In Rwanda, Netanyahu notes similarities between country’s genocide and the Holocaust

Speaking in front of six other African leaders and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Museveni forgot the name of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appeared to have only faint idea what the Balfour Declaration was, and referred to Israel as Palestine a few times.

The plane that flew the Israel Commandos on the night of July 4th 1976.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a memorial for victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda upon his arrival in the African nation.

On top of his agenda is the fight against a growing terror threat by extreme Islamist groups across Africa, and its long-standing fight with Palestine back home.

Kenyan President Ohuru Kenyatta vowed that Nairobi would lobby to elevate Israel’s status in the African Union to that of an observer state, a status Israel lost over a decade ago despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority still enjoys that position.

The tour marks the first visit by a sitting Prime Minister from Israel in nearly three decades.

This was highlighted by the Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu after a meeting at the State house in Nairobi. “Israel can help in many areas”, said Netanyahu. “I apologise to the people of Kenya who were inconvenienced”, he said as quoted by the Star.

Netanyahu will depart to Rwanda later on Wednesday for a series of meetings scheduled in his Africa tour.

Israel would also provide African states with training in “domestic security” and health, it said. “I think we see eye to eye on the nature of this problem, and I think Africa and Israel overwhelmingly see eye to eye on this”, he said.

Netanyahu’s Africa visit reveals a potentially unsettling truth about Israeli diplomacy, and about diplomacy conducted by any small, vulnerable or overmatched state. Netanyahu’s Africa visit represents the fruits of diplomatic pragmatism-surface-level awkwardness aside.

On the eve of Netanyahu’s tour Israel announced a relatively modest $13 million (12 million euro) aid package to strengthen economic ties and cooperation with African countries.