Kenya, Israel & terrorism

The murder of three Israelis and nine Kenyans by suicide bombers at a Mombasa, Kenya, resort on Nov. 30 may well be part of an attempt by al-Qaida to destabilize Israel’s relations with East and sub-Saharan Africa. Given the long history of Israeli-African ties, it is unlikely that this recent effort will succeed.

In 1902, Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern political movement that led to the founding of Israel, wrote in his novel “Altneuland” [The Old-New Land] of “those terrible episodes of the slave trade, of human beings who, merely because they were black, were stolen like cattle, taken prisoner and sold. Once I have witnessed the redemption of the Jews, my people, I wish to assist in the redemption of the Africans.”

Herzl did not live to see the emergence of the Jewish state from British rule in 1948 or the decolonization of Africa after 1956. But Israeli Foreign Minister [and later Prime Minister] Golda Meir, upon taking office in 1956, was determined to fulfill Herzl’s vision. She wrote in her 1975 autobiography that both Israelis and Black Africans “had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, increase the yield of our crops, irrigate, and defend ourselves. Independence had come to us, as it was coming to Africa, not served upon a silver platter, but after years of struggle.”

In 1958, Mrs. Meir visited Ghana as the personal guest of its founding president Kwame Nkrumah. There, she participated in the first All-African People’s Congress. In the course of the next fifteen years, thousands of Israeli experts in agriculture, community services, engineering, hydrology, medicine, public health, and regional planning served in emerging sub-Saharan and East African nations.

An approximately equal number of students from those countries trained in Israel. A Kenyan social worker told Mrs. Meir that “if I had gone to the United States, I might have learned the history of development. But here in Israel, I have seen development as it takes place.”

On Mt. Herzl, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, metal markers commemorate the visits to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s of dozen of African dignitaries who planted trees on those then-barren slopes. Among the numerous projects that emerged from those visits was a joint school for social workers founded in Machakos, Kenya in l963.

In August 1998, after the Al-Qaeda-linked bombing of the United States Embassy in Kenya, the Israel Defense Forces dispatched a planeload of technical experts to assist the wounded and help clear the rubble. When those specialists returned to Israel on Aug. 13, then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted “the difficult and determined” war against world terrorism in which these soldiers had just participated.

“It was not just our war, or that of the U.S. [or] Kenya, but the of the whole democratic world,” he said. He reaffirmed Israel’s commitment to East and sub-Saharan Africa “to help the victims and the weak in times of distress.” On this point the then-prime minister (and foreign minister0 echoed a theme of his predecessor Mrs. Meir decades earlier. She wrote then: “I am prouder of Israel’s International Cooperation Program and of the technical assistance we gave to the people of Africa than I am of any other single project we have ever undertaken.”

It is unlikely that recent terrorism in Kenya will undermine Israel’s long-term commitment in the region or negate Mrs. Meir’s vision.

Jonathan Goldstein, a professor of history at the State University of West Georgia, is author of “China and Israel, 1948-98” [Praeger, l999] and “The Jews of China” [M.E. Sharpe, 2000]. He is a summer resident of Glenburn.