December 18th 2018 (Nyamilepedia) – A prominent Israeli opposition leader has urged the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the export license of sanctioned ex-Israeli general Maj. Gen. (retired) Israel Ziv over his alleged role in the South Sudan conflict.
Tamar Zandberg, the leader of the opposition leftist Zionist party Meretz, said in a letter addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that her call for ending export license of the former Israeli army general is “To prevent one of the most shameful and severe cases in the history of Israeli defense exports.”
Zandberg’s call came after the United States Department of Treasury imposed sanctions on the retired Israeli Major General over his role in the ongoing South Sudan conflict.
“Unfortunately, yesterday it turned out that the suspicions were correct, and the US Treasury Department issued a sanctions resolution on Ziv and his friends for selling $ 150 million worth of arms to the rival sides in the civil war in southern Sudan, paying bribes to senior government officials designed to enrich their pockets – all under the guise of ‘agricultural activity’,” the opposition leader wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Mrs. Zandberg further accused the Israeli Defense Ministry for not paying attention to the activities being played by the ex-general which includes selling Israeli weapons to governments which use them against their citizens.
“The Defense Ministry failed to supervise the export of arms and closed its eyes to the involvement of Israeli weapons in ethnic cleansing and possibly hiding from the High Court of Justice,” she wrote in the letter.
Israel Ziv, who was the head of the IDF Operations Branch, currently heads Global CST, which provides security advice and military training to security forces in countries in Latin America and Africa and owns an agricultural company operating in South Sudan.
The sanctions, also imposed on two Sudanese businessmen, also prohibit the business activities of American companies and businessmen in the United States with those individuals or companies under their control.
The punishment was determined by the Treasury Department on the basis of “actions that undermine stability, security and peace” attributed to the three. The Americans also added that they would continue to act against “all those who profit from the suffering of civilians in South Sudan.”
According to the US Treasury Department, Ziv supplied weapons and ammunition to the government of South Sudan while simultaneously arming opponents of the administration fueling the civil war that claimed the lives of nearly 400,000 citizens.
Ziv transferred weapons, grenade launchers and shoulder-fired missiles worth $ 150 million into the country using construction and agriculture projects to camouflage his activities.
The memo also states that Israel Ziv planned to hire mercenaries to carry out attacks on weapons and infrastructure facilities of the South Sudanese government. This is to put pressure on the government in the country, so that it will rent its security services in order to solve the attacks it itself initiated.
In December 2016 Israeli media revealed that Ziv’s firm was helping South Sudan’s President, Salva Kiir, to repair his reputation after the United Nations found that his government systematically permitted that children be raped and castrated.
The Israeli media further pondered whether Ziv’s efforts to whitewash a war criminal like Kiir were “inherently racist.”
