(Israel Government Press Office)
“Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story — those He redeemed from the hand of the foe, those He gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.” (Psalm 107:2–3)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a four-nation tour in Africa last week, giving a day each to Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, hoping to broaden Israel’s diplomatic strategy and build stronger ties with African and Arab leaders. He is the first Israeli prime minister to visit sub-Saharan Africa in almost 30 years.
“The multilateral effect will take time, but it has begun,” Netanyahu said Friday after returning from his trip. “I don’t think it’s a journey of 1,000 miles, but we have definitely crossed the first mile. I see momentum being built.”
Netanyahu’s trip, in part, sought to garner support from the African nations within the United Nations assembly.
Netanyahu also sought and received support for the reinstatement of Israel’s observer status at the African Union (AU). He said that Israel’s position at the AU would “have a very considerable effect regarding Israel’s international relations in the future.”
Israeli PM Netanyahu lays a wreath at Entebbe. (GPO photo by Kobi Gideon)
Netanyahu began the tour in Entebbe, Uganda. Leaders from seven African countries, including South Sudan, Zambia, and Tanzania, welcomed the PM.
At the Entebbe International Airport, Netanyahu marked the 40th anniversary of Operation Thunderbolt (July 3–4, 1976), the Entebbe raid in which his older brother, Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu, died leading commandos in the rescue of a planeload of skyjacked Israelis, as well as a 12-member Air France crew.
In Kenya, Netanyahu discussed the country’s need for growth in the areas of energy and agriculture and emphasized a mutual concern about a “new form of terrorism” coming out of Islam, with targets worldwide.
“I know that working together will help us defeat the scourge of this terror even faster,” he said. “And when I say working together, it’s Kenya, Israel and other African countries that have an equal stake in defeating the forces of this radicalism that threatens all our societies.”
Recalling the 2013 terrorist attack at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed 67, and last year’s attack by the al-Shahab terrorist group, slaughtering 148 people on the Garissa college campus, Netanyahu stated, “I think Africa and Israel overwhelmingly see eye-to-eye on this.”
Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya
At another stop on Tuesday, Netanyahu met with a group of Christian supporters of Israel, contrasting the dangers to Christians in the larger Middle East with the “one place in the Middle East where the Christian community is not only not shrinking, it’s thriving and it’s expanding and it’s safe and it’s welcome, and that place is Israel. You’re welcome in Israel. I’d like to receive you there, in Jerusalem.” (Algemeiner)
In Rwanda on Wednesday, Netanyahu visited the Kigali Memorial Centre to acknowledge the victims of the genocide that took the lives of 800,000 Rwandans in 1994. At the Kigali center, more than 250,000 nationals are buried in mass graves.
At the memorial, Netanyahu soberly connected the Rwandan genocide with genocidal missions against the Jews, such as those attempted during the Holocaust in Europe and the Pogroms in Russia and Poland.
“My people know the pain of genocide, as well, and this is the unique bond that neither one of our people would prefer to have,” Netanyahu said in Kigali. “Yet, we both persevere despite the pain and despite the horror. We survived; we never lost hope. And you never lost hope.”
Rwandan President Paul Kagame emphasized that Rwanda has learned that their people are their primary resource, while Netanyahu described the similar lesson that the Jewish people have learned — that “in difficult times, we must be able to defend ourselves by ourselves.”
Israeli PM Netanyahu and his wife Sara visit the Rwanda genocide memorial.
Netanyahu concluded his four-legged tour in Ethiopia where he visited with Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in Addis Ababa.
The Israeli PM requested help in securing the release of Ethiopian Israeli Avraham Mengistu, whom Hamas kidnapped in September 2014. Mengistu’s parents have conducted protests outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, seeking intervention for their son.
The Ethiopian parliament welcomed Netanyahu with loud applause. He offered “greetings from Jerusalem, the city I grew up in and where King Solomon met the Queen of Sheba.”
Netanyahu highlighted the values shared by Ethiopia and Israel.
“You in Ethiopia, you fought for your freedom for millennia. We respect you. We admire you. You resisted foreign rule and lived as a free independent homeland. We too live as a free independent homeland,” he said. (Times of Israel)
In terms of cooperation in agriculture and technology, he shared, “We had extraordinarily productive discussions, the Prime Minister and I and our teams. We see possibilities in every field of endeavor — in agriculture, in water, in energy, in space, in cyber, but in ways that will affect, as the Prime Minister said, the lives of ordinary Ethiopians because you can have more water for your personal use, for crops … to produce cows, to produce milk in greater quantities.
“This is the question I ask everywhere I go: Which cow produces more milk per cow in the world? You think it’s a Dutch cow; you think it’s a French cow. It’s not; it’s an Israeli cow and soon it could be an Ethiopian cow.”
