Saturday, August 2, 2008
Michelle Sief has written a very interesting history of anti-Zionism in Africa -- a region that need not had any natural animus toward Israel, save for Arab co-opting of Africa's interests: Nasser's Legacy: Pushing Anti-Zionism in Africa
ONE OF THE IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTS which underpins left-wing anti-Zionism depicts a unified Afro-Arab bloc in direct confrontation with the State of Israel. And while it is a construct, there have been times when it has appeared all too real. For example, in 1973, after the Yom Kippur war, the majority of African states sided with the Arab world and agreed to sever diplomatic relations with Israel. In 1973 and 1975, at meetings of the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) and United Nations General Assembly respectively, African governments also supported Arab-instigated resolutions that demonized Zionism, equating it with colonialism and racism. More recently, the NGO Forum at the UN's infamous anti-racism conference in Durban in 2001 again conjured the specter of a unified bloc embracing Arabs and Africans, emanating, on this occasion, from civil society.
The narrative of an ahistoric, uniform, "Third World" anti-Zionism doesn't only undermine Israel's legitimacy. It also presents anti-Zionism as undefeatable. It elides the struggles that play out in creating shared conceptual meanings and coalitions around anti-Zionism. As a result, opportunities are missed to understand who is a racist enemy and who is vulnerable to persuasion, argument, and dialogue
A politics that defends Israel's legitimacy has to take into account the existence of various anti-Zionist discourses and movements and explore the connections between them. In this essay, I disrupt the narrative of a timeless Arab-African anti-Zionism by examining the origins and evolution of anti-Zionist discourses in post-colonial Africa. I show that anti-Zionist discourse in post-colonial Africa was not natural or inevitable. In what was clearly a political project, Arab nationalist leaders incorporated African nationalists into anti-Zionist discourses by skillfully framing Israel in ways that resonated with the cognitive frames used by these leaders to interpret the world...
In fact, what you find is that at most junctures, the leaders of "Black Africa" were resistant to pressure to break ties with the Jewish State.
They may have been resistant to breaking those ties, but once they did break them, the ties have never been repaired--nor has any effort been made by any African leader to do so.
Geek - not true at all. Read Michelle's piece and you'll see that more African countries have diplomatic ties with Israel now than at any time during the past. The point? There is no inherent enmity between Israel and Africa.