Israeli regime's meddling in Africa taking place for decades: Expert

Israel’s decades-long interference in the affairs of African countries originated from “ideological affinities” the apartheid regime shared with former settler-colonial African governments, says a commentator.

David Miller, who was sacked from his professorship at the University of Bristol in 2021 after a sustained campaign against him by Britain's Israel lobby, told Press TV that Israel’s involvement in African countries and its proximity with dictators ruling some countries in the continent is “dramatic.”

Israel has “very close ideological affinities with settler colonial regimes", Miller said on the weekly show Palestine Declassified, noting that "there are hardly any African countries that the Israelis haven’t been interfering in -- which is really quite a dramatic thing to say."

He said Israel, as a settler colonial entity, not only ideologically aligns with other settler colonial regimes but also seeks to align with authoritarian regimes.

“Israel, of course, wants to align with or interfere with or subvert other authoritarian regimes … the relationship with authoritarian regimes is also something which they did across the whole of the continent,” Miller stated.

Israeli regime's overt and covert interference in the African continent has been going on uninterrupted for decades.

In the 1960s, Israel trained the military forces of African states like the Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic, Dahomey, Cameroon, Senegal, Togo, Tanzania, Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, and Ethiopia.

A key base of operations in Africa for Israel is the state of Ethiopia. Ethiopia's emergency police were trained by around 40 Israeli advisors. The east African country also gave the Israeli Navy the right to use two islands in the Red Sea to access the Bab-el-Mandeb strait.

Israel even founded a commercial cover for its intelligence operations in Africa called 'Incoda', which operated out of Ethiopia and exported meat during the 1960s. It was a military operation that transported spies around the continent.

Israeli intelligence had links with Ghana’s Secret Service, so much so that the Ghanaian government later accused the regime of involvement in a coup attempt against the emperor of the Central African Empire later to become a republic.

The former president of Congo, Mobutu Sese Seko was trained in Israel, where he obtained his parachute wings. He later went on to lead the coup and killing of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961.

In 1982, it was reported that Mobutu was personally paid $10 million for the reopening of an Israeli embassy. In 1983, he agreed to increase his presidential brigade to 7,500 soldiers who operated under Israeli supervision.

Also, Israel has never been held accountable for its widely known role in maintaining and fortifying white settler rule in Rhodesia.

Rhodesia was an unrecognized state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in the territory to modern Zimbabwe.

There were Israeli military mercenaries within the Rhodesian army. In a move similar to the apartheid wall in the West Bank, a 500-mile wall along the border of Mozambique and Zambia was constructed by an Israeli company for the settler Rhodesian regime.

Moreover, Israel voted against the independence of Algeria from French rule, which is not surprising because Israel was actively involved in the conflict.

Israeli intelligence services were working closely with the French in Algeria since at least 1954, setting up its own branch in the country, which was found to be fighting alongside the French and killing Algerians on many occasions.

Israel also supported the secret French terrorist settler group OAS, which assassinated French officials negotiating independence with the Algerians.

“It is a settler colonial situation. And Israel is on the side of the settlers in that circumstance as it has been in many others [cases],” Miller asserted.

He regretted that the sheer number and variety of links and infiltrations that the Israelis have carried out in Africa were not very widely known partly because they have not been reported.