If We Stand Together Against Terrorism, Violence, We’ll Stand Better Chance Than Other Countries – Haskel.

Sharren Haskel is the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel, and recently on a high-level bilateral engagement and working visit to Nigeria.
In this interview with FERDINAND OLISE, the Deputy Minister spoke on several issues of interest between Israel and Nigeria, as well as unraveled some issues of concerns from Hamas.

Excerpt:

What common interests do you believe can be leveraged to deepen the relationship between Nigeria and Israel? How about also the issue of security?

I think that through the discussion led by the Nigerian Deputy Foreign Minister, Bianca Ojukwu, yesterday, we spoke of quite a few fields on how to do this cooperation.
For example, security; obviously Nigeria is facing deadly terrorist organizations, terrible and tragic events that have been committed against your people.
It is an opportunity for me also to send my sympathy and condolences to all the families who were affected by it. I think that if anyone can speak up, and truly understand the heart of the Nigerian people, and things that they’re going through, the difficulty and the trauma; it is just like us in Israel.

We have advanced a lot of our skills, our capability and our technologies in the last three years in fighting off terrorist organizations, and we need to understand that in fighting six different military plans. One of them is Hamas terrorist organization. The other one is Hezbollah, another terrorist organization up in the northern border. The Shia militias in Syria. Shia militias in Iraq. The Houthis from Yemen, and until today, are still sending, almost on a daily basis, rockets and missiles directly to our main cities and areas of population, and directly from Iran as well. Those terrorist organizations are targeting us.

They are learning about their battlefields, and they are also learning from the reactions of the international community. So, if they see in Israel that it is okay to build military bases, terrorist military bases, for example, in hospitals, and to hide weapons and rockets in schools, to put their warehouses in schools, then those terrorist organizations are learning, and are exporting those tactics to other places.

I think the Ambassador had told me also, just recently they found weapons, probably a few years ago;
weapons, armory, in amusement park. This is part of the tactics that they are actually using, exporting, and they’re learning about it. The fact that we’re able to seriously look at Hezbollah in the North, the 12-day war, rising in the middle of Iran, has shown a lot of our capabilities.

I think that this knowledge can be shared from a security point of view, with your officials, with your government, in your struggle against terrorist organizations. That is why we’ve set the starting point of a course where your experts on border security will come to Israel to learn from our experts on how to secure borders properly against terrorist organizations.

We hope to do it as quickly as possible, but this is the start of that kind of collaboration. I think there’s much more that can be done, including having a clear statement from the Nigerian government about the designation of terrorist organizations, and their actions as well. At the end of the day, almost all terrorist organizations around the world are operating in Sweden, in Nigeria,
in Somalia. The source is the same. There are two fountains that are training, arming, and funding those organizations. And the sources come, one from Iran, from the IRGC, the other one is from the Muslim Republic. Those are the two main sources. All the rest is a bit of a different question, but I think we have the same idea and the same tactics, and I think that if we stand together against terrorism, against violence,
against radical Islam, and those terrorist organizations, I think we’ll stand a far better chance than every country individually.

The issue of Gaza is dominating the media in the international community, and there are stories about journalists that were killed, how true is this?

in regards to journalists in Gaza; I want you to look at the images of the funeral of the so-called Journalist that was there, and you will see over the carrying and the symbol of Hamas as well. It’s because he wasn’t a real Journalist. Many people in Gaza are being used as a tool, as part of a propaganda war of Hamas. The war that we are fighting against terrorist organizations are not just in the military front, they are also on social media, in the general media.

How do you think they recruit new terrorists? even here, it’s easier for them through the media, through social media, to attract them, to push their ideology. There are many more fronts, the economical one, that through that political influence, those terrorist organizations are spreading that chaos in many more countries all around the world.

And so, in that world of media, many of their operatives are being used, disguised as Journalists, but the fact is that, they are Hamas affiliated members. Many of them had military training. It’s not just because they have the symbol of Hamas on their brain, carrying them at the funeral; why Hamas operatives and militants are carrying them. We could identify them to you.
In your mainstream media, you have the images of those Journalists coming up, right?
That propaganda about the starvation; there are kids who look like skeletons on the side of the road. Any Journalist can get any picture and document that.

Those images that you brought from the funeral, that you broadcast on the media, do those people who carry them look starving? Do they look like skeletons? So here’s another proof of that propaganda, of the fake news. Yeah, I understand that Hamas has been propagating through the media, war against Israel.
Why do they do that? To put pressure on Israel to stop the war. But we can’t.

So, when will this war come to an end?

The international community is actually putting pressure. And even Israeli citizens are actually putting more pressure to ensure that the government of Israel finds a way to actually end the war.

You ask when this war ends, it ends in one way, and why one way only? because we don’t have any other option. When they swarm to rape our little girls, to burn our people alive, and in any case they will have, we cannot live beside an organization of death cult like that. We have to go and eradicate this terrorist organization to make sure that my children are safe back home. And so this war can end in one way, and one way only. And so there’s two ways to do it.
When all of our hostages will be back home safely.
And when Hamas disarmed itself, and it could have ended yesterday, six months ago, a year ago, just now.

For a few weeks we’ve been negotiating so delicately on a ceasefire that would end this war. We agreed to it.
Any proposal in the last few months of the Americans with our foot on the table,
Israel said yes. Hamas said no. Why don’t they want to end it? Why won’t they want to cease fire?
I’ll tell you why, and I’ll tell you why those negotiations broke again; Because of European leaders like Macron; Every single week during those delicate negotiations, the European Union, or Macron, has given them a reward for the continuation of the war, putting pressure only on Israel, stating that if Israel doesn’t surrender, then they might impose an economic boycott.

That is, if Israel doesn’t surrender, then Macron will declare a Palestinian state.
What do you think Hamas think of it? They say, oh, that’s great.The longer this war will go, the more Macron will reward us, the more the international community will reward us.
So what reason do they have to finish this war in this armistice now? None.
And that’s why the negotiation failed. And when the negotiation failed and didn’t reach a ceasefire, even though he said yes, and he went quite a few steps towards Hamas’ victory.
Unfortunately, we are left with one option, and that’s only.
Last weekend, we saw the images of two of our hostages, a Gethsemane woman being starved
to death, with loose-like skeletons.
We understand they don’t have much more time.
And we have to go and get them as quickly as possible.
And so, we have the prayer to open a new military campaign in the last two territories who have
been strongholds. We will put out Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and we will go in with our military, and we will dismantle Hamas’ military name. Unfortunately, we have the permanent failure of the negotiation.
This is the only option that is left, and it will start..

Israel through its iFAIR programme has empowered so many Nigerian Innovators and entrepreneurs, a great effort from the Israeli government. Are you doing this in collaboration with Nigerian agencies of government?

Israeli government has this project as a collaborator. I have to say, you know, Israel is one of the leading forces who will be involved in innovation. NVIDIA has just announced that it’s going to build its biggest campus in Israel, up in the Northern area of Israel, and many high-tech companies are investing in Israel, because of the money, because of the capability, because of the technology, and the innovation spirit, which is what Israel has. It is about thinking about a problem, and trying to find a solution to it.
I can find many, many similar aspects of that to the Nigerian people as well. I think there’s a great potential here, and so, this project is about bringing our capability and the knowledge we’ve acquired throughout years to develop this same ecosystem here in Nigeria.

What you have here in this hub is remarkable, you have the production, you have the technology, and the small electronic parts, you have the design, you have the marketing.
When they prepare those innovators from stage 1 to stage 15. It doesn’t happen in many cases, but I think the collaboration with the Nigerian government, so there’s the Tech Fund, who’s been a huge partner, the Minister of Communication and Technology, and Digital Economy, who’s been a great partner in this project.

Those are the partners that we’ve been working with, and I’m sure the Ambassador is hoping for more collaboration on this project. I think that the more funds will be invested here in those kind of projects, you will have such a great return, because you have here the local people who are learning, not about just how to develop their own startup, but to acquire the skills on how to develop any startup.

That is an incredible thing on how to produce it here, not to export the production somewhere else, to produce it here so that you can export the final product later-on, as well from this country to benefit from an economical, constructive investments. And so, I think that anyone that would want to continue and collaborate, there’s obviously an open goal here, they can come and see the place for themselves.