Thursday 10th of October 2024

teaching decorum.....

Jamaican-British academic Stuart Hall once said “the university is a critical institution or it is nothing. Indeed, universities have an important role to play in upholding the imperatives of academic freedom and critical inquiry, especially today, amid the growing debate and protests over Israel’s war on Gaza.

 

Gaza has shown European universities are no longer places of free inquiry
The crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech and activism on European campuses does not differ in essence from the repression students face in undemocratic settings.


By Tasnima Uddin and A H Misbach

 

However, despite their ethical and legal commitments to scholarly freedom, many Western institutions of higher education have failed to protect or even suppressed faculty and students who have expressed their solidarity with the Palestinian people. In the United Kingdom, we have observed a worrying pattern in which universities have ended up doing the bidding of a British government fully supportive of a war that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled could be plausibly genocidal and that has potentially left 186,000 Palestinians dead.

Under the guise of upholding “institutional neutrality” or protecting the welfare of Jewish students and staff – which has led to a paternalism that has dangerously homogenised the opinions and commitments of Jewish academics, as the UK Jewish Academic Network writes – universities across the country have cracked down on pro-Palestinian solidarity on their premises.

An open letter released in August by leading Middle East studies organisation BRISMES has documented the types of repression that have been taking place against those expressing solidarity with Palestinians on UK campuses. These range from the cancellation or bureaucratic obstruction of certain speaking events to subjecting staff and students to investigations. According to the human rights charity Liberty, universities have also shared information with the police about their own students’ social media posts and protest activities.

At Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL), where one of the authors works, several incidents have demonstrated its administration’s lack of commitment to upholding freedom of inquiry and speech.

A freedom of information (FOI) request filed earlier this year by a QMUL staff member, for example, revealed that the management requested the local council remove a Palestinian flag near their Mile End campus put up by the local community to “support peoples’ rights and freedoms”.

In February, the university also instructed their estate personnel to break into the offices of the local university union branch to remove two posters expressing support for Palestine out of “free speech concerns”.

While trying to suppress expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people, the administration has also shown remarkable disinterest towards the plight of academics who have been persecuted for their pro-Palestinian views.

In April, Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a leading Palestinian scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) and global chair in law at Queen Mary, was arrested by the Israeli authorities for criticising Israel over its actions in Gaza. She was subjected to inhumane treatment in prison and harassed by her colleagues at HUJ and the Israeli media.

Yet Queen Mary did not issue a public condemnation of Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s mistreatment even after more than 250 academics at the university signed an open letter calling on its president to do so.

Unfortunately, some university administrations have gone even further in their pursuit to suppress pro-Palestinian solidarity on campuses.

The European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), a leading independent advocacy group that seeks to defend those expressing support for Palestinians, where one of the authors works, has documented scores of disciplinary and punitive responses by British universities since October 7. Its findings – which will be arranged in a “database of repression” and will be released early next year – paint a worrying tableau of crackdowns on Palestine advocacy across British universities.

The precursor to this crackdown was an environment of vilifying Palestine supporters fostered by the previous British government. On October 8, the day Israel began its military assault on Gaza, Home Secretary Suella Braverman called for the police to crack down on any support for Hamas. Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick directed officials to explore revoking visas to foreign nationals accused of anti-Semitic acts or praising Hamas.

These government actions came at a time when support for the Palestinian cause was often equated with support for Hamas, while accusations of anti-Semitism were readily made against people expressing criticism of Israel or pro-Palestinian sentiments.

The conflation between legitimate criticism of Israel with claims of anti-Semitism has been a longstanding issue in UK higher education, with former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson demanding universities adopt the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism which has been condemned by civil society groups, leading lawyers, retired senior judges and the definition’s author.

These ministerial castigations crept into the ivory towers of higher education leadership and shaped how universities handled issues of free speech and protest. This is reflected in three ongoing cases ELSC is supporting.

Twenty-two-year-old Hanin Barghouthi, a student at the University of Sussex and co-president of its Feminist Society, was arrested under counterterrorism laws in October after delivering a speech at a pro-Palestine protest for allegedly expressing support “for a proscribed organisation”. The university also initiated an investigation.

Shortly after, Amira Abdelhamid at the University of Portsmouth was suspended from her work pending an investigation over tweets related to October 7 and criticising the UK’s anti-terror laws. She was accused of bringing the university’s name into disrepute and supporting a “proscribed group”.

She was then referred by her employer to the controversial PREVENT programme – a counterterrorism education programme heavily criticised by human rights organisations and the UN for its abuses.

Abdelhamid then found herself the target of the same counterterrorism laws which she had criticised on X, as police arrested her and searched her home. The case against her was eventually dropped.

Dana Abu Qamar, a student of Palestinian descent at the University of Manchester, faced expulsion from the UK after expressing her support for Palestinians engaging in lawful resistance in a brief interview with Sky News on October 8.

She was mourning the loss of members of her family killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza when the Home Office served her a notice of intention to cancel her T4 student visa on the basis that her presence in the UK was “not conducive to the public good”.

After Abu Qamar submitted a human rights claim and written representations, the Home Office wrote back, rejecting her human rights claim and informing her that her visa would be cancelled. The government then instructed the University of Manchester to expel her, which it obliged only to reinstate shortly after.

ELSC’s work suggests that these are not isolated cases but point towards a pattern of repression across UK campuses, and a convergence between university leaders and the British state, ranging from direct instruction to ideological alignment.

The deployment of counterterrorism laws against academic staff and students is also a serious cause for concern. Not only are they repressive in their disproportionality, but they will likely have a chilling effect on pro-Palestine speech while presaging the normalisation of the use of such legislation to suppress protest and free speech.

But the use of these laws also says something about how the state perceives those it targets. In the case of Barghouthi, Abdelhamid and Abu Qamar – these are three racialised women who are presented as fifth columns and national security threats. The views they express – including criticism of Israel’s genocidal actions – are defined as threatening to academic institutions as well.

The irony is that Israel – which the British government readily supplies with weapons despite the ICJ ruling – has obliterated in whole or in part, every single university in Gaza, killing scores of Palestinian academics and students.

ELSC has also observed similar patterns of repression across Europe. In France, universities have caved to the pressure to silence demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine, while the French authorities have launched investigations against students and academics, accusing them of promoting terrorism.

In Germany, the police, in coordination with university administrations, have also cracked down heavily on student protests. To suppress pro-Palestinian speech, the German Ministry of Education has gone as far as drawing up lists of pro-Palestinian academics in a bid to deprive them of future funding in academia.

In the United States, armed police were also deployed to clear protest encampments on campuses across the country. Thousands were arrested. Over the summer, universities prepared for a new wave of student demonstrations by changing campus rules and free speech policies, with one university deciding to effectively ban the use of the word “Zionist” in the context of criticism of Israel.

Many in Europe might think that academic repression takes place elsewhere in the world. The past 10 months have proven that university administrations in the UK, France, Germany and other European countries do not want to protect pro-Palestinian speech under their obligations of upholding academic freedom, and in fact aim to criminalise it (or worse, support the use of counterterrorism law).

The difference in repression compared to undemocratic settings may be only of degree, not of kind. In other words, our universities – like academic institutions elsewhere in the world – are no longer spaces of critical inquiry; they have become repressive arms of the state.

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/9/1/gaza-has-shown-european-universities-are-no-longer-places-for-free-inquiry

 

 

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

SEE ALSO: https://johnmenadue.com/a-five-minute-scroll/

back on campus....

 

Sustained pushback against campus repression will be essential to upholding the right to protest as guaranteed by the First Amendment, writes Norman Solomon. 

 

By Norman Solomon
Common Dreams

 

With nearly 18 million students on U.S. college campuses this fall, defenders of the war on Gaza don’t want to hear any backtalk. Silence is complicity, and that’s the way Israel’s allies like it. 

For them, the new academic term restarts a threat to the status quo. But for supporters of human rights, it’s a renewed opportunity to turn higher education into something more than a comfort zone.

In the United States, the extent and arrogance of the emerging collegiate repression is, quite literally, breathtaking. Every day, people are dying due to their transgression of breathing while Palestinian.

The Gaza death toll adds up to more than one Kristallnacht per day — for upwards of 333 days and counting, with no end in sight. 

The shattering of a society’s entire infrastructure has been horrendous. Months ago, citing data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, ABC News reported that “25,000 buildings have been destroyed, 32 hospitals forced out of service, and three churches, 341 mosques and 100 universities and schools destroyed.”

Not that this should disturb the tranquility of campuses in the country whose taxpayers and elected leaders make it all possible. Top college officials wax eloquent about the sanctity of higher learning and academic freedom while they suppress protests against policies that have destroyed scores of universities in Palestine.

A key rationale for quashing dissent is that anti-Israel protests make some Jewish students uncomfortable. But the purposes of college education shouldn’t include always making people feel comfortable. How comfortable should students be in a nation enabling mass murder in Gaza?

What would we say about claims that students in the North with southern accents should not have been made uncomfortable by on-campus civil rights protests and denunciations of Jim Crow in the 1950s and 1960s? Or white students from South Africa, studying in the United States, made uncomfortable by anti-apartheid protests in the 1980s?

A bedrock for the edifice of speech suppression and virtual thought-policing is the old standby of equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Likewise, the ideology of Zionism that tries to justify Israeli policies is supposed to get a pass no matter what — while opponents, including many Jews, are liable to be denounced as anti-Semites.

But polling shows that more younger Americans are supportive of Palestinians than they are of Israelis. The ongoing atrocities by the Israel “Defense” Forces in Gaza, killing a daily average of more than 100 people — mostly children and women — have galvanized many young people to take action in the United States.

“Protests rocked American campuses toward the end of the last academic year,” a front-page New York Times story reported in late August, adding: 

“Many administrators remain shaken by the closing weeks of the spring semester, when encampments, building occupations and clashes with the police helped lead to thousands of arrests across the country.” 

(Overall, the phrase “clashes with the police” served as a euphemism for police violently attacking nonviolent protesters.)

From the hazy ivory towers and corporate suites inhabited by so many college presidents and boards of trustees, Palestinian people are scarcely more than abstractions compared to far more real priorities. An understated sentence from the Times sheds a bit of light: 

“The strategies that are coming into public view suggest that some administrators at schools large and small have concluded that permissiveness is perilous, and that a harder line may be the best option — or perhaps just the one least likely to invite blowback from elected officials and donors who have demanded that universities take stronger action against protesters.”

Much more clarity is available from a new Mondoweiss article by activist Carrie Zaremba, a researcher with training in anthropology. “University administrators across the United States have declared an indefinite state of emergency on college campuses,” she wrote. 

“Schools are rolling out policies in preparation for quashing pro-Palestine student activism this fall semester, and reshaping regulations and even campuses in the process to suit this new normal.

“Many of these policies being instituted share a common formula: more militarization, more law enforcement, more criminalization, and more consolidation of institutional power. But where do these policies originate and why are they so similar across all campuses? 

The answer lies in the fact that they have been provided by the ‘risk and crisis management’ consulting industries, with the tacit support of trustees, Zionist advocacy groups, and federal agencies. Together, they deploy the language of safety to disguise a deeper logic of control and securitization.”

Countering such top-down moves will require intensive grassroots organizing. Sustained pushback against campus repression will be essential, to continually assert the right to speak out and protest as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Insistence on acquiring knowledge while gaining power for progressive forces will be vital. That’s why the national Teach-In Network was launched this week by the RootsAction Education Fund (which I help lead), under the banner “Knowledge Is Power — and Our Grassroots Movements Need Both.”

The elites that were appalled by the moral uprising on college campuses against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza are now doing all they can to prevent a resurgence of that uprising. But the mass murder continues, subsidized by the U.S. government. When students insist that true knowledge and ethical action need each other, they can help make history and not just study it.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in June 2023 by The New Press.

This article is from Common Dreams.

 

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/05/anti-genocide-students-are-back/

 

 

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anti-pro.....

Michelle Berkon’s article Inquiry into antisemitism a Trojan Horse for the Israeli lobby, discussed the Bill’s adoption of the highly contested International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which conflates antisemitism with criticism of the State of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism. Even Kenneth Stern, the definition’s principal author, has denounced the weaponising of the definition by right-wing Jews. Problematic as the IHRA definition is, the Bill’s flaws go much deeper.

The Commissioner’s role will include inquiring into whether universities have taken steps to ensure that antisemitic content is not included in course and teaching materials, or delivered during classes. Given the Bill’s definition of antisemitism, if it became law, every volume in my small collection of books on Israel and Palestine, including those authored by John Lyons, the ABC’s Global Affairs Editor, and anti-Zionist Jewish writers such as Judith Butler, Illan Pappé and Antony Loewenstein, would be deemed antisemitic. Yet these titles would be required reading in any decent university history course on Israel and Palestine.

As well as silencing and punishing students and staff for criticising Israel and the political ideology of Zionism, the Bill would shut down expressions of support for the rights of Palestinians to freedom, justice and equality. It would repress teaching and learning about what Zionism has meant for Palestinians.

Teaching the history of the founding of the state of Israel as a settler-colonialist project which involved the killing, expulsion and massive dispossessions of the indigenous Palestinian population, and their replacement with European Jews, would be deemed antisemitic. So, too, would a critique of the forms of state violence instituted and maintained by Zionism, including the continuing expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, which are clearly designed to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian State. Even teaching materials on the recent Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice (variously denounced by the ardently pro-Israel Executive Council of Australian Jewry as mendacious, a rewriting of history, and a devastating blow to international law) would be problematic.

The Inquiry will consider whether universities have put in place adequate arrangements to deal with antisemitism on campus including policies, rules, disciplinary procedures, barring and excluding people from campus, and preventing academics, staff and students from engaging in boycotts against collaborations with Israeli institutions. It will determine whether any legislative or regulatory changes are necessary or appropriate to enable the imposition of sanctions on academics, staff, students and organisations that engage in antisemitic conduct. Even more alarmingly, the Commissioner will consider whether legislative or regulatory changes are needed to enable the imposition of sanctions on universities that do not take adequate steps to address antisemitism. The Inquiry will also look at whether any “ministerial intervention powers” are necessary or appropriate to ensure that antisemitism on university campuses is addressed appropriately.

Everyone who cares about academic freedom, maintaining the integrity of critical inquiry, and the importance of robust debate on campus and of universities’ freedom from political interference should be deeply concerned by this Bill. Protecting these foundational principles is crucial, especially in our current political climate in which pro-Israel organisations and politicians of both major parties are weaponising antisemitism to silence and demonise those who support Palestinian rights. Supporters of the rights of Palestinians include many Jews, and liberal Jewish organisations such as the Jewish Council of Australia which has recommended that the Bill be rejected in its entirety.

Racism is on the rise. All forms of racism, including genuine antisemitism (hatred of Jews by reason of being Jews) and Islamophobia, are abhorrent and must be opposed wherever they occur. The right-wing ECAJ and Jillian Segal, the Council’s immediate past president and the government’s recently appointed Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, are strong supporters of the Bill. However, as the Jewish Council has observed, by exceptionalising antisemitism, the Bill has the “potential to create a hierarchy of categories of racism, exacerbate division, and undermine collaborative, multicultural, multi-faith efforts to tackle racism”.

The Australian Human Rights Commission is already conducting an independent study of racism in universities, with a particular focus on the incidence of antisemitism, Islamophobia and the experience of First Nations’ peoples. Its findings will inform the government. The AHRC is the appropriate body to investigate the issue.

If the Bill is enacted into law, the minister responsible for the legislation and for appointing the Commissioner is Mark Dreyfus, the Attorney-General. Dreyfus supports the adoption by universities of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The definition has been used by universities in other jurisdictions, including the UK and Canada, to intimidate, harass and initiate disciplinary measures against those supporting justice for Palestinians. Freedom of speech and intellectual inquiry is being suppressed. If passed, this Bill would have a similar chilling effect on Australian campuses.

Leeser’s Bill has been referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, which has received hundreds of submissions. The Committee will report on 4 October. The Bill is an alarming overreach. It should be rejected in its entirety.

https://johnmenadue.com/sanctioning-universities-for-failing-to-address-antisemitism/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

another layer....

 

Antisemitism and our universities    By Henry Reynolds

 

In today’s papers the Education Minister Jason Clare announced the decision to appoint a new National Student Ombudsman who will combat anti-Semitism at Australia Universities. He explained that Jewish students “don’t feel safe at university” and that it was obvious that antisemitism was a serious problem at tertiary institutions.

Clearly these are difficult times for Australia’s Jewish communities with tensions rising within families, communities and congregations. But do we need another government official to work alongside the recently appointed antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal and who will have the power – and we must assume the funding and the staff to launch separate investigations. The minister seems to be unaware of what he is proposing — the appointment of a government official to act as a political censor inside the universities to control what can be said or promoted. Will teachers have to present texts of their lectures on demand? Will the Ombudsman look for suspect books in libraries? Does the minister have any concern about institutional autonomy?

And all the minister has come up with is that some students “don’t feel safe” on our campuses. Safe from what? And how many students? And, more to the point, how many of our 37 public universities is the minister referring to? Has he any idea himself?

The only direct evidence he adduces is that students at the major universities had set up pro-Palestine encampments and that that was “where some of the worst reports of antisemitism had come from”. I don’t imagine the minister actually visited any of the camps and talked to the students involved. In all likelihood, he would have depended on second- and third-hand reports passed on by the Jewish organisations.

I made several visits to the camp at the University of Tasmania, talking at length with the participants. I don’t know how representative they were of students on other campuses. But there was little evidence of, what might be called classical antisemitism, that is hostility to the Jewish religion, customs or language. Their concern was not with Jewishness at all, but with the actions of the state of Israel about which they knew a great deal and they followed the news from the Middle East with profound concern.

And this is where so many of our current problems arise. In much of the public debate criticism of Israel is conflated, and quite deliberately so, with antisemitism even though many Jews are highly critical of the Netanyahu Government and of the whole Zionist Project. They are traditionally dismissed as “self-hating Jews”. And the conflation is often compounded. Opponents of Israel are accused, almost as a matter of course, of support for Hamas and, by further implication, being fellow travellers with terrorism. But the problem with this logical elasticity is that it can be turned in the opposite direction and, as a result, led to the assertion that defenders of the Israeli onslaught in both Gaza and the West Bank are complicit with genocide, apartheid and war crimes. Like it or not, this is an assessment of the situation, global in its reach. What is more it has behind it the precise legal definitions employed by the world’s peak judicial bodies, the ICJ and the International Criminal Court, in recent opinions about Gaza and the West Bank.

It is in these circumstances that antisemitism, however defined, provides a refuge from the condemnation of the world and an effective barrier against self- reflection. And this is the way it is being used by Clare and the Albanese Government, the Coalition Opposition and the mainstream media. The recent release of a selection of DFAT papers under Freedom of Information relating to advice provided to the government about the situation in Gaza and the West Bank told us a lot about the tactics used to mollify criticism of Israel. As a result, the public has no idea how critical our professional diplomats are of Israel and the “catastrophic” situation in Gaza. The documents present what journalist Michael West called “a litany of war crimes”. What we can conclude from this sample of DFAT advice is that expert opinion is very similar to the views expressed by student activists on the university campuses. What can we make of this? Is DFAT a hive of antisemitism and covert supporters of terrorism?

Well, perhaps not, but it raises the question about the advice provided by other departments and, in particular, by attorney-generals. Several P&I correspondents have remarked recently on the failure of the Attorney General Mark Dreyfus to provide adequate guidance to the Australian public about the significance of the recent decisions of the ICJ and the International Criminal Court. It is clearly a case where silence amounts to negligence. The need of the community to be given expert intelligence on these subjects is a pressing matter, given that since 2002 international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and apartheid have been incorporated in Australian criminal law. They can no longer be ignored as crimes that only have purchase “over there”. Which brings us to the highly contentious matter of Australian citizens who are fighting with the Israel Defence Forces. The government and, we assume, the leading Jewish organisations, know how many people are involved, but it is a matter wrapped in the tightest security.

It is symptomatic of the way in which the profound tragedy of Gaza has opened up the latent contradictions in Australia’s foreign policy and the manner in which we present ourselves to the world. We have tried for a long time to hold together two different things: our deep and close relationship with Israel — one of our “forever friends” — and our commitment to human rights and what we call the rules-based international order. Since October 2023, we have dithered as the cracks in the façade have grown wider by the week. Do we know how we can, certainly in this generation, return to our habit of preaching far and wide about human rights and scold other countries who we like to think have fallen by the wayside? Members of the present government can’t even utter the word genocide and believe that antisemitism is the most serious problem we have to deal with. Meanwhile, the world looks on amazed by the high-end hypocrisy about which our leaders seem to be scarcely aware.

https://johnmenadue.com/antisemitism-and-our-universities/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

SEE ALSO: https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/09/israeli-torture-chambers-arent-new/

israhell sins...

 

 

How Israel Helped Set Up – and Continues to Support – Equatorial Guinea's Brutal Regime

Israel has aided many ruthless dictatorships. But it's still hard to believe its actions in Equatorial Guinea

 

BY Eitay Mack 

 

The Republic of Equatorial Guinea, a small country on the west coast of Africa with a population of about 1.5 million, is one of the world's most notorious dictatorships. Since liberating itself from Spanish colonial rule and gaining independence, on October 12, 1968, it has been a brutal police state lacking even minimal human and civil rights. People are routinely arrested without trial, and human rights activists, journalists, opposition figures or any others the security forces deem to be in those categories, are at risk of being tortured and even murdered. Freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of association are nonexistent in Equatorial Guinea. The country's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, is the world's longest-serving dictator. He's been in power since 1979, when he deposed his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, in a bloody coup.

 

So, how did Equatorial Guinea become one of Israel's best friends 

in Africa, even announcing, in 2021, its intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem? One possible reason is that it's one of Africa's five largest oil exporters, giving Israel an economic interest in the country. But declassified Ministry of Foreign Affairs files reveal that Israel supported the government of Equatorial Guinea decades before it developed a dependency on its oil, and already then helped establish the infrastructure of its police state.

 

 

Israel took this course of action despite considerable evidence that President Macías wasn't mentally sound and suffered from paranoia and schizophrenia. With the aim of gaining Equatorial Guinea's support in international forums, however, Israel ignored Macías' mental condition and his cruelty toward opponents real and perceived.

 

 

According to Foreign Ministry cables, which became available starting two years ago, Israel apparently did not arm Macías' security forces, as his regime didn't have the money to buy weapons, and in any case it had enough rifles that were left behind by the Spanish colonial rulers. However, Israel assisted the president with what was most important for him: the formation and reorganization of the internal security forces, which were in a state of total disarray following the departure of the entire Spanish command network. While Israel has no interest in giving weapons away for free, sending consultants and trainers is considered a cheap "gift," since it is only required to pay their salaries and certain allowances.

 

 

This is how the years of President Macías were summed up, in a review prepared at the Foreign Ministry on September 1986, without referring to the Israeli aid given to help him establish his police state: "Equatorial Guinea, which was a remote Spanish colony, gained its independence only in 1968, but a few months later the elected Macías took control ... The murderous regime of terror thinned the population (according to estimates) by a third, the country became one of the most backward in Africa."

 

Macías thanked Israel wholeheartedly for its aid. A cable sent to the Foreign Ministry on June 3, 1969, by Shlomo Havilio, the ambassador to Cameroon, who was also accredited to Equatorial Guinea, noted that the president "emphasized his most friendly attitude toward Israel, he understands the significance of our struggle against the Arabs and he is on our side." In a March 1970 cable sent to Jerusalem, Havilio's successor, Dr. Shaul Levin, reported that he had met with Macías, who told him of his confidence that, "Our friendship will continue to grow to the degree that he will need it, as proved by our readiness to help him organize his armed forces."

 

 

Levin wrote that "Macías leaped from his chair, hugging and kissing me many times, saying: 'You know, Israel is our most sincere and most loyal friend, we know you will not lend a hand to schemes against us.'" He added how, "'Every night I pray for Israel's well-being.'" In the same cable, the ambassador noted that he had also met with a representative of the United States in the country, who told him that the regime imposes terror and "the police rampage in the streets."

 

The background to the president's hugs and kisses was apparently the extreme paranoia from which he suffered, prompting him to believe that innumerable plots to depose him were being woven and that only Israel was prepared to help him to thwart them. In two 1969 cables to the Foreign Ministry, Havilio reported that, according to Macías, a failed coup attempt against him had been mounted on March 4 of that year by the country's foreign minister. This had been an excuse for the president to liquidate physically "his main rivals," including the country's United Nations ambassador, who "died by torture," the foreign minister himself, and "dozens if not hundreds of political prisoners, among them most of the Foreign Ministry staff."

 

 

A February 25, 1970, cable from Ambassador Levin stated that President Macías claimed that there had been another coup attempt against him and that he had heightened "police supervision"; he was said to be subject to "frequent mood swings" and had apparently undergone a "nervous attack." Two weeks later, on March 6, an adviser in the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Yohanan Bein, reported to Jerusalem that the deputy director of the West Africa section of the State Department told him that Macías was "schizophrenic and unpredictable in his reactions." He added that the Equatorial Guinean president had accused The New York Times of being "a fascist newspaper managed by Jews in a fascist country."

 

 

The representative in the Israeli Embassy in neighboring Cameroon, Yaakov Keinan, advised Jerusalem in a May 18, 1970 cable that Equatorial Guinea's ambassador to Cameroon told him that "the president is not sane and rules his people and his government like a tyrant." Six months later, on November 23, 1970, Ambassador Levin informed the Foreign Ministry that "President Macías has arrived at a mental condition approaching a nervous breakdown and is suffering from a persecution complex." Hence there were mass arrests, this time within his own tribe, and many cabinet ministers and district governors were also imprisoned, all due to the head of state's pathological suspiciousness.

 

 

On September 17, 1971, Israel's ambassador to Congo, Haim Yaari, reported to the Foreign Ministry that he had been told by the U.S. ambassador that Macías was suffering from "paranoia" and that he "thinks that various and sundry plots are being hatched to murder or depose him, and he is convinced that foreign diplomats are also behind them." In the wake of this, "people are being arrested, tortured and executed without trial… In fact, there is no one loyal to Macías, but the means of terror he's employing do not presently make it possible to depose or liquidate him."

 

Far from seeing the reports about the president's mental condition as a warning light, Israel saw an opportunity. In a cable dated March 28, 1969, Ambassador Havilio stated that Macías had requested immediate assistance from Israel "to prepare a police force for keeping order." Six weeks later, on May 13, Havilio recommended that Israel accede to the request, because aid of this sort "will have practical and psychological significance that will far exceed every other aspect from the viewpoint of our relations with the president."

 

To that end, the following month, Israel sent a police officer with the rank of commander to Equatorial Guinea to prepare a survey of the country's domestic security forces. The officer recommended ways to reorganize the forces and also to tighten the president's control even further, by transferring to him responsibility for all police investigations, which until then had been partially overseen by the Interior Ministry. He also recommended that Israel help reorganize, train and equip the border control unit, and also upgrade the Presidential Guard, the police and the National Guard.

Following discussions in Jerusalem at the end of 1969, it was decided to dispatch to the country a six-person team (with representatives of the police, army, the Shin Bet security service and the Mossad) to serve as advisers and instructors, as well an additional officer "to reorganize the Presidential Guard" and to provide communications equipment to the police, a few jeeps and motorcycles to the Presidential Guard and a small quantity of arms, in addition to police courses in Israel. In the end, according to the cables, while the training and advisory missions were carried out, the only equipment that Macías was given were two Land Rover Jeeps and six Honda motorcycles that included police markings and equipment, as well as uniforms and berets for 120 police officers. In May 1970, Israel approved a two-year stint for a police commander in Equatorial Guinea, to serve as an adviser and to "establish" the local police force.

 

In October 1973, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Equatorial Guinea joined most other countries on the African continent in severing relations with Israel. But between 1979 and 1985, what was a positive development from Israel's perspective occurred when Equatorial Guinea decided to absent itself or abstain from United Nations votes on Israel, rather than vote against it. In May 1985, official talks began on renewal of bilateral relations; by now, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo was the country's ruler, having overthrown his uncle, Macías, six years earlier. Israel was well aware that he too was a dictator. According to a Foreign Ministry profile from 1986, Obiang ruled the country with the aid of a Supreme Military Council and bore the authority to promulgate legal orders; the Supreme Court constituted a mere advisory body, party organizing was banned.

 

On May 16, 1986, Israel's ambassador to Congo, Yitzhak Tzarfati, arrived in Equatorial Guinea's capital, Malabo, for a first meeting with President Obiang. The president, he reported in a cable to the Foreign Ministry, asked Israel to provide aid, in the wake of which "diplomatic relations will develop naturally." A month later, President Chaim Herzog sent Obiang a personal greeting on the occasion of his birthday, which was celebrated as a "national holiday" in the country. In June 1986, Equatorial Guinea's foreign minister visited Israel and met with designated acting prime minister and foreign minister Shimon Peres. To his request for Israeli assistance to develop his country's devastated infrastructure and for military aid, Peres replied that Israel would send a delegation to Equatorial Guinea to look into the possibilities.

 

The subsequent Foreign Ministry cables and files are still classified, but relations were renewed and Israel became the major protector of the regime of President Obiang, which prohibits opposition activity. Under Obiang, the majority of the country's citizens live in abject poverty, while a small elite enjoys the oil profits.

 

It was those profits that made it possible for Equatorial Guinea to buy weapons from Israel. In June 2005, Yossi Melman revealed in Haaretz that arms dealers and security firms from Israel were negotiating a contract to train the Presidential Guard. Three years later, the investigative television program "Uvda" ("Fact") revealed that Israel had sold corvette warships and patrol boats to Equatorial Guinea. The country's official information agency confirmed in 2011 that Israelis had trained soldiers of the army's ground forces. On January 17, 2018, Guy Lieberman reported in Yedioth Ahronoth that Israel's Defense Ministry had also approved the sale to the African country of defensive systems for aircraft, a system for surveilling mobile phones, armored vehicles, ammunition, crowd dispersal vehicles, rifles, uniforms and tents – worth tens of millions of euros. It was also reported that former personnel of Israel Defense Forces combat units had trained elite army and police units of the regime.

 

According to information from sources and from official publications of the regime in Equatorial Guinea from 2020, Israeli citizens not only trained the security forces but also served personally in the presidential guard while bearing Israeli-made arms. In mid-July 2021, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, Equatorial Guinea's first vice president and the president's son, whose responsibilities include national defense and security, visited Israel. The government of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid used the opportunity for a festive announcement that Equatorial Guinea had decided to transfer its embassy to Jerusalem. Unsurprisingly, the quid pro quo for this turned out to be another deal for lethal weapons and security services. (The embassy remains for the time being in Herzliya.)

 

The regime in Equatorial Guinea stated that the gist of the visit and of the agreement that was signed was Israeli aid in both military and internal security, adding that on the second day of his visit the vice president and his team held "working meetings" in security companies in Israel, including companies that manufacture "suicide" drones. On April 27, 2023, the regime in Equatorial Guinea again published information about training by Israelis. On the same day, Vice President Nguema visited a military base in Equatorial Guinea and observed Israelis training special forces of his country in riflery and tactical combat.

 

 

Israel, then, was the protector of President Macías' regime, is the protector of the regime of President Teodoro Obiang, and will likely also be the protector of the regime of his son, Teodoro Nguema, if and when he succeeds his father.

 Eitay Mack is a lawyer and human rights activist, who tried without success to stop Israeli military training and exports to Equatorial Guinea.

 

 

https://archive.is/2024.08.11-032908/https:/www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-08-09/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/how-israel-helped-set-up-and-continues-to-support-equatorial-guineas-brutal-regime/00000191-362c-d1ef-a1f3-377d25420000

 

 

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