafia”, who was involved in selling arms to the Liberian government in exchange for diamond and timber concessions. Minin had extensive dealings with one Ibrahim Bah, the official arms and diamond broker for both the RUF and Taylor, with links to Al Queda.[17]
HRW and Amnesty reported in 2012 that Charles Taylor, at that stage former president of Liberia, became the first former head of state since Nuremberg to be convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by an international or hybrid tribunal. Taylor had become president of Liberia in 1997 after years of civil war. As president, he was implicated in atrocities in the conflict in neighboring Sierra Leone through his support of a brutal rebel group known for killing, raping, and cutting off the limbs of thousands of civilians, as well as forcibly recruiting thousands of child soldiers. In 2013 the Borgen project reported that two civil wars in the previous 30 years had decimated Liberia’s roads, water and other basic infrastructure, leading to widespread poverty for 68 per cent of the population and malnourishment for 35 per cent (mainly smallholder farmers struggled to produce to feed their families). Liberia ranked 174 out of 187 on the UN Development Index. Infectious disease ran rampant and the majority of Liberians had little to no education.
Ivory Coast
Halper referred to Simon Rosenblum, an Israeli businessman formerly based in Abdijan, Ivory Coast, who was a member of the inner circle of Charles Taylor during the latter’s reign in Liberia. Rosenblum had logging and road construction interests in Liberia. His trucks carried weapons from Liberia to the border with Sierra Leonne (Taylor was seeking power in Sierra Leonne).
As a background to endogenous conflict in the Ivory Coast former South African president Thabo Mbeki wrote in 2011 that a rebellion within the country in 2002 arose from internal divisions and animosities. Mbeki opined that these divisions continued through what was the electoral competition (for political power) between Laurent Gbagbo (incumbent) and challenger Alassane Ouattara. He claimed that France (the earlier colonial power) had manipulated this competition. Mbeki’s warning about the likelihood of tensions flaring up after the election were borne out by HRW reporting in 2011 that there were gross violations of human rights by security forces of Gbagbo. At the same time Amnesty reported that forces loyal to both Gbagbo and Quattarra committed violations of human rights. In the wake of these violations Gbagbo and his wife were taken into the custody of the International Criminal Court. Mbeki argued that the polls had been held in a climate unconducive to free and fair elections, and that France, the UN and the African Union, by choosing the side of Quattara, enabled the criminalisation of the Gbagbos, rather than working to ease tensions by addressing the cause of the underlying divisions.
According to a student textbook website prior to 2014–15 the less productive agricultural sector employed the majority of Cote d’Ivoire’s poor. The then recent improvement in this sector was expected to lead to a sharp fall in rural poverty, mainly because of the 17 per cent increase in the world market price of cocoa in October 2015. Cote d’Ivoire then was the world’s top exporter of cocoa and raw cashew nuts, as well as being a net exporter of oil. The economy grew by nine per cent in 2015, supported by public and private investment (in the mining, finance and communications sectors), as well as rapid growth in building and public works and the finance sector. However, the benefits of the growth were not shared: there was no significant decline in the relative poverty rate as few new jobs were generated and there was little direct impact on the vast majority of households. This indicates the limitations imposed by dependence of the economy on foreign earnings from exports, itself dependent on the prices of raw material exported.
Angola
Halper reported that in 1990 Arcadi Gaydamak, a Russian-French-Israeli oligarch, brokered a R800 billion arms purchase for the then UN-sanctioned Angolan government. The arms were supplied by an Israeli company, the LR Group,[18] which by 2015 was the largest Israeli company operating in Angola for aerial radar, unmanned aircraft, helicopters and other arms.[19]
Halper also identified Lev Leviev as a Russian-Israeli oligarch and diamond merchant, who facilitated $300 million worth of arms for the Angolan government between 1995 and 2015, in return for diamonds and other resources. Crawford-Browne noted that Leviev had migrated to Israel in 1971 from Tashkent (now Uzbekistan). In 1997 for $400 million Leviev acquired the Africa-Israel Investment Company, which had been established by South African Zionist Jews in 1934 to purchase land in historic Palestine. According to Crawford-Browne the company offered the opportunity to launder the proceeds of “blood diamond” money through property development and the illegal construction of settlements in the West Bank.[20] Africa-Israel crashed in the 2008/2009 credit crisis (the so-called Great Recession). Richard Silverstein’s 2007 Tikkun Olam article draw a similar conclusion about the proceeds of African diamonds from conflict zones being used to build West Bank settlements on confiscated Palestinian land.He notes Leviev’s joining the Israeli diamond industry and making his wealth trafficking in Angolan diamonds. Leviev participated in the the Land Redemption Fund whoch purchases land under false pretenses from Palestinians in order to transfer these tracts to settlement ownership.[21] He is linked to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich (currently owner of Chelsea Football Club in the English Premier League) in the diamond business and they are the two largest donors to Elad, whose goal is to “judaise” East Jerusalem by buying up Palestinian-owned land and transferring these to Jewish ownership.
Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada noted that the context within which Leviev acquired his control over significant Angolan diamond resources, was the extensive alluvial diamond mining in Angola between 1992 and 2002, during the civil war between the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). This disrupted the lives of thousands of villagers — also practicing alluvial diamond mining — who fled for relatively safer towns. Many villagers were relocated in terms of the state’s regulation of concessional alluvial mining, after the end of the war. Any concessions for alluvial mining were formally conditional on the concessionaires providing a similar standard of housing and settlement to relocated villagers. In practice these conditions were seldom enforced. In mid-2004 120 000 Congolese alluvial miners were expelled from Angola with considerable brutality.
Angola’s destructive civil war ended in 2002. HRW reported in 2006 that while important electoral legislation was approved by the national assembly, much remained to be done to create an environment in which free and fair elections could take place and to extend civil and political rights to all Angolans. The government continued to violate Angolans’ rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. Persistent delays remained in rebuilding roads, schools, and other infrastructure in the rural provinces. The consistent lack of full transparency about the government’s use of ever-increasing oil revenues remained a further impediment to enjoyment of human rights and reconstruction in Angola. Abuses against civilians by the Angolan military and political tension in the province of Cabinda remained causes for concern. HRW reported in 2017 that human rights in Angola suffered during 2016 due to continued government repression and an economic crisis sparked by the global drop in oil prices, slowing a decade of growth and exposing unresolved problems caused by years of corruption, mismanaged public funds, and political control of institutions. Calls to diversify the economy to create new revenue sources led to massive land acquisition by the government and private businesses, often with forced evictions and other violations, including in the capital, Luanda. President José Eduardo dos Santos, in power since 1979, and noted by Halper to be worth $20 billion in 2015, announced that he would step down in 2018.[22] Security forces continued to crack down on pro-democracy activists and those protesting on behalf of human rights.
The Borgen project reported in 2020 that Angola, the seventh-largest country in Africa, had one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Since 2013, its economy had been booming and both international and domestic investments had been on the rise. Although Angola’s economy had the potential to become an economic powerhouse in Africa, the report said that the international community had become concerned with the poverty rates and overall income inequality in Angola: it then had a 26 percent unemployment rate and 36 percent of the Angolan population lived below the poverty line.
Guinea
Halper wrote that General Israel Ziv (of CTS Global company) and David Tzur (ex-Tel Aviv police commander) were involved in training the Presidential Guard in Guinea.[23] The guard was for the protection of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, who took power in a military coup in 2008. The contract was worth $10 million and included the training of a larger force composed of the President’s tribal loyalists.
HRW reported that in 2015 Camara was charged for his responsibility as supreme commander of the Guinean armed forces for their massacre of hundreds of opposition supporters at their rally in a stadium in Conakry in 2009. Camara had survived an assassination attempt in 2009 and had shortly thereafter resigned and gone to live in Burkina Faso. The Borgen project in 2018 noted that while it was small, Guinea had some of the largest deposits of iron in the world and had a valuable amount of agricultural and natural resources. However, the country continued to have high poverty rates, with 44 per cent of Guineans living below the poverty line. This situation was primarily due to political unrest and a lack of investment in the country’s infrastructure. Child poverty in Guinea also became exacerbated by poor healthcare and a lack of protection against labor and trafficking.
On a more positive note in 2004 Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada reported on a commerical cooperative artisanal gold mining project — there were then an estimated 100 000 artisanal miners in Guinea. The significance of this project is that it demonstrated that it was possible for artisanal miners to be entrepreneurs and to receive just prices for their work. The cooperative bought gold from the miners and sold it to foreign buyers at prices pegged by the Central Bank of Guinea. Therefore miners were not required to hold licenses and there were no private intermediaries between them and their market. They simply mined and sold gold to the cooperative which acted as the middleman and guarantor of a fair price. To date this regulation of artisanal mining has proliferated neither in Guinea nor anywhere else in Africa. However, it remains a model of how broad-based local economic development might succeed in the mining and minerals sector in African countries.
South Africa
Historically, Israel collaborated with apartheid South Africa in the development of nuclear weapon capacity. This alliance involved billions of dollars and included the exchange of nuclear technology.[24] At the end of apartheid in South Africa, South Africa destroyed its nuclear weapons — according to Halper,[25] by 2015 Jane’s Defence Weekly and the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated that Israel then possessed between 100 and 300 nuclear warheads (deployable by land, air or sea), making it the world’s sixth nuclear power.
In post-apartheid South Africa Israel‘s arms and weapons and security systems and training as well as its intelligence activities have manifested in four ways.
First, through the provision (or enablement) of Israeli produced small arms. The Galil assault rifle is produced under licence in South Africa, dating from the apartheid days when it was issued to troops on the Namibian/Angolan border. In post-apartheid South Africa the Galil was — and, to the best of my knowledge, still is — produced under licence. It was the licensed replica of the Galil SAR weapon with which a detachment of the SA Police Services massacred 34 mine workers during a protest strike at Marikana in 2012. In addition to small arms other weapons have also been procured by South Africa from Israel — Halper noted that Israel’s Israel Aerospace Industries sold its Gabriel (sea skimming anti-ship) missiles to, inter alia, South Africa.
Second, Halper also included South Africa within the circle of states with which Israel can establish some measure of hegemony or influence through its security ties. Currently there are individual Israelis providing security services, for instance to South African farmers. This could be significant because elsewhere in Africa individual Israeli business people have acted as interlocutors between African states and the state of Israel and Israel arms and weapons and security services industries. To substantiate that this has potential to happen here requires further investigation.
A third example is of Israeli military and intelligence modus operandi to achieve its objectives in South Africa. In this regard a 2015 Al Jazeera series of publications, termed the Palestine Papers, has described three such events. On 15 October 2009 Meir Dagan, head of Israel’s Mossad external security agency, put a personal call through to his South African counterpart (on the latter’s private mobile number!) to request that South Africa abstain from voting — or vote against — a then upcoming UN HRC resolution to refer the Goldstone Report[26] to the UN General Assembly. In the event South Africa still voted in favour of the resolution. A second event was the Israeli theft of Denel anti-tank missile technology blueprints which Israel reportedly offered to return on condition that an Israeli implicated in the theft not be prosecuted. A third event was a 2012 threat by people claiming to be ex-Mossad agents with access to Mossad’s electronic assault and defence division, to bring down South Africa’s banking system with a cyber-attack if the local BDS campaign was not discontinued within 30 days, and identified individuals removed or prosecuted.
The fourth example is of a Zionist and ANC-supporting South African arms and weapons entrepreneur, Ivor Ichikowitz, who had emerged as the head of the largest defence and aerospace producer in Africa. His Paramount Group exemplified the nature of the relationships between private arms industry capital and the South African and other African states, material inducements to leaders of the SA state and how weapons and arms trading might feed into social conflict in specific countries which have procured weapons. More is known about Ichikowitz and Paramount than the first three examples, and indicate a congruence of specific corporate economic and state political interests under the ideology of defence, securitisation and stabilisation.
Ichikowitz claimed to have been a member of the ANC during its days of underground struggle, and clarified that he was unashamed about his ongoing support and largesse for the organisation. He celebrated the ANC as the movement that brought an end to the oppressive system of apartheid. In 1994, shortly after South Africa’s democratic transition, he created the Paramount Group, initially as an exporter of military equipment surplus from the then SA Defence Force (SADF). Given the end of apartheid and the shrinking of the budgetary allocation for the domestic defence force, there was a need to sell off much of the equipment that had become redundant. By his own admission his Damascene conversion began in Rwanda, speaking to Paul Kagame just after the genocide of the Great Lakes had been halted. Under Ichikowitz’s leadership the Paramount Group bought the SADF equipment at bargain basement prices and refitted and upgraded it for customised usage in other theatres of conflict, before selling it on allegedly for a handsome profit. Twenty years after commencing Paramount had grown into the largest defence and aerospace producer in Africa with 2 500 employees worldwide. In 2014 its annual revenue approached $1 billion.
By 2021 Paramount had also established an Advanced Training and Support division, with facilities in the North West province of South Africa and also at Wonderboom airport and Polokwane International airport. These facilities offered training services to pilots, air forces and the police. Paramount’s Wikipaedia page refers to it having clients in 28 countries, but besides the earlier supplying to Rwanda, details of this are hard to come by: several internet searches revealed only India (in respect of its Mbombe 4 armed vehicle), and through a joint venture in advanced training and support with Burnham Global (from Dubai) a possible presence in Lebanon and Jordan. Further research is required to ascertain the extent of Paramount’s arms, weapons and security training in Africa, and elsewhere.
Ichikowitz’s and Paramount’s ideology of defence, securitisation and social stabilisation dovetails with that which Halper has ascribed to Israel. In addition, Ichikowitz is Zionist-inclined, supporting the state of Israel in its fight against Palestinian “terrorists”, as evidenced by his support for a fund raising campaign for individual IDF soldiers who took part in Operation Protective Edge, the invasion and bombardment of Gaza in 2014. The Ichikowitz Family Tefillin Bank webpage supported this initiative by a Rabbi, although it was taken down from the internet shortly thereafter.
South Africa has a strongly organised Zionist community through the South African Zionist Federation and the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBoD). In addition there is a network of Zionist-supporting organisations from the following eight countries: Bostwana, DRC, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These make up the African Jewish Congress (AJC). Mary Kluk, in 2020 National President of SAJBoD, Director of the Durban Holocaust Centre, Vice President of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) (she headed the WJC Global Jewish Communal Security Committee[27]) and Chair of the Africa Australia Jewish Congress, was vice-President of the AJC. Judging from the apparent lack of activity on its website in recent years, the AJC appears to have no — or at least a very limited — function in advancing the interest of the state of Israel and its arms and weapons and security services industry. A constant theme in this article is that this function is performed largely by individual Israeli business people who are weapons and security services and diamonds/precious metals and raw materials entrepreneurs. The geopolitical significance of Ichikowitz and Paramount probably lies in this role. That said, the AJC network, based on the strong South African Zionist networks as a support base, should not be discounted as being functional to Israeli arms and weapons, and security services trade in the future.
Nowithstanding Ichikowitz’s claim to have transparent relationship with political elites and being committed to promoting stability and development in Africa, the following events raised questions about the veracity of this claim.
- His praise for Equatorial Guinea’s Mbasogo and (then) Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, who are generally regarded as examples of Africa’s most oppressive, corrupt and untransparent leaders.
- Free flights for then President Zuma to Lebanon, Kazahkstan and Washington, showing inappropriate closeness to the centres of national state political power and creating potential — and likely real — conflicts of interest.
- Free flight for then ex-President Mandela from Johannesburg International to Mthatha airport, likewise inappropriate for transparent governance.
- Free flight and week-end holiday at Ichikowitz’s Madikwe Game Reserve lodge, for then Israeli ambassador Arthur Lenk and his family, strong evidence for his links with and support for Israel.
- Defence Department claim, in 2005, that the Paramount Group violated arms control regulations through exports to, inter alia, Angola and Ghana (quoted by Halper).
- Ichikowitz’s involvement, in 2007, in a mining venture in the war-torn eastern DRC with the Makabuza family (the latter had been accused of illegal trade in arms with rebels accused of war crimes).[28]
- In 2014 Ichikowitz was accused of corrupting officials in the Malawian government and also of supplying Brazilian police with weapons for clamping down on favelas preparatory to the World Cup competition.
The intelligence-related events referred as the third example above are emblematic of Israel’s and Zionists’ frustrations with and contradictory perceptions of the ANC government. In 2021 Marc Pozniak, then vice-Chairman of SAJBoD and an Executive Committee Member of the WJC, and until 2018 a Steering Committee member of the World Jewish Diplomatic Corp, explained that it was an uphill struggle to get the South African state onside. He explained that SAJBoD tackled it bit by bit. The reality was that Israel was a “political football” and an “easy target” in South Africa. He said that the SAJBoD fought antisemitism in the streets, and through the courts and engaged with the government in an attempt to influence them. Thus, South Africa differed from other African countries in that there were strong countervailing pressures by local anti-Zionist formations as well as within the ANC itself, that made it difficult for smooth collaboration between the South African and Israeli states — this might have impacted negatively on the potential for Israeli arms and weapons and security trading with South Africa.
Israeli — or Israel-sympathetic — arms and weapons traders and security advisers currently operate in a South African environment characterized by high levels of inequality, poverty and unemployment, and a growing distrust of political elites and minority groupings that have a real — or perceived — advantage in the social pecking order. I have concluded this from my own work in the fields of housing and urban strategy and also from other analysts, most recently including investigative journalist and social activist Ebrahim Harvey’s “The Great Pretenders”. The extent of social fault lines in contemporary South Africa is relevant to my reflection on the modus operandi and impact of Israel’s arms and weapons and security systems trade on African states and their populations. Israeli produced arms and weaponry and security systems could be of interest to different — often conflicting — population groups and social classes in post-apartheid South Africa. One such group referred to, and already receiving security support from Israeli security services entrepreneurs, is the commercial, largely Afrikaans-speaking farming communitry, many of the members of which are under siege both economically and from crime and violent attacks.
My colleague Arumugam Pillay and I have analysed the emergence and development of social conflict in post-apartheid South Africa in a paper titled “The Urban Network Strategy — The Panacea for Urban and Developmental Ills?“ This reflected that South Africa faced multiple challenges in 2015 — and arguably still faces these — of poor governance and financial accountability, poverty, unemployment and social marginalisation, and the undermining of both financial and ecological sustainability of city environments and services. We argued that unemployment and poverty lie at the root of social marginalization, observing that since 2004 there had been growing protest and resistance to the persistent inadequacy of service delivery, the relatively high cost of basic services, spatial and social marginalisation, unemployment, and the lack of support for livelihood opportunities. By 2020 further asset destruction through the lockdown resulted in the real unemployment rate climbing to 46 per cent of the economically active population. In the absence of effective governance and state welfare support[29] the outcome was predictable: greater social instability, fragmentation, conflict and protest. In mid-2021 large scale looting and destruction of central business districts in KwaZuluNatal and Gauteng provinces took place. It is only a matter of time before these events repeat themselves or take some novel but socio-pathological form, because Ichikowitz’s much loved ANC government is divided against itself and therefore rudderless. In the ensuing instability and chaos it is quite possible that Paramount will provide the securitization services to try and pacify a rebellious population.
Conclusion:
Zionist antisemitism experts said that Mandela spoke about Jews as being inherently underhand in their dealings with African national leaders, bribing them to achieve their ends and that their practices impacted negatively on the lives of most African people. Although Mandela did not once use the word “Jews” in this designation, they claimed that his use of the word “Israel” was a code for “Jews”.
I recorded the involvement of Israeli businesspeople in trading arms, weapons systems, diamonds and raw materials in 15 African countries (Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Burundi, Uganda, Gabon, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somaliland/Chad, Zaire/DRC, Cameroon, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Angola, Guinea and South Africa) in order to explore the extent of their links to the state of Israel, the transparency of their dealings, the likely role of money passing hands to their African counterparts and the contribution of their trade to the collective well-being of the citizens of these countries.
Private sector Israeli state relationships
The sources I referred to presented substantial anecdotal evidence indicating that private Israeli arms dealers and security companies’ operations in Africa were congruent with the policies and strategies of the state of Israel.
Halper referred to TAR Ideal Concepts (established in 1990 as a one stop shop) to illustrate the intimate relationships between Israel’s MoD, its Ministry of Internal Security, arms manufacturers, private security firms, former (and still influential) politicians and senior military police. Another example was the company Global CST, which was awarded a $10 million contract to provide security consultancy and equipment to Colombia’s Special Forces, at the suggestion of the Israeli MoD. Among CST’s senior personnel was general Yossi Kuperwasser, director-general of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Shlomo ben Ami, former Israeli Foreign Minister and in 2015 vice-President of the Toledo (Spain) International Centre for Peace. According to Wikileaks cables CST had a close relationship with the Colombian National Police. In 2009 CST stole classified Colombian documents and tried to sell these to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.[30]
From the content recorded above for each of the said African countries there was a definite relationship of all these individuals to the state of Israel. Most had been mid-level officers of the IDF before migrating to trading as middlemen for Israeli weapons companies[30] and security service providers.
Specific examples of the state of Israel’s direct involvement in these African relationships are events like Ariel Sharon’s secret meeting with Mobutu Sese Seko (1981), the Israeli MoD involvement through its arms export coordinating structure, SIBAT (DRC 2003), MoD delegation in Cameroon (post-2000), links between Israeli ambassador to South Africa (Arthur Lenk) and Zionist-supporting South African weapons dealer Ivor Ichikowitz and the latter’s support for a Teffilin campaign rallying behind IDF soldiers involved in Operation Protective Edge (2014), and Yair Klein who trained paramilitaries in Colombia and South Africa under an official Israeli government licence.
Halper noted that the IDF has played a similar role to the private security firms by sending personnel to teach, advise and secure governments, corporations and vital facilities. The IDF’s Foreign Training Branch brought soldiers like Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko and Samuel Doe (from Liberia), commanders and would-be military to Israel for training and schooling in the securitisation narrative based on hasbara.
Furthermore, as Harmon Snow reported, diamond tycoon Gertler was close to Avigdor Lieberman (leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu [Israel Home] party) and that Gertler’s close partner, Benny Steinmetz (said to be Israel’s richest billionaire) was close to ex-prime minister Ehud Olmert while Gertler’s spiritual guide-cum-business partner Leibovitch was close to both Lieberman and ex-prime minister Benjamin Nethanyahu.
Halper[32] quoted Ian Almond (source) that the semi — autonomous agents — like Klein, Leo Gleser (arms sales to Honduras), Mike Harrari (brother-in law of Israel’s Attorney General, later Supreme Court Judge, Dorith Beinish) (sold guns to Panama), were not rogue outlaws but could not have operated as efficiently as they did without the backing and endorsement of the Israeli state.
While these relationships were more evident in the “dirty wars” of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, they appear also to have formed the bedrock for Israeli business people’s engagements with African leaders from the 1990s.
Transparency of dealings and inequality
In assessing the transparency of the Israeli interlocutors’ dealings with the leaders of the 15 African countries examined, I also considered the extent of inequality in these countries between the elites and the ruled.
I used freedom of expression and the press as well as other human rights like the right to opposition and freedom of association as indicators of transparency. I assumed that without a vibrant and free press the interactions and agreements between political and private elites remained unexposed, effectively covered up.
Taken together with freedom of the press, I assumed that the extent of inequality impacted on the sensitivity of elite rulers to their subjects’ situation and quality of life. Where differences in wealth and disposable income of rulers and the ruled were significantly large inequality functioned as the material basis for lifestyles diametrically opposed in terms of comfort/discomfort, over-consumption/under-consumption and the ability/inability to address crisis personal situations (including health and employment crises). It follows that inequality distanced rulers from ruled and led to a lack of understanding and compassionate attitudes. I concluded that these divisions reinforced the tendency for discrete and hidden political and economic relationships, rather than transparency.
I assessed fourteen of the African states to undermine the human rights of their citizens including freedom of expression and right to a fair trial (i.e. Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Burundi, Uganda, Gabon, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somaliland, Zaire/DRC, Cameroon, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Angola and Guinea). Five of these states egregiously violated human rights and committed crimes against humanity (killing of civilians) (i.e. Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Zaire/DRC and Liberia). Reports about the Arms Deal, what has become known as “State Capture” and more recently the Zondo Commission of Enquiry, demonstrated that while South Africa stood out with a better human rights record, many corrupted state/private sector relationships here have remained hidden from public view. As is the case with the other 14 African states, poor governance and lack of transparency about the practices of South African economic and political elites has happened in the context of extreme inequality, which is evident from the noticeably high levels of unemployment and the lack of wealth and often dire income poverty of the majority of the populations of all these 15 countries.
It was in this context that Israeli security advisors trained the guards of three African presidents (Equatorial Guinea, Zaire, and Guinea) and also Liberia’s ATU, and Ichikowitz provided free flights for Mandela and Zuma.
Gertler’s companies’ contradictory and confusing commercial registrations (indicated in the first diagram presented earlier) are a concrete example of corporate opacity, that shields companies from open reportage. Furthermore, given the opacity of their registrations, the network of Gertler companies (indicated in the second diagram presented earlier) as well as crosscutting directorships and shareholding is a graphic illustrration of their outreach into specific functions in certain areas — this lends credence to what Harmon Snow described as the “Israeli octopus”, a term that the antisemitism expert Shain would likely identify as a code for the Protocols’ depiction of the “scheming and controlling Jew”.
Crawford Browne noted that Gertler’s South African partners and associates included Tokyo Sexwale (ex-Premier of South Africa’s Gauteng province, former Human Settlements minister in the ANC government and a major shareholder in the minerals and energy sector), ex-President Zuma’s nephew (who had shareholding in the minerals and energy sector), Glencore (the world’s largest mining company and commodities trader) and current South African President Cyril Ramaphosa (also heavily invested into the minerals and energy sector).
Harmon Snow and Crawford Browne see this structure of commercial entities as part of a broader structure of other entities that link elite structures (like the Council on Foreign Relations), the CIA and organised crime syndicates, which have an interest in the weapons and diamonds trades as well as the pacification of local social rebellions.
Thus the Israeli weapons and arms producers and security services relationships with African states were not transparent but opaque and undermining of democratic accountability of the rulers to their citizenry. The same can be said about Ichikowitz’s and Gertler’s relationships with the ruling ANC in South Africa, notwithstanding Ichikowitz’s protestations to the contrary. Mandela’s claims about underhand methods and Israel “worming itself” into influencing decision-makers, reflected this reality.
Corruption
There were mutual material benefits made from deals with political elites. Israeli businesspeople, ex-IDF personnel as well as Israeli intelligence and other state functionaries received commercial concessions the quid pro quo being arms and security systems.
Arms deals are notorious for the payment of fees by the dealers to the intermediaries and governmental decision-makers. This happened with the notorious Al Yamamah arms deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia[32] and also with South Africa’s arms deal.[34] Halper provided no evidence about specific instances of bribery in the 14 African countries — arms deals are usually shrouded in secrecy and their actual terms and conditions seldom
revealed. By contrast there is evidence for the estimated wealth of some of these African leaders. The net value of the president of Burundi was estimated as hundreds of thousands of US dollars; of the presidents of Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, and South Africa[35]as hundreds of millions of US dollars; and of Nigeria, Zaire and Angola, as billions of US dollars. It would be interesting to understand how they accumulated this value and whether it had to do — directly or indirectly — with weapons and arms deals from Israel or any other arms exporting country. (South Africa’s current president Ramaphosa is said to have accumulated his wealth through acquiring shares in minerals and mining operations as part of what was termed black economic empowerment). The answer to this question will likely never be known. But the astronomical wealth of these leaders stands in stark contrast to the absence of wealth and income poverty of the vast majority of their citizens (South Africans included). Which leads to the question of inequality in wealth and income, and the impact of Israeli weapons and arms dealing and security services on the quality of life of these citizens.
Impact on quality of life
In all these countries where the overwhelming majority of the population is impoverished, these relationships between Israeli weapons and arms producers and security systems providers and African states have not helped but in fact undermined broad-based economic development that could have advantaged the majority of citizens of these states. In many cases weapons and arms have been used against the citizens of these and neighbouring states, with deadly consequences. Feinstein, in the chapter “Cry the Beloved Continent”,[36] notes that the provision of weapons and
arms has been devastating in terms of conflict, injuries, deaths and economic and social dislocation. Feinstein, noted that “ while the ready availability of small arms and mobile weapons systems is undoubtedly a consequence of some of this (endogenous) violence, it is also a precipitating cause. The easy supply of weapons makes these conflicts exponentially more violent and deadly; Africa’s most notorious conflicts include: Liberia and Sierra Leonne; Rwanda; DRC; Angola; Somalia; Sudan; Egypt; Libya; and, Ivory Coast.” As I have demonstrated above, with the exception of Egypt, Israeli arms dealers, security agents and associated business people have been involved in all the above countries.
Their activities and the provision of Israeli arms and security strategies have fed into and reinforced deadly conflicts in these countries leading to much human suffering. The millions killed in the Hutu/Tutsi conflict as it manifested in Rwanda and Burundi, as well as in the Eastern DRC are pertinent examples of this impact of Israel’s arms, weapons and securitisation practices in Africa. To the extent that Israel has fed and reinforced conflicts that have led to such large scale destruction of life and infrastructure, it is not inaccurate for Mandela to refer to its “evil actions” and “pernicious agenda”.
In his address Mandela also referred to “Apartheid Israel Dogs of War” in respect of Ukraine. For this one of the Zionist antisemitsm experts accused him of using the suffering in Ukraine for his own problemtaic objectives. However, Mandela’s comments in this regard reflects the reality of Israeli arms being provided to the neo-fascist Azov Battalion in Ukraine, fuelling the attacks on the Russian-speaking Donbass region. Azov is but one neo-fascist formation amongst several others that have been attacking Jewish places of worship and memorials as well as Roma people directly. Accusing Mandela of exploiting the war in Ukraine for his own purposes obscures a frightening reality: the rise of right wing forces to centres of both political and military power in Ukraine, following the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovitch in 2014, and the shocking reports about right wing violence and attacks on people, places and democratic institutions.
Israel accounts for only two per cent of the world’s arms sales and only three Israeli companies are found among the hundred largest arms exporting companies. From 2012 to 2013 Israel’s arms sales to Africa more than doubled — $71 million in 2009 and $223 million in 2013. Still, Israel is not the only weapons and arms producing power that has facilitated the deaths of civilians and destruction of economic potential in these African countries. Historically South Africa provides an example of the activity in Africa of weapons and arms dealers from other states. Hennie van Vuuren in his book ‘Apartheid, Guns and Money’ shows that prior to the 1994 transition to democracy weapons and arms producers from both the West as well as from the then Soviet Union and Red China were violating the UN arms embrago of apartheid South Africa. Investigative journalist Evelyn Groenink identified some of these dealers having targeted the ANC as early as the 1980s — she claimed that Joe Modise (then chief of the ANC military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, and later the first ANC defence minister in the post-1994 government of national unity) was central to these corrupt relationships and possibly stood behind the assassinations of ANC cadres Dulcie September and Chris Hani whom she characterised as the ‘incorruptibles’. If Israel’s arms and weapons trade is relatively small in magnitude, what is the merit of focusing on Israeli weapons and arms dealing with African states?
Halper emphasised that he chose Israel for the purpose of exploring security politics and securitisation — the magnitude of its arms deals with foreign states was not the primary reason. He argued that Israel rather than major core powers like the US, Britain and Germany, has played a crucial, and niche, function in providing security and pacification strategies on a global scale, for several reasons.
First, Israel has had a pivotal position along key axes: having fought several conventional wars but also embroiled for over a century in asymmetrical warfare against the Palestinian people. This provides it with institutional memory and battlefield experience in pacifying a rebellious people.
Second, it’s role as an agent identifying major niches (i.e. the weaponry of hybrid warfare and securocratic control and the model of sufficient pacification) in the securocratic needs of the world’s hegemons (at both the core and on the periphery), and filling them.
Third, its ability to supply the most advanced technologies to the field-based tasks of pacification.
And, fourth, to quote Halper “when it comes to the rulers of countries on the peripheries Israeli involvement becomes more personalised, with Israeli business people-cum-military advisors, suppliers and trainers identifying up-and-coming leaders and currying relationships with them until they reach power, afterwards playing a key role in the security affairs of their countries.”
Therefore, in terms of its breadth of military relations across the globe[37] and the depth of its involvement in countries’ internal security arrangements, Halper concluded that Israel has had an unparalleled degree of securocratic reach throughout the world system.
In response to the above story several of the Israeli oligarch’s referred to, project themselves as philanthropists, supporting humanitarian causes and development projects in several of the countries mentioned. These projects appear to contradict the above negative assessment of Israel’s presence in Africa. The Gertler Family Foundation lists 15 projects[38] in the fields of health, education, and culture and social programmes in the DRC. Likewise the Ichikowitz Family Foundation[39] lists seven philanthropic projects across South Africa, Gabon and Brazzaville Congo. Compared with Gertler and Ichikowitz, Lev Leviev’s charitable contributions are decidedly sectarian: Silverstein (referred to above) claimed that these contributions were mainly focused on the right wing Zionist-like Chabad and the Israeli settler movement. Still he also funded the museum of the City of New York, the Angel Ball cancer research and the Carousel of Hop Ball. His claim to provide funds to Oxfam America was not corroborated by that organisation, which doesn’t accept donations from people who violate international law. Assessing the extent and value of these charitable contributions must await another occasion. Regardless of their impact and ideological meaning, the intensively and extensively reported Israeli state and business practices in Africa warrant serious consideration in their own right, which cannot simply be described as manifestations of the tropes from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Paul Hendler, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
August/September 2022.
[1] Halper references several other sources as a basis for using the political economy of transnational capitalism as his point of departure: Cf. Michael Parenti’s Imperialism 101 and Carolyn Nordstrom’s Global Outlaws — Crime, Money and Power in the Contemporary World; Peter Phillips’ Global Giants: American Empire and Transnational Capital provides a similar global systems perspective that builds on earlier work like that of C Wright Mills’ The Power Elite.
[2] Jeff Halper, War Against the People, Pluto Press, 2015, page 227.
[3] Equatorial Guinea was news in the media in 2004 when 67 people, all travelling on South African passports, were arrested at Harare airport suspected of being en route to overthrow the Equatorial Guinean regime of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Key people named in the media as conspirators were Mark Thatcher (son of ex-British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher), Simon Mann (a former British special forces officer), and South African businessman Nick du Toit. Mann was reported to have been involved in protecting oil installations in Angola during that country’s civil war.
[4] Halper, op. cit, pages 235–236.
[5] Sharon was defence minister, overseeing the IDF invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s, and was found by an Israeli commission of enquiry to be complicit in the massacres of several thousand Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon.
[6] Both HRW (2019) and Amnesty (2021) reported on serious human rights violations (particularly violent crackdowns) that left 120 people killed in Khartoum, physical and electronic surveillance activity and violence against women perceived to have transgressed gendered norms), a failing economy and continuing popular protests during Sudan’s transition after the overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
[7] Halper, op. cit, page 236.
[8] Halper, op. cit, page 229.
[9] For instance, in 2012 the oil sector grew by eight per cent but non-oil industries contracted by 0,35 per cent and the unemployment rate remained over 20 per cent. Oil yielded high profits but did not create significant employment opportunities.
[10] The Borgen project opined that to reduce the presence of Boko Haram and improve both public safety and quality of life in Nigeria, it was essential that economic development initiatives succeeded. Terrorist organizations took hold in countries where people felt robbed of opportunity. The best way to combat them was to provide legitimate means for employment and personal prosperity.
[11] Halper, op. cit, page 229.
[12] Cf. Davenport, C and Stam, A 2009 What really happened in Rwanda, Miller Mclune, who concluded that besides the genocide there were mass spontaneous killings that arose from social breakdown and reflected more closely similar killings in events like the English, Greek, Chinese and Russian civil wars; Wrong, M 2021 Do not disturb — murder and an African regime gone mad, Fourth Estate, pp. 253–264, who lists research that reinforces some of Davenport and Stam’s conclusions, and relates anecdotes of shocking humiliation and assaults by Kagame and his colleagues on recalcitrant Rwanda government officials (book link).
[13] Halper, op. cit, page 229.
[14] Halper, op. cit, pages 90–92, explains that SIBAT was the Israeli arms and components export coordinating structure of the Israeli Ministry of Defence (MoD). It had a self-described close relationship with Israel’s Defence and Homeland Security industries, pinpointing relevant technological solutions for specific requirements, establishing joint ventures, managing Israeli arms industry at a glance, marketing and sale of IDF inventory and organizing Israeli national pavilions at international defence exhibitions.
[15] Cf. Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada, 2004 Rich Man Poor Man Development Diamonds and Poverty Diamonds - The potential for change in the artisanal alluvial diamond fields of Africa, pages 25–30. “Despite the huge value of diamond exports , however, life for artisanal miners is desperate. Their pay is bad, they work in poor conditions and they have little physical and financial security.” The report noted that the DRC state had regulations governing artisanal mining, but that these (including licensing) were observed largely in the breach due mainly to a lack of transportational, human resource and technical capacity. Alluvial miners in the DRC were said to be earning the equivalent of about US$1 per day.
[16] The Borgen report indicated that there was a significant foreign aid and NGO sector (including US Aid) operating in the country.
[17] Halper, op. cit, pages 232–233.
[18] The LR Group’s website makes no mention of arms and related security dealing and presents itself as a company providing sustainable development solutions. There are many questions raised about the LR Group’s alleged development projects in Papua Nieu Guinea, which prompt deeper questions about the nature of the company itself — whether it is a substantial company with a real staff complement and operational processes or whether it remains a shell company through which transactions of all sorts (including arms deals) could be conducted.
[19] Halper, op. cit, page 234.
[20] Crawford-Browne’s reference for this is an article in Haaretz. One of Africa Israel Investment Company’s subsidiaries, Danya Cebus, owns leading building contractors involved in the illegal construction of settlements in the West Bank. These settlements include Zufom, near Jayyous, Mar Horua, near Bethlehem and Ma’ale Adumin, between Jerusalem and Jericho.
[21] In 2007 Leviev’s development company was building several settlements including a US$230 million project on land confiscated from the Palestinian village of Bilin. Then Leviev also owned property in New York worth more than US$1 billion.
[22]In 2020 Dos Santos’ successor was reportedly pursuing him on corruption charges.
[23] Halper, op. cit, page 234. Cf. Mellman, Web Guinea.
[24] For details see Polakow-Suransky, Sasha 2010. The Unspoken Alliance — Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, Jacana, Auckland Park.
[25] Halper, op. cit, pages 113–114. The key delivery force are Israel’s Jericho series of intercontinental ballistic missiles (Jericho II was developed with apartheid South Africa). Jericho III includes two or three low yield multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) — MIRVs can be dispersed against multiple targets across a broad area. Nuclear warheads can also be delivered by its US-supplied F16 fighter jets or by sea on Israeli-modified American Harpoon missiles or Israeli Popeye Turbo missiles. The latter can be deployed on four Dolphin-class submarines supplied by Germany. These delivery systems give Israel a nuclear strike capability covering the entire Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and almost all parts of North America as well as large parts of South America and Oceania.
[26] i.e. the findings of the Goldstone Commission into Operation Cast Lead, the 2008 attack on Gaza. Cf. Horowitz, Adam Ratner, Lizzy and Weiss, Phillip (editors) 2011. “The Goldstone Report — The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict”, Nation Books, New York.
[27] An internet search on the WJC site revealed no such security committee, but it was listed on the site of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is a pro-Zionist organisation that operates as a watchdog patrolling the bounds of permissive criticisms of Israel.
[28] In 2008 Aniedi Okure reported on the African Faith and Justice Network website, inter alia, that Modetse Makabuza had interlinked commercial interests in rare metals (particularly cassetirite) in the eastern DRC and was engaged and collaborating with certain of the armed groups that were controlling different slices of the geographical areas of the mines, in what was already a war with many civilian casualties.
[29] We argued that to address the unaffordability of housing requires three key interventions, viz. fiscal reform, public banking and recasting municipalities as public developers, and a political intervention in the economy to reshape funding flows to productive green industries. We juxtaposed these interventions with the ongoing neo-liberal trajectory of the ANC government that persists in seeing individuals, institutions and the state itself as having to function as private entrepreneurs, with only very limited state support that shouldn’t be named as welfare but more realistically, basic services for the survival of the poor and the system as a whole.
[30] Halper, op. cit, pages 241–242.
[31] Halper, op. cit, page 93, identified the five top Israeli weapons and arms companies as Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, Israel Military Industries and Israel Weapons Industries.
[32] Halper, op. cit, pages 239–240.
[33] The extent of bribes paid in the course of the Al Yamamah arms deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia dwarfs most arms deals.
[34] A major beneficiary was one Fana Hlongwana, advisor to then Defence Minister Joe Modise. Shabir Shaik, Jacob Zuma’s financial advisor, was found guilty of bribing the latter on behalf of a French weapons company, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
[35] Thabo Mbeki (hundreds of thousands of US dollars), Jacob Zuma ($20 million), and Cyril Ramaphosa (U$ 450 million).
[36] Andrew Feinstein, The Shadow World — Inside the Global Arms Trade, Jonathan Ball, 2011, page 435.
[37] Cf. Halper, op. cit, pages 193 -226; 249 -274. In addition to the practices on the African continent listed above, Israel also markets and sells its weapons and security systems in the Middle East, Central, South and East Asia and Latin America. It markets and sells its methods for pursuing securocratic wars to the ruling political and corporate classes of its core client states, the US, Canada, Britain and France. By 2012 the Israel Defence Exports Control Agency issued 8 716 export permits for 18 000 defense commodities to 130 countries.
[38] Health sector: a) Refurbishment and equiping of Hospital du Cinquantinaire de Kisangani; b) Partnered to build 40 bed hospital — Le Centre Hospitalier Lombo-Lombo (Kindu Province Du Maniema); c) Provided state of the art medical equipment to Hospital General de Reference de Kipushi (Province du Katanga); d) Partnered with Operation Smile Ministries to provide free surgery for facial deformities (Province du Katanga); e) Donated medicince and food to Le Centre de Saute St-Raymond for malnourished children; f)Partnered with Kimbondo Pediatrics Orphanage and Hospital (Kinshasha) to save 800 abandoned children; and, g) Made commitment to Operation Project CHIRPA to defray cost of pediatric cardiac surgery. Educational sector: a) Funding to develop and maintain Lycee Francais Blaisepascal de Lumbumbashi school (Katanga Province); b) Funding repairs and maintenance for Ecole Pramaire 3 et 4 Binza Delvaux (Kinshasha) school; and, c) Funded a literacy programme of Afalit International Literacy programme (Kinshasha). Cultural and social programmes: a) Fully renovated Hospice des viellards Saint Pieire; b) Fully supported SOS Children Villages N’Sele Kinshasha (11 orphans); c) Participated (31 per cent) in funding the FRIPT Electricity Project — the largest public private partnership in the DRC; and, d) Set up the Kitoko Food Farm (2012 to 2017), a sustainable food farm and settlement based on kibbutz principles, jointly with the Fleurelle Group. the farm employs 100 people, uses high-tech agricultural techniques to demonstrate the viability of commercial agriculture to meet the DRC’s food security needs.
[39] a) African Oral History Archive: documents stories of key events, stimulates debate and gives access to the history of the development of the South African and other nations; b) Conservation: financed anti-poaching initiatives and trained park rangers in partnership with national agencies in Gabon and South Africa; c) Funded World Tour for Unity Concerts in South Africa in 2015; d) Funded a national campaign, I am the constitution at Constitution Hill in 2016, to celebrate South Africa’s constitution; e) Supported the making of the film, Plot for Peace, about the behind-the-scenes actions leading to Mandela’s release; f) Ichikowitz honoured for his role in the 1998 Brazzaville Protocol, which according to the ANC’s Mathews Phosa (quoted) set in motion the birth of a just and peaceful South Africa; and g) Funded Brazzaville Congo Field Hospital.
