Netanyahu's Africa tour: A spit in the face of those Israel helps oppress

July 6, 2016, +972 Magazine http://972mag.com (Israel)

The Israeli public and its government need to internalize that ‘Israel’s pride,’ its wildly successful military export industry, has been an unending nightmare for the people of Africa. How can Netanyahu look the Rwandan and Ugandan people in the eyes?

By Itay Mack*

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently on a tour of African states of Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Kenya.

For decades, Israel’s relationship with the African continent, from South Africa to the Sahara, has been almost entirely based on military and arms exports that have fueled oppression, civil wars and murderous

Africa’s less-known business ventures offer lessons for Israel

8 June 2011, +972 http://972mag.com (Israel)

Roee Ruttenberg*

As Israelis look for solutions to deal with some of the country’s growing economic and social problems, they could stand to sometimes take a few less lessons from America and a few more from Africa.Finance ministers and bank officials from Africa and investing countries are heading to the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, for the annual gathering of the African Development Bank.

The international lending group’s two-day meeting begins on Thursday, but it was preceded by a forum focused on helping some of Africa’s less known ventures: entrepreneurs from the southern continent who have gathered in the Portuguese capital Lisbon to find new ideas among their colleagues and new markets among their neighbours.

They are CEOs, but of companies you’ve likely never heard of, invited to Portugal by the EMRC, a Brussels-based international association that serves as a network for people just like them … and brings their brains in direct contact with global financiers, consultants and officials.

A select group was asked to present their business plans before the gathering. Among them was Soumaïla Coulibali, whose Mali-based company Prosema promotes the development and marketing of sesame. In the last five years, it has exported nearly six-thousand tonnes to China, Turkey, Israel and Senegal. And Amande Sonde, whose telecoms business in Burkina Faso hopes to provide five million minutes of communications this year to the local population. He reveals, his passion stems from fond memories of his first ever phone call at age 6.

The EMRC awarded fifteen-thousand dollars cash to the most impressive proposal decided in part by audience applause. Five finalists, but there could be only one winner.

(PHOTO: Suzanne Marie Belemtougri, a veterinarian-turned-managing director of Burkina Faso's SOPHAVET receives EMRC prize, along with $15,000 for her emerging business venture./photo: Roee Ruttenberg)


Suzanne Marie Belemtougri is a veterinarian-turned-managing director, whose company SOPHAVET raises guinea fowl and eggs as a culinary alternative to poultry. It has an annual operating budget of some one-million euros, though it rents most of its vital equipment. Belemtougri hopes to use the money to buy some of it instead.

“The EMRC allows us to develop a project and move ahead,” Belemtougri said upon winning the award. “It gives us the opportunity to grow and reach our objectives, helping farmers produce more. I’m thankful for what they’ve done for me, for my country, and for those who fight for Africa.”"
Ventures like hers are known as SMEs – small-to-medium enterprises. They can make up as much as 70-80 percent of Africa’s economies and are crucial in generating jobs. Organizers say overlooking them is a mistake, and one of the key factors holding back the African continent’s development.

“It is extremely important to deal with this sector, which suffers for so many barriers in Africa which we Europeans don’t know,” says Idit Miller, managing director of the EMRC. “So we came here for two days with experts, bankers and consultants, and entrepreneurs from Africa — lots of entrepreneurs from Africa — to discuss these barriers.”

Global development groups say support of SMEs and their unique role in societies is crucial. “In the developed world, interestingly, it’s not the size of the companies that seems to matter most, but the rate at which they grow,” says Pedro Conceicao, Director of UNDP Office of Devemopment Studies. “In other words, the companies that create more jobs are those that grow faster. But in Africa, the evidence seems to suggest that with small and medium enterprises – the size of the company is critical to stimulate jobs.”

The EMRC forum is called “the Missing Middle”. It focuses on those whose borrowing needs fall in between micro-finance options and more traditional lending institutions. It is a precursor to the annual summit of the African Development Bank, which begins on Thursday here in Lisbon. And some say: it sends a clear message to the bank: focus less on Africa’s governments, and more on the people they govern.

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Additionally commentary: When I was living in Mexico City, I remember being fascinated by some of the small scale entrepreneurship I witnessed, from the vendor selling chopped-up fruit at his corner stand, to the drive-way kitchen selling gourmet lunches. I also remember a Mexican friend of mine telling me that in Mexico everyone has the initiative to start (including my friend, who recently launched a fitness program), but few have the desire to go beyond the first steps … because they were not institutionally raised with the same business drive as the Americans to the North.

Essentially what he was saying was that if the Mexican has one successful shop from which he earns enough money to live off of and to feed his family, he’s unlikely to naturally think to expand. He will rarely consider hiring someone to replace him while he opens up a second shop, or taking out a loan against his first shop’s success to support any such expansion. (This is not to say that it is not done, I should qualify, but rather than it is not the institutionalized way of thinking.) In the U.S. by contrast, the “small business owner” dream of millions of Americans is what keeps the economy going. American Presidents, particularly when campaigning for re-election, love to talk about what they have done for one man’s little packing company in Tulsa, Oklahama, or one woman’s chain of comsetic shops in Indiana. For one, it makes them sound like they are in touch with America’s emerging entrepreneurial class. But two, it speaks to the memories that Americans have from early childhood: that, like homeownership, business-ownership is the American dream.

To promote this end, the U.S. has over the years put in place a large infrastructure of governmental and non-government bodies aimed at providing small business support, including tax tips, loan guidance and management training. However, unlike the developing world, the goal here is to grow — the bigger you are and the more you earn, the more successful you have been. This would be in line with American values that focus on individualism. And of course, the government promotes this system because it creates tax revenues and establish stable households.

But in much of the developing world, not only are the resources not there — as I have noted above — but neither is the cultivation of what we in the West consider a natural human drive. For most people, it’s not about getting a business from A to Z. People are not creating companies with their eye on exit strategies. They are thinking about getting from A to B, and then maintaining B. To me, that’s fascinating in the context of what Conceicao says. These people are generating jobs and then maintaining jobs, mostly for people who simply cannot afford NOT to work (meaning, they will literally die). They are not trying to get rich on the backs of others — they are trying to survive, and to help others do the same. Calling them “middle class” once they establish some sort of consistent income does not do justice to the predicaments in which they find themselves: they now have enough cash to buy the things they need, but perhaps not the things they want (if they even know to want them in the first place.)

But the idea here is to support these people, not because doing so allows them to individually get rich, but because doing so allows them to support each other. That’s a novel idea.

In Israel, you have a growing disparity among the country’s wealth classes. The government attempts to provide some of the same resources seen in the U.S. but to a population that is not necessarily ingrained to use them. Yes, Israel is among the world’s leaders in start-ups, but that most often than not reflects a drive that is instilled in the home, not necessarily in the schools or in public debate. And like in the U.S., the end goal is not to make Israel a better, more stable place, but to make the entrepreneur a richer man or woman.

This is not the first time Israel’s old world socialism has morphed into new world capitalism. Rather it serves as another example and another reminder. As Israelis look for solutions to deal with some of the country’s growing economic and social problems, they could stand to sometimes take a few less lessons from America and a few more from Africa.

*Roee Ruttenberg is a freelance journalist and news producer. He has worked for ABC News, CCTV (Chinese Television), Al Jazeera International and ZDF German Television, as well as several other international news outlets. He divides his time between Israel and the United States.

Haaretz exclusive: Secret cables show Israel's battle plan over Palestinian UN bid

Foreign Ministry documents outline instructions to envoys to thwart international recognition of Palestinian state.

10 June 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

By Barak Ravid

Israel has started mobilizing its embassies for the battle against UN recognition of a Palestinian state in September, ordering its diplomats to convey that this would delegitimize Israel and foil any chance for future peace talks.

Envoys are being asked to lobby the highest possible officials in their countries of service, muster support from local Jewish communities, ply the media with articles arguing against recognition and even ask for a call or quick visit from a top Israeli official if they think it would help.

Foreign Ministry Director General Rafael Barak and the heads of various ministry departments sent out classified cables outlining the battle plan to the embassies over the past week, after earlier ordering all the country's diplomats to cancel any vacations planned for September. The contents of the cables reached Haaretz and are reported here in full.

"The goal we have set is to have the maximum number of countries oppose the process of having the UN recognize a Palestinian state," Barak wrote to Israel's ambassadors in his cable, which was sent June 2. "The Palestinian effort must be referred to as a process that erodes the legitimacy of the State of Israel...

"The primary argument is that by pursuing this process in the UN, the Palestinians are trying to achieve their aims in a manner other than negotiations with Israel, and this violates the principle that the only route to resolving the conflict is through bilateral negotiations."

Each envoy was ordered to prepared a focused plan for the country in which he or she serves and present it to the Foreign Ministry by today, June 10.

"The goal is to get the country in which you serve to vote against recognizing a Palestinian state," Barak wrote. "Your plan must include approaching the most senior politicians, mobilizing the relevant force multipliers [such as local Jewish communities, nongovernmental organizations], using the media, influencing local public opinion, and public diplomacy aimed at all the relevant communities."

Barak also informed the emissaries that the ministry had established a "September Forum" headed by the director of its Middle East Department, Yaakov Hadas.

"This team is analyzing possible Palestinian moves and the options open to Israel to foil the process, and is putting together a diplomatic, public diplomacy and media plan," Barak wrote. "You are to report on your activities to the September Forum once a week."

"The mission that has been assigned to us is not an easy one," the cable concluded. "But I'm sure that by joining forces, we will do the best we can to achieve the goal we've set for ourselves."

A Foreign Ministry source said the directive issued to ambassadors by both Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the ministry director general is not to give up on any country in advance, and to work to obtain a hearing with the highest possible officials in each country.

This past Sunday, June 5, the head of the ministry's Western Europe department, Naor Gilon, sent a follow-up cable to embassies in all European Union countries. A similar cable was sent by the head of the Eurasia Department, Pinhas Avivi, to representatives in the EU countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

In his cable, Gilon asked the ambassadors to prepare plans "that will lead the country in which you serve to oppose or abstain during a UN vote." It divided the EU countries into three groups:

* Countries that have already voiced objections to unilateral Palestinian action. A Foreign Ministry source put Germany and Italy in this category.

* Countries whose stance is unclear, particularly members of the former Eastern Bloc that had recognized a Palestinian state back in 1988. These include the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. In two weeks, Lieberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are planning to make separate trips to these countries in an effort to persuade them to vote against a Palestinian state.

* Countries that tend to automatically side with the Palestinians and are expected to support a Palestinian state, among them Sweden, Ireland, Belgium and Portugal.

Gilon wrote that the Foreign Ministry believes the 27 EU members "will have difficulty reaching a consensus decision on recognizing a Palestinian state, as happened with regard to [recognizing] Kosovo. Even so, it's clear that the EU bureaucracy in Brussels will try to enter into a dialogue with the Palestinians in an effort to moderate the [UN] resolution so that EU members could support it.

"Everyone knows where the country he serves in stands," Gilon wrote. "Our goal is to create momentum against recognition of a Palestinian state in September by creating a significant bloc of EU states that voice their opposition as early as possible to unilateral Palestinian action." Another goal is to try to persuade those countries which have already said they will vote in favor of the Palestinian move to refrain from publicly stating their position.

Gilon tasked the ambassadors with trying to spur as many politicians and opinion-makers as possible to either make public declarations or issue statements opposing unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. He also instructed them to generate negative media reports and op-eds objecting to the Palestinian moves.

The ambassadors were asked to inform the September Forum of any requests they receive from their respective countries' leaders to speak by phone with President Shimon Peres, Netanyahu or Lieberman, and to indicate whether a diplomatic visit by senior Israeli officials before September might be helpful in persuading top officials in the countries where they serve.

But one senior Foreign Ministry official said that regardless of what efforts are made, only a few countries will vote against recognizing a Palestinian state in a General Assembly vote, including the United States, Canada and a few European countries. The ministry's assessment is that most Asian, African and South American countries will vote in favor.

More on this topic
•Moussa: Committed to Palestinian-Israeli peace, but not at any price
•Obama: Palestinians should avoid seeking UN recognition for statehood
•UN agency report shows West Bank economy not flourishing

Why are the Libyan Rebels seeking Israel’s support?

2 June 2011, Jews for Justice for Palestinians http://jfjfp.com

By Anissa Haddadi

UK International Business Times

As mediation and ceasefire initiatives such as the Road Map proposed by the African Union via South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma failed, a French writer, Bernard Henri Levy announced that he delivered a message on Thursday from Libyan rebel leaders to Israel’s Prime Minister, saying they would seek diplomatic ties with the country if they came to power.

This move, which is set to be ambivalently received in the Muslim world, also breaks the National Transitional Council from the Gaddafi regime, which does not have any diplomatic relations with Israel. Also it comes as the rebels are slowly gaining advantages over Gaddafi. In the last few days they have progressed on the battlefield while the Libyan leader’s regime is facing an increase in defections and is becoming increasingly isolated internationally, especially after last week when Russia shifted its position and called on Gadaffi to step down.

The latest high-profile defection to further demoralise the regime was that of Shukri Ghanem, the regime’s oil minister and former prime minister. He was followed by the defection of eight Libyan army officers, including five generals, who were part of a wider group of 120 military personnel that defected in recent days.

In Africa, five other countries do not formally acknowledge Israel as a state or have diplomatic relations with it. They are Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan, while in the Middle East Iraq, Lebannon, Kuwauit, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and the United Arab Emirate share the same position.

So why are the rebels interested in obtaining Israel’s support, and affirm they will acknowledge the existence of Israel as a state as soon as they gain power?
Well, according to Levi “The main point was that the future Libyan regime would be moderate and anti-terrorist and will be concerned with justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel”.

It seems that the move will infuriate Gaddafi, not because of the new born relationship between the rebels and Israel but rather because it assumes the transitional council will, no matter what, gain control of the state.

Interestingly, the council’s stance and newly found interest in playing a major role in the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes just after the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Occampo revealed this week that following accusations of arbitrary imprisonment and ill treatment of foreign workers by the rebels fighters, he was “investigating reports of unlawful arrest, mistreatment and killing” of sub-Saharan African civilians wrongly perceived to be mercenaries.

Also, as members of the fighters on the ground were accused of having ties with Al-Qaeda, it seems that expressing support for (and gaining support from) Israel will help the council steer away from accusations of having links with terrorist movements or of harbouring Muslims fundamentalists, who are not generally noted for their love of Israel.

If the new regime (if it arrives) wishes to be taken seriously by Western countries and become a successful intermediate between Israel and Palestine, then recognition of Israel would give it some initial international brownie points by putting it firmly on the international geopolitical map in a region where the West and Israel are actively seeking new allies.

Of course another possibility is that after the surge of negative reports in the last few days the regime felt it had to take a very public stand to reassure Western liberal democracies of its dedication to democracy but also to their ideals and values.

While only time will tell us what really motivated the move, the conflict is still on-going.

Today, the Libyan government tried to play down the significance of yesterday’s defection of the country’s oil minister Shukri Ghanem.

While Libyan officials had previously insisted that Mr Ghanem was on an official trip to Tunisia, Europe and Egypt, a government spokesman was forced to dismiss Mr Ghanem’s departure was a blow to the regime.

“This is a country, a state, a government, not just one person,” Mussa Ibrahim told reporters and insisted Libya would be still represented at the meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) in Vienna on June 8. “I don’t have a name yet but we’ll have somebody.”

An executive with the state-owned National Oil Corporation, Mosbah Ali Matoug, took Mr Ghanem’s place today at a meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Cairo.

Meanwhile in rebel-held eastern Libya, an explosion damaged a hotel used by rebels and foreigners in Benghazi, wounding one person while 270 people, who were fleeing the country, went missing after a fishing boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy broke down just off the Tunisian coast.

According to a state run agency, 570 people were rescued and seven people injured, and passengers were mainly said to be migrants from Africa and Asia who planned to enter Italy illegally.

YOUNG MIZRAHI ISRAELIS TO YOUNG ARABS: WE HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP) http://jfjfp.com
Sunday, April 24 2011|+972blog

Young Mizrahi Israelis’ open letter to Arab peers

Translated from Hebrew; English edited by Chana Morgenstern

In a letter titled “Ruh Jedida: A New Spirit for 2011,” young Jewish descendants of the Arab and Islamic world living in Israel write to their peers in the Middle East and North Africa

“We, as the descendants of the Jewish communities of the Arab and Muslim world, the Middle East and the Maghreb, and as the second and third generation of Mizrahi Jews in Israel, are watching with great excitement and curiosity the major role that the men and women of our generation are playing so courageously in the demonstrations for freedom and change across the Arab world. We identify with you and are extremely hopeful for the future of the revolutions that have already succeeded in Tunisia and Egypt. We are equally pained and worried at the great loss of life in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and many other places in the region.

Our generation’s protest against repression and oppressive and abusive regimes, and its call for change, freedom, and the establishment of democratic governments that foster citizen participation in the political process, marks a dramatic moment in the history of the Middle East and North Africa, a region which has for generations been torn between various forces, internal and external, and whose leaders have often trampled the political, economic, and cultural rights of its citizens.

We are Israelis, the children and grandchildren of Jews who lived in the Middle East and North Africa for hundreds and thousands of years. Our forefathers and mothers contributed to the development of this region’s culture, and were part and parcel of it. Thus the culture of the Islamic world and the multigenerational connection and identification with this region is an inseparable part of our own identity.

We are a part of the religious, cultural, and linguistic history of the Middle East and North Africa, although it seems that we are the forgotten children of its history: First in Israel, which imagines itself and its culture to be somewhere between continental Europe and North America. Then in the Arab world, which often accepts the dichotomy of Jews and Arabs and the imagined view of all Jews as Europeans, and has preferred to repress the history of the Arab-Jews as a minor or even nonexistent chapter in its history; and finally within the Mizrahi communities themselves, who in the wake of Western colonialism, Jewish nationalism and Arab nationalism, became ashamed of their past in the Arab world.

Consequently we often tried to blend into the mainstream of society while erasing or minimizing our own past. The mutual influences and relationships between Jewish and Arab cultures were subjected to forceful attempts at erasure in recent generations, but evidence of them can still be found in many spheres of our lives, including music, prayer, language, and literature.

We wish to express our identification with and hopes for this stage of generational transition in the history of the Middle East and North Africa, and we hope that it will open the gates to freedom and justice and a fair distribution of the region’s resources.

We turn to you, our generational peers in the Arab and Muslim world, striving for an honest dialog which will include us in the history and culture of the region. We looked enviously at the pictures from Tunisia and from Al-Tahrir square, admiring your ability to bring forth and organize a nonviolent civil resistance that has brought hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets and the squares, and finally forced your rulers to step down.

We, too, live in a regime that in reality—despite its pretensions to being “enlightened” and “democratic”—does not represent large sections of its actual population in the Occupied Territories and inside the Green Line border(s). This regime tramples the economic and social rights of most of its citizens, is in an ongoing process of minimizing democratic liberties, and constructs racist barriers against Arab-Jews, the Arab people, and Arabic culture. Unlike the citizens of Tunisia and Egypt, we are still a long way from the capacity to build the kind of solidarity between various groups that we see in these countries, a solidarity movement that would allow us to unite and march together–all who reside here–into the public squares, to demand a civil regime that is culturally, socially, and economically just and inclusive.

We believe that, as Mizrahi Jews in Israel, our struggle for economic, social, and cultural rights rests on the understanding that political change cannot depend on the Western powers who have exploited our region and its residents for many generations. True change can only come from an intra-regional and inter-religious dialog that is in connection with the different struggles and movements currently active in the Arab world. Specifically, we must be in dialog and solidarity with struggles of the Palestinians citizens of Israel who are fighting for equal political and economic rights and for the termination of racist laws, and the struggle of the Palestinian people living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and in Gaza in their demand to end the occupation and to gain Palestinian national independence.

In our previous letter written following Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009, we called for the rise of the democratic Middle Eastern identity and for our inclusion in such an identity. We now express the hope that our generation – throughout the Arab, Muslim, and Jewish world – will be a generation of renewed bridges that will leap over the walls and hostility created by previous generations and will renew the deep human dialog without which we cannot understand ourselves: between Jews, Sunnis, Shias, and Christians, between Kurds, Berbers, Turks, and Persians, between Mizrahis and Ashkenazis, and between Palestinians and Israelis. We draw on our shared past in order to look forward hopefully towards a shared future.

We have faith in intra-regional dialog—whose purpose is to repair and rehabilitate what was destroyed in recent generations—as a catalyst towards renewing the Andalusian model of Muslim-Jewish-Christian partnership, God willing, Insha’Allah, and as a pathway to a cultural and historical golden era for our countries. This golden era cannot come to pass without equal, democratic citizenship, equal distribution of resources, opportunities, and education, equality between women and men, and the acceptance of all people regardless of faith, race, status, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnic affiliation. All of these rights play equal parts in constructing the new society to which we aspire. We are committed to achieving these goals within a process of dialog between all of the people of Middle East and North Africa, as well as a dialog we will undertake with different Jewish communities in Israel and around the world.

We, the undersigned:
Shva Salhoov (Libya), Naama Gershy (Serbia, Yemen), Yael Ben-Yefet (Iraq, Aden), Leah Aini (Greece, Turkey), Yael Berda (Tunisia), Aharon Shem-Tov (Iraq, Iranian Kurdistan), Yosi Ohana (born in Morocco), Yali Hashash (Libya, Yemen), Yonit Naaman (Yemen, Turkey), Orly Noy (born in Iran), Gadi Alghazi (Yugoslavia, Egypt), Mati Shemoelof (Iran, Iraq, Syria), Eliana Almog (Yemen, Germany), Yuval Evri ((Iraq), Ophir Tubul (Morocco, Algeria), Moti Gigi (Morocco), Shlomit Lir (Iran), Ezra Nawi (Iraq), Hedva Eyal (Iran), Eyal Ben-Moshe (Yemen), Shlomit Binyamin (Cuba, Syria, Turkey), Yael Israel (Turkey, Iran), Benny Nuriely (Tunisia), Ariel Galili (Iran), Natalie Ohana Evry (Morocco, Britain), Itamar Toby Taharlev (Morocco, Jerusalem, Egypt), Ofer Namimi (Iraq, Morocco), Amir Banbaji (Syria), Naftali Shem-Tov (Iraq, Iranian Kurdistan), Mois Benarroch (born in Morocco), Yosi David (Tunisia Iran), Shalom Zarbib (Algeria), Yardena Hamo (Iraqi Kurdistan), Aviv Deri (Morocco) Menny Aka (Iraq), Tom Fogel (Yemen, Poland), Eran Efrati (Iraq), Dan Weksler Daniel (Syria, Poland, Ukraine), Yael Gidnian (Iran), Elyakim Nitzani (Lebanon, Iran, Italy), Shelly Horesh-Segel (Morocco), Yoni Mizrahi (Kurdistan), Betty Benbenishti (Turkey), Chen Misgav (Iraq, Poland), Moshe Balmas (Morocco), Tom Cohen (Iraq, Poland, England), Ofir Itah (Morocco), Shirley Karavani (Tunisia, Libya, Yemen), Lorena Atrakzy (Argentina, Iraq), Asaf Abutbul (Poland, Russia, Morocco), Avi Yehudai (Iran), Diana Ahdut (Iran, Jerusalem), Maya Peretz (Nicaragua, Morocco), Yariv Moher (Morocco, Germany), Tami Katzbian (Iran), Oshra Lerer (Iraq, Morocco), Nitzan Manjam (Yemen, Germany, Finland), Rivka Gilad (Iran, Iraq, India), Oshrat Rotem (Morocco), Naava Mashiah (Iraq), Zamira Ron David (Iraq) Omer Avital (Morocco, Yemen), Vered Madar (Yemen), Ziva Atar (Morocco), Yossi Alfi (born in Iraq), Amira Hess (born in Iraq), Navit Barel (Libya), Almog Behar (Iraq, Turkey, Germany)”