Israel Goes Afro-Asian
By WALTER SCHWARZ Tel Aviv
WHILE some Afro-Asians were in Accra last month discussing unify, and others were in Cairo discussing economics, yet others were in Israel learning lessons about co-operative farming and adult education. If the last encounter played its part in changing the balance of power in the world, it was primarily because a good time was had by all.
Delegates to the Afro-Asian seminar on co- operation were entertained in traditional Israeli fashion by a group of teenage hora dancers. When this was over they produced their own entertain- ment. •The Executive Secretary of the Ghana Farmers' Union sang a soft love song. The man from the Kenya Dock Workers' Union performed a dirge, the words of which (he explained in English) meant : 'To get the white men out of your land you've got to kill their babies, kill their babies, kill their babies. . . .' The Assistant Pro- fessor of Education from Tokyo University stood on his hands and danced by waving his legs in the air.
The Israeli kids, of course, just stared. But to be fair, they were no more taken aback than the Secretary to the Ethiopian Minister of Community Development, when his pea-green sleeve was seized by an earnest, bespectacled Histadrut man who asked him what they were saying about Ben- Gurion in Addis Ababa—and then lectured him for an hour about how it all started with King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Israel has taken on a staid and venerable look, in contrast to these exuberant visitors. Extrava- gant costumes and expansive smiles have pene- trated everywhere, what with two itinerant seminars, the African Ballet and the ordinary run of students, diplomats and businessmen from some countries younger than Israel and others not yet even weaned. Showing them round, Israeli officials affect a new gravity of gait, and talk about 'the new countries' in an avuncular tone. The ballet was actually made to wear brassieres for its tour.
The Histadrut's three-month seminar on co- operation, the first thing of its kind held by Afro-Asians for Afro-Asians, is a huge success— in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that no two delegations have the same idea of what co- operation is.
In Ethiopia they haven't really started yet, as Miss Tayetch Beyene admits blandly. She is tall and slim, in a tight-fitting two-piece, immaculately hair-dressed, nail-varnished and lip-sticked in matching shades of blood red. She is a social worker, just graduated from Birmingham.
'You see we've simply got to produce more coffee and wheat. But we haven't the capital for large-scale investment. So we need some kind of co-operative farming and marketing.'
What kind? 'Not kibbutzim of course, like they have them here. That wouldn't do at all.' Much the same goes for Ghana, Nigeria and the French Sudan. In Ceylon, on the other hand, they could hold a seminar for the Histadrut. 'We have 10,800 co-operative societies, 3,000 credit societies, 4,000 co-operative wholesale societies.. . .' rattles off the man in the tasselled cap, with no notes and little encouragement.
As for the Indians—well, they find Israelis all right as far as they go. 'They have a fine spirit— like we had before Independence, only now we've lost it,' concedes the diminutive figure in the tunic buttoning up to the chin. He represents the Bhoodan movement, the Ghandi-inspired land revolution.
'Your kibbutzim are very wonderful, very won- 'derful. But in one place they told me they were not producing enough. That puzzled me ex- tremely. Surely, they were not hungry? So they had enough. More than enough.' Mr. Omprekash Gupti said no more about kibbutzim. But the implication was plain. The veteran kibbutzniks should take off their shoes and walk up and down the land from Dan to Eilat (for walk is what the great Vinoba did, in a land where distances are somewhat greater) haranguing the people in every kind of settlement from Eel Aviv to Umm-el- Fahm until they turn themselves into kibbutzim.• But one thing they were all united about, the dele- gates from Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, French Sudani Ivory Coast, Senegal and Southern Rhodesia : distinct lack of enthusiasm for Gamal Abdul Nasser. This pleases their hosts. Israeli policy-makers are beginning to look to the Afro- Asians to provide the first 'break' in years for their hamstrung foreign policy.
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