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Haggai Erlich, Alliance and Alienation: Ethiopia and Israel in the Days of Haile Selassie, Tel Aviv: Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, 2013, 261 pp. in Hebrew.1
ECHOES OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
Historians have largely neglected the love affair between Israel and Africa in the sixties and the seventies. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion for ideological and practical reasons wanted close ties with what he saw as Israels natural hinterland: a wish to extend a helpful hand to the newly independent African states while securing potential allies. Golda Meir, the minister of foreign affairs at the time, orchestrated the opening of Israeli diplomatic missions throughout the continent. In a matter of years Israels technical assistance in such diverse fields as agriculture, medicine, leadership courses would make a significant impact due to the country's emphasis on hands-on experts being sent for on-the-spot training. This important program came crashing down with the onslaught of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973 when all African countries decided to cut off relations with the Jewish state. A case in point was Ethiopia which should have been the flagship of Israel's policy in Africa. Ties between Ethiopia and the ancient kingdom of Israel go back to the dawn of recorded history. Alliance and Alienation: Ethiopia and Israel in the Days of Haile Selassie dwells on the ebb and flow of the links between the mountain kingdom and Israel from the beginning of the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930, that is before the proclamation of the State of Israel, until the resounding break-off of ties in 1973. This is a welcome addition to the few scholarly works devoted to Israel and Africa. Its author, Professor Haggai Erlich has made a lifelong study of Ethiopia. From 1973 until he retired in 2004, the Israeli born professor was head of graduate studies in the Middle Eastern History Department of the School of History of Tel Aviv University. He has taught in number of prestigious institutions in North America-from Concordia, Montreal, to Georgetown and San Diego State, California. He has focused mainly on the Middle East and on countries of the Horn of Africa-more specifically Eritrea and Ethiopia. However, most of Erlich's work deals with the emergence of the Ethiopian state and its...