Bosnjak wrote:What is about the trade between Africa and Israel.
You made your tremendous mistake by lumping together an amalgamation of 53 countries, each with their own autonomic governments into a single entity. If you want to examine the relations you have to consider
at least each region by itself.
What we can then see is that in North and West Africa, two regions that share a Muslim identity, the majority of countries don't accept Israel's existence. Algeria, Chad, Djibouti, Guinea, Libya, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia have no diplomatic relations whatsoever with the Jewish state. I myself am rather glad that my native country of Senegal does not engage in such nonsense, it has cordial relations with Israel and has recently made a number of trade agreements with the country regarding assistance in agriculture.
East Africa as a region has a lot of ties to Israel, ranging from simple geographical vicinity to a shared culture, both in Ethiopia and Kenya people claimed to be descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. This obvious connection and their common fight against fundamentalist Islam has made East Africa and Israel quite dependant on each other which resulted in a close relationship. This of course also translates into economic trade between them.
In the case of Central and South Africa we have a number of countries that have normal diplomatic ties to Israel. I don't know about any specific trade agreements but I would imagine there are some, none however particularly remarkable.
To get a larger impression of Israel's relationship with Africa one can venture to take a look into the history of Israel's approach towards Africa. Even before Israel was founded, the father of political Zionism wrote in 1902: "once I have witnessed the redemption of the Jews, my people, I wish also to assist in the redemption of the Africans."
When Israel was established this ideal was taken up and realised by the most important person in Israeli policy towards Africa, Golda Meir, who believed that the lessons learned by Israelis could be passed on to Africans who, particularly during the 1950s were engaged in the same process of nation building. She even pointed out the similarities:
"Like them, we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops, how to irrigate, how to raise poultry, how to live together, and how to defend ourselves." Israel could provide a better model for the newly independent African state, Meir believed, because Israelis "had been forced to find solutions to the kinds of problems that large, wealthy, powerful states had never encountered."
Nonetheless, beneath the idealistic attitude lay a tangible interest in the country on the grounds of Africa being an important factor in Israel's fight against the Arabs - African nations became pawns in the effort to obtain an advantage on the continent. The effort failed in the predominantly Muslim countries in North and West Africa, it did however succeed to a large extent in the rest of Africa. This may somewhat explain the interesting relationship the "dark continent" and the Jewish state share.
- By wat0n
- By litwin