A Uganda Plan for the New Century

“If Israel needs help, it only need ask.” That was the statement this week by the head of Uganda’s armed forces, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba. He is the son of Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni. The scion asserts that “any talk of destroying or defeating Israel” would bring the East African nation into the war with Iran on the side of the Jewish state. This from the country once ruled by the so-called Last King of Scotland, Idi Amin. The Wall Street Journal notes that the heir apparent is “widely known for his provocative online statements” but that he is “nonetheless considered a front-runner for succeeding his father, who has ruled for 40 years.” General Kainerugaba appended to his statement a photograph of what appears to be a bronze statue of Israeli hero Yonatan Netanyahu, the prime minister’s brother who led the daring rescue at Entebbe’s airport in 1978. Netanyahu was killed by a Ugandan sniper. The Israeli operation freed more than 100 hostages who were taken in the hijacking of an Air France plane by Palestinian Arab and German leftist terrorists. Just seven years prior, Amin had visited Israel and been toasted by Israel’s Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan. A visit in 1972 to Libya and parley with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, though, led to a plummet in cordiality, and all Israelis were ordered to leave Uganda that year.Uganda will always have a special place in the tale of the return to Zion. Following the ravages of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, Theodor Herzl grew desperate to find a refuge for Jews. The British secretary of state in charge of the colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, reckoned that Uganda “would be just the country for Dr. Herzl.” The Foreign Office drew up a plan which was put to a vote in 1903 at the sixth Zionist Congress at Basel.The Uganda Plan precipitated an uproar, though the Congress did approve of sending a fact-finding mission to explore the possibility. Herzl’s deputy, Max Nordau, backed the African option even as he insisted that the ultimate goal would always be Zion. That same year, he was attacked at a Hanukkah party by a would-be assassin, Chaim Zelig Luban, who screamed “Death to the East African” as he fired his gun. Nordau survived. Herzl ended the Sixth Zionist Congress by declaring in Hebrew — a language he hardly spoke — the Psalmists vow “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning.” Two years later the plan was withdrawn, with Chamberlain — Neville’s father — reckoning in his diary that East Africa was too far from Palestine. Vladimir Jabotinsky, seeing the catastrophe in the 1930’s, wondered whether he had been too quick to dismiss Uganda in 1903.General Kainerugaba adds that his support for the Jewish state comes both from his Christian faith — “We stand with Israel because we are Christians” — and because “Israel stood with us when we were nobodys in the 1980s and 1990s. Why wouldn’t we defend her now that our GDP is $100 billion?” He adds that “I hear our friends in Israel are looking for a division to capture Tehran.” He reckons that one of his Uganda brigades could do the job. It’s hardly necessary to take General Kainerugaba literally to note that the emerging alliances of the 21st century could look different from the enmities of the 20th. We’ve noted how Hitler’s carmaker, Volkswagen, is eyeing joining production for Israel’s Iron Dome. The war against the Islamic Republic has put the Arab nations roughly on the same side as America and the Jewish state, who now counts Somaliland as an ally. And now Uganda too.

A Uganda Plan for the New Century

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