Israel was aware of violence against Hutus before Rwandan genocide, new documents show

New documents published by Israeli investigative news outlet Sicha Mekomit show that Israeli authorities were well aware of the racial tensions at the heart of Rwandan society as early as the 1960s, sprouting further calls for the publication of records regarding arms sales to the Rwandan regime.

Cables exchanged between Israeli diplomats and the administration in Israel show that the Jewish state knew that Tutsis were being persecuted by Hutus as early as the 1960s.

This new information is crucial to understanding the way in which the state of Israel could have justified collaborating with the mass violence. 

According to the uncovered cables, Israeli diplomats considered that the Rwandan government's Tutsi 'problem' would make them a natural ally in dealing with the issue of Palestinian refugees. 

“They understand the refugee problem since tens of thousands of Tutsis are sitting across the border, and it is well known that they are supported by the Arabs (There are Tutsi offices in Cairo, Algiers, and Rabat)," Aryeh Levin, an Israeli diplomat in Kigali, wrote on February 21st, 1966.

It has long been alleged that weapons from Israel were sold to the Rwandan government in 1994, although it was repeatedly denied by Israeli officials.

An in-depth investigation of the flow of guns and ammunition into Rwanda during the violence was published in a Peace Research Institute Oslo 2000 report, The Arms Fixer, and corroborated by ongoing investigations into the role of French interests in the genocide. 

It shows that Israeli military officials were involved in French and UK-brokered deals to provide small arms to Rwanda through private contractors, flown in via Albania.

During just over three months in 1994, over 100,000 Tutsis and uncooperative Hutus were killed by state-sponsored militias, before an offensive by a Tutsi-led rebel movement headquartered in neighboring Uganda put an end to the massacre. 

The documents were taken out of a trove of newly released archives from the Israeli defense ministry, and unearthed by Eitay Mack, a human rights lawyer who was also one of the petitioners that asked to detail Israel's weapons exports to Rwanda between 1990 and 1995 in 2014.

"There is no doubt that the State of Israel and the defense and foreign ministries knew very well what was going on in Rwanda in real time, just as the entire world knew," the petition to the High Court, ultimately denied on grounds of national security, said.

The current Rwandan government has been warming up to Israel, hoping to gain from the close US relationship, as well as Israeli expertise in entrepreneurship and technology. This year, Israel opened its first embassy in Rwanda.

Israel exports weapons as well as military expertise, and has in the past found itself steeped in controversy after assisting problematic regimes - despite being legally obliged to adhere to strict standards and regulations.  

Israel has used its knowledge industry and military technology to gain friends in sub-Saharan Africa, in order to create diplomatic goodwill on the international stage.