Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to South Sudan

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Israeli support for the Anyanya and the SPLA, recognition in 2011 and Salva Kiir's visit, Israeli rifles and surveillance equipment documented by the UN Panel of Experts and Amnesty, the 2012 deportations of South Sudanese, and the 2025 reports of talks on relocating Gazans


Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to South Sudan rest on decades of Israeli support for southern Sudanese rebels,[1][2] close ties between "Israel" and the government of Salva Kiir since independence in 2011,[3] and Israeli weapons and surveillance technology used by South Sudan's security forces during the civil war that began in 2013.[4][5]

Jewish community and religious life

History

No historic Jewish community in what is now South Sudan was found.

The community today

No Jewish community in South Sudan was found. The US State Department's 2023 report on religious freedom in the country does not mention one.[6]

How far is it Zionist? There is no Jewish organisation in South Sudan. Pro-Israeli feeling is, however, visible in public life: in 2012 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that miniature Israeli flags hung from car windscreens, that lapel pins with the Israeli flag were sold in the Juba souk, and that a Juba neighbourhood was called Jerusalem.[2]

Chabad

Main article: Chabad-Lubavitch movement

There is no Chabad Bot page for South Sudan, and the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States lists no rabbi there.[7]

Zionist movement and advocacy

No Zionist organisation operating in South Sudan was found. On his visit to "Israel" in December 2011 President Salva Kiir told President Shimon Peres, "I am very moved to be in Israel and to walk on the soil of the Promised Land, and with me are all South Sudanese people."[3]

Israeli state and commercial ties

Support for the Anyanya and the SPLA

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the first contact between southern Sudanese rebels and the Israeli government came in 1967, when an Anyanya commander wrote to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol offering to keep the enemies of "Israel" "bogged down and distracted".[2] Between 1969 and late 1971 "Israel" gave comprehensive support to the Anyanya in an operation led by the Mossad. Arms, military equipment and medicine were airdropped at the rebel headquarters at Owiny Ki-Bul near the Ugandan border, and Israeli military advisers and medics trained the rebels on the ground.[1] Africa Watch said "Israel" supported the Anyanya through Ethiopia,[8] and the Federation of American Scientists says it trained Anyanya recruits and shipped weapons to them via Ethiopia and Uganda.[9] James Mulla of the US coalition Voices of Sudan told the JTA, "Israel was the only country that helped the rebels in South Sudan."[2]

Reports of continued Israeli help during the second civil war (1983–2005) are less well documented. A US-based veteran of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, Angelos Agok, told the JTA that leaders of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) had travelled to "Israel" for training and that the ties were kept discreet; the Israeli government declined to comment.[2] In 2011 The National, summarising a column in the Emirati newspaper Al Khaleej, reported that a 2003 book published by the Moshe Dayan Center and written by a retired Mossad officer, Moshe Fergie, described five phases of Israeli support for the southern rebels, including backing the southern leader John Garang in the late 1970s and 1980s and supplying heavy weapons via Kenya and Ethiopia in the late 1990s.[10]

Recognition and Kiir's visit

On 10 July 2011, the day after South Sudan declared independence, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet that "Israel" recognised it, saying, "We wish South Sudan success as a peace-seeking state and will be glad to cooperate with it."[11] On 20 December 2011 Kiir made a visit of less than 24 hours to "Israel", meeting Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and visiting Yad Vashem. He told Peres: "Israel has always supported the South Sudanese people. Without you, we would not have arisen." Netanyahu offered to send a government delegation to assess how "Israel" could help.[3] The possible repatriation of Sudanese "infiltrators" in "Israel" was also on the agenda.[12] In 2012 the incoming Israeli ambassador, Haim Koren, told the JTA that South Sudanese "see in us kind of a role model in how a small nation surrounded by enemies can survive and prosper".[2]

Arms and surveillance

The UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan reported in January 2016 that in 2013 the security official Akol Koor had bypassed the national security minister and gone straight to the presidency to obtain Israeli ACE rifles. The rifles "were handed out to members of the Mathiang Anyoor from the presidential palace as they targeted Nuer in Juba in December 2013". The Panel also found Israeli Micro Galil rifles in Upper Nile State that the manufacturer had sold to Uganda's defence ministry in 2007 and that were passed to the National Security Service (NSS) in 2014; the Israeli government said Uganda had not asked permission for the transfer. The Panel said the NSS's ability to identify and illegally detain people had been "significantly enhanced" since the start of the conflict "because it has acquired additional communications interception equipment from Israel".[4]

In 2021 Amnesty International found that, at least from March 2015 to February 2017, the Israeli company Verint Systems Ltd, a subsidiary of the American Verint Systems Inc., had provided the South Sudanese authorities, including the NSS, with communications interception equipment and annual support services through the mobile operator Vivacell. Documents showed Vivacell being required to pay at least $762,236 to Verint in "Israel" for "LI technical services rendered". Verint did not respond to Amnesty's letters.[5] In early 2016 the Israeli lawyer Eitay Mack and the Meretz parliamentarian Tamar Zandberg petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to freeze transfers of spy technology to South Sudan, and in May 2017 Mack and 54 other activists sought a criminal investigation into Israeli arms exports to the country; the court placed gag orders on both cases.[5] The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute database records no Israeli transfers of major arms to South Sudan.[13]

Reports of Gaza relocation talks, 2025

In August 2025 the Associated Press reported, citing six people familiar with the matter, that "Israel" and South Sudan were in talks over an Israeli proposal to transfer Palestinians from Gaza to South Sudan. South Sudan's foreign ministry said it "firmly refutes" the reports, calling them "baseless". Joe Szlavik, founder of a US lobbying firm working with South Sudan, said South Sudanese officials had briefed him on the talks, while the civil society leader Edmund Yakani said the country "should not become a dumping ground for people".[14]

Trade

South Sudan does not appear in the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics' table of trade by country.[15]

Migration and aliyah

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics does not list South Sudan separately in its table of immigrants by country of birth.[16]

Deportations of South Sudanese, 2012

Until June 2012 people from any part of Sudan in "Israel" were covered by a policy of "non-removal". Estimates of the number of South Sudanese ranged from 700 to 3,000. Voluntary returnees were offered a lump sum of €1,000, and those who did not leave were to be arrested and deported. On 7 June 2012 a court ruled in favour of the policy and South Sudanese were given a week to register for "voluntary" return; two days later immigration police near Eilat arrested eleven South Sudanese on their way to work. On 17 June a plane carrying more than 120 South Sudanese left Tel Aviv for Juba, the first flight of what the Israeli government called "Operation Returning Home". In the following months a further six flights would airlift "a total of 1,038 South Sudanese". Returnees later reported that some people had died soon after arriving in South Sudan, and in February 2013 the UN refugee agency asked "Israel" to explain the policy, which it said breached the principle of non-refoulement. In August 2012 Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced mass detention of North Sudanese.[17]

Political interference

"Israel" armed and trained southern rebels against the Sudanese state for decades before independence.[1][2] After independence, Israeli rifles were handed out to a militia that targeted Nuer civilians in Juba, and Israeli interception equipment strengthened the NSS, according to the UN Panel of Experts.[4] In 2025 South Sudan denied reports that it was discussing taking in Palestinians from Gaza.[14]

No credible sourced link between Jeffrey Epstein and Zionist or Israeli activity in South Sudan was found, so this page has no Epstein section.

See also

External links

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Yotam Gidron, "A People Fighting" ISPADA – Israeli Planning, Architecture and Development in Africa, accessed 21 October 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, South Sudan, world's youngest nation, develops unlikely friendship with Israel JTA, 17 May 2012.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Leader of South Sudan Visits Israel The Forward, 20 December 2011.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 United Nations Security Council, Final report of the Panel of Experts on South Sudan established pursuant to Security Council resolution 2206 (2015), S/2016/70, 22 January 2016.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Amnesty International, "These Walls Have Ears": The Chilling Effect of Surveillance in South Sudan Amnesty International, 2021 (critical).
  6. ↑ US Department of State, 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: South Sudan US Department of State, 2024.
  7. ↑ Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, The Rabbis rabbisalliance.org, accessed 21 October 2026 (Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States-side).
  8. ↑ Africa Watch, "Western Policy towards Ethiopia", chapter 20 of Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch, September 1991 (critical).
  9. ↑ Federation of American Scientists, Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) FAS Intelligence Resource Program, accessed 21 October 2026.
  10. ↑ The National, Story of Israel's hand in Sudan division The National, 12 January 2011.
  11. ↑ Ynet, ראש הממשלה הודיע על הכרתה של ישראל בדרום-סודן (The prime minister announced Israel's recognition of South Sudan) Ynet, 10 July 2011 (in Hebrew; translated).
  12. ↑ Jewish Journal, South Sudan president makes lightening visit to Israel Jewish Journal, 20 December 2011.
  13. ↑ Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Arms Transfers Database SIPRI, accessed 20 October 2026.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Al Jazeera, South Sudan denies Israel talks over forced transfer of Palestinians Al Jazeera, 13 August 2025.
  15. ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Foreign Trade Statistics Monthly, Table D1: Trade Countries – Imports and Exports CBS, December 2025 issue (library copy) (Israeli government-side).
  16. ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Statistical Abstract of Israel 2024, Table 2.55: Immigrants, by period of immigration, country of birth and last country of residence CBS, 2024 (Israeli government-side).
  17. ↑ Laurie Lijnders, Deportation of South Sudanese from Israel Forced Migration Review, accessed 21 October 2026.
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