Democratic Palestine : 2 (ص 29)
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- Democratic Palestine : 2 (ص 29)
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MPLA soldier guarding a factory against enemy sabotage
unions, even though it has itself practiced a similarly racist
policy against Palestinians. Instead the Histadrut works to
establish contacts with the black trade unions in South Africa,
as a showcase example of “progressiveness” to counter the real
phenomenon of close Zionist-Pretoria cooperation. Last
summer's course in cooperative enterprises, the 52nd of its
kind sponsored by the Histadrut’s Afro-Asian Institute, was
attended by participants from 21 countries which have no
diplomatic relations with ‘Israel’; half of these were from
Africa. .
Since the fifties, with and without diplomatic ties, mil-
itary cooperation has also occurred. In fact, serious re-
searchers on the subject contend that this is the most signifi-
cant aspect of Israeli involvement in Africa, but the details are
most often kept secret by both sides. It is known that ‘Israel’
trained Zaire’s brutal secret police in the years when the two
countries had no diplomatic relations.
More recently, Israel Military Industries (state-owned)
supplied Nigeria’s police with guns for supervising the fradu-
lent August 1983 elections, after a deal with the US fell through
because Nigeria lacked the hard cash for advance payment.
The Israeli state backed this transaction with a £4 million
export credit, showing the importance attached to the arms
market in Africa.
Arab reaction’s responsibility
The shallowness of the neocolonial African regimes’ break
with ‘Israel’ is also predicated on the hypocrisy involved in
much of official Arab politics, due to the domination of Arab
reaction. It is well-known that the Arab boycott of ‘Israel’ is not
impecably observed by all, and some of the violations are
deliberate. For example, one could read in the newspaper last
year that Saudi Arabia is buying Israeli irrigation equipment
through European dealers (Los Angeles Times, November 13,
1983). On what basis can a more stringent position be exacted
from other countries, especially those whose economic and
political maneuverability is much less than that of Saudi Ara-
bia?
The other aspect of Arab reaction’s responsibility lies in the
policy of OPEC as led by Saudi Arabia. This has aimed at
further integrating the oil-producing states in the imperialist
system, and thus precluded any genuine ‘third world’ solidari-
ty. It was the poorer African countries, much more than the
capitalist ones, that suffered from the rise in oil prices. Though
some Arab oil-producers committed substantial aid to African
countries, this was never sufficient to offset the economic
difficulties imposed by these countries’ bottom-ranking in the
imperialist hierarchy.
US imperialism’s offensive
The most compelling force behind the Zionist comeback in
Africa is, very simply, imperialism’s increasingly aggressive
global offensive, led by the US. It is telling that the two African
leaders who stepped forward to publicly embrace the Zionist
state are unconditionally pro-US. Liberia’s Samuel Doe was
trained by the US Special Forces in 1979, before taking power
in the 1980 coup. Mobutu of Zaire is a virtual imperialist agent.
His first coup was the 1960 CIA operation in the Congo
(Zaire’s former name), which ousted the popular nationalist
leader, Patrice Lumumba. In 1963, Mobutu was trained as a
paratrooper in ‘Israel’. His 1965 rise to power was also CIA-
sponsored, and CIA operative Robert Devlin “remains in Kin-
29 - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 2
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