BRICS countries’ heads of state will meet from Oct. 22-24 at a summit in the Russian city of Kazan. Among the heads of state scheduled to attend: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Narendra Modi of India, Xi Jinping of China, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates.
PATRICK BOND, pbond@mail.ngo.za
Bond is co-editor of BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique. He is distinguished professor of sociology and directs the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.
While many have looked to BRICS as being a counterweight to U.S. and European dominance in global affairs, Patrick Bond has been scrutinizing the reality rather than the rhetoric of BRICS states. In his recent piece “‘The Blessing’ for Genocide: Nearly all BRICS+ regimes nurture Israel, economically,” he notes that virtually all BRICS countries, which have been vocal in criticizing Israel’s attack on Gaza — and in the case of South Africa, invoked the Genocide Convention against it — continue lucrative economic relationships with Israel.
He notes: “Since August, South Africa has become the number one coal supplier to the genocide and Russia number two, now that Colombia and Turkey have declared Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. …
“Brazil supplies 9 percent of Israel’s oil while Russia operates the main shipping export terminal for one of the largest oil suppliers (Kazakhstan), and as Michael Karadjis points out, Israel imports a small but regular amount of oil from its BRICS neighbor Egypt, via Sidi Kerir, near Alexandria. …
“In both South Africa and Brazil, leading officials have openly bragged in recent weeks that they will not impose coal and oil sanctions on Israel. …
“South African arms dealer Ivor Ichikowitz (the ruling party’s leading campaign contributor a year ago, and a tireless pro-Israel propagandist this year) operates a military joint venture with Elbit Systems, has a Tel Aviv office and runs an ‘Ichikowitz Family International Tefillin Bank’ supplying the Israel Defense Forces. …
“Chinese-Israeli trade hit a recent record of $20 bn/annum, including $14.4 billion of exports to Israel (number one in the world in 2022) — in spite of December 2023 claims that Chinese Cosco ships would avoid Israeli ports (a stance reversed in February) … The two main parts of Israel’s main port — at Haifa — were privatized in recent years by Shanghai International Port Group and [Indian firm] Adani, facilitating more efficient supply of weapons and ammo to the IDF;
“India supplies vital military equipment for use in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon, including Adani-Elbit’s deadly medium-altitude, long-endurance (‘MALE’) drones. … India is the number five trader with Israel at nearly $5 billion;
“The normalization of Arab-Israeli trade continues, e.g. a recent wartime 5 percent increase in UAE-Israeli commerce — thanks to increasingly crucial transshipment services following Houthi disruptions to Red Sea shipping — featuring co-U.S. sub-imperial powers Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia, as Netanyahu himself bragged when applauding the new land route. …”