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href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-arms-industrys-great-leap-central-america/26881">https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-arms-industrys-great-leap-central-america/26881</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israeli arms industry's "great leap" in
Central America</h1>
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/gabriel-schivone">Gabriel
Schivone</a></span> <span class="field field-publisher">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2019-03-15T17:26:00+00:00">15 March 2019</span></span>
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<article>
<figure id="file-75846"><source media="(min-width:
72rem)"><figcaption><small><span></span></small></figcaption></figure>
<p>Halfway through Donald Trump’s presidency, Israel’s
decades-long role in Central America is scaling new
heights of military and political influence.</p>
<p>Israel has wasted no time securing valuable arms
deals in this part of the world, deals that now
account for nearly 20 percent of its arms exports.
This scale of activity hasn’t occurred since the
Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s, when
far-right rulers in Central America circled the
wagons.</p>
<p>Tacit US approval for the purchase of such weapons
has ensured Honduran and Guatemalan support at the
United Nations for Donald Trump’s decision to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/oh-jerusalem-requiem-two-state-solution/22521">move
the US embassy</a> from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.</p>
<p>The changeover from Barack Obama’s two terms as
president to Trump has heralded a resurgence of policy
trends among the US, Israel and US-dominated Central
American countries reminiscent of the transitional
Carter-Reagan years.</p>
<p>The migrant caravans in fall and winter, meanwhile,
have focused attention on the plight of Central
Americans fleeing three countries ravaged by decades
of US intervention: Guatemala, Honduras and El
Salvador.</p>
<p>Sparse attention has been placed on how the caravans
travel across a more than 2,000 mile Israeli-exported
military and homeland security terrain that has
expanded across Central America since the 1980s,
escalating after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the
US.</p>
<p>The monitored terrain now covers all of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-shadowy-role-guatemalas-dirty-war/19286">Mexico</a>
as well as up through, and beyond, the US-Mexico <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israels-war-industry-profits-violent-us-immigration-reform/13283">border</a>.
Israeli boundary enforcement and surveillance products
are deployed along the migrant and refugee trail, the
subject of this author’s next book that traces Israeli
involvement throughout the international regions
between Central America and the US-Mexico <a
href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/us-mexico-border-gaza-israeli-tech-wall/">border</a>.</p>
<p>As the regional conditions that prompted the
caravans’ repeated departures demonstrate no signs of
quieting, the Israeli arms industry interests in the
region will likely grow.</p>
<p>But while the military-security dimension is both
Israeli and American, the US asserts ownership over
the geography. In 2012, Alan Bersin, Commissioner of
US Customs and Border Protection under Barack Obama, <a
href="http://latinalista.com/general/historic-partnership-agreements-signed">declared</a>
that “Guatemala’s border with Chiapas [Mexico] is now
our southern border.”</p>
<p>With millions of dollars in US military aid <a
href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/10/mexico-us-borderpatrolsecurityimmigrants.html">poured</a>
into Mexican immigration enforcement practices,
“Mexico is doing the dirty work, the very dirty work,
for the United States,” <a
href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mexico-now-deports-more-central-americans-than-the-us-2015-6">observed</a>
Franciscan Friar Tomás González Castillo.</p>
<p>Castillo runs the “72” migrant shelter to aid Central
Americans desperate to cross Mexico, which acts,
spatially speaking, so much like a vertical border of
death (rather than a horizontal one) that Mexican
human rights advocates call the entire country <a
href="https://dawnpaley.ca/2013/06/04/report-dubs-mexico-a-graveyard-for-migrants/">“a
graveyard for migrants.”</a></p>
<p>In effect, with its security aid utilized at all
junctions, Israel has contributed to the US Border
Patrol’s strategic <a
href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/10/mexico-us-borderpatrolsecurityimmigrants.html">“layered
approach</a>” of ratcheting up Mexico’s proxy
enforcement measures.</p>
<p>This is the border-bolstered world that Trump has
inherited and is now pushing to enlarge.</p>
<h2>Trump’s Israeli “deputy”</h2>
<p>By the end of Obama’s tenure, Israel’s burgeoning
presence in Central America was in the cards. Just
ahead of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017,
historian Greg Grandin, <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/will-the-trump-administration-approve-a-military-deal-between-honduras-and-israel/">writing
in <em>The Nation</em></a>, advised those watching
events to the south: “If you want to know how Donald
Trump’s Latin American policy will play – and how he
might deputize Israel to conduct a good bit of it –
keep an eye on Honduras.”</p>
<p>The 2016 $200 million Israel-Honduras security
cooperation agreement that Grandin flags in his
report, has continued to evolve and expand since it
was signed. At that time, it was lauded as the
Honduran military’s “great leap” forward by Honduran
President <a
href="http://www.sre.gob.hn/portada/2016/Diciembre/08-12-16/Honduras%20da%20%E2%80%9Cun%20gran%20salto%E2%80%9D%20en%20esta%20alianza%20con%20Israel.pdf">Juan
Orlando Hernández</a>.</p>
<p>Obama’s outgoing administration had scaled back some
forms of military collaboration in its last years in
office after Honduras overplayed its hand by using
US-supplied weapons to down civilian airplanes
suspected of carrying illegal drugs.</p>
<p>The US rebuke, minor though it was, prompted Honduras
to look elsewhere for military assistance. Israel
stepped in to play its historical role as a faithful,
bipartisan US <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-shadowy-role-guatemalas-dirty-war/19286">proxy</a>,
just as it did during the Carter and Reagan years.</p>
<p>With Trump in office, it didn’t take long for
Grandin’s prediction to bear out.</p>
<p>In March 2017, the military business press <a
href="https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/28961">reported</a>
more information on the “great leap” deal, according
to Israeli human rights and legal sources familiar
with the agreement. This included a 10-year timeline
boosting Honduran cyber security, naval and air power.
This time the reported figure jumped to $300 million.
And with continual new components being <a
href="https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/37209">reported</a>,
such as six Skylark drones from Elbit Systems, the
deal appears to be a work in progress.</p>
<figure id="file-75851"><source media="(min-width:
72rem)"><figcaption><small><span></span></small></figcaption></figure>
<p>By implicitly authorizing the Honduras security
deals, the US “deputized” Israel to gallop into the
region and whip up a posse of right-wing proxy
reinforcements in Central America that the US could
count on when needed.</p>
<p>By December 2017, massive social upheaval rocked
Honduras amidst a transparently <a
href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/26/incumbent_honduras_president_declares_victory_in">fraudulent</a>
election in which the electoral commission, controlled
by the incumbent president, allowed too many <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/22/us-recognizes-re-election-of-honduras-president-despite-calls-for-a-new-vote">“irregularities”</a>,
according to the conservative and usually passive
Organization of American States in its ignored call
for a new election. Facing international scandal over
the election results, both the US and Israel quickly
congratulated the Hernández administration on its new
lease over the country.</p>
<p>The saga continued just days later as an opportunity
presented itself for Honduras to return the favor to
its US and Israeli patrons. President Trump’s pledge
to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
elicited international condemnation, but not from
Honduras.</p>
<p>Now that Israel had stepped into the arms breach left
by the Obama administration, Washington and Tel Aviv
could both count on Honduras – and neighboring
Guatemala, as their other faithful right-wing ally in
the region – to join the isolated US-Israeli caucus at
the UN. A toothless UN General Assembly <a
href="https://undocs.org/A/RES/ES-10/19">vote</a>
decreed the embassy move illegitimate, in line with
decades of past resolutions.</p>
<p>By balking at the UN resolution, Guatemala and
Honduras departed from a long-held international
consensus over the status of Jerusalem. Investigative
journalist Allan Nairn has noted how <a
href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/26/incumbent_honduras_president_declares_victory_in">Honduras
jettisoned</a> its own past voting pattern, paving
the way to a modern “arms diplomacy” – a phrase coined
by political scientist Aaron S. Klieman in his 1985
book, <em>Israel’s Global Reach: Arms Sales as
Diplomacy.</em></p>
<h2>A history of right-wing arms dealing</h2>
<p>Israel’s deepening global pariah status between 1967
and 1982 – pockmarked by habitual regional aggressions
which preceded multiple illegal occupations from Gaza
to Lebanon and unlawful annexations of East Jerusalem
and the Golan Heights – necessitated seeking out other
pariahs with which to do business. As Michael Shur,
director of the state-owned Israeli Military Industry
(Ta’as) weapons manufacturer, remarked in 1983, the
“welfare of our people and the state supersedes all
other considerations,” adding, “If the state has
decided in favor of export, my conscience is clear.”</p>
<p>The logic of Israeli arms transfers to other world
outcasts was obvious. Tom Buckley of <em>The New York
Times</em> asked Shmuel Mirom, an Israeli embassy
official, why Israel was willing to sell arms to
Guatemala during the purported US arms embargo then in
place in spite of what Amnesty International <a
href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1981/03/19/guatemala-a-government-program-of-political-murder/">called</a>
President Fernando Romeo Lucas García’s “government
program of political murder.” Mirom replied: “We would
rather sell them toys, I assure you, but it is weapons
that they want to buy, and we have to keep making
weapons to remain an efficient source of supply for
our own army.”</p>
<p>Yohanah Ramati’s estimation, put <a
href="https://www.merip.org/mer/mer140/israel-guatemala#_1_">bluntly</a>
in 1985 when she spoke as a former member of the
Israeli parliament’s foreign relations committee,
further clarified Israel’s position: “Israel is a
pariah state. When people ask us for something, we
cannot afford to ask questions about ideology. The
only type of regime that Israel would not aid would be
one that is anti-American. Also, if we can aid a
country that it may be inconvenient for the US to
help, we would be cutting off our nose to spite our
face not to.”</p>
<p>The feeling was mutual, as a Guatemala City political
and business leader observed: “We are isolated
internationally. The only friend we have left in the
world is Israel.”</p>
<p>This “friendship” with Guatemala was the single
biggest reason why the Israeli arms trade in Central
America enjoyed a golden age after receiving a <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-shadowy-role-guatemalas-dirty-war/19286">green
light</a> from the US. The <a
href="https://nacla.org/article/israeli-connection-not-just-guns-guatemala">Israel-Guatemala</a>
relationship thrived so much that Israel eventually
planned to set up Guatemala’s very own munitions
factory to mass produce Israeli guns and armaments,
even Guatemalan-model combat tanks.</p>
<p>Guatemala wasn’t Israel’s only beneficiary, or ally,
in the region. Although mainstream US media have
studiously avoided pulling from their vast (yet, at
the time, underreported) historical archives of
Israeli involvement in Central America, the countries
themselves can’t hide the record.</p>
<p>Honduras, for its part, received a transfer of
Israeli fighter jets on top of its receipt of Israeli
small arms, artillery, ammunition, transport aircraft
and reconnaissance aircraft. All this came in while
Honduras was both collaborating with Salvadoran state
counterinsurgency efforts and providing the largest
base of operations for the US war of aggression
against Sandinista-led Nicaragua.</p>
<p>At that time, Israel provided El Salvador with
approximately 83 percent of the arms (including <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/09/world/salvador-officer-said-to-have-told-of-napalm-use.html">napalm</a>)
the state used against the Salvadoran population
during its counterinsurgency wars between 1980-1992
that <a
href="https://nacla.org/blog/2016/05/24/migration-reparations">killed</a>
more than 75,000 civilians.</p>
<p>Costa Rica, too, has its own past of Israeli state
security aid (arms and training of police forces
despite having no military), including a tristate
US-Israel-Costa Rica settler-colonist-modeled “land
development” project in which it militarized its
border with Nicaragua during US-sponsored state terror
and aggression there.</p>
<p>Although Israeli military export sales are
underreported for this period, political economist <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/shir-hever">Shir Hever</a> and
other experts estimate that Israel’s global arms sales
were then a “significant” part of Israel’s industrial
sector. By the mid-1980s, Latin America amounted to
half of all Israel’s known global arms sales.</p>
<p>In recent years, Israel’s Latin American arms market
consistently accounts for a sizable 18 percent of
Israeli arms sales worldwide, in terms of major
conventional weaponry. Israel today remains a major
player in Guatemala’s <a
href="https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/system/files/publications/wp144_argueta.pdf">private
security</a> and <a
href="http://www.albedrio.org/htm/otrosdocs/comunicados/ElObservador-InformeespecialNo.14-2018.pdf">resource
extraction</a> industries.</p>
<h2>Mixed results</h2>
<p>The jockeying for diplomatic favors in exchange for
arms deals also goes back decades, as scholars Milton
Jamail and Margo Gutiérrez document in their 1986
book, <em>It’s No Secret: Israel’s Military
Involvement in Central America</em>. Guatemala, El
Salvador and Costa Rica, at times, had their
diplomatic missions based in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Guatemala, the first country to place its embassy in
Jerusalem, <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-trump-take-note-how-jerusalem-went-from-hosting-16-embassies-to-zero-1.5627682">retreated</a>
to Tel Aviv in 1980, obeying a UN dictate to withdraw
diplomatic missions after Israel enacted a “basic law”
codifying its 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem.
Guatemala’s reversal also came after Kuwait, Jordan
and Saudi Arabia threatened to boycott Guatemalan
cardamom, which then generated a revenue of some $70
million, mostly from Arab states.</p>
<p>From the 1980s through today, Israel’s “arms sales as
diplomacy” has, at best, achieved mixed results. In
October, for example, the UN General Assembly <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/palestinians-win-vote-to-chair-group-of-77-developing-countries-at-united-nations-1.6569036">elected</a>
Palestine to chair the G-77 convention of developing
nations, a title usually reserved for states. The
resolution passed despite US and Israeli opposition.
Honduras abstained and Guatemala did not bother
casting a vote.</p>
<h2>Pariahs against the world</h2>
<p>As the US has sparked a revival of 1980s-era Israeli
involvement in Central America, the region’s two
leading client states, Honduras and Guatemala, have
been cultivating right-wing domestic rule.</p>
<p>Both Guatemala and Honduras remain politically
isolated in the region and dependent on US aid. The
countries’ behavior at the UN over Jerusalem came as
leaders in both countries were seeking favor with Tel
Aviv that would, in turn, earn them goodwill in
Washington. While the US increasingly follows its own
tune in world affairs, antagonizing allies and foes
alike, the US, Israel, Guatemala and Honduras, global
pariahs, big and small, continue to stick together.</p>
<p>The latest president of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales,
whose support base includes the rightist Guatemalan
military, has been <a
href="https://progressive.org/dispatches/guatemala-president-vendetta-corruption-commission-180905/">embroiled</a>
in a corruption investigation but is eager to assure
Washington that he can tough it out while at the same
time looking to be <a
href="https://progressive.org/dispatches/republicans-fueling-assault-on-anti-corruption-Guatemala-Abbott-190117/">rewarded</a>
for moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Morales will
surely want to avoid the fate of his predecessor,
former President Otto Pérez Molina, who was forced out
of office on <a
href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2018/09/13/guatemalas-government-races-to-scrap-an-anti-corruption-commission">corruption</a>
charges (along with every single one of his ministers)
and remains incarcerated.</p>
<p>Israel’s role in the region has received scant media
scrutiny over the last 30 years, making the limited
coverage in the late 1970s and 1980s seem copious by
comparison. At that time, Israeli involvement in
Central America was underreported by generally
uncritical US media and mostly met with silence by
leftist and progressive forces – a recurring <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/opinion/sunday/martin-luther-king-palestine-israel.html">concern
slowly being broken</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, observers lamented their place in the
crossfire between armed guerrillas and state security
forces. In 1983, Guatemalan journalist Victor Perera <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5-YDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT24&ots=hGQuw-9tij&dq=%22rios+montt%22+israel&pg=PT27&hl=en#v=onepage&q=%22rios%20montt%22%20israel&f=false">asked</a>
a grave digger in Chichicastenango, who was burying a
local townsperson slain by the Guatemalan military, if
anyone had taken up arms against the state since the
killing.</p>
<p>“Even if we wanted to join the guerrillas, where
would we obtain arms?” the gravedigger asked in reply.
“In church they tell us that divine justice is on the
side of the poor, but the fact of the matter is, it is
the military who get the Israeli guns.”</p>
<p>Today’s Trump era presents an opportunity to raise
oppositional voices as a revival of 1980s-era Israeli
security and arms diplomacy deepens its shadow over
Central America and beyond to potentially greater
levels than ever before.</p>
<p>If today’s grave-digging truth tellers in the region
aren’t abandoned but supported at the source by more
solidarity efforts that started in the 1980s and
continue today, Israel may find it harder to keep its
footing in the region.</p>
<p><em>Gabriel M. Schivone is a visiting scholar at the
University of Arizona and author of the forthcoming
book</em> Making the New “Illegal”: How Decades of
US Involvement in Central America Triggered the Modern
Wave of Immigration <em>(Prometheus Books).</em></p>
<br>
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