I might just scan the rest and link them here. I’ll also link some stuff about the Rios Montt regime, which Israel supported.

I’ll just do it in one post later w/ links, so it’s not spam.

General Benedictor Lucas Garcia recently commented, “While Israel did not provide us with large amounts [of arms], it was the only country that gave us military support in our battle against the guerrillas.” There is little doubt that Israel now provides almost all of the small arms (including machine guns and automatic weapons) used by the Guatemalan military. As early as 1981, James Nelson Goodsell reported in the Christian Science Monitor that Guatemala “made substantial new purchases of weapons from Israel, long its biggest weapons supplier, for $20 million this year.” Christopher Dickey reported in the Washington Post that Israeli Galil rifles were now “standard issue,” and Leslie Gelb wrote in the New York Times that “almost all of the Guatemalan armed forces carry Uzi submachine guns and Galil rifles.” The respected Jane’s Publishing Company reported in a 1984 publication that “Israeli influence remains strong and the Guatemalan military is now primarily equipped with personal weapons and equipment of Israeli origin.”

By 1982 Israel had delivered at least 11 Arava, 10 RBY Mk armored cars, 15,000 Galil rifles, and four field kitchens. In early 1984, Guatemala purchased 12,000 rifles from Israel, ostensibly to be used for “training purposes.” It is likely that they were intended for use by the civil patrols in the Guatemalan military’s counterinsurgency effort. Israeli government officials claimed that the rifles “were not a government-to-government transaction,” and added that they were sold by a former partner of David Marcos Katz, the Israeli Aircraft Industries representative in Mexico. In addition to the above, by December of 1984 Guatemala reportedly had received an additional three Dabur patrol boats, hundreds of tons of light arms and ammunition, bazookas, 81-mm mortars, grenade launchers, and Uzi submachine guns.

Israeli Weapons in Guatemala

Although Guatemalan military officials visited Israel as early 1964, it was not until after a 1975 trip, ostensibly seeking assistance in agricultural co-operatives, that Israel became a major military supplier for Guatemala. That year Great Britain persuaded the U.S. to hold back on arms sales to Guatemala, because providing weapons could threaten Guatemala’s neighbors (and Britain’s colony) Belize. Israel filled in by delivering a number of Arava aircraft, Uzi submachine guns and a variety of heavier arms including bazookas.

Faced with a military aid cutoff from the U.S. in 1977 because of a “consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights,” the Guatemalans once again turned to Israel. Within three months, Guatemala began to receive large shipments of Israeli-made weapons. From 1977 to the present, the U.S. has sold virtually no military equipment to Guatemala. In turn, Israel has become the main source of armaments for Guatemala. After 1977, Guatemala changed its standard military weapons from the Garand M-1 to the Israeli Galil assault rifle. Ironically, by 1981 the Guatemalan insurgency movement’s standard weapons had also become the Galil, obtained by stealing or buying it from the Guatemalan military, or by purchasing it on the black market.

Initally, Israeli’s arms sales to Guatemala were secret. However in 1977, the government of Barbados seized a ship loaded with 65 tons of Israeli guns destined for Guatemala. Later that year, a private plane traveling from Portugal to Guatemala landed in Bridgetown, Barbados for mechanical reasons. The local police, having been advised by British intelligence, inspected the plane and found 26 tons of arms and ammunition from Israel. Occasionally, the Guatemalan press will report the arrival of ships loaded with arms for the Guatemalan military, but notice of purchases of small arms, ammunition and electronic equipment usually goes unreported publicly.

The sale of heavier military equipment, however, is easier to detect. One of Guatemala’s major purchases from Israel is the Arava aircraft, used extensively in the Guatemalan counterinsurgency effort. Since 1975 Guatemala has bought seventeen Arava. Israel Aircraft Industries describes it as a “passenger/cargo versatile aircraft that solves the transportation problems of inaccessible developing regions,” and adds, “it also enables police units to control more effectively large areas with small units having limited ground transport.” Although Guatemala did use the Arava for its agricultural development for its agricultural development programs, its main purpose is military in nature. Former Guatemalan army chief of staff General Benedicto Lucas Garcia, a brother of President Romeo Lucas Garcia, stated in a 1986 interview that “Israel helped us in regard to plans and transportation – which we desperately needed because we had problems in transferring ground forces from one place to another.” When asked if he was referring to the Arava, he remarked “Yes, to Avara planes.” As early as 1979, Cynthia Arnson wrote in The Nation that “The Guatemalans have equipped their ten Avaras with forward-firing machine guns and underwing carriers for gunships.”

SIRPI calculates that between 1975 and 1979, 39 percent of Guatemala’s arms imports were from Israel.

I’ll focus on Guatemala only.

Part One

Brief synopsis on their methodology:

Much of the available information is redundant, i.e. the same fact are found in a dozen articles, all leading back to the same source. We have attempted to provide the best documentation available – or at least the most acceptable to a North American audience. Thus the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, NBC, ABC, and CBS are among the sources most often cited. We also sought out Israeli press accounts, newsletters from Central America, and the Mexico City press. We have evaluated the information on Israeli military involvement in the region from our perspective as Central Americanists.

Israel in Guatemala

It would be easy to conclude that Israel is simply acting as a proxy for the U.S. in Guatemala. However, it is worth stressing that the independent foreign policy agendas of Israel and the United States coincide quite neatly in Guatemala.

Although Israel points to its early special relationship with Guatemala, it is important to note that that relationship began between a progressive government in Guatemala and what was perceived by the Guatemalans as an anti-colonial struggle in Palestine. The situation has changed considerably in the ensuing forty years. Guatemala’s military dictatorship of today is the direct descendant of a right-wing military dictatorship of today is the direct descendant of a right-wing government that took power in 1954 by overthrowing the government that had forged such good relations with Israel.

And Israel, in turn, is now broadly allied with conservative (e.g., United States) and reactionary (e.g., South Africa) regimes. Today it is an alliance between an Israel which wants or needs to please the U.S., requires a market for its arms, and seeks allies at the UN, and a repressive Guatemala which needs military assistance. In 1981 Israeli ambassador to Guatemala, Moshe Dayan (no relation to the late defense minister) hailed Guatemala as “one of our best friends.” The following year, a Guatemala City political and business leader told Los Angeles Times reporter Dial Torgerson, “We’re isolated internationally. The only friend we have left in the world is Israel.”

Hamas is the government in Gaza, so the GFM had to work w/ them.

And Efrain Rios Montt is held in high regard by many people in Guatemala. In some cases, even by sectors of the population whom he targeted.

That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a war criminal and monster.

Is your argument, that people liked Duvalier hence he didn’t commit human rights abuses?

When did he get that nickname? When did he go on his human rights abuses spree?

The point of Phil’s article is simple. This guy carried out gross human rights violations and yet Israel supported him.

Same thing happened in Guatemala so there is context behind this kind of support from Israel.

You’re just trying to derail the thread.

Quoting the position of the Christian Science Monitor declaring Papa Doc to be “terrorizing” haitians is symantics…why do you think the people of Haiti named him PAPA DOC. because of the medical attention he secured for the country’s poor. he was a folk hero. and here you are condemning him as a terrorist. he was a freedom fighter and Israel helped him defeat the US push to regain control in Haiti.

Can’t you see how hypocritical you are being?

But it seems the Israeli involvement in the nation was not always so positive. On Dec. 27, 1982, the US newspaper Christian Science Monitor reported that since 1968 Israel had sold weapons to two Haitian dictators-Francois Duvalier, who became president in 1957; and his son Jean-Claude Duvalier, who succeeded him in 1971. The two, known as “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc,” controlled and terrorized the country with a private army. On March 27, 1983, the New York Times reported that Israel was among the few countries that had agreed to sell weapons to Baby Doc, and provided him with the long-term payment arrangement that he requested.

This piece of information is juxtaposed to the recent PR effort to undermine the claim that Israel went to Haiti purely out of goodwill.

Israel’s involvement in Central America follows the same format. They supported harsh brutal regimes that committed lots of atrocities.

But the actual reasons are no better too.

The point to make is that Israel’s supporters present Israel like a human being. W/ ‘feelings’.

Israel is a State.

And as you said, it’s ‘earning’ that money from the US.

I agree. These are complex power structures. Israel is not a ‘light unto the nations’ – it’s a State. A political entity. States have interests and they pursue them.

That does not make what they do any less or more moral though and their are real consequences to these actions.

With respect to Guatemala – I’ll get into that later.

So I went at length into the Central American counterinsurgency wars. The Sante Fe report. The Reagan Doctrine. Jeanne Kirkpatricks’s essay in Commentary about why supporting a government like the Shah is relatively ‘better’ than blah blah blah.

I was going to go into detail about the symbiotic relationship between Christian fundamentalists and ‘multinational corporate greed’ as evidenced in Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.

One of the glaringly obvious examples was Rios Montt, the born-again Christian dictator of Guatemala. During his brief reign, thousands of indigenous Mayans was specifically targeted and massacred in what became known as the Mayan genocide or Mayan Holocaust (physical and cultural destruction of Mayan society).

The Christian Right funded these military juntas. W/ respect to Rios Montt, they provided him w/ PR support and counter-activism (against the peace movement) and funded his ‘pacification centers’ (model villages). These were essentially, concentration camps where the survivors of the massacres were taken to.

Naturally, the Christian fundies were given something in return. In many of these camps, they had the authority to ‘re-educate’ the surviving Mayans.

It’s a very well-documented piece of history that I doubt many Americans know about.

Suicide bombing is easy to understand, emotionally, intellectually, etc.

However, the way in which a Christian fundamentalist psycho can legitimately channel their political aspirations is much more complex and requires more patience (relatively, in and of itself it requires nothing, just READ!).

But idiots like to bash Muslims and Arabs because it’s just too easy in our society.

This blog is about Israel/Palestine.

If you don’t like that focus, then go elsewhere. It’s that simple.