[News] Israel in Colombia: Death Do We Impart
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Apr 11 12:02:58 EDT 2008
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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