Newspaper Article

Obituary: David Kimche: Israeli spymaster with a key role in Africa and the Middle East

Joffe, Lawrence

2010

Overview

Officially [David Kimche] was deputy head of the Israeli intelligence and counterterrorism agency, the Mossad, until 1980, then director-general of Israel's foreign ministry for seven years. Yet this only hints at his influence. He was largely responsible for Israel's diplomatic and military overtures to Africa from the late 1950s, nurtured the young Idi Amin and secretly visited Arab leaders in Morocco and Egypt. He prepared the groundwork for the Camp David accords (1978) and the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of the following year. Other involvements included Israel's ill-fated plan to install a Christian potentate in Beirut in 1982, and the Iran-Contra scandal of 1985. When Egyptian pressure barred Israel from the conference of non-aligned nations in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, Kimche and his colleagues responded by cultivating ties with non-Arab states bordering the Middle East. He compared Israel's struggle against imperialism with Africa's yearning for freedom. Yet sentiment and idealism were not his only weapons. He brought Kenyan Mau Mau rebels to Israel for military training, established national security agencies across the continent and helped Ghana spy on its ally, Egypt. He also located Mossad listening stations in the Horn of Africa and allegedly backed coups, including the overthrow of the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1964. Numbered among Kimche's presidential allies, and often friends, were Ivory Coast's Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Chad's Ngarta Tombalbaye, Nigeria's Ibrahim Babangida and Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam, enabling thousands of Israeli kibbutz workers to initiate medical, agricultural and environmental projects across Africa. Thousands more Africans studied at Israeli educational institutions. Israel in turn won blocking votes in the UN.

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited
• Subject: Kimche, David