[News] Israel in Colombia: Death Do We Impart

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Israel in Colombia: Death Do We Impart

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17124

April 11, 2008 By José Steinsleger
Source: La Jornada

Military links between Israel and Colombia date 
back to the first five years of 1980 when a 
contingent of the Colombia battalion "... one of 
the worst violators of human rights in the 
western hemisphere, received training in the 
Sinai desert from some of the worst violators of 
human rights in Middle East," according to the 
U.S. investigator Jeremy Bigwood (who) observed 
that the training of young Colombian 
paramilitaries could not have been done without 
the express permission of the highest authorities 
of the Israeli defence forces.

In those years, landowners and ranchers of the 
Caribbean region of Uraba and Magdalena Medio 
(among them Uribe) were not satisfied with the 
"inefficiency" of the army in its fight against 
the guerrillas of FARC and ELN for which, in 
1983, a group of "young idealists" went to 
Israel, not exactly to study "agrarian socialism" of the chosen people.

Of land-owning family, Carlos Castaño was then 
18. Six months later, filled with "patriotic 
fervour", he returned to Colombia and tried to 
apply blindly what he had learnt in Course 562 
imparted by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). He 
went back to the Bombona battalion but, 
disillusioned, concluded that the army was not killing "seriously".

Together with his elder brother Fidel, Carlos 
organised the death squad Los Tangueros, a name 
taken from his ranch, Las Tangas. In My 
Confession he declared: "In fact, I copied the 
concept of armed ‘self-defence' from the 
Israelis". In his interviews (to Spanish 
journalist Mauricio Aranguren Molina), Castaño 
emphasised the relations he cultivated in Course 
562 with an Army Colonel, Aflonso Martínez 
Poveda, and "other men of Colombia Battalion".

The serial killer comments abundantly about the 
"firmness of Zionism... that has always been ... 
defeating terrorism... from there I was convinced 
that it is possible to defeat the guerrillas in 
Colombia". Castaño died in 2004 and recent 
history remembers him like how he was: one of 
most bloodthirsty Colombian paramilitaries.

Not only was Castaño trained in Israel, but also 
Salvatore Mancuso, the other "historic leader" of 
the (paramilitary) AUC currently in prison. From 
about the Nineties, Mancuso organised the 
paramilitaries of Convivir, financed by Alvaro 
Uribe, then governor of Antioquia (and now the 
President). In an interview with Margarita 
Martínez of Associated Press (13/02/02), the 
paramilitary boss bragged of "... not executing 
more than three persons at the same time".

The ‘security' company Spearhead, headed by the 
retired Israeli Colonel Yair Klein, started to 
train paramilitaries in Puerto Boyacá after the 
ceasefire of May 1984 signed by President 
Betancur (1982-86) and the secretary of FARC.

At that time of global rightist gains, the 
ranchers of Magdalena Medio belonging to ACDEGAM 
(an agrarian pressure group) were not interested 
in peace. It bought arms manufactured by 
Industrias Militares (Indumil) and Army officials 
such as Lt.-Col. Luis Bohórques (Brigade 14, 
Bárbula Battalion) handed them over to the 
paramilitaries. Everything legal, everything in order.

Klein's paramilitary model turned out to be a 
‘success'. Beyond the brilliant massacres of poor 
urban and rural people, four presidential 
candidates were assassinated. Enthused with the 
results, Klein filmed the training. The broadcast 
of the film by ABC News led to a global scandal. 
More than the Israeli professionals, the film 
showed known Australian mercenaries and British 
ones of the Special Air Service. The errant 
operative was getting in the way of the growing 
importance of the Colombian-Israeli economic 
relations like the purchase of 14 Kfir combat 
aircraft in April 1988. In February 1989 the 
Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot recognised the 
"possible participation" of Israelis in drug trafficking.

A case that resonated in 2001 was the sale of 
3,000 AK-47 rifles and 2.5 million rounds of 
ammunition, a deal agreed in Guatemala by Oris 
Zoller, director of GIRSA, a subsidiary of the 
Israeli war industry. It was said the Nicaraguan 
police had bought the arms. The Colombian 
ex-President, César Gaviria, blamed the 
Nicaraguans in a report. Wes Carrington, State 
Department spokesman, was more imaginative, 
saying the automatic rifles were destined for 
"arms collectors in the United States". Finally, 
the nimble Israeli trafficker Simon Yelinek, 
resident in Panama, made sure the lethal cargo 
reached the clients: the AUC of Colombia.

The official presence in Colombia of Israel Ziv, 
retired IDF general, represents a qualitative 
leap in the war plans of Uribe and his Defence 
Minister Juan Manuel Santos. Engaged for the 
moderate sum of $10 million, Ziv could well have 
collaborated in the attack against FARC in 
Ecuadorian territory. His experience gives him 
away: in October 2002, as head of the Givati 
Brigade, Ziv invaded the refugee camp of Al Amal 
(Gaza). Infantry troops, tanks and armoured 
vehicles caused a massacre in which the old, the 
disabled, women, children and babies died.

General Ziv is on the payroll of Counterterrorism 
International and is member of the Task Force on 
Future Terrorism (FOTFF), created in June 2005 by 
the Office of Homeland Security of ­ Israel? No, 
of the USA. FOTFF operates under the orders of 
Secretary Michael Chertoff and Lee Hamilton, 
director of the ultra-conservative Woodrow Wilson 
Centre, nest of academics, psychologists, 
businessmen and ‘intelligence' experts.

In Colombia, Ziv's operations base is in 
Tolemaida. He meddles at the highest level. The 
Defence Vice Minister Sergio Jaramillo described 
as "precious" the Israeli help. "They are like 
psychoanalysts to us: they raise issues we had not thought about."

What will they be?

Abridged and translated from Spanish by Supriyo 
Chatterjee. The 
<http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/03/12/index.php?section=opinion&article=020a2pol>first 
and the 
<http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/03/19/index.php?section=opinion&article=022a2pol>second 
part of the article were published in La Jornada 
on March 12 and 19, 2008. More Latin America 
reports at: <http://nuestrosricos.blogspot.com/>Meeting Point




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