Israel and North Korea: Missing the
real story By Aidan
Foster-Carter
I can only assume March 11
was a slow news day in Israel - though there was
plenty going on in the neighborhood. Otherwise,
why would that distinguished daily, the Jerusalem
Post, deem it worthwhile to devote quite a long
article, in its International Section, to the
exciting, world-shattering news that Israel now
boasts a North Korea friendship group? [1]
The
moving spirit is one Shmuel Yerushalmi: originally
from Ukraine, now of Beersheba. Many former Soviet
Jews who moved to Israel are conservative, but not
Shmuel. An avowed Marxist-Leninist, he's quoted as
saying that the true dictators of the modern world
aren't the likes of Kim Jong-il of North Korea -
he also cites Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Belarus' Alexander
Lukashenko - but the leaders
of the US and "Western empires". Whatever you say,
comrade.
Alejandro Cao de Benos, who runs
the Korea Friendship Association, confirmed that
KFA has an Israeli branch, with a mailing list of
around 60, and a Hebrew section of its website [2]. He
added that they have "two major responsibilities":
translating information about North Korea into
Hebrew, and creating an Israeli support base that
can lead to cultural exchanges. Turning the turgid
works of the Great Kims into Hebrew: that should
keep Shmuel busy.
For any readers
unfamiliar with the KFA, its site claims to be the
"Official Webpage of The Democratic People's
Republic of Korea." Actually it is a fan site. Cao
de Benos dresses like Kim Jong-il, and touchingly
refers to North Korea as "We" (as in the Jerusalem
Post article). He can be seen online declaring: "I
Will Be A Soldier of Marshal Kim Jong-il" - but
hurry! For some reason the video is to be pulled
on April 29 [3]. I do hope Cao de Benos will post it
elsewhere.
On KFA's true status, the
article quotes a leading British expert: Hazel
Smith of Cranfield University, who lived and
worked in Pyongyang for two years. Professor Smith
briskly dismisses KFA as "extreme" and of "no
influence … they are a bunch of individuals who
are a mixture of the curious, the naive and those
who just want a free trip somewhere". Ouch. But
true.
Intriguingly, Cao de Benos told the
Jerusalem Post that he planned to travel to
Pyongyang shortly, taking with him "American
Jewish lobbyists linked to Israel, some of whom
live in Tel Aviv". But he refused to name these. A
tall story? Not wholly implausible, as we shall
shortly see.
As for Yerushalmi, he hasn't
actually made the pilgrimage to Pyongyang yet -
but there is nothing to stop him. Apparently
worried whether all this was politically kosher,
the Jerusalem Post asked the foreign ministry.
Spokesman Yigal Palmor called it "a particularly
misplaced form of friendship expression, but it's
not illegal and not something we are going to
interfere with".
You can see why there
might be doubts. In 2007 Israel bombed a secret
nuclear reactor that was being built at Al-Kibar
in Syria's eastern desert. There is video and
other evidence of North Korean involvement.
Missile sales to Iran are also not seen as exactly
a friendly act.
Cue confusion among the
comrades. Yerushalmi says Pyongyang shouldn't have
assisted with Al-Kibar, but complains of double
standards on the nuclear issue. (He's right on
that: Israel, and India, get away with it.) But
Cao de Benos, in the true spirit of the DPRK,
denied everything: "We absolutely never helped
with nuclear technology." Believe that if you
will.
Still, Israel does not define North
Korea - or even Iran and Libya - as enemy states.
For his part Cao de Benos said the DPRK would
welcome relations with Israel, claiming "we" talk
to them like any country since both are United
Nations member states. Truer than he probably
knew…
Not so, retorts official spokesman
Palmor. There have been no talks. Indeed "the
question of relations with North Korea isn't even
on the agenda, and you can't consider marriage if
the bride is not only not consenting, but does not
even consent to be asked".
But here Palmor
is being economical with the truth - and the
Jerusalem Post, astonishingly, let him get away
with it. For Israel and North Korea have indeed
talked. Their courtship is a fascinating tale -
way more interesting, and important, than the odd
sad Kim fan - and hardly unknown in Israel, if
less familiar elsewhere. Dating back to the 1990s,
it was aired again in 2006.
For a moment I
thought the Jerusalem Post was going to omit the
real juicy story altogether. Almost, but not
quite. Nearly at the very end of the article comes
this single solitary sentence:
"In the early 1990s, Mossad and
Foreign Ministry officials traveled to Pyongyang
to try to convince North Korea to end its
support for Israel's enemies."
That's
it. No further elaboration. This I find utterly
bizarre. Focusing on a trivial sideshow like the
KFA, the Jerusalem Post has totally missed the
real story - and let the government off the hook.
The real thing is so vivid that hints of
it even turn up in an Inspector O novel. I trust
readers know this excellent series, exploring
North Korea's Kafkaesque and internecine
labyrinths [4]. If not, a treat awaits. Sometimes
fiction is the best way to convey fact. The Israel
connection appears in Bamboo and Blood, the
third Inspector O novel [5]. To say more would be to
give the game away. (Author James Church is a
former US spook; he knows whereof he speaks.)
But back to the facts. They aren't hard to
find. A rival daily, Ha'aretz, summarized the
story in 2006 [6]. Start with this to get the gist,
but don't miss a much fuller version also
available online - translated from a long article
in another Israeli newspaper, Maariv, back in
1995 [7].
No way can I do all this justice,
but here goes. The Jerusalem Post's bland account
implies that "Mossad and Foreign Ministry
officials" undertook a joint mission to Pyongyang.
Not a bit of it.
The Ha'aretz headline
sums up the reality: "How the Mossad killed a deal
with Kim Il-sung." Or as Maariv had earlier
scathingly put it, this is "a typical Israeli
reality: struggles for power and prestige within
the Israeli establishment, jealousy, hatred,
scheming, concealment of information, stinginess,
rivalry between parties and short-cuts in making
critical decisions".
In brief, contra
Palmor, in the mid 1990s his ministry was very
much talking to North Korea - which initiated the
contact. The agenda was missiles, and Pyongyang
hinted it was prepared to be bought off; meaning
it would stop selling them to Israel's foes, but
at a price.
A senior foreign ministry
official, Eitan Bentzur, reckoned this was worth
pursuing. According to Ha'aretz, "Bentzur's idea
was that Israeli businesspeople would invest in
North Korea - especially in the fuel industry,
would run a gold mine at Onsan [sic - in fact
Unsan] and would help it obtain a $1 billion
loan". It names three businessmen: Leslie Bond in
the US, Shaul Eisenberg, and a former aide to
Shimon Peres, Nimrod Novick.
Bentzur
visited Pyongyang in 1992, to discuss not only the
above but also diplomatic ties. So much for
Palmor's unconsenting bride! Au contraire, the
lady was evidently up for it.
Two further
rounds of talks were held in Beijing in 1993.
According to Ha'aretz, Kim Il-sung (no less)
suggested that contacts continue in Paris - via
his own daughter Kim Kyong-hui and her husband
Jang Song-thaek, who was running the missile
program. Top-drawer stuff.
Enter Mossad.
Israel's spy agency got wind of this plan, and
rushed to Pyongyang to stop it. In a moment of
high black farce, the two Israeli delegations each
only learned that the other had been in town as
well when they bumped into each other on the plane
back to Beijing afterwards. (The foreign ministry
officials were seated in first class, while Mossad
had to slum it in tourist class.)
One
could well argue the pros and cons of buying North
Korea off: a hardy perennial debate for all
interlocutors. But in an added twist, the merits
of the case weren't even the point here.
Furious at the Foreign Ministry for
trespassing on its own patch (secret contacts),
Mossad was doing the United States Central
Intelligence Agency's dirty work. They convinced
premier Yitzhak Rabin to end contacts with North
Korea, saying Washington was dead against. Yet -
twist within twist - this wasn't true. The US was
quietly pursuing its own contacts with Pyongyang
over the nuclear issue, culminating in the Agreed
Framework signed by Bill Clinton after a
nail-biting summer in October 1994.
That's
a very compressed account. Like all good feuds,
the FM-Mossad spat is still ongoing. It flared up
a decade later when Mossad's former head Ephraim
Halevy - who went on that spoiler mission to
Pyongyang - published a memoir, Man in the
Shadows, in 2006. He was unrepentant, calling
the Foreign Ministry's plan to buy off missiles a
"ridiculous … embarrassing farce".
The
Foreign Ministry as such presumably couldn't
answer back, but the now retired Bentzur had no
such inhibitions. Ha'aretz, clearly on his side,
quotes him: "Shortsightedness, an urge to destroy
the successful actions of others, and the lack of
backbone in disagreements with the United States
are inherent in Ephraim Halevy's falsified
description of the contacts with North Korea … His
unwanted actions harmed clear interests of Israel
and the Western world."
Turf wars apart,
the point at issue is missiles. As matters turned
out, in the Agreed Framework - now itself a dead
letter, but let's not beat about the Bush - the US
focused on its own main worry: nukes. Pyongyang
was given oil and other incentives to mothball its
Yongbyon nuclear site. But the deal did not
address what was on Israel's mind, namely
missiles. Ha'aretz concludes: "Thus, and not for
the first time, the Mossad erred and torpedoed an
important diplomatic move."
To be fair,
Clinton did later go on to initiate separate talks
with North Korea about missiles. But his term of
office ended, and George W Bush didn't think this
worth continuing with.
Bush the younger -
Kim Jong-bush, shall we call him? - made many a
fateful policy choice. This is one of his less
famous ones, but it may yet turn out to be up
there with invading Iraq.
Pyongyang has
gone on supplying Syria and Iran with ever bigger
and better missiles, even as Tehran gets closer to
being able to lob something really nasty at
Israel. Iran's Shahab-3 and -4 medium range
missiles have long been known to be based on the
DPRK's Nodong missile, but there may be worse to
worry about. A disclosure from WikiLeaks last year
revealed US fears that North Korea has also
supplied longer-range BM-25 missiles, based on
Russia's R-27 design, which could strike much of
Europe [8]. Other US cables complain that such cargoes
still regularly transit Beijing airport
unhindered, despite being forbidden under UN
sanctions since 2009.
There now. Isn't all
this even more interesting, and ever so slightly
more newsworthy, than the fond delusions of Shmuel
Yerushalmi, the absurd posturings of Alejandro Cao
de Benos, and the smarmy evasions of Yigal Palmor?
Apparently not to the Jerusalem Post, which ran
with the trivia and then unaccountably fell asleep
on the job. Oy vey. Wakey wakey!
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary
senior research fellow in sociology and modern
Korea at Leeds University, and a freelance
consultant, writer and broadcaster on Korean
affairs. A regular visitor to the peninsula, he
has followed North Korea for over 40 years.
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