Israeli Cultivation of Cuba Reflects Contempt for U.S. Policies

By Dr. Israel Shahak

As confidence grows that there will be no U.S political or financial pressure on Israel so long as Bill Clinton occupies the White House, writers for the Israeli press feel increasingly free to describe the contempt with which the government of Yitzhak Rabin regards American attempts to dictate Israeli policy at any level.

The right word to describe the previous 30 years of Israeli political dependence on the U.S. was coined by Davar's political commentator Daniel Ben-Simon, who wrote on Oct. 18, 1993 of "American tutelage" of Israel. But, he adds:

"The Oslo agreement put Israel's patron to shame. While the chiefs of the State Department were busily overseeing the progress of Israeli-Palestinian formal negotiations, Rabin and Peres closed the deal in provincial Oslo. The Americans were notified of the agreement barely a few days before its finalization, as a gesture to spare them overt insult, and in order to make it still possible for them to disburse money needed for the agreement's implementation. "

In fact, the signing of the agreement on principles of peace on the White House lawn was pure show business. The deal was done by Israel without U.S. knowledge or involvement. For this reason, Ben Simon concludes that "the main loser from this rapid increase in the Israeli power of diplomatic maneuver is the U.S.''

Israel's New Foreign Policy

Israeli-Cuban relations provide a vivid example of Israel's new foreign policy, in particular, of Israel's efforts to free itself of American tutelage, and the Rabin government's contempt for feeble Clinton administration protests against Israeli policies.

Writing about Israeli-Cuban relations, Shlomo Slutzky reports in the Oct. 20 Ha'olam Ha'zeh that the main go-between for trade has been the notorious Mossad veteran Rafael (better known as Rafi) Eitan. Israelis have nicknamed him "the stinking Rafi Eitan" to distinguish him from another Rafael Eitan, the former chief of staff and current head of the Tsomet Party.

"Stinking" Rafi Eitan has an impressive record of carrying out on Israeli government orders acts hostile to the U. S. He was the director of LEKEM (the Hebrew acronym for "Office of Scientific Contacts"), which supervised the espionage against the U.S. secretly carried out by U.S. Naval counter-intelligence specialist Jonathan Jay Pollard. Eitan himself evaluated Pollard's information and reported it directly to the Israeli Minister of Defense. As a consequence, Eitan no longer dares to enter the United States, where he could be arrested.

Israeli trade with Cuba is coordinated by "Business Enterprises Corporations" (BEC), which has its main offices in Tel Aviv. Eitan's position within BEC has never been defined, Slutzky writes, because, "as usual, Rafi Eitan likes to hide behind the scenes." Nor "has he ever actually visited Cuba." Instead, Slutzky reports, he "has sent other Israelis, some of whom remained there as major advisers." In order to impress the Cubans, Rafi Eitan arranged the visits of some of their experts and high officials to Israel. Their visits took place early this year, ostensibly in order to let them see an agricultural exhibition then being held in Tel Aviv, really in order for them to meet Minister of Agriculture Ya'akov Tsur.

As Israel has become increasingly involved in Cuba, management of Cuban citrus plantations has fallen into Israeli hands. Of several such areas, one alone exceeds the total area of citrus groves in Israel. According to Slutzky, the Israeli experts sent by Rafi Eitan found that Cuba's citrus yield was "less than one-tenth of Israel's." They were expected to raise it, and are working to increase the efficiency of the Cuban economy, especially its agriculture.

Despite never having visited Cuba, Slutzky reports, Rafi Eitan "represents in Cuba a large number of Israeli trading companies. The high esteem accorded by the Cuban regime to an unofficial representative of the Israeli intelligence establishment can only prove–as a proverb puts it–that 'money never stinks.'

"Rafi Eitan has good access to all Cuban ministries, where he closes deals worth many millions of dollars with people whom, when he was an adviser on terror (to the Israeli prime minister), he defined as 'hard-core communists abetting anti-Israeli terror gangs who will not shrink from planning assaults on laws throughout the entire world.' Since business comes before pleasure, Eitan now makes good business, first of all for himself, then for Cuba and in the last place for Israeli companies which need him to capture the Cuban market."

When Slutzky asked at the Israeli Foreign Ministry how it views Eitan's exploits, he was told that "Israel maintains absolutely no relations with Cuba and is not interested in establishing any." The Foreign Ministry officials appeared surprised when told that "a well-known Israeli, Rafi Eitan, is doing business there, and has involved many Israeli companies, to the tune of millions of dollars." The officials in the Foreign Ministry's economic department who, as Slutzky observes, "should know about such things," assured him that they had never heard of BEC.

When told by Slutzky that the company was located in Tel Aviv, they asked him for its phone number. After a delay of a few days, they told Slutzky they needed further time "for inquiries and consultations." And that was the end of the affair. They apparently decided simply to continue to deny any knowledge of BEC and its doings.

As for the U.S. government's position on Israeli involvement in Cuba, Slutzky writes, "about two weeks ago the State Department told Israel in no uncertain terms: 'We request Israel to refrain from renewing its relations with the communist regime of Cuba, especially at this time.' . . . According to my information, the letter in question reached its destination in the Foreign Ministry, but it strikes me that the latter was not the proper addressee. The officials of that ministry keep reiterating that 'all relations between Israel and Cuba were severed on Cuban initiative 20 years ago (during the 1973 war) and we have done nothing to re-establish them."'

Apart from this timid intervention, the Clinton administration has done nothing. Israel clearly expects it to continue to do nothing for the foreseeable future.

Yet even without risking a clash with Congress over the magnitude of U.S aid to Israel, any U.S. administration has potent means at its disposal to impose its will. Under Bush or Kissinger, any Israeli obstructionism would have been followed by calculated leaks to the American press, revealing things which Israel would prefer to keep under wraps, especially in the U.S.

Such leaks would in turn be instantly relayed by the Hebrew press. The exposure would not only force the Americans to protest, but also set in motion Israeli domestic pressures on the government to yield to the U.S. demands.

Peculiar for the Cuban case is the fact that some of the most zealous supporters of Israel in the U.S. are extreme right-wingers and Christian fundamentalists who abhor Fidel Castro. They could be expected to respond with hostility if they learned that Pollard's overseer was now Castro's friend. Under Clinton, however, Israel can be sure that the U.S. administration will meekly acquiesce in whatever Israel may do.

This story has strong implications for Middle East politics. If the Clinton administration does nothing about Israelis who ignore the U.S.-backed embargo on Cuba, it can safely be assumed the U.S. will do nothing to stop any policy Israel chooses to pursue in the Mideast, or press Israel to adopt a policy it does not like. Increasingly, the Israeli government assumes it can operate without any constraints, and still demand full American support.

Dr. Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and retired professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israeli League of Human and Civil Rights.