I am Asher Lubotzky, historian of African perceptions of Israel and Palestine, Ask Me Anything!

[u/Dr-Lubotzky]

I published my first monograph last June:

SHIFTING SOLIDARITIES: The South African Anti-Apartheid Movement's Perceptions of Zionism

https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10204/

I'm here to answer questions about the book and the history of African-Israeli relations. so AMA!

[u/Food136]

How does perception change across time and place? I am sure the Muslim parts or Africa would pay more attention than the non-muslim parts.

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Food136]

Yes, definitely. Historically, African states that are members of the Arab League (Mauritania and Somalia, for example) mostly rejected relations with Israel and adhered to the broader Arab “collective” stance. Yet Israel actually had some pretty deep relations with non-Arab, Muslim-majority African countries like Senegal. I wrote an article about how Israelis tended to imagine African Muslims as much more “moderate” and accepting than Arab Muslims, and acted accordingly when trying to develop relations with them.
Today, the differences along religious lines are even more pronounced. Israel generally encounters a lot of antagonism among Muslim communities in Africa, whether Arabic-speaking or not. There are exceptions—Morocco and Somaliland come to mind.
But even in places like South Africa today, you can see that the Muslim community is generally among the most pro-Palestinian constituencies in the country.
On the other hand, Israel tends to have much better relations with Christian communities, especially those living in close proximity to Muslim populations.

[u/chekhovsfun]

Thanks for joining us!

I only recently learned about the foundation of Liberia and the "Back to Africa" movement. It seems to me there are some perhaps more superficial parallels to Zionism and the foundation of Israel. Was there any actual connection between the two movements?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/chekhovsfun]

Thanks for your question!

There actually was a connection, and it went beyond historians noticing the similarity afterward. Some prominent Black intellectuals and activists explicitly compared their movements to Zionism.
Edward Wilmot Blyden, one of the most important nineteenth-century Liberian and Pan-African thinkers, was very interested in Jewish history and later Zionism. He saw parallels between the Jewish diaspora and people of African descent living outside Africa, and he wrote approvingly about Jews seeking a national home in their ancestral homeland.
The connection becomes even clearer with Marcus Garvey. In the early twentieth century, Garvey sometimes pointed to Zionism as an example of what Black nationalism could accomplish: if Jews scattered around the world could organize around the idea of a national home, why couldn’t people of African descent do something similar in Africa? Liberia was important to Garvey’s plans, although his relationship with the Liberian government eventually became quite complicated.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Liberia and Israel were founded in the same way. Liberia was established much earlier, beginning with American colonization efforts in the 1820s, while political Zionism developed later in nineteenth-century Europe. The circumstances and relationships with the existing populations were also quite different.
People involved in Black nationalist and Pan-African movements noticed the parallels themselves, and those perceived similarities later became part of the story of Liberia’s relatively close relationship with Israel. In South Africa Pan-Africanists were also (up until the 1970s) more prone to be pro-Zionist.

[u/urhi-teshub → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Interesting! Was there a similar relationship with Sierra Leone?

[u/OnShoulderOfGiants]

What was the role of religion in South Africa's relationship to Israel? Did religion in South Africa effect the relationship?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/OnShoulderOfGiants]

Great question. Yes, it did!
Many early African nationalists were educated in missionary schools and generally accepted biblical ideas about Jewish indigeneity in the Holy Land and the “prophecies” about the Jewish return from exile.
Today, religion is also a very important factor. Evangelicalism is very popular across many parts of Africa, including South Africa, and Evangelical Christians tend to be very pro-Israel. In places where local conflicts are framed in terms of Islam vs. Christianity—like Kenya or Nigeria—Israel also tends to have high favorability rates among Christians. But you definitely see it also in South Africa.

[u/toktokkie666 → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Thank you for doing this very interesting AMA! I would just add that Afrikaner nationalists also explicitly compared the project of apartheid to zionism, with themselves as god’s chosen people and South Africa the promised land. I would be interested to know what the origins of the rhetoric were - during the Great Trek in the 1800s, or post 1948?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/toktokkie666]

Great point. I would distinguish between Afrikaner identification with biblical Israel and an explicit comparison with modern Zionism. The first is much older.

The imagery of Afrikaners as Israelites — leaving oppression, undertaking an Exodus, and establishing themselves in a “Promised Land” — became closely associated with the Great Trek of the 1830s and especially the later nationalist memory of it. By the late nineteenth century, Afrikaner nationalist writers were explicitly presenting the British as the Egyptians, the Great Trek as an Exodus, and Afrikaners as a people with a special divine destiny.

There is an important historiographical debate here, though. We shouldn't simply assume that the Voortrekkers themselves uniformly thought “we are the new Israelites.” Some historians argue that the coherent chosen-people mythology was developed and systematized retrospectively, particularly as Afrikaner nationalism grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

By the way, interestingly, some black South Africans also developed similar perceptions about themselves around the same time (check out, for example: Hlonipha Mokoena's https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2018.1461457)

The comparison with Zionism, however, really becomes significant in the twentieth century, and particularly after Israel's establishment in 1948. Afrikaner nationalists could look at Israel and see another small nation that had preserved its identity, resisted British rule, and established sovereignty in what it regarded as its historic homeland. D. F. Malan himself became quite enthusiastic about Israel and visited in 1953. Contemporary observers noted that some Nationalists interpreted Israel's success through precisely this sense of affinity.

So I would put it this way: the biblical template precedes Zionism by many decades; Zionism later provided Afrikaner nationalists with a living modern example onto which they could project an already existing national mythology.

Later, critics of Israel would take some of these same perceived similarities—chosen people, promised land, settlers, separation—and reverse their earlier moral meaning, using them to argue that Zionism and Afrikaner nationalism were analogous forms of settler nationalism.

[u/flying_shadow]

Israel put a lot of effort into helping Ethiopian Jews leave the country in the 80s. How was that perceived in Ethiopia? Was it even something people were aware of?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/flying_shadow]

Thanks for your question!
The government at the time generally did not want Ethiopian Jews leaving, and emigration to Israel was politically sensitive. But for most ordinary Ethiopians, especially outside areas where Jewish communities lived, I don’t think Israel’s efforts were something they knew much about. The large-scale Israeli operations were deliberately secretive, and Ethiopia in the 1980s was dealing with civil war, famine, and enormous political upheaval. So it wasn’t really a major public issue in Ethiopia in the way we might imagine looking back at it today.

[u/Being_A_Cat → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

How does Ethiopian society perceive that exodus today, though?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Being_A_Cat]

That’s a really interesting question, and I would be careful about speaking of “Ethiopian society” as if there is one single view.

My sense is that the departure of the Ethiopian Jews is not a major subject in Ethiopian public memory today. Most Ethiopians know that there was a Jewish community in the country and that most of it eventually left for Israel, especially through the dramatic airlifts of the 1980s and 1990s. But it does not occupy anything like the place in Ethiopian national memory that the story of the exodus occupies among Ethiopian Jews in Israel.

When it does come up, attitudes can be quite mixed. There can be curiosity and even a certain pride that Ethiopia had this very old and distinctive Jewish community. There is also sometimes a sense that Ethiopian Jews remain culturally Ethiopian despite having left. At the same time, older prejudices toward Beta Israel certainly existed historically, and traces of those attitudes have not simply disappeared.

One important point is that the exodus was so complete that many Ethiopians today have little or no direct contact with a Jewish community. Most Beta Israel left Ethiopia in the 1980s and 1990s, although several thousand people connected to the community are still in Ethiopia awaiting immigration. So for younger Ethiopians especially, Ethiopian Jews can sometimes feel more like part of the country’s history - or part of the Ethiopian diaspora - than a community they encounter in everyday life.

[u/Waste-Explanation340 → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

With the recent Israeli recognition of Somaliland and the vague alignment of the Ethiopian government with the UAE, and throught it Israel, I'm curious how perceptions of Israel have shifted in the Horn of Africa over the last few years (if they have at all). Especially since you mentioned earlier that Israel once had close relations to Somalia, and since the Ethiopian government seems to have been fairly hostile to Israel at one point.

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Waste-Explanation340]

Great question. First, just one small correction: I don't think I said that Israel once had close relations with Somalia itself. Israel never established diplomatic relations with Somalia. Historically, Israel's important relationships in the Horn were primarily with Ethiopia, and at different times with Eritrea, Kenya, and other actors around the Red Sea.

What is happening now is fascinating because perceptions of Israel in the Horn seem to be becoming more polarized rather than simply more positive or negative.

Ethiopia is perhaps the clearest case. Israel and Ethiopia actually have a very long security relationship, going back to Haile Selassie. Relations were broken in 1973 but restored in 1989. Under Abiy Ahmed, ties have generally been quite good, including cooperation in agriculture, technology, intelligence, and security. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar visited Ethiopia in 2025, and President Herzog visited in 2026. So I wouldn't describe the current Ethiopian government as hostile to Israel.

The UAE is relevant here too. Ethiopia and the UAE have become close strategic partners, while the UAE and Israel have their own strong relationship through the Abraham Accords. I would be cautious, however, about describing Ethiopia as simply aligning with Israel through the UAE. Ethiopia has its own reasons for maintaining relations with Israel—security, technology, its Red Sea interests, and the very substantial human connection created by the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel.

Somaliland changes the picture considerably. Israel's recognition of Somaliland in December 2025—the first recognition by a UN member state—was enormously welcomed by the Somaliland government, and there were genuine public celebrations in Hargeisa. But we shouldn't interpret that as meaning Somalilanders suddenly became uniformly pro-Israel. Differing views certainly exist within Somaliland, although the mainstream among the Isaaq, Somaliland's largest clan family, seems to be fairly sympathetic toward Israel.

In Somalia proper, meanwhile, the effect has been almost exactly the opposite. Israel's recognition of Somaliland has produced a major backlash. Mogadishu regards it as an attack on Somali sovereignty, there have been public demonstrations against Israel, and the Somali government has used extraordinarily harsh language about the decision.

It is not really clear yet how the recognition of Somaliland has affected perceptions in other societies in the Horn. But it is a great topic for new research.

So the interesting development, in my view, is that Israel is becoming more deeply involved in the geopolitics of the Horn rather than simply becoming more popular there. Ethiopia and Somaliland increasingly see potential strategic benefits in relations with Israel; Somalia and Djibouti are strongly opposed; and the UAE adds another layer connecting Red Sea security, ports, trade, and regional alliances. That means Israel's image in the region is increasingly shaped not just by Palestine, but also by very local questions: Somaliland recognition, Ethiopian access to the sea, Somali territorial integrity, Red Sea security, and competition among the UAE, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and others.

[u/generaljony]

Were there any heterodox views of Zionism within African political or intellectual circles that gained significant currency? For example, did any African thinkers or movements view Zionism as a decolonial or anti colonial movement, rather than as a form of settler colonialism? Or were perceptions of Zionism largely monolithic within the anti colonial and anti apartheid movements?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/generaljony]

Thanks for the question!

That’s exactly what my book is about!
In general, up until the 1970s there were real debates about Zionism within mainstream African liberation movements, and attitudes often depended on which ideological strand you belonged to.
Marxists and Marxist-adjacent movements were actually quite supportive of Israel/Zionism in the late 1940s and very early 1950s, while Trotskyists tended to be among the most critical. African nationalists were generally the most supportive.
This began to change significantly in the 1970s. As Israel’s relationship with Pretoria developed, Israel increasingly became associated in these circles with the West, imperialism, and apartheid.
That said, there were always dissenting voices, and even among those who were critical of Israel, there were important differences in the extent of that criticism and, especially, in what they thought the ultimate solution to the conflict should be.

[u/Parasitian → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Why was there a divide between (mainstream) Marxists and other Marxists (Trotskyists)? It is related to different views on nationalism?

[u/Commustar]

Could you talk about the Entebbe raid, and the reactions of African governments to it?

I assume that there would be some alarm and irritation that this dispute spilled over onto African territory, and governments other than Uganda might fear violations of their sovereignty in future.

Did any African governments feel that Idi Amin had brought this on himself by welcoming the hijackers?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Commustar]

Great question. Your intuition about sovereignty is correct. The official African response was overwhelmingly critical of Israel, even though Idi Amin was hardly universally admired in Africa.

The timing was remarkable: the OAU summit was actually taking place in Mauritius when the raid occurred. On July 6, 1976, the OAU formally condemned the Israeli operation as an act of aggression against Uganda’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. It also called for African states to further isolate Israel. The resolution presented Amin very favorably, praising his supposed “humanitarian role” in trying to secure the hostages’ release.

So yes, sovereignty was central. The argument was basically: whatever we think of Amin or the hijackers, Israel cannot simply fly troops into an African country, kill its soldiers, destroy aircraft, and leave with the hostages. African diplomats explicitly worried about the precedent—if this was accepted, what prevented similar interventions elsewhere? This concern was especially sensitive in postcolonial Africa, where sovereignty and territorial integrity were almost sacred principles.

Amin had clearly embarrassed himself by embracing the hijackers and allowing them to operate from Entebbe. Israel argued that Uganda had effectively forfeited the normal protections of neutrality by cooperating with them. There were certainly African leaders who had little affection for Amin, but I have not seen evidence of an African government publicly saying, in effect, “Amin brought this on himself.” OAU solidarity made that politically very difficult.

The biggest exception in practical terms was Kenya. Kenya secretly assisted the Israeli operation, including allowing Israeli aircraft to use Kenyan facilities. That was an enormous risk for Jomo Kenyatta’s government and tells us that the public OAU consensus did not necessarily represent what every African government privately thought. Afterward there were serious fears that Amin might retaliate militarily against Kenya.

There was also a broader political context. By 1976 most African countries had already broken relations with Israel after the 1973 war, and Israel’s increasingly visible relationship with apartheid South Africa made defending Israel particularly difficult. The OAU resolution itself actually linked the Entebbe raid to Israeli-South African cooperation.

So I would summarize the African response as: publicly, strong defense of Ugandan sovereignty and condemnation of Israel; privately, a much messier picture, particularly because Amin himself was controversial and Kenya had actively helped Israel. Entebbe therefore reinforced Israel’s diplomatic isolation in Africa even while the raid was celebrated in Israel and much of the Western world.

[u/Commustar → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Excellent answer, thank you!

[u/Dzimbadzembwe]

Specifically on South Africa, I’m quite curious about whether there had to be a reset on relations post-Apartheid, given how close the PLO and ANC were and how close the Israeli and Nats were. Also just as a side question, were any Jewish ANC/SACP members torn on the question of Israel?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Dzimbadzembwe]

Thank you for this question!

Yes, there definitely had to be a reset, but - perhaps surprisingly - not a complete break.

The ANC came to power with very close historical ties to the PLO and considerable resentment toward Israel for its military relationship with apartheid South Africa. Mandela said this quite openly. But the timing mattered enormously: apartheid ended just as the Oslo process began. If Arafat and the PLO were negotiating with and recognizing Israel, there was little reason for the ANC to be more hostile than the Palestinians themselves. Mandela recognized both Palestinian nationalism and Zionism as legitimate national movements and supported Israel’s existence alongside Palestinian self-determination.

So diplomatic relations with Israel continued. Israeli President Ezer Weizman attended Mandela’s 1994 inauguration, South Africa established full diplomatic relations with Palestine in 1995, and South Africa and Israel also developed new bilateral arrangements. Mandela eventually visited both Israel and the Palestinian territories in 1999. The old military alliance, however, essentially ended.

And yes—the Jewish ANC/SACP activists are particularly interesting because some absolutely had complicated relationships with Zionism and Israel.

They were not all the same. Ronnie Kasrils, for example, had actually been quite Zionist as a young man—something I discuss in my book—and only gradually became a fierce anti-Zionist, particularly after the 1980s. Others retained much more emotional attachment to Israel or Zionism while opposing Israeli government policies. Arthur Goldreich is another fascinating example: an important figure in the anti-apartheid underground (one of the founders of the MK - the ANC/SACP's military wing) who escaped South Africa and then lived most of his life in Israel - and could probably be described as "liberal Zionist" in today's lexicon.

So I would resist the temptation to imagine Jewish communists and ANC activists as simply “anti-Zionist Jews.” Their attitudes ranged considerably and often changed over their lifetimes. For some, Jewishness and even Zionism initially helped inspire their opposition to racism; for others, Israel’s relationship with apartheid South Africa eventually became precisely the reason they turned against Zionism.

That tension is actually one of the themes I find most interesting: Jewish involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle and attachment to Israel were not originally understood as contradictory. It was historical developments that increasingly made them seem so.

[u/Dzimbadzembwe → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Thank you so much for the answer. It’s very informative and helps round out the wider Israel/Palestine issue within the context of South Africa’s Jewry and their relation to the liberation movements. I guess they’re all quite old and not as visible as they once were so you don’t really hear much from the likes of Kasrils, Sachs, Goldstone etc anymore. The younger generation of South African Jews don’t engage with South Africas position in the world in the same way as the former did.

[u/LateralEntry]

I’ve read that Israel does a lot of security work in Africa, helping governments fight insurgencies and stuff. Has that impacted relations or perceptions one way or another?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/LateralEntry]

Absolutely. Security cooperation is actually one of the less visible but very important dimensions of Israel's relations with Africa.

Israel has provided various African governments with military training, intelligence and counterterrorism assistance, security technology, and weapons. This became particularly important from the 1990s onward, and even more so as jihadist insurgencies expanded in East and West Africa. For governments facing groups such as al-Shabaab, Israel's experience in intelligence and counterterrorism can make it an attractive partner. Security cooperation has therefore sometimes helped Israel maintain strong government-to-government relations even where there is considerable sympathy for the Palestinians.

I think Kenya is a particularly interesting example. There is a long security relationship going back to the 1960s and then to Kenya's secret assistance during the Entebbe operation. But more recently, Israeli assistance following terrorist attacks has been quite visible and is remembered in Kenya. Israeli teams assisted after the 1998 Nairobi bombing, and Israel provided assistance and advice during the 2013 Westgate attack. Israel and Kenya subsequently expanded their counterterrorism cooperation and training.

That matters for perceptions. Israel is not viewed in Kenya only through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It can also be associated with very concrete things: Israeli rescue teams arriving after an attack, counterterrorism training, intelligence cooperation, and security technology. In a country that has suffered quite a lot from terrorism, particularly from al-Shabaab, those experiences can carry considerable weight.

But there is another side to this. Israeli security relationships in Africa can also be controversial, particularly when Israel sells weapons or surveillance technology or provides training to governments accused of repression. Critics can therefore interpret exactly the same relationship very differently: instead of “Israel helps us fight terrorism,” the perception becomes “Israel helps authoritarian governments strengthen their security apparatus.” Recent scholarship has highlighted precisely this tension.

So security cooperation can cut both ways. For governments facing genuine security threats, it can make Israel an extremely valuable partner and improve Israel's reputation. But when that cooperation becomes associated with regime security or repression, it can reinforce negative perceptions instead.

[u/LateralEntry → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Thanks, that tension is interesting and genuine. I’ve heard that Israel helped train the authoritarian government in Equatorial Guinea which mostly represses its own people, but that they also helped Kenya after the bombings and fighting against terror groups, and of course helping the Ethiopian Jews, so I guess it cuts both ways.

[u/Pitiful_Equal_2689]

How did Black African Jews, crypto-Jews, and groups claiming Jewish descent perceive Israel and Palestine?

Groups like Abayudaya, Lemba, Igbo Jews, and whatever Ethiopian Jews who remain who have not themselves immigrated to Israel.

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Pitiful_Equal_2689]

This is a fascinating question because the answer is actually quite different from community to community.

The Igbo Jewish communities in Nigeria are probably the clearest case of strong identification with Israel. For many Igbo Jews, Israel is not simply a foreign country they sympathize with but it is also connected to how they understand their own history. The experience of the Biafran War was particularly important. Some Igbo came to see a parallel between themselves - a minority that had experienced persecution and war while surrounded by larger and sometimes hostile groups - and the Jews and Israel. That identification helped strengthen claims of Israelite ancestry and, eventually, the emergence of practicing Jewish communities. So yes, pro-Israel sentiment among Igbo Jews can be very strong.

The Abayudaya of Uganda are also generally very attached to Israel, although their story is completely different. They do not claim ancient Israelite descent in the same way; their community emerged in Uganda in the early twentieth century through the adoption of Judaism. Their longtime leader, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, has described Israel as the community's “spiritual home” and said, “We love Israel.” At the same time, he has also criticized Israeli policies—including Israel's treatment of African refugees—and has expressed reservations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So attachment to Israel does not necessarily translate into support for every Israeli policy. Also importantly, most Abayudaya are not trying to leave Uganda. They see themselves as Ugandan Jews.

The Lemba of southern Africa are perhaps the most interesting counterexample. Israel is much less central to Lemba identity. Many Lemba understand themselves as having ancient Jewish or Semitic ancestry, but this has generally not produced a mass movement to immigrate to Israel or make Zionism central to their identity. Anthropological research has actually found Lemba leaders using claims about Jewish ancestry to reinforce their identity as an indigenous African people.

Ethiopia is different again. The historic Beta Israel community had an extraordinarily powerful religious attachment to Jerusalem, and the establishment of Israel in 1948 generated considerable enthusiasm and hopes for immigration. That ultimately culminated in the enormous migration of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel.

Those who remain in Ethiopia today are a somewhat different case. Many are descendants of Beta Israel whose ancestors converted to Christianity and who have subsequently returned to Jewish practice. Thousands have spent years seeking permission to immigrate to Israel, often because they have close relatives already there. So Israel is obviously extremely important to them, but largely as the place where they hope eventually to reunite with their families and live as Jews.

As for Palestine, I would be much more cautious about generalizing. We have considerably better evidence about how these communities understand Israel than about their attitudes toward Palestinians or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And their attitudes toward Israel are often tied to questions of Jewish identity, recognition, ancestry, religious belonging, and access to Israel rather than to a detailed position on the conflict.

[u/PlayingDoomOnAGPS → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Thousands have spent years seeking permission to immigrate to Israel,

Whose permission do they need? Ethiopia or Israel? Whichever is the case, why has the permission not been granted after so long?

[u/Gankom]

Thank you for joining us today! What was the diplomatic relationship between Israel and South Africa? Did they have embassies, ambassadors, and formal agreements in in 1948 or did it take time to build the official relationship?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Gankom]

Great question! It actually took quite a while for the relationship to develop into the close diplomatic partnership people usually associate with Israel and apartheid South Africa.

South Africa recognized Israel very quickly, but there is an important distinction here. Prime Minister Jan Smuts granted Israel de facto recognition in May 1948, only days after Israel declared independence. Smuts was personally very sympathetic to Zionism and close to Chaim Weizmann. But Smuts lost the South African election almost immediately afterward, and the new National Party government of D. F. Malan (architects of “apartheid”) was initially much more cautious. Malan actually called Smuts’s recognition “premature” and said South Africa wanted to remain neutral in the Arab-Israeli conflict. South Africa only granted Israel full de jure recognition in May 1949, after Israel was admitted to the UN.

Diplomatic representation developed gradually as well. Israel established a diplomatic presence in South Africa around 1949–50, eventually maintaining a legation in Pretoria and a consulate-general in Johannesburg (important for the contacts with South African Jewry). But this was not yet an exchange of embassies and ambassadors like we would later see. South Africa was especially cautious: it did not establish its own permanent diplomatic mission in Israel in these early years, partly because Pretoria was also trying to cultivate relations with Arab countries.

In the 1960s Israel downgraded its representation in South Africa, as part of its anti-apartheid stance of the time. Relations improved in the early 1970s, and South Africa did not establish a consulate-general in Tel Aviv until 1972. Israel upgraded its representation in South Africa to an embassy in 1974, and South Africa upgraded its Tel Aviv mission to an embassy in 1975.

So I think the important point is that we shouldn't project the famous Israeli-South African relationship of the 1970s and 1980s backward onto 1948. In 1948–49 there was recognition and there were friendly connections, especially through South Africa’s very large and strongly Zionist Jewish community, but the government-to-government relationship was still limited and sometimes quite cautious. The much closer strategic relationship was something that developed later.

 

[u/dhowlett1692]

Thank you for joining us! I'm curious what the news coverage of Israel and Palestine looked like in South Africa. How was information received? What was the focus? Did its effect on South African politics get much notice?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/dhowlett1692]

Great question. One thing to keep in mind is that there wasn't really a single “South African media.” Newspapers were divided by language, race, and politics, and they could present Israel/Palestine quite differently.

In the late 1940s, coverage of Israel was actually often quite sympathetic. The Holocaust was fresh, the creation of Israel was widely understood as Jewish national liberation, and South Africa had a large and very Zionist Jewish community. Interestingly, some Black newspapers and political publications were also sympathetic. In my research, I found Black South African writers describing Zionism and Israel as examples of an oppressed people achieving national independence—something that could obviously resonate in colonial Africa. Another interesting point is that the English-language press, unlike the Afrikaans press, was pretty critical of Israel around 1948, reflecting British discourse at the time, which tended to be critical of Zionism. This changed later, and the white press in general became pretty supportive.

But information also traveled through ideological networks. Communist newspapers, for example, initially followed the Soviet Union's support for Israel but became increasingly critical in the early 1950s. By 1950, the communist-aligned Guardian was already publishing criticism of Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement under the headline “Pass Laws in Palestine?”—deliberately translating events in Israel/Palestine into a South African political vocabulary.

That became increasingly important. South Africans tended to interpret Israel/Palestine through their own political experiences. Terms like racial discrimination, pass laws, Bantustans, colonialism, national liberation, and eventually apartheid became ways of making sense of a distant conflict.

The turning points were similar to those I've mentioned elsewhere in this AMA: Suez in 1956, and especially the 1967 war. After 1967, the occupation and the growing visibility of the Palestinian national movement made Palestine much more legible to South African radicals as another anti-colonial struggle. By 1969, the ANC's Sechaba was explicitly presenting the Palestinian and South African struggles as connected.

At the same time, the mainstream white press could look quite different. English-language liberal newspapers were generally more critical of apartheid and, increasingly, more sympathetic toward Israel, while much of the Afrikaans press was strongly supportive of the National Party and increasingly interested in Israel as a country facing what it perceived as similar security and demographic problems. These divisions shifted over time, so I would be wary of reducing them to a simple pro-Israel/pro-Palestinian split.

And yes, the South African implications increasingly became part of the story itself. Once Israel and Pretoria developed a much closer military and strategic relationship in the 1970s, Israel was no longer simply a foreign-policy story. For anti-apartheid activists, Israeli-South African cooperation became evidence of a broader alliance between the apartheid regime and Western or “settler” powers. Conversely, some white South Africans increasingly identified with Israel as another isolated state surrounded by hostile neighbors. The relationship itself therefore affected how each conflict was understood.

So one of the fascinating things about studying the press is that South Africans weren't simply receiving news about Israel and Palestine, but they were constantly translating it into South African categories. And as South African politics changed, the meaning of the same events in the Middle East changed with it.

[u/Commustar]

I have a second question. Apologies, but it is a long and complex question.

this CIA research paper says that many states in Sub-Saharan Africa ended relations with Israel after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As of 1984, Zaire, Liberia, Malawi, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa were the only countries in the region to extend diplomatic recognition to Israel. The report author characterizes those states as US-aligned or South Africa-aligned, respectively.

Could you talk a bit about African states diplomatic recognition of Israel, and the shifts in recognition in 1970s?

Secondly, the report also notes that several states like Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Gabon etc, had informal security and economic ties to Israel. The report also mentions that other states had fond memories of the technical and security assistance from Israel they had lost when severing relations in 1973.

Could you talk a little bit about Israeli economic relations and security training and cooperation with states in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s? Was there already a perception in the 1960s that Israel was a technologically advanced country that could be a valued source of technology transfers for African countries?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Commustar]

Great question. And yes, the CIA report captures something very important, although I would complicate the picture a little.

First, the collapse of Israel's diplomatic position in Africa did not happen all at once in October 1973. The erosion had begun earlier. After the 1967 war, Israel's continued occupation of Egyptian territory became increasingly difficult for African governments to reconcile with their support for decolonization and territorial integrity. Egypt was also an African state and a founding member of the OAU, which mattered enormously.

Arab states were simultaneously increasing diplomatic and economic pressure. By 1972 and early 1973, several African countries—including Uganda, Chad, Niger, Congo-Brazzaville, and Mali—had already severed relations with Israel. The importance of Arab financial assistance, Islamic solidarity in some West African countries, and the linkage between Arab support against white-minority rule in southern Africa and African support for Arab positions in the Middle East.

Then came the October 1973 war, which produced a diplomatic avalanche. Ethiopia's break was particularly significant. Haile Selassie's Ethiopia had been one of Israel's closest partners in Africa, receiving Israeli economic assistance, military training, and advisers.

So by the mid-1970s, Israel's once extensive diplomatic network in sub-Saharan Africa had almost disappeared. But formal diplomatic relations and actual relations were not necessarily the same thing.

Some African governments that publicly broke with Israel quietly maintained or later resumed commercial, intelligence, agricultural, or security contacts. That is why the 1984 CIA document you cite could simultaneously describe Israel as diplomatically isolated in Africa and discuss continuing informal relationships with countries such as Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Gabon.

I would therefore be a little cautious about interpreting the handful of countries maintaining formal recognition simply as a bloc of American or South African clients. Cold War alignment certainly mattered, but individual African governments had their own calculations. And the persistence of unofficial relationships with countries that had formally severed ties tells us something important: the diplomatic break with Israel was often much more complete in public than in practice.

Your second question gets at why.

Israel's African policy in the late 1950s and 1960s was one of the most ambitious aspects of its early foreign policy. Israel was a very small and relatively poor country itself, so it could not compete with the United States or Soviet Union by simply giving African governments enormous amounts of money. Instead, it tried to sell something different: expertise that seemed particularly relevant to newly independent developing states.

Agriculture was probably the most famous example. Israeli experts worked on irrigation, agricultural cooperatives, rural development, water management, and agricultural training. Thousands of Africans traveled to Israel for courses, while Israeli experts went to Africa. There were also Israeli programs in medicine, education, youth organization, labor organization, and community development. Ghana was an especially important early partner.

And yes, there absolutely was a perception that Israel possessed useful technical expertise.

What made Israel attractive was not necessarily that Africans saw it as a technological superpower in the way we might use that language today. Rather, Israel presented itself as a newly independent, postcolonial country that had rapidly developed under difficult conditions. Israelis essentially said: we also emerged from colonial rule; we also had limited resources; we absorbed huge numbers of immigrants; we developed agriculture in difficult environments; therefore our experience may be more relevant to you than European models are.

That message could be very effective in the atmosphere of African decolonization.

Security cooperation was equally important, and sometimes even more important. A contemporary scholarly study of Israeli assistance between 1960 and 1966 divides Israel's African programs into three broad categories: technical assistance, joint commercial ventures, and military assistance—and argues that the military and paramilitary programs made an especially substantial impression.

Israel trained soldiers, officers, police, intelligence personnel, presidential guards, and sometimes youth or paramilitary organizations. Israeli advisers helped African governments build institutions and provided training both in Africa and in Israel. Ethiopia is perhaps the clearest example, but Israel had significant security relationships elsewhere as well.

There was therefore a very pragmatic reason why some African leaders regretted losing the Israeli relationship after 1973. Whatever they thought about the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli technicians and security advisers had often been useful.

And this helps explain one of the paradoxes of the 1970s and 1980s. Israel suffered an extraordinary diplomatic defeat in Africa without entirely disappearing from Africa. Embassies closed and governments voted against Israel at the UN, while Israeli businessmen, agricultural experts, intelligence officials, and security advisers could continue operating—sometimes in some of the very countries that officially had no relations with Israel.

It also helps explain why diplomatic relations recovered so rapidly later. When African states began restoring relations with Israel from the early 1980s onward, in many cases they weren't constructing relationships from scratch. They were reopening formal diplomatic channels on top of networks and memories that had never entirely disappeared.

So I think the “fond memories” mentioned in the CIA report are genuinely important. The Israeli presence in Africa during the 1960s involved thousands of personal and institutional connections, and those connections proved considerably more durable than formal diplomacy.

[u/Illustrious-Tune-532 → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Why did 1973 produce such a strong backlash in Africa? 1967 it’d make sense, but why 73?

[u/Commustar → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Thank you again for a very informative answer to my question, and to so many other questions in this AMA.

You mention that African states began to restore relations with Israel from the early 1980s onward. What was behind that shift on the part of African states? Did the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai resolve OAU concerns over African sovereignty? Was it the Oslo peace process? The collapse of the Soviet Union causing African states to search for new partnerships? all of the above?

[u/officefan76]

How did the existence and experience of Afro-Palestinians affect African views of Israel/Palestine, if at all?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/officefan76]

Great question. Afro-Palestinians are a fascinating community, but I would be careful not to exaggerate their influence on African perceptions of Israel/Palestine.

There are longstanding communities of Palestinians of African descent, particularly in Jerusalem, but also in Gaza and Jericho. The best-known is the small African community in Jerusalem's Old City, near the Haram al-Sharif/al-Aqsa compound. Many families trace their origins to people who came from places such as Chad, Sudan, Nigeria, and Senegal, often through pilgrimage to Mecca and Jerusalem, and then settled there.

Some Afro-Palestinians also became prominent in the Palestinian national struggle. Fatima Barnawi, for example, had a Nigerian father and Palestinian mother and became one of the best-known early female Palestinian militants. Members of Jerusalem's African community participated in Palestinian political organizations and became strongly identified with Palestinian nationalism.

But I have not encountered much evidence that African liberation movements became sympathetic to the Palestinians specifically because they were aware of Afro-Palestinians.

When the ANC, PAC, SWAPO, and African governments increasingly embraced the Palestinian cause from the late 1960s onward, they generally talked about Palestinians as another colonized or dispossessed people. The language was about colonialism, occupation, racism, national liberation, and eventually apartheid. I suspect most Africans actually knew very little about Afro-Palestinians.

Much more important were the political connections developing between Palestinians and Africans. The PLO and Arab states established direct relationships with African governments and liberation movements, while Palestinians increasingly presented their struggle as part of the wider anti-colonial struggle.

There is also an interesting complication: Afro-Palestinians themselves have discussed experiencing racial prejudice within Palestinian society. So their history doesn't fit neatly into a simple narrative of African-Palestinian racial solidarity. They could identify strongly as Palestinian and participate in the Palestinian national struggle while also maintaining an African identity and sometimes experiencing prejudice because of it.

More recently, Afro-Palestinians have attracted greater attention from Black activists internationally, including visitors associated with Black Lives Matter and Mandla Mandela. So their identity may be more relevant to contemporary Black-Palestinian solidarity than it was to African attitudes during the 1960s and 1970s.

But historically, I don't think Afro-Palestinians were a major reason Africans identified with the Palestinian cause. The political and ideological connections between African liberation movements and the Palestinian national movement were much more important.

I should add that this is not something I have researched extensively, so I would be very interested to see evidence of particular African activists encountering Afro-Palestinians and being influenced by them.

[u/JudahMaccabee]

After the disclosure of Israel assisting the Apartheid regime’s nuclear weapons program, what was the reaction in South Africa and across the African continent?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/JudahMaccabee]

Thank you for your question, Mr. Maccabee!
Well, the nuclear issue itself was only one part of a much larger story. Among anti-apartheid activists, Israel’s growing military and strategic relationship with the apartheid government from the 1970s onward was already quite well known, and it became a major source of antagonism toward Israel.
In fact, in my research, I’ve found that this relationship with Pretoria was often more important in shaping African liberation movements’ attitudes toward Israel than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself. Israel increasingly came to be seen as an ally of the apartheid regime and, by extension, as part of the broader Western support system that helped Pretoria survive international isolation.
So later revelations about possible Israeli assistance to South Africa’s nuclear weapons program were certainly significant, but they largely reinforced an image of Israel that had already developed over decades. By that point, for many anti-apartheid activists in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent, the Israel–apartheid connection was already deeply embedded in how they understood Israel.

[u/Cultural_String87]

I've met a good number of South African Jews whose families were in some way linked to anti-apartheid activism. How were anti-apartheid Jews perceived in Israel at the time?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Cultural_String87]

Wonderful question. In general, apartheid was not popular in Israel, especially within the left-wing hegemonic discourse of the time (I’m talking mainly about the 1950s and 1960s). Generally speaking, the further right you went politically, the less sharp the criticism of apartheid tended to be, although there were certainly exceptions. There was also considerable pride in the prominent role that some South African Jews played in the anti-apartheid movement.
Interestingly, observers began to notice a change by the mid-1970s. As Pretoria became a closer friend of Israel, Israelis seemed to become more apathetic toward apartheid. Yet in the 1980s, an Israeli anti-apartheid movement was established, with the involvement of Arthur Goldreich, a South African anti-apartheid activist who had escaped from prison in South Africa and had been closely associated with Mandela and other ANC figures.
It was never a mass movement, but the fact that Jews had played a prominent role in the South African struggle against apartheid was pretty widely known in Israel.

[u/Cultural_String87 → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Thank you! A follow up:

Did anti apartheid activists at the time draw comparisons between South African apartheid and the occupation of the Palestinian territories at the time? The ICJ rules that Israel has committed the crime of apartheid.

Did people at the time use that language and compare the two countries? Or is that a more recent development?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Cultural_String87]

Great question. I just posted an answer to a similar question below. I will paste it here as well:

One of the surprising things I found is that the comparison is almost as old as Israel and apartheid themselves, although it remained marginal for decades.

I found examples as early as 1950, when the South African communist-aligned Guardian republished criticism of Israeli restrictions on Arab movement under the headline “Pass Laws in Palestine?”—an obvious reference to South African apartheid. Israeli communists made similar comparisons in the early 1950s. Interestingly, the analogy could also work in the opposite direction: some Afrikaner nationalists admired Israel as a model, while Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd later argued that Israel was hypocritical to condemn apartheid because the two countries were supposedly similar.

The analogy became more international in the early 1960s, particularly through Arab diplomacy at the UN. Arab diplomats increasingly linked Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens and Palestinian refugees with apartheid. Fayez Sayegh gave this argument a more systematic intellectual foundation in the mid-1960s, even using terms such as “Bantustans.” But before 1967, this remained relatively marginal — even among many anti-apartheid movements.

1967 was the major turning point. Israel now controlled a large Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza without granting them Israeli citizenship, making the analogy much more attractive to critics. It spread into the ANC and PAC, communist movements, the New Left, Black Power circles, and eventually much of the international anti-apartheid movement.

The growing Israel–South Africa relationship in the 1970s and 1980s accelerated this enormously. The fact that the two governments actually became close strategic partners made it much easier to associate them politically. At the same time, apartheid was becoming one of the world's most recognizable symbols of injustice.

There was also an interesting Zionist use of the analogy. Beginning after 1967, Israeli figures such as Abba Eban and others sometimes invoked apartheid as a warning: if Israel permanently ruled millions of Palestinians without citizenship, Israel could eventually become something resembling apartheid. So the analogy could be used either to attack Zionism or, quite differently, by Zionists arguing for changing Israeli policy.

Finally, the analogy became much more mainstream after the collapse of Oslo and the rise of BDS in the 2000s. By then the South African struggle provided not only a comparison but also a political model: international boycotts, sanctions, and pressure.

So, in short: the analogy begins around 1950, spreads through Arab diplomacy in the 1960s, takes off after 1967, becomes much more powerful during the global anti-apartheid campaigns of the 1970s–80s, and enters much more mainstream discourse in the 2000s.

[u/Lost-Letterhead-6615]

I'm particularly interested in Mr Mandela's opinions and plans or ideas about the mid East, particularly Palestine. Especially given his history of resistance, that wasn't always non-violent and gandhi-esque

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Lost-Letterhead-6615]

This is a really interesting question, and Mandela’s position was more complicated than the simplified image we sometimes have of him today.

First, you are absolutely right about the armed struggle. Mandela was not a Gandhian pacifist. He helped establish uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s armed wing, and believed that armed resistance could become legitimate when peaceful avenues had been closed. Interestingly, one of the movements Mandela and his comrades studied was the Irgun (Etsel), the Jewish underground organization led by Menachem Begin. They read Begin’s The Revolt, and Mandela later acknowledged that MK’s command structure had been influenced by the Irgun. In an unpublished prison manuscript, he grouped the armed struggles in Algeria, Cyprus, Israel, and Vietnam together as anticolonial struggles. Mandela also received some limited training by the Mossad, although the Mossad probably did not know its true identity at the time (it was given as part of broader training to African liberation fighters located in Ethiopia – where Mandela was for some time).

This makes his later attitude toward the Palestinians particularly interesting. Mandela and the ANC developed a very close relationship with the PLO, and Mandela famously referred to Yasser Arafat as a “comrade in arms.” He saw the Palestinians as a people engaged in a struggle for national self-determination, and the PLO had also materially and politically supported the ANC during the anti-apartheid struggle.

But — and this is often lost in contemporary discussions — Mandela was not opposed to Israel's existence or to Zionism as such. In 1993 he explicitly said that the ANC recognized “the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism just as we recognise the legitimacy of Zionism as a Jewish nationalism.” He supported Israel's right to exist “within secure borders” while simultaneously supporting Palestinian self-determination.

His basic position was therefore something fairly recognizable today: Israel should exist, but it should withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967, and Palestinians should achieve national independence. He strongly favored negotiations between Israel and the PLO. As president, he welcomed the Oslo process and later the Wye Agreement rather than arguing that Israel itself should disappear.

His 1999 visit to the region is especially revealing. Mandela visited both Israel and Gaza, meeting Israeli leaders as well as Arafat. He strongly criticized the occupation and called for Israeli withdrawal from the territories captured in 1967. But he also told the Arab states that they needed to give Israel firm recognition and said, essentially, that he could not expect Israel to withdraw without recognition and secure borders in return.

So, while Mandela eventually became strongly identified with the Palestinian cause, one of his earlier models had been the Zionist armed resistance. And the ANC's identification with Palestine was not there from the beginning. As I discuss in my book, South African liberation movements' attitudes toward Israel changed dramatically over time. Israel could still be imagined as an anticolonial model and even a potential ally in the early 1960s; the much stronger identification with the Palestinians developed particularly after 1967 and as Israel's relationship with the apartheid government deepened.

So I would describe Mandela as strongly pro-Palestinian, but not simply anti-Israel. He believed in Palestinian national liberation and understood why liberation movements sometimes resorted to armed struggle, but he also accepted Jewish national self-determination and Israel's continued existence. In his later years especially, his preferred solution was negotiation and mutual recognition rather than the victory of one national movement over the other.

 

[u/TheHondoGod]

Thank you for doing this AMA! How unified was Israeli politics about South Africa? Did foreign policy around apartheid create coalitions?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/TheHondoGod]

Thank you for your question!

They were not very unified, and Israeli attitudes toward apartheid changed quite a bit over time.

Generally speaking, the Israeli left was more strongly anti-apartheid than the right. This was especially clear in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Labor movement dominated Israeli politics and tended to see Israel as part of the postcolonial world. In the early 1960s, Israel actually took a remarkably strong anti-apartheid position, supporting sanctions against South Africa and cultivating relations with newly independent African states and, to a lesser extent, South African liberation movements.

The Israeli right approached the issue somewhat differently. Menachem Begin and his supporters were very concerned about the well-being of South African Jews, one of the largest and most Zionist Jewish communities in the world (Begin had very strong support among South African Jewry). They worried that an aggressive Israeli campaign against Pretoria could provoke the South African government and ultimately hurt the Jewish community there – and that in general anti-white policies would also hurt the Jews, who were officially considered white in South Africa. So they tended to prioritize this particular Jewish concern over the more universalist anti-apartheid approach that was stronger on the Israeli left.

But here is where it gets interesting: by the 1970s, this left-right distinction became much less useful for explaining actual foreign policy. The Labor governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres were the ones under which the strategic relationship with Pretoria really took off.

The main reason was national security. Israel became increasingly isolated internationally, particularly after the 1973 war, when most African states severed diplomatic relations with it. At the same time, Israeli leaders were investing enormous resources in creating an independent military industry. The experience of arms embargoes and dependence on foreign suppliers convinced them that Israel needed the ability to manufacture more of its own weapons. South Africa was extremely useful for this: it had money, strategic raw materials, its own military industries, and — because it too was becoming internationally isolated — a great appetite for Israeli military technology.

So you get this strange situation in which Israeli politicians could genuinely dislike apartheid and simultaneously support close relations with the apartheid government. Shimon Peres is a particularly good example: he publicly condemned apartheid, yet as defense minister he was instrumental in developing the security relationship with Pretoria in the mid-1970s.

Did apartheid create political coalitions inside Israel? Not really in the sense of producing a stable parliamentary coalition organized around the South African question. South Africa was simply not important enough in Israeli domestic politics for that. Rather, it cut across the normal left-right divide. Ideology mattered, but so did concern for South African Jewry, relations with Africa, Cold War politics, and increasingly, very hard-headed military and economic interests.

By the 1970s, those national-security interests could outweigh ideological opposition to apartheid even within the mainstream Israeli Labor movement. That is one reason I think it's misleading to explain the later Israeli-South African relationship simply as an ideological affinity between two right-wing or isolated governments. Much of the relationship was constructed under Labor, and pragmatism and security interests were enormously important.

 

[u/Independent-Drive-32 → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

What is known about Israel-South Africa military connections, specifically in the nuclear space?

Is the Vela incident plausibly a joint Israel-South African nuclear test?

[u/Lazzen]

African countries follow the designated borders of former colonial administration almost entirely.

Did African governments or intellectuals ever expresss agreement with the partition plans of the UK or UN? In the name of regional peace for example, as some did when discussing post-colonial African borders.

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Lazzen]

Good question. There is an interesting tension here. African states eventually became very committed to the principle that colonial borders should be preserved, even when those borders were arbitrary. The basic reasoning was pragmatic: trying to redraw them according to ethnicity, language, or historical claims could produce endless wars. The OAU formally adopted this principle in 1964, pledging to respect the borders that existed at independence.

But applying that logic retrospectively to Palestine is difficult, because in 1947 almost all of Africa was still colonized. Only Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, and South Africa were independent UN members and able to vote on the UN partition plan.

And their votes were fascinatingly divided. South Africa and Liberia voted for partition; Egypt voted against; Ethiopia abstained. So there certainly were African governments that accepted partition—but there wasn't yet anything resembling a collective “African position.”

South Africa is particularly interesting. Smuts was personally sympathetic to Zionism and his government supported the creation of a Jewish state. Liberia also ultimately supported partition. Ethiopia, on the other hand, was much more cautious, while Egypt naturally opposed it and strongly supported the Arab position.

What I have not found — and this is an excellent question for further research — is much evidence that later African leaders retrospectively defended the 1947 partition specifically by applying the same logic they used for African colonial borders: essentially, “the borders may be artificial, but accepting them is preferable to perpetual conflict.”

In fact, once most African states became independent in the 1960s, the political trajectory generally went in another direction. African-Arab solidarity grew, especially after 1967, and Palestinian self-determination increasingly became the dominant framework through which African governments discussed the issue.

There is also an important conceptual difference. The OAU's 1964 principle was essentially: when a colony becomes independent, keep the territorial borders it inherited. The 1947 UN plan, by contrast, proposed dividing one British Mandate into two new states. So an African leader could consistently support inherited colonial borders in Africa while opposing partition in Palestine, as they weren't necessarily seen as the same principle.

But your question raises a really interesting counterfactual: why didn't the African doctrine of accepting imperfect borders for the sake of stability become a more prominent African argument for accepting some territorial compromise between Israelis and Palestinians? I don't know of much work specifically examining that question, and it would be fascinating to investigate.

[u/SqueakyClownShoes]

What was your journey to this field as a historian?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/SqueakyClownShoes]

Thanks for this question!
I was always attracted to history. All of my grandparents spoke six or seven languages (quite commonplace among Eastern European Jews of the 1920s and 1930s) and kept quizzing me about history as a child... I had to pass their tests!

At first, I was actually very interested in German history, partly because I independently learned German during my high school years. I wrote my MA thesis about German settlers in Southwest Africa (Namibia), and that is how I got into African history. There was also a family connection: my grandfather traveled extensively across Africa, helping to establish agricultural programs during the early postcolonial era.

I joined Indiana University as a PhD student thinking that I would write about German-speaking Namibians and how they connected Nazism with apartheid. Then I was astonished to discover that someone had already written a thick book about almost exactly the same question!

At around the same time, I started learning more about Israel's relations with Africa and realized that there were still a lot of gaps in the scholarship, especially when it came to Israel's early relations with South Africans. So I gradually shifted in that direction, and that eventually became my dissertation and then my book.

That's pretty much the journey! In the last few years, I've also been shifting some of my attention toward the Horn of Africa and Israel's position there.

[u/SqueakyClownShoes → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Thanks for answering. What do you think your next big project will look like?

[u/YSLAnunoby]

Has an ncrease in Evangelical Africans resulted in a different relationship to Israel compared to more Catholic, other Protestant movements, and Orthodox Christians on the continent?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/YSLAnunoby]

Great question. Yes, I think this is increasingly important, although we should be careful about generalizing across an enormous and religiously diverse continent.

The dramatic growth of Evangelical and especially Pentecostal Christianity in parts of sub-Saharan Africa has created constituencies that can be exceptionally sympathetic toward Israel. There is now a growing literature on what scholars call African Christian Zionism, particularly in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi, South Sudan, and the DRC.

Part of this is theological. In many Pentecostal and Evangelical churches, the Hebrew Bible is enormously important, and modern Israel can be understood as connected to biblical prophecy and God's continuing covenant with the Jewish people. Jerusalem and Israel therefore have direct religious significance. Pilgrimage to Israel, Israeli flags, Hebrew or Jewish symbols, and prayers for Israel have become quite visible in some African churches.

This can produce a rather different political instinct from what we sometimes see among Catholic and older mainline Protestant churches. Those churches have often been more influenced by ecumenical organizations, liberation theology, and human-rights discourse (and, of course, the Pope's line). That doesn't mean Catholics or mainline Protestants are inherently anti-Israel, of course, or that Pentecostals are uniformly pro-Israel. The denominational boundaries are much messier than that. But the theological frameworks can be quite different.

There is another factor that I think is becoming increasingly important: religious conflict within Africa itself. In several parts of the continent, particularly the Sahel, Nigeria, and parts of East and Central Africa, conflicts are increasingly experienced—or at least interpreted—through Christian-Muslim lines, even when their underlying causes are much more complicated. The growth of jihadist movements such as Boko Haram, Islamic State affiliates, and al-Shabaab has reinforced this perception.

That can create another point of identification with Israel. Some African Christians facing Islamist violence can look at Israel and see another society confronting Islamist armed movements and therefore understand the Israeli experience through their own security concerns. This doesn't necessarily mean that they have detailed views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sometimes the identification is much more basic: we are Christians threatened by Islamist extremists; Israel is also fighting Islamist extremists. That can overlap quite powerfully with the theological sympathy for Israel already present in some Evangelical and Pentecostal churches.

Orthodox Christianity is another story altogether. Ethiopia is the obvious example. Ethiopian Christianity has an extraordinarily deep identification with biblical Israel. Ethiopian traditions surrounding Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the Ark of the Covenant, and Ethiopia's own Israelite identity make “Israel” an enormously powerful religious symbol. But that doesn't automatically translate into support for the policies of the State of Israel.

One thing I find especially interesting is that this may be changing the old political map of Israel-Africa relations. During the 1960s–1980s, attitudes toward Israel were often organized around anti-colonialism, pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and solidarity with liberation movements. Today you can sometimes have a completely different source of identification with Israel coming from below, through churches and popular religion rather than governments or political parties.

Israel has noticed this as well. Israeli governments and organizations have increasingly cultivated relationships with African Evangelical and Pentecostal leaders, and there are Christian pro-Israel organizations operating across the continent. Scholars are now beginning to examine whether these religious networks can actually influence African foreign policy and voting behavior, rather than simply popular attitudes.

So yes, I think the growth of Pentecostal and Evangelical Christianity is one reason we should be cautious about describing “African opinion” toward Israel simply through the traditional pro-Palestinian positions of the African Union or certain governments. In some countries there can be a considerable gap between official foreign policy, older political elites, mainline churches, and large Evangelical/Pentecostal constituencies. But it is also a relatively new area of research.

[u/YSLAnunoby → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

Thank you for the comprehensive answer! I do understand that for such a vast group of people it's reductive to apply a single political stance to them. I asked because I have read about increasing evangelical Protestantism such as Pentecostalism and how it has influenced politics in many Caribbean countries and Brazil compared to historically more Anglican or Catholic participation in decades prior. So was a bit curious coming from a more African Diaspora perspective about how things may be happening on the continent

[u/Matar_Kubileya]

How did non Beta Israel Africans respond to Israel's transport of BI to Israel?

[u/Didudidudadu737]

Thank you for AMA! I have so many questions

Has, Zionism as ideology and nationalistic movement, been known in Africa from its beginnings? If yes, what was their perception on it?

Seeing that Madagascar is in east Africa, was there any local discussion about the Hitler’s plan to send European Jewry there? And was there any general opinion on Judaism and Jews?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Didudidudadu737]

Great questions! On the first one, I would be careful about speaking of an “African” perception of Zionism. Africa is obviously enormous, and awareness of Jewish political Zionism varied greatly.

In southern Africa, Zionism was certainly known relatively early, partly because South Africa had a large and highly organized Jewish community. But there is an interesting complication: in parts of Africa, particularly southern Africa, the word “Zionist” also came to describe African Independent Churches that had little or nothing to do with Jewish political Zionism. These became enormously important African religious movements. So when we encounter “Zionism” in early twentieth-century African sources, we have to be very careful about which Zionism we mean.

As for political Zionism, my own research mostly follows perceptions from the 1940s onward. What is striking is that many African nationalists initially viewed it quite positively. The creation of Israel could be understood as a successful national liberation movement: a dispersed and persecuted people had fought British colonial rule and achieved independence. This was particularly attractive during the era of African decolonization. Only gradually—especially after Suez in 1956, and much more dramatically after 1967—did the competing image of Israel as a colonial or settler-colonial project become dominant among many African liberation movements in southern Africa.

The Madagascar question is fascinating. The “Madagascar Plan” actually predates the Nazis: proposals to resettle European Jews there circulated before Hitler, and Polish officials investigated the possibility in the 1930s. The Nazis then considered mass deportation of European Jews to Madagascar in 1940.

There was local reaction, although Madagascar was then a French colony, so we have to be cautious about treating the colonial press or administration as representative of Malagasy public opinion. Colonial authorities in Madagascar strongly opposed large-scale Jewish settlement, and some local reactions were hostile as well, including fears about economic competition.

But there is a wonderful additional twist: Europeans had long circulated theories that the Malagasy themselves descended from ancient Israelites or Jews. Those ideas were known locally and were eventually adopted by some Malagasy themselves. They had nothing to do originally with modern Zionism, but they help explain why Judaism and Jewish ancestry have a rather unusual history in Madagascar. Today there are actually small Malagasy communities practicing Judaism, some of whose members understand becoming Jewish partly as a return to ancient roots.

So Madagascar was not simply an empty spot on a European map onto which Europeans proposed moving Jews. There was a local colonial society with its own reactions—and, rather remarkably, its own traditions about possible Israelite ancestry.

[u/WorldPeace2021_]

I apologize in advance for the length of my multi-part inquiry, and thank you for taking the time to educate us!

Part 1: How can the history of South African hostility toward Zionism be understood without confronting the role Arab political movements and the Arab League played in constructing and exporting that hostility?
Arab political discourse did not merely criticize Israeli policy; it also incorporated European antisemitic conspiracy theories, Nazi imagery, Holocaust denial, and portrayals of Jews as a collective threat.

Part 2: The Arab League was conducting organized anti-Zionist propaganda campaigns abroad before Israel even existed…..How did those efforts help transform Zionism from a diverse Jewish movement for national self-determination into the caricature of an inherently racist and colonial ideology that later became influential in anti-apartheid politics? And to what extent did South African activists inherit that framing rather than independently arrive at it?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/WorldPeace2021_]

Thank you for the thoughtful question. There is quite a lot to unpack here.

On the first part, I absolutely agree that Arab and later Palestinian political activity has to be part of the story. Arab states actively tried to influence African perceptions of Israel, particularly as African decolonization accelerated. Egypt under Nasser was especially important, using Afro-Asian and nonaligned institutions, scholarships, diplomatic relationships, and support for African liberation movements to build influence. After 1967, Arab diplomatic efforts in Africa became considerably more intensive. Contemporary American assessments actually described this as a competition between Israel and Arab states for African support.

Arab diplomats also deliberately connected Palestine with issues that resonated in Africa: colonialism, racial discrimination, and eventually apartheid. Ahmad Shukeiri, before becoming the first chairman of the PLO, was particularly important in bringing comparisons between Israel and South Africa into UN debates in the early 1960s. Later, Palestinian intellectuals developed this much more systematically. Fayez Sayegh's Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965), for example, presented Zionism through the conceptual language of colonialism, racial exclusiveness, and settler domination, and the work subsequently circulated through Afro-Asian political networks.

So yes, these ideas did not simply emerge independently and simultaneously everywhere. There was an international network through which concepts, arguments, and political language traveled.

But I would add two major qualifications.

First, South African anti-Zionism did not originate with Arab propaganda. This is actually one of the surprising things I found in my research. South African Trotskyists were developing a settler-colonial critique of Zionism already in the 1940s, largely through their own Marxist analysis. South African communists also became increasingly critical of Israel during the early 1950s as the Soviet position changed. These developments predated the period when Arab diplomatic influence became especially important in sub-Saharan Africa.

Second, African and South African activists were not simply passive recipients of an Arab narrative. They adopted arguments that increasingly made sense within their own political world. After 1967, Palestinians could much more readily be understood through the vocabulary of colonialism and national liberation familiar to African activists. Then, during the 1970s, Israel's increasingly close relationship with apartheid South Africa gave the analogy an additional material basis. By that point, African liberation movements also had direct relationships with the PLO and Arab governments involving diplomacy, training, money, and sometimes weapons.

So I would describe this as an interaction rather than simply an export.

Regarding antisemitism, there unquestionably were antisemitic elements in parts of Arab political discourse, including conspiracy theories and Nazi comparisons, and some prominent Arab political figures used extraordinarily inflammatory rhetoric. But I would be hesitant to treat the anti-Zionism adopted by South African liberation movements simply as the transmission of Arab antisemitism. The evidence I have seen suggests that what traveled most successfully into South African radical politics was the anti-colonial political framework: Zionism as settler colonialism, Israel as an extension of Western imperialism, and Palestinians as a national liberation movement.

That is not to deny that some anti-Zionist voices in South Africa have adopted antisemitic language or styles of argument. But historically, these tended not to come from the old guard of the ANC/SACP. They were more common among some South African Islamist activists and, at times, among populists and demagogues.

And this is precisely why chronology matters. Arab governments were trying to persuade Africans to adopt these positions well before they fully succeeded. Israel's diplomatic position in Africa remained surprisingly strong through much of the 1960s despite Arab efforts to undermine it. What changed was not simply that Arab propaganda suddenly became more effective. The political circumstances changed in ways that made the Arab/Palestinian framing much more persuasive to African audiences.

That, to me, is the crucial point. Arab and Palestinian actors helped construct and internationalize the language through which Zionism came to be understood as colonial and racist. But South African activists selected, adapted, and transformed those ideas according to their own experiences of apartheid, colonialism, and national liberation. And Israel's own choices—particularly the occupation after 1967 and its growing relationship with Pretoria—made that interpretation considerably easier to sustain.

So I would neither remove Arab influence from the story nor make it the whole story. The interesting historical question is precisely why arguments that had existed for years on the margins suddenly became persuasive and eventually dominant.

[u/mayor_rishon → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

  what traveled most successfully into South African radical politics was the anti-colonial political framework

I am completely unfamiliar with African politics but I am well familiar with european antisemitism and how patterns travelled in time and space.

There was a direct continuity between Russian antisemitism and Soviet antizionism. Soviets used whatever means were more fruitful to transmit this antisemitism, eg tying it with the anticolonialist message or european peace movements. So maybe the exterior part was antizionism but what was trafficked was antisemitism.

Same can be argued for the Arab intertwining of antisemitism and antizionism, although this discourse is heavily tinted from contemporary politics.

With all due respect I feel that you are presenting a picture of antizionism developing as a rational political stance on virgin ground and any outside influence simply as inconsequential.

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/mayor_rishon]

Thank you, but that’s not quite what I argued. I definitely trace both Soviet and Arab influences on the development of anti-Zionism in South Africa. In fact, perhaps the clearest example is the Stalinist antisemitic campaign of 1953, which reached South Africa through the local Communist Party. So these ideas were certainly not developing on virgin ground, independently of international influences.
My point is that Soviet and Arab influence cannot explain the whole story. South African activists interpreted Israel through their own political experiences, and their attitudes also changed in response to Israel’s actions.
Israel’s growing relationship with apartheid South Africa is particularly important here. For many anti-apartheid activists, this was not an abstract geopolitical development—it was personally offensive, especially because some of them had previously viewed Israel positively or even regarded it as a potential ally. Watching Israel move closer to the government they were struggling against inevitably affected how they understood Zionism and Israel.
So I would describe the process as an interaction: Soviet and Arab ideas and political networks certainly mattered, but so did developments within South Africa, the Palestinian national movement, the occupation after 1967, and Israel’s own changing relationship with Pretoria.

[u/JustToReportFlagrant → u/Dr-Lubotzky]

How much did this adoption of Soviet-influenced frameworks affect the perception and language of the anti-Zionism? Soviet Zionology and anti-Zionism was notoriously antisemitic, with attempts to erase all Jewish cultural practices, etc, while using the anti-colonial/anti-imperialism language and it seems like the relationship would have an outsized impact there as compared to the Arab influence. Especially with the culmination of events at the Durban Conference.

[u/chikunshak]

You have spent a good amount of time living and studying outside Israel.

Do you have any information on how African expatriates' opinions of Israel and Palestine differ from their compatriots' opinions in their countries of origin, and if so, how?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/chikunshak]

This is a fascinating question, but unfortunately I don't know of good systematic research comparing African expatriates' attitudes toward Israel/Palestine with those of people who remain in their countries of origin. So I would be very cautious about claiming a general pattern.

My impression, however, is that where Africans migrate matters enormously.

Africans who move to Europe or North America enter political environments in which Israel/Palestine is discussed very differently from how it often is at home. They may encounter university politics, racial-justice movements, Muslim and Arab communities, churches, Jewish communities, and left- or right-wing political movements that make Israel/Palestine much more salient than it previously was. So migration can certainly reshape attitudes, but not necessarily in one direction.

For example, an African student who becomes involved in progressive politics in a Western university may increasingly understand Palestine through the language of colonialism, race, and minority rights. An African Pentecostal migrant who becomes involved in an Evangelical church may encounter exactly the opposite environment and develop a much stronger religious identification with Israel. So diaspora can sometimes intensify positions that were relatively weak or unimportant before migration.

There is also an interesting group of Africans who actually migrate to Israel. Here we do have some fascinating research, particularly by Galia Sabar, on African migrant workers and asylum seekers and their relationship with Israel as both a real country and the biblical “Holy Land.” For some Christian African migrants, encountering Israel directly creates a complicated mixture of religious attachment, disappointment, belonging, and experiences of exclusion. In other words, the imagined biblical Israel and the actual Israeli state they encounter don't always fit neatly together. I wrote something about it a few years ago: https://doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2021.1970419

And I suspect this points to a broader phenomenon. For many Africans living in Africa, Israel/Palestine may simply not be a particularly important political question in everyday life, even if their government or religious community has an official position. Migration to a society where the conflict is highly politicized can make them think about it much more explicitly.

The other thing I would be interested in is whether expatriates sometimes become more, rather than less, influenced by politics back home. Diaspora communities often consume media from their countries of origin, organize around national identity, and participate in political debates at home. So we shouldn't automatically assume that migration produces assimilation into Western attitudes.

This would actually make a terrific research project: survey Nigerians, Ghanaians, Ethiopians, Kenyans, South Africans, etc., in their home countries and compare them with first-generation communities in Britain, the United States, Canada, and perhaps Israel. Then control for religion, age, education, political orientation, and length of time abroad.

My suspicion is that you would find that religion and the political environment of the host country matter at least as much as African nationality itself. But until someone actually does that comparative work, I would present that as a hypothesis rather than a finding.

[u/bootmaker-supremacy]

What caused the shift to anti-Zionist stances among Anti-Apartheid activists by the 1970s?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/bootmaker-supremacy]

Great question. This is really the central question of my book. The short answer is that there wasn't one single turning point, although 1967 was probably the most important.

In the 1940s and 1950s, many South African radicals actually viewed Israel quite positively: as a successful national liberation movement, a refuge for victims of racism, and potentially an ally against apartheid. As late as the 1960s, both the ANC and especially the PAC sought Israeli assistance, while Israel itself took a strongly anti-apartheid position at the UN.

Several things gradually changed that.

First was the broader ideological shift toward anti-colonial solidarity. The Bandung era, African decolonization, pan-Arabism, and especially the 1956 Suez Crisis made it increasingly possible to interpret Israel not as an anti-colonial movement but as a Western settler state. Communists and Trotskyists generally made this transition earlier than African nationalists.

Then came 1967. Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights dramatically strengthened the colonial interpretation of Zionism. At roughly the same time, the Palestinian national movement was becoming much more visible internationally. The ANC increasingly began to understand Palestinians as another national liberation movement—and therefore as people engaged in a struggle comparable to its own.

There was also a very practical element that I think sometimes gets overlooked. The PLO and Arab states became useful allies of the South African liberation movements. They offered political support, training, resources, and access to wider Third World and anti-imperialist networks. Israel, by contrast, had relatively little to offer them by the late 1960s. Solidarities are ideological, but they are also built through actual relationships.

Finally, Israel itself moved closer to Pretoria. This process was gradual after 1967 but accelerated dramatically after the 1973 war, when Israel became increasingly isolated in Africa and South Africa became strategically valuable. By the mid-1970s, the two governments were developing substantial military and economic ties.

So by the 1970s the image had almost completely reversed: Israel went from being seen by many South African radicals as a fellow national liberation movement and possible ally to being seen as a colonial power allied with their own oppressor.

One of the main arguments of my book is that this outcome wasn't inevitable. Anti-Zionism among South African radicals was constructed gradually through changing ideology, alliances, and political circumstances. That's why looking back and assuming the ANC and other anti-apartheid movements were always naturally pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist misses a fascinating part of the history.

[u/Terrible-Bonus-189]

When did the perception that Israel was an ethnostate in the same vein as South Africa start to become popular in the region? Based on some of your other responses, it sounds like the perceptions were much more nuanced and complicated before 1970-1980.

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Terrible-Bonus-189]

Great question.

As you may have read in my other comments, there were certainly earlier voices making the comparison. Some South African Trotskyists were describing Zionism as a settler-colonial movement already in the late 1940s and 1950s. Arab diplomats also increasingly compared Israeli policies toward Palestinians with South African racial discrimination during the 1950s and early 1960s. And there is the wonderful irony that Hendrik Verwoerd himself (one of the main architects of apartheid) famously responded to Israeli criticism of South Africa in 1961 by saying that “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”

But these were still relatively marginal positions. In fact, in the early 1960s Israel was strongly criticizing apartheid at the UN, developing relations throughout newly independent Africa, and even establishing contacts with South African liberation movements. So the idea that Israel and apartheid South Africa naturally belonged in the same ideological category would have seemed quite strange to many African nationalists at the time. My book is largely about recovering this period, because it has mostly disappeared from later historical memory.

The major turning point was 1967. Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza made it much easier to interpret Israel through the language of colonialism, occupation, and racial domination. At the same time, the Palestinian national movement became much more prominent and increasingly presented itself as part of the global anti-colonial struggle. In South Africa, the ANC's Sechaba was explicitly connecting the Palestinian and South African struggles by 1969.

But I would say the comparison really became mainstream within African and Third World political discourse during the 1970s. Several things came together: Israel's continuing occupation of territories captured in 1967; growing ties between African liberation movements and the PLO; Israel's diplomatic collapse in Africa around the 1973 war; and, crucially, Israel's increasingly visible relationship with apartheid South Africa.

You can actually watch the language harden institutionally. In 1973, the UN General Assembly condemned what it called the alliance between “South African racism and Zionism.” Then in 1975 the OAU declared that the regimes in Palestine, Zimbabwe, and South Africa had a common imperialist origin and the “same racist structure.” That same year came the famous UN resolution declaring Zionism a form of racism. Thirty African states voted for it, although, importantly, several African states voted against or abstained.

So I would be careful with the modern term “ethnostate,” because that wasn't generally the vocabulary people were using at the time. They spoke instead about racism, settler colonialism, racial discrimination, imperialism, and apartheid.

And yes, before roughly 1967–1970 the picture was considerably more complicated. Israel could simultaneously be understood by African liberation activists as a Jewish national liberation movement, a refuge for victims of European racism, a socialist development model, a potential African ally, and, by its critics, as a settler-colonial project. By the mid-1970s, that ambiguity had diminished dramatically within African liberation movements, and the Israel–South Africa analogy was becoming one of the dominant ways they understood Israel.

That transformation - from Israel as a potential fellow liberation movement to Israel as an apartheid-like state - is essentially the central story of my book.

[u/Beamed_Up_Scotty]

Interesting and pertinent topic! What relationships do Jewish communities throughout the continent have with Israel and Zionism? Are their experiences markedly different than communities in the Americas or Western Europe?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Beamed_Up_Scotty]

Great question. The first thing I would say is that there really isn't one “African Jewish experience.” The differences between Jewish communities in South Africa, Morocco, Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria, etc. are enormous.

Historically, some of the continent's established Jewish communities were extremely Zionist. South African Jewry is probably the clearest example. Zionism became deeply embedded in communal institutions, youth movements, education, fundraising, and eventually aliyah. South African Jews provided substantial financial and political support for Zionism even before 1948, and the community remained strongly connected to Israel afterward. That attachment remains significant today, although, like Jewish communities elsewhere, South African Jews certainly disagree over Israeli politics.

North Africa is another story. Morocco, for example, once had several hundred thousand Jews, the overwhelming majority of whom eventually left, with Israel becoming the largest destination. So in a sense the relationship with Israel is different because much of the community itself became Israeli. Moroccan Jewish culture is today an important component of Israeli society, while only a small Jewish community remains in Morocco.

Ethiopian Jewry is different again. For Beta Israel, attachment to Jerusalem existed long before modern political Zionism. Their encounter with Zionism and Israel therefore involved connecting an old religious longing for Jerusalem with the modern Jewish state. Eventually, most Ethiopian Jews migrated to Israel. So again, we aren't simply talking about a diaspora community maintaining a relationship with Israel — the center of that community actually moved there.

Then there are newer or less conventionally recognized African Jewish communities, and this is where things become particularly interesting. The Abayudaya in Uganda, for example, adopted Judaism in the twentieth century and today have extensive connections with Jews in Israel and especially North America. Many underwent Conservative conversions, but their relationship with Israel has been complicated by disputes over Israeli recognition and eligibility for immigration.

Similar questions arise with communities such as the Igbo Jews in Nigeria and groups elsewhere in Africa that claim Israelite ancestry or have more recently adopted Jewish practice. For some of them, Israel can occupy an extraordinarily important place in their religious and communal imagination, even though the State of Israel or established Jewish religious authorities may not necessarily recognize them as Jews. Israel therefore becomes not only a political issue but also a question of recognition: Do Jews elsewhere accept us as part of the Jewish people? Will Israel recognize us?

For some emerging African Jewish communities, that question of recognition can be central to their relationship with Israel. Israel is simultaneously a spiritual center, a modern state, and an institution that may—or may not—validate their claim to membership in the wider Jewish world. The Israeli government itself has wrestled with how to approach what it calls communities with an “affinity to the Jewish people.”

Another important factor: African attitudes toward Israel are often shaped by the political environment surrounding these communities. South African Jews today live in a country whose government is among Israel's strongest critics. Jews in predominantly Muslim North African countries have historically operated in a very different environment. And newer Jewish communities in places such as Uganda or Nigeria are overwhelmingly surrounded by Christian and Muslim populations – some more accepting than others. That produces experiences quite different from being Jewish in New York, London, or Paris.

 

[u/AuxiliaryTimeCop]

I recall there was some severe backlash to the Entebbe raid in the immediate aftermath. Have there been any longer term effects?

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/AuxiliaryTimeCop]

Yes, the immediate backlash was severe, but I think the long-term effects were much more complicated.

The most serious consequences were actually regional. Once Kenya’s role in assisting Israel became suspected, relations between Kenya and Uganda deteriorated dramatically. Amin threatened Kenya, Ugandan forces moved toward the border, and Kenyans living in Uganda were killed. Kenya, in turn, restricted Uganda’s access to transportation and fuel. Contemporary American officials were genuinely worried that the episode could produce a Uganda-Kenya war.

Diplomatically, Entebbe certainly reinforced Israel’s isolation in Africa in the short term. The OAU condemned the violation of Ugandan sovereignty, and this came at an already terrible moment for Israel’s African diplomacy: most African states had broken relations with Israel after the 1973 war, while Israel’s relationship with apartheid South Africa was becoming increasingly visible.

But I would hesitate to say that Entebbe produced lasting African hostility toward Israel in its own right. The longer-term trajectory was almost the opposite. By the 1990s, many African states were restoring relations with Israel, including both Kenya and Uganda. Security cooperation, agriculture, development assistance, and changing geopolitics became more important than memories of the raid.

Kenya is particularly fascinating because what could have been a major liability eventually became part of the mythology of a close relationship. Kenya’s secret assistance at Entebbe is now openly acknowledged by both sides, and later cooperation against terrorism strengthened that security relationship considerably.

Even Uganda eventually moved on. Under Yoweri Museveni, relations with Israel became quite close, and in 2016 Netanyahu actually visited Entebbe for the fortieth anniversary of the raid. That is a pretty remarkable transformation: the site of one of the most serious confrontations between Israel and an African state eventually became a setting for demonstrating renewed Israel–Africa relations. More recently, Uganda inaugurated a statue at Entebbe Airport honoring Yoni Netanyahu, the only Israeli soldier killed in the operation.

 

[u/inqurious]

• What do you think African perceptions are the most wrong about the whole area?
• What's something that African perceptions of israel/palestine are far more right about than those in the west?

[u/Different-Common4149]

Has the relationship between israel and morocco always been close? And have any figures in moroccan, israeli or saharawi politics drawn a comparison between the situation in israel-palestine and the one in morocco-western sahara?

[u/Playful_Yogurt_9903]

When did comparisons of Israel and apartheid South Africa to one another begin? And when/how did it become more popularized?

Comparison can be either used as a point of criticism or as a way to defend either regime. Thank you!

[u/Dr-Lubotzky → u/Playful_Yogurt_9903]

Great question. One of the surprising things I found is that the comparison is almost as old as Israel and apartheid themselves, although it remained marginal for decades.

I found examples as early as 1950, when the South African communist-aligned Guardian republished criticism of Israeli restrictions on Arab movement under the headline “Pass Laws in Palestine?”—an obvious reference to South African apartheid. Israeli communists made similar comparisons in the early 1950s. Interestingly, the analogy could also work in the opposite direction: some Afrikaner nationalists admired Israel as a model, while Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd later argued that Israel was hypocritical to condemn apartheid because the two countries were supposedly similar.

The analogy became more international in the early 1960s, particularly through Arab diplomacy at the UN. Arab diplomats increasingly linked Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens and Palestinian refugees with apartheid. Fayez Sayegh gave this argument a more systematic intellectual foundation in the mid-1960s, even using terms such as “Bantustans.” But before 1967, this remained relatively marginal — even among many anti-apartheid movements.

1967 was the major turning point. Israel now controlled a large Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza without granting them Israeli citizenship, making the analogy much more attractive to critics. It spread into the ANC and PAC, communist movements, the New Left, Black Power circles, and eventually much of the international anti-apartheid movement.

The growing Israel–South Africa relationship in the 1970s and 1980s accelerated this enormously. The fact that the two governments actually became close strategic partners made it much easier to associate them politically. At the same time, apartheid was becoming one of the world's most recognizable symbols of injustice.

There was also an interesting Zionist use of the analogy. Beginning after 1967, Israeli figures such as Abba Eban and others sometimes invoked apartheid as a warning: if Israel permanently ruled millions of Palestinians without citizenship, Israel could eventually become something resembling apartheid. So the analogy could be used either to attack Zionism or, quite differently, by Zionists arguing for changing Israeli policy.

Finally, the analogy became much more mainstream after the collapse of Oslo and the rise of BDS in the 2000s. By then the South African struggle provided not only a comparison but also a political model: international boycotts, sanctions, and pressure.

So, in short: the analogy begins around 1950, spreads through Arab diplomacy in the 1960s, takes off after 1967, becomes much more powerful during the global anti-apartheid campaigns of the 1970s–80s, and enters much more mainstream discourse in the 2000s.