The Burmese army has been under strong pressure from the West since it launched a coup last month. However, Reuters reported on June 6 that the Burmese government has hired a former Israeli military intelligence officer as a lobbyist to show goodwill to the U.S. and other Western countries because the Burmese army believes the elected government’s substantive leader, Ung San Suu Kyi, is overly pro-China and wants to distance himself from China.
Ari Ben-Menashe, an Israeli-Canadian lobbyist hired by the Tatmadaw, is reportedly a former Israeli military intelligence officer who lobbied on behalf of the late President Robert Mugabe of Simbawe and the military government of Sudan.
In a telephone interview with Reuters, Menashe said he and his political lobbying firm, Dickens & Madson Canada, have been hired by the Burmese military to help the Tatmadaw communicate with Western countries such as the United States, which “misunderstands” them. He said bluntly that the Tatmadaw believes that after Ung San Suu Kyi took power in 2016, the country is too close to China, and that “Myanmar wants to be closer to the U.S. and the West, not to China, and they don’t want to be China’s puppet.”
In addition, Menashe also stressed that Myanmar’s military is eager to exit the political arena after the coup, while also looking for his assistance in reaching out to Middle Eastern countries such as the Shah Alam and the United Arab Emirates to convince them to fund Myanmar and send the Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh back to their Home countries.
However, UN reports indicate that between 2016 and 2017, the Tatmadaw indiscriminately raped Rohingya women and set fire to their homes, causing hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee.
The Burmese military government has not responded to the reports for now.
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