Israel has refused to stop selling weapons to the military junta in Myanmar despite recent reports and United Nations data on massacres the country’s government has perpetrated against the Rohingya minority as well as systematic rape and expulsions.
Responding on Monday to a petition in the High Court of Justice from human-rights activists demanding an end to the arms sales Shosh Shmueli representing Israel said the court should not interfere in Israel’s foreign relations Haaretz daily said in a Tuesday report.
Eitay Mack the petitioners’ lawyer noted that the European Union and the United States had imposed a trade embargo on the country formerly known as Burma and said Israel was the only Western entity supplying weapons to the military junta.
The violence directed at the Rohingya has intensified recently. Some 421000 members of the Muslim minority have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in the past month as the UN and others raise concerns of ethnic cleansing.
Israel is keeping its weapons trade with Myanmar under wraps but the heads of the junta boast of its ties with Israel on their Facebook pages.
In September 2015 Gen. Min Aung Hlaing the commander of Myanmar’s military visited Israel and met with Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot. Hlaing noted on his Facebook page that he had visited various war industries and placed an order for patrol boats.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Michel Ben Baruch the head of the Israeli Army Ministry’s International Defense Cooperation Directorate — better known by its Hebrew acronym SIBAT — visited Myanmar in the summer of 2016 and met with heads of the military regime.
Meanwhile TAR Ideal Concept an Israeli military company published pictures on its website last year of training it had conducted with Myanmar’s armed forces.
