Israel Attacks the Yarmouk Munitions Factory in Sudan

Today, 24th October 2012, the Sudanese Minister of Culture and Information declared that the Yarmouk munitions factory has been attacked by four Israeli war planes. This was not the first attack. Israeli aggression began with the military support for the first rebellion in Southern Sudan that erupted in 1955 (before the Sudan’s independence). Joseph Lago, the leader of that rebellion has documented in his 2006 memoirs his visits to Israel and the meetings he held there. Throughout the second rebellion, (1983-2005) Sudanese rebels received military training and equipment through neighbouring countries as the US investigative journalist Rebecca Hamilton has documented in her Atlantic articles.

In 2009, Israeli planes killed 119 East African migrants, alleging that the target was weapons smuggled through the Sudan across Egypt to Hamas. At least one Israeli analyst questioned that and suggested that the attack was a moral boasting exercise for the Israeli air force(after the Lebanese humiliation). Hosni Mubarak, Israel’s ally, was in power and his intelligence minions could have been alerted to wait with TV cameras for the convoy in order to catch the Sudan red-handed and expose the weapons’ smuggling route if Israel was sure of the contents of the convoy. In April 2011, another air raid against the Sudan killed two citizens.

Israeli aggression against the Sudan took the form of support for the Darfur’s rebels. Save Darfur Coalition was formed in the US by arms of the Israeli settlers’ lobby. It failed in its attempt to persuade the US to attack the Sudan militarily; but succeeded (through the ICC) in raising allegations against president Bashir. It is quite logical that the World Jewish Service is going to honour the ICC’s former prosecutor L.M. Occampo on the 7th of November 2012.

The Darfur rebels who have got offices in Tel Aviv are the only ones who refuse even to negotiate with the Government of the Sudan, or consider the Doha Peace Initiative behind which the international community including the UN, AU as well as the US and her allies stand. Israeli linked leaders of the SPLA/N in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States are being manipulated to reignite the conflict between Khartoum and Juba. Behind them are Israeli front organizations that hosted them in Washington DC recently. The US and her allies have, to their credit, distanced themselves from the goal of ‘regime change by force’.

Only Israel stands behind the SPLA/N proxy atrocities against civilians as well as UN facilities in Kadugli, South Kordofan. Significantly, these rebels are never called terrorists by the main Western news sources.

The legitimate question is: why does Israel target the Sudan? After All, the Sudan has accepted the 2002 Saudi Arabia- Arab League Peace Initiative that evolves upon the principle of full recognition conditional on the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

The expansionist, far-right Israeli establishment and Governments pursue a policy of naked aggression because of the appeasement and even complicity of Israel’s strategic partners.

This attack against the Sudan was carried out by the Netanyahu-Lieberman government that was described by the UK-based Israeli professor Avi Shlaim as ‘the most right wing, chauvinistic and racist’ in Israeli history. The word racist is key here, because a Likud MP has called the Africans in Israel ‘cancer’, after they were initially manipulated to replace Palestinian workers in Israel in the aftermath of the second Intifada.

Will the international community condemn today’s Israeli attack on the Yarmouk factory? We won’t hold our breath. Israel has time and again been rewarded with more lethal weapons, more preferential economic treatment and OECD membership and more UN vetoes for her settlers’ land grab policies. This encourages Israel to continue its recalcitrance and even bullying leaders of Western democracies, as A. Lieberman did with Catherine Ashton of the EU and as Netanyahu tried to do with president Obama. Last night, the US president and his Republican challenger were competing in making promises of future appeasements and more reward for Israel.

The Sudan will not be shaken by this latest attack. The Arab Spring has demonstrated that the region’s subservient rulers and governments were swept away by the people. Like Israel’s previous aggressions since the 1955 rebellion, this latest attack will only strengthen the resolve of the Sudanese people and cement their national unity behind the broad-based government led by their democratically elected president Omer Al- Bashir.

Media Office
24th October 2012