During my service at Uganda’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York in 1971/72, one of the Israeli diplomats on the UN political committee asked me to ensure Uganda votes in favour of Israel on a resolution relating to that country’s relationship with Palestine. We have for decades been defenders of Palestine’s right to exist as an independent state alongside Israel.
If the request had been made during President Obote’s first regime, I would have responded with a straight ‘no’. Uganda’s foreign policy on most issues was then quite clear. We rarely sought guidance from home, at least not on the Israel and Palestine question. But now that Obote had been overthrown by Idi Amin with the assistance of Britain and Israel, Uganda’s foreign and domestic policies were rapidly changing. A wise diplomat had, therefore, to be cautious in handling most issues.
I told the Israeli diplomat that I would consult and get back to him, but he complained a few days later that I was procrastinating; that I was not being helpful. He told me that they had referred the matter to their mission in Kampala, and a day or so later, our mission received instructions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kampala to vote in favour of Israel. Obviously, Amin had been cajoled by the Israel envoy in Kampala to support his government.
It took the raid on Entebbe airport by Israel to change Amin’s amicable relations with Israel, and because of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, Israel was eventually (to use Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s words) ‘blacklisted’ by Africa and almost all civilised countries.
Netanyahu also admitted that Israel’s collaboration with South Africa’s apartheid regime in suppressing the aspirations of Black South Africans greatly contributed to her being blacklisted.
Israel continues to oppress the Palestinians and has committed atrocities involving the killing of civilian children and women and the bombing at will of Palestine territory. The United Nations condemned Israel’s building of a wall to separate it from Palestine, but even the countries that celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall have not brought enough pressure on Israel to stop that deplorable project.
It is against that background that many people were dismayed by Netanyahu’s recent visit to Uganda, Rwanda Kenya and Ethiopia, and even more so by the hospitality and friendliness he was accorded by the African leaders he met, including President Museveni.
He flattered them with offers of economic and security assistance in fighting ‘terrorists’, and while he was making the offers, his government was announcing that he had approved the building of 800 housing units for Israelis in the occupied territories. A courageous leader would have used that opportunity to throw Netanyahu out of his country.
Although they have their own reasons, some friends of mine have joined Gen Moses Ali in disagreeing with the decision to erect a plaque at Entebbe airport in honour of Netanyahu’s brother who was killed in the raid in particular, and in remembrance of the raid in general. There has been little mention of Dora Bloch, the female hostage who was reportedly dragged from a hospital bed at Mulago in Kampala and executed, nor of Jimmy Parma, a prominent Ugandan photographer who was allegedly murdered for posting a photograph of Dora Bloch to foreign publications.
Gen Ali thought the Ugandan soldiers who were killed in the raid should also be honoured, but my friends think that whatever monuments are put up should be erected in Israel and not in Uganda.
Mr Kiwanuka is a journalist, retired foreign service officer and author. jkiwanuka700@gmail.com
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