Shaul Nehemia Eisenberg

Shaul Nehemia Eisenberg
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Born	22 September 1921 Munich
Died	27 March 1997 Beijing
Nationality	Israeli
Residence
Occupation	Industrialist; arms intermediary
Known for	Secret Israel–China military trade, 1979–92; Israel Corporation
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Shaul Nehemia Eisenberg (22 September 1921 – 27 March 1997) was an Israeli industrialist and the intermediary for the secret military trade with China that ran from 1979 until diplomatic relations in January 1992. Aron Shai calls him “the king of China” and the man who carried the first Sino-Israeli military contacts. He died of a heart attack in Beijing. Without the channel he opened, the 1992 signing is a date.

Far East

He was born in Munich to a Polish Jewish family. During the war the family fled to the Far East. The JTA obituary says they settled in Japan. A 2017 Newsweek reconstruction says he was among Holocaust refugees who reached Shanghai. Both can be true of a wartime route. After 1945 he built Japan-based companies supplying raw materials to the Japanese steel industry, then spread the business through Asia, South America and Europe. He and his family moved to Israel in the 1960s. He held a major stake in Zim and Israel Chemicals through the Israel Corporation, and holdings in the oil refineries and Shikun u'Pituah. A Knesset tax break for the company was nicknamed the Eisenberg Law. He left a wife and six children. The only son, Erwin Eisenberg, was named as the heir.

The 1979 flight

China and Israel had no relations. Israel had lost Iran as an arms customer in 1979 and wanted a replacement. Eisenberg already knew the Israeli products from other Asian deals. After preliminary meetings he returned with a shopping list of missiles, radar, artillery shells and armour, and pressed the government to send a delegation. In 1979 he put his private plane at the disposal of that flight. The Chinese side was told the party were foreign businessmen with defence-industry connections. On the plane were Gabriel Gidor, chief executive of Israel Aerospace Industries, and senior officials of the foreign and defence ministries. The JTA, at his death, dated the first unofficial contacts to 1980 and said they were mainly his initiative, with the active support of the defence ministry. The trade was not officially acknowledged.

The first shipment, tank shells, arrived in 1981. Further contracts covered shells, missiles and radar. The Chinese would not come to Israel. They signed after photographs and the occasional video. In 1985 Beijing issued visas to nine Israeli agricultural executives, one of them a ministry official, and Israel reopened the Hong Kong consulate it had closed a decade earlier. Official relations still waited. Yitzhak Shichor reads the 1980s sales as begun with United States encouragement, against the Soviet Union. Newsweek calls the sequence arms diplomacy. The two accounts agree on the intermediary.

1992

Relations were signed on 24 January 1992 by David Levy and Qian Qichen. Levy told Israeli reporters on the trip that there was “an exaggeration in the defence cooperation between Israel and China.” He did not deny it. Eisenberg’s civilian trade expanded with the reforms. He died in Beijing on 27 March 1997, aged 75, and was buried in Israel. The Phalcon and Harpy cancellations, forced by Washington, came after the channel he had opened had already done its work.

See also

• Chinese policy on Jews, Zionism and Israel
• Yitzhak Shichor
• Israel Corporation
• Israel Aerospace Industries