The Central American Experience,
Israel's Arms Export Policy: An
Assessment
excerpted from the book
Israel and Latin America: The
Military Connection
by Bishara Bahbah
St. Martin's Press, 1986, paper
The Central American Experience
p143
With the exception of Nicaragua, which has purchased n1 weapons
from Israel since the overthrow of the Somoza government, all
the countries of the region are important clients and have signed
military agreements with Israel. At the end of 1982, the New York
Times quoted U. S. officials as saying that Israel was the largest
supplier of infantry equipment to El Salvador and Guatemala, and
had a "comparable role" in Honduras and Costa Rica.'
Israel's role in the region goes beyond the provision of weapons
and military communications and electronics equipment to include
a broad range of military assistance, such as training, counterinsurgency
and intelligence advice, and military-agricultural development
projects based on the Nahal-type projects of the 1960s. Moreover,
Israeli-Central American military ties are fraught with a political
significance which by and large has been lacking elsewhere in
Latin America.
Perhaps as a result of Israel's importance
as a supplier, the governments of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador,
and Costa Rica have been more forthcoming in their support of
Israel than those of any other region. Guatemala, like Nicaragua
under Somoza, has not supported a single UN resolution critical
of Israel; Honduras has supported only four, and El Salvador and
Costa Rica seven (Venezuela and Peru each supported eighteen anti-Israeli
votes; Argentina 14; Mexico 13; Brazil and Bolivia 11 each; and
Ecuador, 10). All the Central American states except Guatemala
voted for the 1980 UN resolution condemning Israel's "Basic
Law of Jerusalem" and subsequently moved their embassies
from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Honduras, Costa Rica, and El Salvador,
however, returned their embassies to Jerusalem several years later.
The only countries to have done so, they incurred the anger of
the Arab states.
These Central American countries are also
less reticent in expressing admiration for Israel and acknowledging
its help. While Argentina, Ecuador, and indeed most Latin American
countries were highly critical of Israel's invasion of Lebanon
in June 1982, Costa Rica's Foreign Minister Fernando Volio publicly
stated that he "understood Israel's motives" and Guatemala's
Defense Minister Benedicto Lucas Garcia expressed admiration for
Israel's military decisiveness and willingness to stand up to
Washington. Former Guatemalan President Garcia stated that Israel
is "a model and an example to follow," while his successor's
chief of staff called Israel "our main purveyor of arms and
Guatemala's number one friend. -6 El Salvador's interim President
Alvaro Magana stated that "Israel is the only country with
the possibility of helping US.
As a region, Central America has all the
characteristics traditionally associated with Israeli arms clients-longstanding,
entrenched traditions of military rule, right-wing orientation,
high incidence of territorial disputes and internal strife, and
a tendency toward human rights violations-which make procurement
of arms at desirable levels from other countries difficult. But
what makes the area particularly interesting from the standpoint
of Israeli arms exports is the light it sheds on the complex relationship
between these sales and the actions or policy of the United States.
Indeed, the American presence in the area is so overwhelming as
to make Israel's actions essentially reactive, with its role expanding
and contracting as a function of U.S. policy-expanding as a result
of the human rights policies of the late 1970s and contracting
as the U.S. reclaimed its place as the preeminent supplier and
restored its former levels of aid in the early 1980s.
Although Israel has maintained close relations
with all the Central American states, it did not become a major
arms supplier to the region until the mid-1970s. As elsewhere,
by turning international politics to its advantage (e.g., territorial
disputes and U.S. human rights policies), Israel was able to break
into a market that until the mid-1970s had been dominated by the
United States.
p147
U.S. Human Rights Policy
The Carter administration's human rights
policy inaugurate in 1977 had the greatest impact on Israel's
sales to Central America, particularly to El Salvador, Guatemala,
and Somoza's Nicaragua, all of which had been accused of gross
and systematic violations of human rights. During the five-year
period following the U.S. ban on military credits to El Salvador,
Israel was most active in the country, delivering rocket launchers,
Uzi submachine guns, Galil assault rifles, ammunition, spare parts
and "security" equipment, and the last shipments of
the Arava STOL counterinsurgency aircraft. Israel reportedly supplied
El Salvador with an average of 80 percent of its weapons needs
prior to 1980.
Guatemala responded to President Carter's
new policy by rejecting U. S. military aid altogether rather than
complying with the human rights standards set by Congress. Three
months after the U.S. suspension of military assistance, a cargo
load of Israeli grenade launchers, Gaul rifles, Uzi submachine
guns, 81-mm mortars, and 120 tons of ammunition arrived at the
port of Santo Tomas de Castilla. According to opposition figures,
by the end of 1977 the Guatemalan army had switched from Garaud
M-1 rifles to Israeli-made Galils.
Meanwhile, Israel agreed to sell Guatemala
an additional ten Arava STOL planes, which were delivered that
year and during 1978.22 Five troop-carrying helicopters were also
sold.
Although Israel initially denied that
it was supplying weapons to Guatemala, which was coming under
increasing international censure for its human rights violations,
the situation came into the open on 28 June 1977, when an Argentine
plane carrying twenty-six tons of arms and ammunition from Israel
to Guatemala was confiscated in Barbados. According to the Excelsior,
quoting the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the government of Barbados
lodged an official protest to Israel on the grounds that the arms
would end up being used against Belize, although the newspaper
added that the arms shipments had received the blessings of "various
countries." In December Israeli President Ephraim Katzir
visited Guatemala and signed a military assistance agreement with
President Kjell Laugerud Garcia for the modernization of Guatemala's
military and the training of officers in Israel. The country's
defense minister, General Otto Spiegler, was subsequently sent
to Israel "to study the purchase of arms for the armed forces."
Despite the purchase of large items such as helicopters and Aravas,*
most of Guatemala's military purchases from Israel have actually
been small arms. Talks for the Kfir were initiated in July 1979,
but the agreement was thwarted by the refusal of the United States
to authorize the sale. Under a $6 million contract in 1980, an
additional 10,000 Galils were purchased '29 and in 1981 it was
estimated that practically all of the 25,000 men in the Guatemalan
army, including the artillery units, used some type of Israeli
weapons. 30 Several years later, an incident was reported in which
U.S. customs agents in Florida impounded 12,000 illegally imported
Israeli-made rifles destined for Guatemala.
Israeli arms sales to the Somoza regime
likewise received an important boost from the Carter administration's
policy. Even before the United States cut off economic and military
aid to Nicaragua in November 1978,32 Israeli weapons had become
critical to the regime's survival (see Table 9). The Nicaraguan
National Guard's supply of weapons and ammunition was severely
depleted after the September 1978 popular insurrection, and without
reinforcements the government forces were not expected to be able
to hold out long against the guerrillas. By 13 October 1978, the
Mexican daily Excelsior wrote that Uzis, Galils, and Aravas "will
determine the fate of Somoza" and that the victory "would
be a victory for Israel because it will show that Israeli-manufactured
weapons are reliable and trustworthy." Until the') regime's
collapse in July 1979, Israel was Somoza's sole weapons supplier,*
delivering helicopters, heavy combat tanks, patrol vehicles, mortars,
Galil rifles, Uzi submachine guns, and even missiles. According
to Newsweek, the shipments were unloaded by night from unmarked
Israeli planes under the supervision of Somoza's son. Israeli
technicians installed an antiaircraft defense system around the
president's residence, reportedly as protection not only against
the Sandinistas but against Venezuela and Panama, outspoken foes
of Somoza. In response to pressure from the United States and
Latin American countries, Israel finally terminated supplies several
weeks before Somoza's fall and ordered home two cargo ships loaded
with two Dvora missile boats and a number of armored vehicles
(the arms had been prepaid in cash, which Israel did not return
to the successor government on the pretext that Somoza owed some
money). By that time, however, Israeli arms were so ubiquitous
as to have become synonymous with the Somoza dictatorship: the
Galil assault rifle was brandished as a symbol of triumph before
television cameras by Sandinista soldiers celebrating their victory.
p149
Fallout of the Sandinista Victory
The Sandinista victory totally changed
the situation. The low-level insurgencies and civil wars endemic
in this area of poverty and severe income disparities received
a tremendous moral boost from the success of the new Sandinista
regime in Nicaragua. This, in turn, helped spark military buildups
and in general drew the region into an era of escalating violence.
Former Somoza National Guardsmen moved into the border areas of
hitherto relatively peaceful Honduras from which they launched
attacks into Nicaragua. Former Sandinistas who had broken with
the new Nicaraguan regime launched harassment operations from
Costa Rica, the only traditionally nonmilitarist country in the
region. El Salvador, too, though to a much lesser extent, hosted
anti-Sandinista forces while still embroiled in its own decades-old
civil war that intensified in 1979 despite a so-called "revolutionary
coup" in 1979 and the presence of a civilian as the nominal
head of the junta. * Only Guatemala, separated from Nicaragua
by greater physical distances, has no anti-Nicaraguan forces on
its soil. However, it was the scene of a guerrilla challenge of
its own and the government waged a war against what it termed
"Marxist subversion" and those attempting to bring about
land reform. t
El Salvador
The Sandinista victory also brought Central
America back to the very center of U. S. policy considerations,
causing a reassessment of its human rights policies in the interests
of staving off what it perceived as the spread of communism. Where
possible, the United States resumed military assistance. On 28
July 1982, less than two years after the government of General
Carlos Humberto Romero was overthrown, President Reagan certified
that El Salvador had made significant progress on human rights.
This was done even though Amnesty International, the American
Civil Liberties Union, and the UN Permanent Commission on Human
Rights had concluded that violations were escalating and that
the major responsibility lay with the government security forces
or paramilitary groups operating with government acquiescence.
According to the legal aid office of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese
of San Salvador, a total of 12,501 people in El Salvador were
murdered by the army, national guard, or various police forces
and paramilitary groups during 1981. Improvement of human rights
has been certified by the Reagan administration regularly since
then, and the landslide victory at the polls of Christian Democrat
José Napoleon Duarte in May 1984 has assured continuing
congressional support for the government.
With the resumption of U. S. involvement
in El Salvador on a large scale,* Israel's role has decreased,
but it continues as an important weapons supplier, the second
largest source of arms after the United States. In 1981 Israel
was reported to have sold El Salvador an additional four Mystere
B-2 bombers and in 1982 three Arava STOLs, along with less important
items, including napalm. In August 1983 a delegation headed by
Ernesto Magana, son of interim president Alvaro Magana, visited
Israel to inquire about counterinsurgency help They met with Defense
Minister Moshe Arens and were taken to see Israeli military installations
and Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) plants. During the visit
the decision to relocate the Salvadoran embassy in Jerusalem was
announced, fueling speculation about what El Salvador would receive
in return.
Israel has also been accused of installing
and operating electronic surveillance and data systems in El Salvador.
According to Arnaldo Ramos, the U.S. representative of Frente
Democratico Revolucionario (FDR), Israel has set up a computer
system that monitors 1,000 phone calls simultaneously and pinpoints
heavily used phones. Another system monitors people's movements,
and computer terminals, some manned by Israelis, have reportedly
been set up at military checkpoints. According to former Salvadoran
Vice Minister of the Interior Colonel Francisco Guerra y Guerra,
* the Israelis began installing a computer system for surveillance
purposes in 1978.
In recent years Israel's advisory role
has been more important than military hardware, especially since
the United States has been limiting the number of advisors it
will have in the country at any one time to fifty-five .48 An
estimated 100 to 200 Israeli military advisors have been training
the Salvadoran military in counterinsurgency tactics, arms maintenance,
and intelligence services.
Honduras
Honduras, which shares a 500-mile border
with Nicaragua and hosts tens of thousands of Salvadoran refugees
and exSomoza National Guardsmen, inevitably became an important
staging area for clandestine U.S.-sponsored operations against
the Sandinista government and the theater of military activities
aimed at disrupting supply lines from Nicaragua to the guerrillas
in El Salvador. These twin goals were enthusiastically embraced
by Honduran Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Gustavo Alvarez.*
Fearing that Honduras would be the next target for "international
communism," in mid-1982 General Alvarez launched what was
termed a "preventive war" against Honduran leftists,
who had been gaining ground as a result of the country's high
unemployment and severe strains on the economy caused by a sharp
decline in exports. At the same time, Alvarez was deeply involved
in the organization of the Somocista forces, the antiSandinista
Contras grouped into the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) operating
from Honduras. In his desire for Honduras to take a more active
role in combat operations with the Contras against Nicaragua and
with the El Salvadoran government against the Salvadoran guerrillas,
Alvarez embarked upon :an arms buildup of his own.
... Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon
arrived in Honduras in early December 1982 at the head of a delegation
which included General David Ivri, the head of the Israeli air
force, who one month later was named president of the Israel Aircraft
Industries. In the course of the three-day visit, General Sharon
was flown to La Ceiba on the Atlantic Coast where the Hondurans
wanted to build a major military base. Sharon was also taken to
two other bases in the center of the country to assess Honduran
military needs.
The result of this visit was an agreement
signed by General Sharon and General Alvarez which U. S. intelligence
sources said would escalate Israel's involvement in Honduras to
an unprecedented degree. The agreement was reportedly worth $25
million and covered the acquisition of armored tanks, rocket launchers,
Galil rifles, radar equipment, military replacement parts, and,
most important, twelve Kfir jet fighters. According to the Christian
Science Monitor, a second phase of the agreement was to involve
missiles. Although Honduras initially denied such an agreement,
maintaining that the "conversations were limited to possible
future economic and technology agreements," it was learned
that two weeks prior to the visit the Honduran Congress had approved
a constitutional amendment empowering General Alvarez to conclude
armament and military training agreements.
Since Sharon's visit, the United States
has stepped up its involvement in Honduras with the approval of
$72.5 million in security assistance for 1985. Furthermore, some
150 diplomatic and 1,300 U.S. military personnel are permanently
stationed there. The latter number has swelled to 5,000 as a result
of the joint military maneuvers which have continued virtually
nonstop since February 1983. American forces have built bases
and airfields in Honduras and set up a regional military training
center where U. S. Green Berets train Honduran and Salvadoran
troops in counterinsurgency techniques.
... Honduras has also been the conduit
through which Israel channels aid to the Nicaraguan Democratic
Force (FDN), the former Somoza National Guardsmen operating from
Honduran territory. Early in 1983 while on a secret visit to a
CIA training center in Virginia, General Alvarez reportedly inspected
samples of weapons that Israel had seized from the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) in Lebanon. According to U.S. officials quoted
in the New York Times, at the request of the United States Israel
had begun to supply Honduras with captured PLO weapons including
machine guns, artillery pieces, mortar rounds, hand grenades,
and ammunition "for eventual use by Nicaraguan rebels."
Costa Rica
Costa Rica, the only country in Central
America with a deeply rooted democratic tradition, was, like Honduras,
drawn into the conflict because of its 320-mile border with Nicaragua.
Lacking a national army, which was abolished by constitutional
amendment in 194971 and replaced by a 10,000-man force divided
into rural and civil guards, it is ill-equipped to enforce Its
tradition of neutrality. Following the installation of the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua, Costa Rica has been the somewhat reluctant
host of Eden Pastora's Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ARDE),
a group of former Sandinistas, some of whom had used Costa Rica
as a base in their struggle against Somoza before falling out
with the current Nicaraguan government. The country's strong antimilitarist
tradition has kept it from becoming, like Honduras, a full-fledged
staging area for attacks on Nicaragua.
... in the early 1980s Costa Rica for
the first time had become the scene of limited, but nonetheless
real, terrorist activities.
By the time Luis Alberto Monge was elected
president in February 1982, fear of further escalation caused
Costa Rica increasingly to consider strengthening its meager security
capabilities. Israel was a logical place to look for help* especially
since direct U. S. military aid to a country which had disbanded
its army might have occasioned U.S. congressional opposition.
Moreover, Costa Rica had long maintained warm relations with Israel.
p159
... toward the end\ of 1984 Israel had about 100 experts in Costa
Rica working in "different spheres of development aid. "
But criticism in Costa Rica was mounting
for what was seen as a departure from its traditional neutralism
and a shift toward Washington. The example of Honduras, ever more
mired in the military plans of the United States and faced with
the specter of 14,000 jobless and armed former National Guardsmen
on its territory in the event of a U. S. policy change, was not
reassuring. So in November 1983 President Monge took advantage
of the resignation of his anticommunist foreign minister, Fernando
Volio, to proclaim "the perpetual, active and unarmed neutrality"
of Costa Rica to be enshrined in the constitution.
Shortly thereafter, Costa Rica turned
down a U.S. offer to build, at U.S. expense, a network of roads
and bridges giving access to the more isolated areas along the
Nicaraguan border. 106 The project, which was separate from but
complementary to the U.S.-Israeli-Costa Rican settlement project,
was rejected because it could be "considered a provocation
against Nicaragua. " Distrust of American intentions can
be seen in the reaction to the arrival in Costa Rica of U. S.
Army Special Forces advisors to train Civil Guard officers. According
to a senior Costa Rican security official, there was a "widespread
perception in the country that the United States was pressing
Costa Rica to militarize" and that it wanted the country
to take a "more militant stand" toward Nicaragua.
p160
Guatemala: A Special Case
Other than Panama, Guatemala is the least
involved of the Central American countries in anti-Sandinista
activities largely because it is the farthest away from Nicaragua
and has no Contras operating from its soil. This distance from
the area of conflict, combined with its steadfast refusal to make
even a gesture toward compliance with U. S. human rights requirements,
resulted in a singular lack of U. S. aid, apart from humanitarian
aid, to the country from 1977 to 1984, when President Reagan approved
a relatively modest $300,000 for military training."
During the relative absence of the United
States from the Guatemalan scene, the military government subdued
its guerrilla challenge and is proud to have done so without U.
S. assistance. Indeed, the government attributes the success of
its efforts in this regard to the lack of U. S. oversight and
advice, enabling it to find its "own solutions." Such
solutions-widely agreed to have been unparalleled in violence-included
scorched earth campaigns, the bombing, burning and bulldozing
of entire villages, massacres in the countryside, and death squad
killings in the city. Although the United States remained in the
background, Guatemala obtained assistance to implement these solutions
from South Africa, Argentina, Taiwan, and, especially, Israel."
... more significant has been Israel's
advisory role to the Guatemalan government. In addition to police
and military troop training, this has involved primarily assistance
in electronic surveillance systems, intelligence gathering, and
military-agricultural resettlement projects in former rebel areas.
It is impossible to estimate accurately the number of Israeli
military advisors in Guatemala. At the time of the Rios Montt
coup d'etat in March 1982, the Israeli press-which referred to
the Montt coup as "the Israeli connection" because that
group was "trained and equipped by Israel"-put the figure
at 300." The PLO ambassador to Nicaragua, Marwan Tahbub,
was more conservative, estimating the number of advisors to be
150 to 200, although his figure excluded agricultural and other
advisors whose work is in fact of a military nature. Nevertheless,
the presence of a large body of Israeli advisors is undisputed.
Rios Montt himself told ABC News reporters that his coup had been
successful because "many of our soldiers were trained by
the Israelis."
p163
... the most important aspect of Israeli assistance in Guatemala
is billed as "agricultural." Aimed especially at the
conflict areas such as the Frente Transversal del Norte (FTN)
where the guerrilla movement is strong, this rural development
is viewed by the Guatemalan government as "one of the most
important political methods in the struggle against the revolutionary
guerrilla movement. " Within the Guatemalan context, this
rural development means, among other things, land clearing and
road building in previously impenetrable areas, the destruction
of hamlets thought to be guerrilla strongholds, and the forcible
concentration of the native Indian populations traditionally scattered
over large areas in villages into easily guarded and controlled
communities. This has been achieved through the creation of cooperative
model villages* in which peasants whose houses have been destroyed
by the army are relocated and regrouped under army "protection.
" Seventy-four such villages have been built to date by the
army's Civilian Affairs Section, which is charged with the pacification
of civilian populations in former rebel areas. The project has
been notably successful in ending the local population's assistance
to the rebels.
Central to the program's success are the
civil defense patrols into which 900,000 peasants between the
ages of eighteen and fifty-five have been forcibly conscripted.
Armed with sticks, machetes, and old Mauser rifles in a ratio
of one gun per 100 men and operating under the close supervision
of the army, they are used primarily for control of popular resistance,
as informants, and as manpower reserves for building roads and
other projects. Their chief function, in fact, is to provide
the army with a ready means of keeping tabs on virtually all men
of fighting age. The pacification program also involves reeducation
and literacy campaigns, and, theoretically at least, the distribution
of small parcels of land.
Israel has been in the forefront of these
rural development efforts. The government-sponsored cooperatives
are in part based on the kibbutz model, and the civic action programs
are also patterned after those in Israel. Indeed, in March 1983
Colonel Eduardo Wohlers, head of the Plan of Assistance to Conflict
Areas (PAAC), stated that Israel was the principal source of inspiration:
"Many of our technicians are Israeli-trained. The model of
the kibbutz and the moshav is planted firmly in our minds. "
Other Guatemalan military men speak of the "Palestinization"
of the Native Indian populations.
p167
Israel and the United States
On November 30, 1981, the United States
and Israel signed the Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Strategic
Cooperation, which laid the groundwork for joint military ventures
"outside the east Mediterranean zone" and called for
closer collaboration between the two countries in arms sales to
third countries. Even before the memorandum-which was reaffirmed
and upgraded in a November 1983 security agreement that created
a U.S-Israeli political-military planning group to organize joint
military maneuvers and coordinate strategy-formalized cooperation
between the two countries in the third world, such cooperation
existed, whether explicit or otherwise. Thus, although the United
States publicly expressed displeasure at Israel's persistent sales
to the Somoza regime after it had discontinued its own American
support, an administration official indirectly approved the supplies
that propped up the regime by saying: "If Somoza goes, we
would prefer to see him go peacefully, we would not like to see
him toppled in an armed revolt." While the United States
refused aid to Guatemala because of the latter's brutality in
dealing with dissent, Secretary of State Alexander Haig reportedly
asked Israel to do more there. '59 A State Department official,
when asked if the United States viewed Israeli activities in the
region favorably, replied: "Absolutely. We've indicated we're
not unhappy they're helping out" but added, perhaps a bit
disingenuously, "but I wouldn't say we and the Israelis have
figured out together what to do."
However, the U.S-Israeli relationship
has often been very explicit. Caught between perceived strategic
national interests and congressional restraints that have limited
maneuverability in Central America, the U. S. administration was
obliged to circumvent these restraints by going through surrogates.
Because the Israeli public was largely supportive of its arms
export policies and it already possessed an extensive network
in the region, Israel was perfect for the job. The use of Israel
by the United States as a means of "supplementing American
security assistance to friendly governments" has been on
occasion strictly financial. In 1981 when President Reagan decided
to send aid to El Salvador but found that the foreign aid funds
had run out, he asked Israel to give El Salvador $21 million in
military credits originally voted by Congress for Israel's own
use, to be "repaid" the following fiscal year.
But nowhere has this mutual assistance
been more significant than to the anti-Sandinista forces in Honduras
and Costa Rica ...
In April 1984 when Reagan's request for
further funding for covert operations against Nicaragua was stagnating
in Congress, the CIA reportedly "unofficially" asked
Israel secretly to support the Contras. "U.S. sources"
cited in the Washington Post' noted that Israel could be repaid
for several million dollars worth of unofficial assistance to
the Contras through Washington's annual military and economic
aid package. On January 13, 1985, the New York Times reported
that some U.S. military aid to Israel was being routed to the
Contras and that Israeli arms shipments of "rifles, grenades
and ammunition to the rebels had picked up since the summer when
U.S. aid began to run out.
p169
Israel has shown itself more than willing to assume a proxy role,
although seldom with the overtly enthusiastic zeal displayed by
Ya'acov Meridor, chief economic coordinator in Prime Minister
Begin's government. In August 1981, Meridor proclaimed that Israel
was negotiating an agreement with the United States to sell arms
"by proxy" to countries Washington felt uncomfortable
dealing with directly. "We are going to say to the Americans,
'Don't compete with us in Taiwan, don't compete with us in South
Africa, don't compete with us in the Caribbean or in other countries
where you couldn't directly do it. Let us do it!" Far more
discreet was Yehuda Ben Meir, deputy foreign minister in the Shamir
government, who noted: "It is no secret that there are agreements
for U.S.-Israeli cooperation, in Asian countries, Africa, Latin
America and Central America. The United States, as a world power,
has interests throughout the world. Israel has its / own interests
in the countries of the world. In some of the places these interests
overlap and the two countries cooperate.
p170
The revival of attempts by the United States to squeeze Central
America into the mold of the Arab-Israeli conflict and to present
Israel's role there as part of its drive against the PLO and international
terrorism can be seen as part of this campaign. Thus, references
to the Marxist-Arab coalition in Central America and President
Reagan's statement that "it is no secret that the same forces
which are destabilizing the Middle East-the Soviet Union, Libya,
the PLO-are also working hand-in-glove with Cuba to destabilize
Central America, followed a month later by the statement that
greater involvement in Central America would give Israel the opportunity
to fight the PLO there, seem designed to prod Israel and to forestall
criticism from pro-Israeli congressmen critical of U.S policies
in Central America.
Israel's Arms Export Policy: An Assessment
p182
Despite President Carter's greater scrutiny of individual arms
deals, in general Israel's exports of combat equipment flourished
under his administration. Indeed, it was Carter's policies of
limiting the proliferation of sophisticated weapons and then of
banning arms sales to systematic human rights violators that allowed
Israel to enter the Latin American market in a significant way.
When the United States voluntarily withdrew to a large extent
from such markets as Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala and
El Salvador, Israel was able to move in. With President Reagan,
the opposite situation occurred. Although more liberal concerning
individual sales, his reversal of Carter's policy of restraint
in American arms sales signaled the return of the United States
to the region as the preeminent supplier ...
Politically, Israel has not obtained benefits
from its arms transfers to Latin America. On the contrary, its
position there has declined, as evidenced by eroded support at
the United Nations and outspoken criticisms of Israeli policies
in the occupied territories and in Lebanon. More important, its
role as military ", advisor, supplier, and supporter of brutal
and repressive regimes, and its growing reputation as a surrogate
for the United States, have cost Israel the sympathy of large
segments not only of progressive Latin American opinion, but of
the local populations at large, thus canceling the goodwill generated
in earlier years by j its cooperative projects. Representative
of the kinds of attitudes resulting from Israel's Central American
activities is the following statement in the Costa Rican-based
publication, Human Rights in Central America (1980s)
Israel continues denouncing the Nazi
genocides from World ') War II committed against the Jewish populations
in Germany, Austria and Poland; thirty-five years later, it still
pursues Nazis all over the world, but it has no reservations nor
shame in cooperating with genocides of peasants in Central America,
[or] the Indians of Guatemala and Nicaragua.
p184
Anger over Israel's role has increased sympathy for the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO), although, contrary to Israeli and
U.S. claims, there has been little evidence of any PLO involvement
in Central America beyond the provision of moral support. After
the overthrow of the Somoza government, the Sandinista government
froze relations with Israel, and then severed them entirely during
the Lebanon invasion as a gesture of solidarity with the PLO.
Furthermore, the PLO representative in Managua was elevated to
the rank of ambassador. In El Salvador the leftist People's Revolutionary
Army (ERP) stated that Israeli interests in Latin America were
being attacked in "solidarity with the Palestinian people
and their struggle for freedom" as well as to "expel
the foreigners" that had been propping up repressive regimes.
When guerrillas of the FPL in Guatemala kidnapped the South African
ambassador in November 1979, they demanded as conditions for his
release the severance of Guatemala's ties with South Africa and
Israel and the recognition of the PLO. While Israel and the United
States have often attempted ex post facto to attribute this sympathy
for the PLO to local anti-Semitism, these allegations have not
been borne out.
p185
As the Israeli daily Davar pointed out on the eve of Somoza's
overthrow: [1980s]
The people of Nicaragua did not become anti-Semitic by the influence
of a new kind of bananas they have begun to grow. The Sandinista
movement does not need such questionable 4 justifications in order
to achieve popularity-the fact that Somoza's regime is so corrupt
and dirty is sufficient grounds for any reasonable man to support,
either openly or covertly, those fighting Somoza. If more and
more Nicaraguans are hating Israel more and more, it is not because
they have become anti-Semitic suddenly. The reason is different:
Because more and more of their children are being killed or wounded
by weapons "made in Israel."
... Israel's political well-being in the
region hinges on the survival of rightwing military dictatorships.
By associating so closely with hated regimes, Israel alienates
local populations and effectively rules out the possibility of
continued relations in the event of a change in regime. Indeed,
most liberation movements in Central America have explicitly expressed
the intention of severing ties with Israel immediately upon coming
to power.
... For a variety oil reasons ... including
limited access to information and a sense that whatever Israel
does will earn it criticism-the Israeli public by and large continues
to support the arms exports policy. As Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
of the University of Haifa wrote in a New York Times editorial:
There is virtually no Israeli opposition
to this global adventurism. There is no "human rights lobby"
to oppose military involvement in Guatemala, Haiti or South Africa.
There are no angry editorials or demonstrations when officials
from repressive third world countries visit Jerusalem .... When
Israeli military advisers train Angola Unita forces in Namibia,
there are no angry congressional reactions and no oversight committees.
The Knesset has nothing to say about such matters, which are defined
as classified military business. The Peace Now movement would
not dream of protesting Israeli involvement in Guatemala, Haiti
or the Philippines. As far as the Israeli public is concerned,
this is a non-issue.
p188
Israel's arms clients are increasingly apt to be international
pariah states or right-wing dictatorships waging war against their
own people and in need of Israel's particular military expertise.
And this will ultimately be to Israel's detriment politically,
and certainly to the detriment of the populations of the countries
it supplies.
Israel
and Latin America: The Military Connection
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