those against whom African fighters were waging a struggle’.69
The main exception in this context was Israel’s position on South Africa. During the 1960s Israel was vocal and consistent in its opposition to apartheid. Along with African governments, it repeatedly condemned Pretoria at the UN, and made sure that its position on the matter was known to its African allies. More discreetly, so as not to damage its relationships in the West, Israel also established ties with, and extended symbolic assistance to, African liberation movements from southern Africa and the Portuguese colonies, including the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of South Africa, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO).70 While many Israeli politicians genuinely opposed apartheid and colonial rule on moral grounds and invoked the long Jewish history of marginalisation and discrimination as a justification for this position, Israel also hoped that its vocal opposition to South Africa’s policies and low-key support for African liberation movements would convince African leaders that Jerusalem was, after all, on their side.
An African adventure
The decade of 1957 to 1966 has often been described as the ‘honeymoon’ or ‘golden age’ of African–Israeli relations. And the strategic and material interests that were the driving force behind this romance notwithstanding, one reason that this period was cherished in Israeli memory is that Israeli engagement with African countries was closely linked to the urge of the Zionist elites to reimagine their own identity vis-à-vis their surroundings and neighbours. On the one hand, Israeli rhetoric in Africa portrayed Israel as a postcolonial nation and Zionism as a liberation movement, associating Israel with other young nations of the ‘Third World’ and rejecting the comparison between Zionism and imperialism. On the other hand, as Yacobi and Bar-Yosef argue, Zionist perceptions of Africa were heavily influenced by late colonial ideas about progress and civilisation and consistently stressed the differences between Israel and African countries.71 Israel’s position as a ‘donor’ and a model not only highlighted the inequality between Israel and African countries in terms of development and wealth but also positioned Israel as part of the ‘modern’ world, in contrast to Africa.72
In terms of the Israeli institutions involved, a major role was played by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israeli security agencies (the military and the Mossad) and companies that took part in joint ventures with African governments. Israeli engagement therefore not only focused on state-building and state-led development but was also of a highly formal and state-centric nature. By the second half of the 1960s, tensions and disagreements between Israeli civilian institutions, private entrepreneurs and security agencies emerged, as diplomats began to feel that the activities of the latter two groups of actors were getting out of control. ‘With no objective justification, a security empire has been erected in Africa’, an Israeli official protested in 1966 to Abba Eban, then Israel’s new foreign minister. ‘This interferes with work, foments turmoil, and creates great political risk.’73 In the following years, however, events in the Middle East and Africa slowly shifted the balance of power much further away from the state’s civilian institutions and into the hands of both formal and informal security and business entrepreneurs.
Among the many African leaders who heard about Israel’s technical and military assistance in the early 1960s and sought to benefit from it was a group of exiled southern Sudanese politicians. Their plan was to fight for the independence of southern Sudan: to liberate it from the Arab government in Khartoum. Their main problem was that they had few resources at their disposal: meagre funds, even less political backing and hardly any weapons. As early as 1961, southern leaders began appealing for Israeli assistance, writing letters to Jerusalem and knocking on the doors of Israeli embassies across Africa.1 Israeli officials, however, were reluctant to support them. They understood that the war in Sudan represented a golden opportunity for fuelling the tensions between Africans and Arabs, something that could only strengthen Israel in the international sphere. But the southern secessionist agenda was unpopular among African leaders, and Israel did not want to damage its diplomatic efforts on the continent by supporting the controversial cause of a non-state armed group.
It was Israel’s expansion during the war of 1967 that eventually led its leaders to change their minds. Throughout the mid-1960s, tensions between Israel and Syria escalated, prompting mutual exchanges of threats between Israel and its neighbours that resulted in the situation in the entire region spiralling out of control. On 15 May 1967 Egyptian troops entered the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt expelled the UN forces that had been based there since the 1956 Suez campaign. On 22 May Nasser announced the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Not before securing American approval, on 5 June Israel launched a surprise attack, starting a war that ended on 10 June in a major Israeli victory. Within these six days Israel occupied the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, the Jordanian West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights.2
Israel’s new occupation of Arab territories complicated its diplomatic position in Africa and altered its security concerns, which now focused on preserving its grip over territories and populations far beyond its original boundaries.3 These developments unavoidably also drew Sudan and the Horn of Africa more clearly into the Middle Eastern conflict. In the following years, a war of attrition unfolded between Israel and Egypt, whose troops were stationed on the eastern and western banks of the Suez Canal. Egypt received most of its military support from the Soviets, but Sudan also lent a hand. The Mossad calculated that increasing the capacity of the rebels in southern Sudan would keep the Sudanese military busy at home, and suggested Israel should act. Golda Meir, who became Israel’s prime minister in March 1969, approved the initiative. During the following two years, the Mossad led a covert operation that involved airdropping arms and humanitarian aid inside the headquarters of the southern Sudanese rebel group Anya-Nya and training its members in guerrilla warfare.
All Israeli assistance was provided via one southern rebel officer, Joseph Lagu. Thanks to Israel’s support, Lagu was able to consolidate his position as the leader of the southern struggle, much to the dismay of other politicians who saw themselves pushed aside. The weapons Israel sent to Sudan were mainly Syrian and Jordanian booty captured during the 1967 conflict: limited in scope and sophistication but nonetheless significant given that the rebels previously had hardly any weapons.4 Small delegations of Israeli military advisors, doctors and communication experts travelled through Uganda into Sudan to train the rebels, while additional equipment was transferred through western Ethiopia. The entire operation was carried out with the consent of Ethiopia, Kenya and, above all, Uganda, whose territories Israeli advisors used to sneak into Sudan. To maximise the impact of the operation in the international sphere, the Mossad also embarked on a secret propaganda campaign and disseminated posters and leaflets on behalf of Anya-Nya across the world, publicising the atrocities Khartoum, the Egyptians and the Soviets were committing against Africans.5
If the involvement in Sudan was a Mossad-led clandestine operation, after the 1967 war Israeli security agencies were quietly dominating Israel’s presence in neighbouring countries as well. In Ethiopia, Israel began to promote a new secret military alliance (codenamed ‘coffee’) that envisioned the establishment of a joint Israeli–Ethiopian base in Assab, on the Red Sea, though the plan did not materialise.6 In Uganda, Israeli military advisors were working in close cooperation with the Ugandan chief of staff, Idi Amin, who also used Israel’s assistance and advice to take power in a military coup in January 1971. In exchange for Israeli support – and, according to some accounts, bribes – Amin advanced Israel’s strategic and economic interests in Uganda, which included free access to southern Sudan.7
Israel’s fall from grace in Africa
For Israel, the occupation of Sinai was a strategic
