Israel in the Third World: Zionist Expertise and Development Aid to Africa in the 1960s

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

Less than a decade after the formation of the State of Israel, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invested heavily in the establishment of diplomatic relations with decolonized African states by providing aid in various fields, including agriculture, education, health, and construction. In the Cold War competition over development, Israel distinguished its aid by emphasizing its own postcolonial status, alleging similar geography, struggle for independence, and racial composition to prove solidarity, rather than superiority, with the African states. Strategically turning its position as a young developing country into an advantage, it emphasized its nation building expertise as a model for African social and economic development. Stung by the exclusion from the 1955 Bandung Conference of Asian and African states, it is well known that Israel sought to win UN votes through aid. However, it is important to note that Israel’s ties with Africa were not only a matter of diplomacy, but also concerned the country’s own identity in the new postcolonial world order. Focusing on Israel’s self-fashioning in this highly visible and competitive arena of international exchange, this panel will shed light on Israel’s claims to position itself as a bridgehead between East and West, and its short-lived affiliation with the Global South.

The papers discuss how professionalism and technical expertise were entangled with nation-building ideology and the crisis of “pioneering” in three different aid projects. Ayala Levin addresses the tensions created in the conflict between Solel Boneh's professional ambitions and its diplomatic commitments, and explores the discursive and material effects of the Foreign Ministry’s framing of Israeli aid as extra-territorial pioneering. Anat Mooreville argues that eye aid—Israel’s largest and longest medical aid to Africa—was not simply circumstantial, but fit a longstanding leitmotif that correlated eye care as gift to the East. Israeli ocular research in Africa advanced Israel’s credentials in an era in which scientific research could be used to substantiate nations’ international standing. Eitan Bar-Yosef demonstrates how efforts to establish African versions of the Israeli Nahal corps (a unique IDF program combining military service with settlement pioneering) reflected tensions and contradictions typical of the post-1948 Zionist ethos.

Sub Unit

• Israel Studies

Chair

• Daniel J Schroeter, University of Minnesota

Individual Presentations

• Paving the Road to Africa: Solel Boneh and HALUTZIUT in Israeli-African Relations - Ayala Levin, Columbia University

• Israel Eyeing Africa: National Identity and New Frontiers of Ocular Expertise - Anat Mooreville, UCLA

• In the Nahal Settlement in Africa: Zionism and Pioneering in the Jungle - Eitan Bar-Yosef, Ben-Gurion University

Respondent

• Yehuda Sharim, Rice University