Africa

Sleeping giant has a role to play

Alana Baranov — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 09:50:40 +0000

Living at the tip of the African continent, it is easy to feel disconnected from the pulse of global affairs. But, while I may not have grown up in one of the world's financial or political capitals, as the 21st century progresses, it is clear that Africa matters. And as the "sleeping giant" awakens, her geopolitical importance will shape world events. Long overlooked by political analysts for its strategic importance and influence in relation to other regions, Africa's stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be ignored forever.

Recent developments in Africa on the Middle East issue call for serious consideration. December's vote by South Africa's ruling party to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel has immense symbolic importance. The ANC declared it was "unapologetic in its view that the Palestinians are the victims" and called on "all South Africans to support the programmes and campaigns of the Palestinian civil society which seek to put pressure on Israel to engage with the Palestinian people to reach a just solution". The latest in a series of party and government decisions, including that of the trade minister to introduce labelling of settlement goods, it has served to bolster the BDS campaign worldwide.

Historically, the Jewish state and Africa were natural allies, with the shared experience of gaining independence in the aftermath of the Second World War. There have been three distinct phases since then. We went from close solidarity in the 1960s to the collapse of diplomatic ties after the Yom Kippur War, and finally to the gradual resumption of relations in the 1980s and '90s. In recent years, there have been visits by Israeli and African officials to each other's countries as well as limited trade and skills exchanges.

Yet it is the Palestinian struggle that has increasingly won over African hearts and minds. A perfect example is the UN vote on upgrading Palestine. Comprising more than a quarter of the UN's membership, Africa overwhelmingly backed the resolution: 46 African states voted in favour, while five abstained and three were not present. Pan-African pundits have noted the significance of this in the light of the economic and political ties most of these countries enjoy with the West, especially Israel's traditional ally, the US.

How did Africa fall out of love with Israel? We can look to the collaboration between African and Palestinian national liberation organisations, or to the strain of the Yom Kippur War and subsequent oil crisis. More recently, rumours of Israeli air strikes on weapons facilities in Sudan's capital last October and outrage over unrelenting settlement expansion have strengthened African-Palestinian bonds. Even those African states that abstained from the UN vote all subsequently extended diplomatic acknowledgment to Palestine, suggesting that their votes were self-interested rather than shows of support for Israel. Other factors include Arab influence in Northern Africa and the spread of fundamentalist Islamist movements, a common anti-imperialist world-view, and African sympathy for regimes that supported liberation. Resentment towards states perceived to be less supportive of national movements, as well as the association of Israel with apartheid South Africa, cannot be underestimated.

As the nations on either side of the Middle East conflict grow weary of a seemingly intractable dispute, Africa's unique ability to relate to both Israelis and Palestinians, through shared histories and current concerns, could be invaluable.

Lessons from Africa's tumultuous past, and from South Africa's peaceful transition, could be extrapolated to the Middle East to provide a sustainable solution. My generation of young African Jews has an obligation to call for change and support activists on our continent who are working for peace.

Orthodox wedding with a Ugandan Putti twist

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:00:08 +0000

Trudging through a bog with temperatures in the high 30s, dozens of Orthodox Puttis made their way towards the new mikveh. Onlookers from neighbouring Ugandan villages could hardly believe their eyes.

The event — which took place late last month — was the marriage of Ruth Muthoni, a young Orthodox lady from the Nairobi Jewish community, to Tarphon Kamya, a member of the Putti community who had recently returned to Uganda after studying at a yeshivah in Jerusalem for a year.

The pair had been introduced to each other by Simon den Hollander, a New York-based rabbinical student and matchmaker.

Many in the small Putti community are related to one another. It was therefore crucial to introduce their youngsters to members of other Orthodox communities. Ruth and Tarphon were just the first to be introduced, and will remain in the Putti community to teach Orthodox practice.

Israel uproar over ‘forced’ birth control

Ben Hartman — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:38:27 +0000

Certain sections of the Israeli media have renewed accusations that doctors have been allowed to give contraceptive drugs to Ethiopian women without their consent after the head of the Health Ministry, Ron Gamzu, appeared to supply evidence that such a practice could be in place.

In December, Israeli Educational Television (IET) broadcast interviews with Ethiopian women who said they were given the injections in clinics run by Jewish organisations in Ethiopia and later at clinics in Israel.

The women said they were told that if they did not take them, they would not be allowed to emigrate to Israel.

This week, Mr Gamzu wrote to Israel’s four major health clinics instructing them to stop prescribing long-term contraceptive Depo Provera to Ethiopian women.

The letter stressed that it was written “without taking a stance or establishing any facts regarding the allegations raised in this matter”. It added that to receive the injection, women must meet a doctor, express a desire to prevent pregnancy, and then have its side-effects explained.

Mr Gamzu’s directive came in response to a letter from a lawyer at the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (Acri), which called on the ministry to instruct HMOs to stop the practice.

The letter from Acri also states that it is unclear where or why this practice started, and voices concern that it could be seen as a policy to reduce the Ethiopian birth rate.

According to the IET report, the practice has led to a 50 per cent drop in the birth rate among Ethiopians in Israel over the past decade.

Health Ministry Spokeswoman Einav Shimron Greenbaum said that there was never any policy to give Ethiopian women contraceptives against their will, and that the directive was sent out by Mr Gamzu because “there were so many rumours swirling around so the General Secretary wrote that, from here on, clinics must ensure all women know what they’re being given”.

Algeria is jihadists’ biggest prize

John R Bradley — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:17:41 +0000

It is not often that the head of a Western government and a leading al-Qaeda operative see eye-to-eye on developments in the Middle East. But that is what happened after last week’s unprecedented take-over of In Amenas, a gas facility in Algeria.

British Prime Minister David Cameron warned that North Africa has now become a battleground against Islamist radicals that will last for “at least a decade”. One of al-Qaeda’s leaders in northern Mali, Omar Ould Hamaha, quickly concurred. France “had opened the gates of hell” by intervening military in Mali, he declared, falling “into a trap much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia”.

Recent history shows that both are spot on, albeit for different reasons. A decade after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the country is still mired in a cycle of sectarian bloodshed, ranks as the most corrupt country on earth and is a Shia theocracy aligned with Iran. As Nato forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan, the consensus is that the only solution to that country’s continuing inter-tribal, and Islamist-inspried, chaos is a peace deal with the Taliban — whose overthrow was the justification given for the initial invasion.

With the fall of Libya, Colonel Gaddafi, the centre of gravity for al-Qaeda’s myriad networks has clearly shifted from Iraq and Afghanistan to North Africa. And that is a nightmare for recession-hit Europe. Algeria, North Africa’s economic powerhouse, is Europe’s third-biggest supplier of gas, and a major supplier, too, of high quality sweet crude oil. Last week, gas prices spiked 4 per cent in the wake of the terror attack. While the In Amenas facility represents 18 per cent of Algerian gas exports, supplies from Russia will make up for a short-term shortfall. However, that will give Russia, at loggerheads with Nato on the Syrian crisis, still more political leverage.

Now there is the risk of copycat attacks in Algeria, and throughout the region. Egyptian pipelines supplying natural gas to Israel have already repeatedly been bombed over the past two years; a pipeline tied to the only liquefied natural gas export facility in Yemen was sabotaged last October; and in 2004 the Abqaiq oil facility in Saudi Arabia, the country’s largest, was attacked by al-Qaeda.

It seems inevitable that more Algerian facilities in particular will be targeted, resulting in a dramatic decline in foreign investment. If that transpires, the Algerian government will be hard pressed to continue providing food subsidies — the principal reason the regime has managed to avoid the Arab Spring upheaval.
Having spent the 1990s putting down a Islamist uprising, a food crisis would make Algeria ripe for a revolution, which could result in the transformation of the last secular, republican regime in the Arab region into an Islamist theocracy right on Europe’s doorstep.

One thing at least seems crystal clear: al-Qaeda has learned that the way to bring the West to its knees is not by launching terror attacks on its home soil, but by taking control of its own region’s oil and gas facilities.

Mali to Zanzibar: why terror is eating Africa

John R Bradley — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:30:57 +0000

The decision by Britain and France to launch strikes in northern Mali, where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its myriad affiliates have taken control, has brought to the world’s attention how the poisonous tentacles of the Arab Spring have reached a great swathe of Africa.

From Zanzibar to the Maldives, Somalia to Nigeria, a re-energised, disciplined and heavily armed network of Islamist terror groups are now on the warpath — as their counterparts in the Arab world consolidate their own new power bases in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and beyond.

The airstrikes in Mali followed a botched, French-led attempt to rescue one of its captive nationals. And as France braced for retaliatory terror attacks at home, in Benghazi, Libya, the French Consul’s bulletproof car saved him from an assassination attempt. That little-reported event points to a grim reality the Western media would prefer to ignore. Namely, that by forming short-term alliances with al-Qaeda franchises, while offering uncritical support of their dictatorial paymasters Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the West is responsible for sowing the seeds for a massive Islamist blowback.

It was in Benghazi, after all, that Nato trained and armed al-Qaeda fighters — as they are now doing in Syria. After Gaddafi’s fall, the Nato-installed interim regime was reduced to begging Qatar to cease arming the by then out-of-control Islamist militias.

During the subsequent chaos, many of the Islamists, along with a hodgepodge of tribal mercenaries, flowed through Libya’s southern borders, teamed up with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — and headed for the latter’s stronghold of Mali. The al-Qaeda affiliate was already reportedly using the country to train Boko Haram, the Islamist group causing mayhem in Nigeria, and had formed close ties with Somalia’s al-Qaeda outfit Al-Shabaab.

That jihadism is spreading fast in parts of Africa not previously linked to that strain of Islam is clear enough, as is the reason. Al-Qaeda provides the suicide bombers, and for decades Saudi funding for mosques and madrassas has created fertile ground for recruitment. The Saudi-backed Wahhabi “charity” Al-Noor has centres across Muslim Africa, giving clerics free reign to spew their hate-filled discourse.

Ousted Maldives Prime Minister Mohamed Nasheed recently suggested that “East Asia” needed to provide a narrative to counter the spread of conservatism. Presumably, he was referring to South-East Asia’s Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia and Malaysia; and if so, he needs to take a reality check. Saudi Wahhabism has become so dominant in those two countries that, in some parts of northern Malaysia, there are now even segregated checkout queues in supermarkets — madness unknown even back in the Wahhabi kingdom itself.

What is instead needed is a new narrative in the West itself: one which shines a light on, rather than tries to obscure or excuse, our uncritical support for Saudi Arabia, which funds the jihadis we train and then have to fight.

Israel rescue team sent to Ghana in wake of building collapse

Zoe Winograd — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 13:52:09 +0000

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has sent a search-and-rescue team to Ghana after a shopping centre collapsed in Accra on Wednesday.

The team of doctors, engineers and communication experts left Israel Wednesday evening, only hours after the multi-story building collapsed, trapping many people inside.

According to media reports, four people were found dead with dozens still possibly lying under the rubble.

Yonatan Yagodovsky, director of the Magen David Adom international department said: “We are in touch with the local red cross and the Israeli ministry. We are waiting for the first team to evaluate the needs there and to give us additional information about the situation. We are ready to send a team with medical personnel and equipment in a few hours as soon as we hear from them.”

Mystery of Israeli Sudan attack solved?

Anshel Pfeffer — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 13:00:00 +0000

The most credible information coming out of Sudan over the past week came from an NGO set up by Hollywood megastar George Clooney.

The Satellite Sentinel Project was established in October 2010 by Mr Clooney and fellow human-rights activists in Sudan to use satellite footage to deter the regime of President Omar al-Bashir from committing atrocities against its civilians. Shortly after reports of explosions early on Wednesday morning near Khartoum, the project’s analysts were poring over images of the bomb site and comparing them with previous satellite images taken earlier this month.

The photographs indicate that an area where around 40 shipping containers were previously held had been obliterated by at least six air-launched bombs. Residents of southern Khartoum who spoke to the project’s researchers reported seeing at least three fighter aircraft flying low.

The Sudanese government accused Israel of having attacked a munitions factory and various media reports claimed that Iranian ballistic missiles were being manufactured on the site. Media reports also claimed that the strike was an Israeli rehearsal for a future bombing mission against Iran’s nuclear installations. Israel, as usual in these cases, neither denied nor confirmed any involvement.

Little of this makes sense. To start with, a surgical strike on one relatively small target in impoverished Sudan is very different from the complex, multi-stage operation that will have to be carried out if Iran’s nuclear programme is ever attacked by Israel or the United States. And while Iran has close relations with the Sudanese government, it is very hard to see it basing the manufacture of its advanced long-range missiles outside its borders.

But if it was indeed the Israeli Air Force operating in the sky over Khartoum, then the Satellite Sentinel Project offers the best understanding of the nature of the target.

Sudan is a nexus for arms smuggling to Hizbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian groups in Gaza. The shipments leave Iranian ports and sail through the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea to the Sudanese coast, from where they are taken overland to Egypt and onwards, either through the Rafah tunnels to Gaza or by container ships to a Lebanese port.

A silent war is being waged between Israel and Iran along these routes. Beyond sightings of Israeli warships in the Suez Canal and visits by Iranian naval vessels to Port Sudan — both of which happened early this week — very little ever gets reported on the subject.

Interdictions — preventive interceptions — are usually at sea and not normally acknowledged by either side. An attack on a sovereign land target in Sudan would normally only occur if Israel had advance information on “game-changing” weapons on their way to Hizbollah or Gaza. Such an attack apparently took place in 2009 when an arms convoy was bombed from the air on a remote Sudanese road. This seems to be the most likely scenario for last week’s attack.

ANC backs Israel boycott

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:44:24 +0000

An African National Congress (ANC) International Solidarity Conference has backed the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

The support for BDS follows an international statement presented by Dutch former anti-apartheid activist Adri Nieuwhof signed by 35 organisations from 19 countries.

In the statement, Ms Nieuwhof called for BDS against Israel as an expression of solidarity with Palestine’s “fight for freedom, justice and equality”.

In addition she asked for “Respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”

The ANC chairperson, Baleka Mbete, backed the statement, saying that she had been to Palestine herself and that the Israeli regime is “far worse than apartheid South Africa”.

Sudan blames Israel for arms factory explosion

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:35:38 +0100

The Sudanese government has blamed Israel for explosions at an arms factory in Khartoum in which two people were killed. Sudanese Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman made the accusation to reporters in Khartoum and said: “We reserve the right to react at a place and time we choose.”

This is not the first time the Sudanese government has blamed Israel for such attacks. In April 2011, Khartoum accused Israel of carrying out a targeted air strike which killed two people in a car near the city of Port Sudan. In 2009, Sudan pointed the finger of blame at Israel for a strike on a convoy in the north-east of the country.

Witnesses in the area of this latest incident reported seeing aircraft overhead before the explosions. They also said that there were two or three fires with intermittent flashes of white light at the scene of the Yarmouk factory, which was said by Mr Osman to make “traditional weapons”.

Israel has refused to comment on any of the cases, including the newest one, neither confirming nor denying the reports.

Eritrean refugee protest outside Israeli embassy

Marcus Dysch — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:00:00 +0100

The ongoing controversy over Israel’s treatment of African immigrants came to the streets of London as more than 100 Eritrean refugees protested outside the Israeli embassy.

Thousands of young men flee every year to escape compulsory national service and the ruling régime. Human trafficking, arms smuggling, rape, murder and electrocution are among the risks they face as they travel from Eritrea through Sudan and the Sinai desert in an effort to cross into Israel.

Last Friday’s protest, organised by Eritrean Youth Solidarity for Change and Citizens for Democratic Rights in Eritrea, was in response to Israeli plans for a large detention centre for African immigrants, near the Egyptian border.

There was a spate of attacks on Africans in Tel Aviv earlier this summer, and Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai waged a war of words on African immigrants, blaming them for spreading disease and crime and threatening to fine local authorities which employ illegal immigrants.

Protesters in London also delivered a petition, signed by more than 2,300 people, to Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub. It raised the issue of “alarming increases in the discriminatory treatment of Eritrean refugees in Israel”.

The petition stated: “Such senseless hate, fuelled in part by right-wing politicians, has led to Eritreans being attacked on the street and in their homes. Eritreans today are living in a general climate of fear in Israel.”

Hermon Yohannes of the EYSC said: “This emergency protest was in response to the imminent building of the detention centre and Eli Yishai’s calls for Sudanese refugees to be rounded up in Israel, and for Eritreans to be next.

“We wanted to highlight what appears to be inhumane treatment. Israel has an obligation to follow the Refugee Convention and we urge it to uphold international standards.”

An Israeli embassy spokesman said the partially-constructed centre was being used “to facilitate eligibility for refugee status and to provide a venue where illegal migrants can reside, with all humanitarian requirements, until they can be repatriated”.

The spokesman added: “The ongoing flow of illegal migrants, be it to Israel or any other country, is not sustainable and will bring no real benefit to anyone. Unlike a number of European countries which have a policy of forced repatriation, Israel has a policy that illegal migrants are only repatriated with the agreement and co-operation of their home countries, something which we do not currently have with Eritrea.”