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<font size="1"><a href="https://orinocotribune.com/new-investigation-reveals-role-of-israeli-operatives-in-colombias-political-genocide/">https://orinocotribune.com/new-investigation-reveals-role-of-israeli-operatives-in-colombias-political-genocide/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">New Investigation Reveals Role of Israeli Operatives in Colombia’s “Political Genocide”</h1>By Dan Cohen – Jun 2, 2021</div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<p><strong>Known as the “Red Dance,” the systematic murder of the
Patriotic Union remains one of the most extreme cases of political
violence in Latin America and new evidence suggests that it was
concocted by one of the most decorated spies in Israeli history.</strong></p>
<p><span>B</span>OGOTA, COLOMBIA — On April 6, 1984, a group of men
dressed in police uniforms arrived at the home of Milcíades Contento in
the town of Viotá, Colombia. Contento was a peasant, communist and
member of the Patriotic Union (UP), a newly-formed experimental
political party born out of the 1985 peace negotiations between the
conservative President Belansio Betancourt and the guerrillas of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The men seized
Contento, tied him up and dragged him away. The next day, his corpse was
found in a nearby village.</p>
<p>The murder of Milcíades Contento marked the beginning of a nearly two-decade extermination <a href="http://centromemoria.gov.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/UP-Expedientes-contra-el-olvido.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">campaign</a>. From 1984-2002, at least 4,153 UP members – <a href="http://centromemoria.gov.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/UP-Expedientes-contra-el-olvido.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">including</a> two
presidential candidates, 14 parliamentarians, 15 mayors, nine mayoral
candidates, three members of the House of Representatives and three
senators – were <a href="https://centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Todo-paso-frente-a-nuestros.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">murdered or dissapeared</a>, in what a Colombian court deemed was a “political genocide.” According to data <a href="https://corteidh.or.cr/docs/comunicados/cp_07_2021_eng.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">presented</a> to
the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the purge claimed more
than 6,000 victims through murders, disappearances, torture, forced
displacement and other human rights violations. From May 1984 to
December 2002, not a month passed without a murder or disappearance of a
UP member. In the 2002 elections that brought Álvaro Uribe to power,
the Patriotic Union had been so thoroughly wiped out that it failed to
meet the electoral threshold and the government removed the party’s
legal status.</p>
<p>According to a recent investigation by renowned Colombian journalist
Alberto Donadio, the extermination of the Patriotic Union was devised by
Betancourt’s successor, President Virgilio Barco Vargas, implementing a
plan concocted by of one of the most decorated spies in Israeli
history, Rafael ‘Rafi’ Eitan.</p>
<p>The revelations underscore the pivotal relationship that has
developed between Israel and Colombia – the United States’ respective
top allies in the Middle East and Latin America. Both countries are
testing grounds for military weapons and strategies that have long been
exported around the world. Following the success of the U.S.
government’s Plan Colombia in debilitating the FARC guerrilla movement,
it has been hailed as an exportable counterinsurgency model to be
applied from <a href="https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/more-than-a-mexican-problem-how-the-us-can-adapt-plan-colombia-to-mexico" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mexico</a> to <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/03/a-plan-colombia-for-afghanistan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Afghanistan</a>.
Israel, for its part, maintains the world’s largest repression- and
weapons-testing laboratories in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip,
where it has a captive population of several millions Palestinians.</p>
<p>Through the presence of Rafi Eitan in Colombia, the burgeoning
alliance of junior partners of the U.S. empire deepened. Despite a
series of scandals, the Israel-Colombia relationship has only grown
stronger over the years. Under President Iván Duque, the two countries
have renewed ties and Israeli military personnel have trained their
Colombian counterparts in “counter-terrorism.”</p>
<p>Yet the systematic murder of the UP remains one of the most extreme
cases of political violence in Latin America. The scale of killing is
especially striking because, unlike many of the bloodiest U.S.-backed
regimes of the 1980s, Colombia never became a dictatorship. The killing
of the UP – known among its perpetrators as <a href="https://youtu.be/AMQng34vHJc" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>El Baile Rojo</i></a> (The Red Dance) – took place in an ostensible “democracy.”</p>
<p><strong>‘All intelligence work is a partnership with crime’</strong><br>
Involved in Israeli espionage since the estalbishment of the state,
Eitan is primarily remembered for capturing the Nazi war criminal Adolf
Eichmann in Argentina. However, he also played a central role in several
of the Mossad’s most unsavory operations. “All intelligence work is a
partnership with crime. Morals are put aside,” Eitan once <a href="https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/the-spymasters-tale-415725" target="_blank" rel="noopener">remarked</a>.</p>
<p>In 1965, Eitan <a href="http://www.archivodelosddhh.gov.co/saia_release1/almacenamiento/ACTIVO/2017-01-26/250640/anexos/1_1485432891.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">advised</a> Moroccan King Hassan II on how to abduct and murder the leftist politician Mehdi Ben Barka.</p>
<p>During a 1983 Mossad <a href="https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/oct/12/promis-israel/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mission</a> in
the United States, he disguised himself as an assistant prosecutor in
the Israeli Ministry of Justice and met with the inventor of the PROMIS
surveillance software. After a visit to the Department of Justice,
Eitan <a href="https://www.wrmea.org/003-september/book-review-robert-maxwell-israel-s-superspy.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">obtained</a> the
software and had an Israeli working in Silicon Valley install a
backdoor in the program. Fellow Mossad agent Robert Maxwell, (father of
Ghislaine Maxwell, the notorious child sex trafficker and
partner-in-crime of Jeffrey Epstein), sold the PROMIS technology to
dozens of countries around the world, including Colombia. This gave
Israel unfettered access to intelligence the program collected in every
country using it, friend and foe alike.</p>
<img src="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AP11121217224_edited.jpg" alt="Israel spies" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="480" height="320">Eitan,
center, speaks with Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders at an
Knesset exhibition about his life. Sebastian Scheiner | AP
<div>
<p>In 1985, Eitan initiated a spying operation on Israel’s top ally, the
United States. Eitan’s team recruited Jonathan Pollard, the
Jewish-American Naval Intelligence Service analyst, who went on to
deliver 800 classified military intelligence documents relating to
military capabilities of Arab states, Pakistan and the Soviet Union.
Seymour Hersh reported that the documents on U.S. intelligence
capabilities were passed on to the Soviet Union in <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/01/18/the-traitor" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exchange</a> for release of Soviet Jewry.</p>
<p>According to a declassified CIA damage <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=7332518-National-Security-Archive-Doc-13b-Foreign-Denial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">assessment</a>,
Eitan urged Pollard to obtain material on signals intelligence and
“dirt on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify
Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States,
and any information on U.S. intelligence operations targeted against
Israel.” According to a court <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=7332512-National-Security-Archive-Doc-08b-Defendant" target="_blank" rel="noopener">document</a>,
Pollard refused some of Eitan’s requests “because he suspected that
Eitan would use such studies for improper political blackmail.”</p>
<p>The discovery of the spying operation landed Pollard in prison. U.S. federal prosecutors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/05/us/darker-side-of-us-israeli-ties-revealed-israeli-in-case-few-facts-known.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">named</a>Eitan
as one of four co-conspirators but declined to file charges. With Eitan
at the center of a national embarrassment, he returned to Israel, never
to set foot again in the U.S.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Eitan’s elite status ensured he landed in a comfortable
position. In the 1970s, he had served as deputy to Ariel Sharon, then
national security advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Sharon, then a
general in the army, arranged for Eitan to be appointed as president of
Israel Chemicals, the largest state-owned company in the country. This
new position left Eitan with ample free time to leverage his experience
in black ops into a position as a clandestine national security adviser
to Colombia’s president, Virgilio Barco Vargas. With the Patriotic Union
beginning to coalesce into a formidable political party, Barco looked
for any way to stop them. And Eitan’s lifetime of experience waging war
against the Palestinian peasant population made him the perfect man for
the job.</p>
<p><strong>Eitan goes to Colombia</strong><br>
In 1985, Colombian President Belisario Betancourt and the FARC rebels
negotiated a peace accord to end nearly three decades of armed conflict.
The agreement formalized the creation of the Patriotic Union and saw
ex-guerrillas join with communists, trade unionists, communal action
boards and leftwing intellectuals to form a party that would integrate
the FARC into the electoral political system. As negotiations were
underway, Patriotic Union members were being killed. In May 1986,
Liberal Party leader Virgilio Barco won the presidency. Shortly after he
took office, the pace of assassinations of UP members skyrocketed. A
whopping 400 members were assassinated in the first 14 months of his
term.</p>
<p>According to an <a href="https://losdanieles.com/columnista-invitado/virgilio-barco-y-el-exterminio-de-la-up/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">investigation</a> by
Donadio, Barco secretly brought the veteran Mossad agent Rafi Eitan to
Colombia on August 7, 1986, seeking advice on how to defeat the FARC.
After an initial clandestine meeting in Colombia’s presidential palace,
Eitan spent months touring the country with Colombian advisors, secretly
funded by the Colombian energy giant Ecopetrol.</p>
<p>During the second meeting, President Barco explained Eitan’s
recommendation to Secretary General Germán Montoya and a figure from the
high military command present. Eitan even offered to preside over the
killings himself in exchange for another honorarium, but the military
commander rejected his offer, insisting that an all-Colombian force
carry it out</p>
<p>For decades, Eitan’s role in the Colombian genocide sat in plain
sight, even as his presence flew under the media’s radar. The February
1, 1987 edition of the Colombian newspaper <i>El Espectador</i> featured a buried <a href="http://www.archivodelosddhh.gov.co/saia_release1/almacenamiento/ACTIVO/2017-01-26/250640/anexos/1_1485432891.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> on
the hiring of Eitan, noting he was brought in for his expertise in
“counterinsurgency.” In 1989, veteran journalists Yossi Melman and Dan
Raviv <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1989/09/03/israeli-consultants-should-be-more-careful/721160fa-00df-4d24-9657-c7468617f82c/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> in <i>The Washington Post</i> that the Israeli had been hired as a national security advisor to Colombia’s government.</p>
<img src="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Screenshot-1_edited.jpg" alt="Colombia Paramilitaries Israel" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="480" height="273">A now-buried report from the Feb, 1987 edition of the Spanish language El Espectador on the hiring of Eitan
<p>When Donadio began searching for documentation of Eitan’s role, he <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/un-cazador-de-nazis-contratado-por-el-presidente-virgilio-barco/&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1618439433413000&usg=AOvVaw28fEr-P200lIQrw9mBJOxc/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> a
memo and contract draft with an Israeli security firm called “Ktalav
Promotion and Investment Ltd” in the files of Barco’s legal secretary,
Fernán Bejarano Arias, who is today the vice president of legal affairs
at Ecopetrol. The document valued the deal at almost $1 million,
including a fee of $535,714, which covered “up to 50 tickets for air
transport purposes, round trip, on the Tel Aviv-Bogotá route,” amnog
other expenses. The memo indicates that portions of the contract were
agreed upon with the lawyer Ernesto Villamizar Cajiao.</p>
<p><a href="https://orinocotribune.com/colombia-the-government-murders-with-impunity-because-the-us-empire-is-behind-it/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED CONTENT: Colombia: “The Government Murders with Impunity Because the US Empire is Behind it.”</a></p>
<p>When Donadio <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/el-espia-rafi-eitan-habria-venido-a-proteger-al-presidente-virgilio-barco/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">contacted</a> Villamizar
and asked him about the contract with KPI, though not mentioning the
Mossad spy’s name, Villamizar answered him with a question. “Rafi
Eitan?”</p>
<p>While Eitan sought to keep his activities in Colombia discreet, a <a href="https://www.makorrishon.co.il/magazine/262065/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">profile</a> in the Israeli magazine <i>Makor Rishon</i> revealed
that he played a central role in the March 1989 purchase of 20 Israeli
Kfir fighter jets. Eitan “organized a visit by top army brass from
Colombia – a visit which was followed by the Colombians ordering many
things from the [Israeli] air force, and it brought Israel much benefit –
but he himself was not permitted to participate in the meeting.”
Following the purchase, Colombia <a href="https://www.fac.mil.co/milestones-palanquero-history" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sent</a> several pilots to Israel for training. The jets were <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israels-kfir-jets-going-up-against-swedens-saab-jets-595613" target="_blank" rel="noopener">flown</a> in numerous operations against the FARC over three subsequent decades.</p>
<p><strong>Yair Klein arrives in Colombia</strong><br>
For Colombians, a different Israeli is well-known for his role in the
death squad rampages that have plagued the country since the 1980s.
While Eitan was advising President Barco, an Israeli mercenary named
Yair Klein arrived in Colombia and began <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-08-30-mn-1305-story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">training</a> narco-paramilitaries in how to defeat the FARC insurgency.</p>
<p>A retired military officer, Klein started a mercenary firm called Hod
Hahanit (Spearhead) in 1984, drawing from the pools of former Israeli
police and special operations units.</p>
<img src="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/18484-001-26_edited.jpg" alt="Israel spies" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="480" height="331">Yair Klein appears in n Israeli court in 1989. Rachamim Shaul | The National Library of Israel
</div>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/All-Clouded-Desire-International-Comparative/dp/0275983307" target="_blank" rel="noopener">book</a> <i>All Is Clouded by Desire: Global Banking, Money Laundering, and International Organized Crime</i>,
the mercenary outfit struck its first deal amid the civil war in
Lebanon, supplying the notoriously brutal Christian Phalangist militias –
the same force that massacred between 800 and 3,500 Palestinian
refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps under direct Israeli military
supervision in September 1982.</p>
<div>
<p>In 1987, Klein landed in Colombia to meet with Israeli Lieutenant
Colonel Yithzakh Shoshani and Arik Afek, both of whom had established
themselves years before with lucrative deals selling military equipment
in Colombia. Shoshani subsequently <a href="https://www.jta.org/1989/08/30/archive/behind-the-headlines-israeli-firms-activities-in-colombia-raise-questions-about-military-ties" target="_blank" rel="noopener">became</a> the main conduit between Klein and his Colombian customers.</p>
<p>In 1990, Afek’s decomposing body was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/26/us/israeli-tied-to-suspect-colonel-is-discovered-slain-in-miami.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> with
multiple gunshot wounds in the trunk of a car at Miami International
Airport after a pedestrian noticed the odor. He was reportedly being
investigated by the CIA and was wanted by Colombian authorities.</p>
<p>Klein told me in a telephone interview that he was working through
the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the state-owned weapons
manufacturer, Israel Military Industries (IMI), which had a contract
with a Colombian data surveillance company obtained through Colombia’s
Ministry of Defense. He said he was originally hired to provide security
for the banana-growing operations in the region of Uraba, where the
American fruit company Chiquita had <a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/chiquita-made-killing-colombias-civil-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">paid</a>millions of dollars to Colombian death squads.</p>
<p>Shoshani, he explained, worked for a company called AMKAN, which is a
subsidiary of IMI. The Colombian Federation of Cattlemen, long known
for its <a href="https://pares.com.co/2020/03/03/fedegan-una-historia-de-violencia-y-depredacion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ties</a> to paramilitaires, contacted Shoshani to have Eitan train a force to fight guerrillas.</p>
<p>With Shoshani guiding him, Klein returned to Israel in 1988 and met
with top paramilitary and military figures as well as wealthy
businessmen. All of this, Klein assured me, was done with the full
knowledge of the Israeli government. “You can’t do anything without
permission from the Ministry of Defense,” he said.</p>
<p>Klein’s statement upends the claim of then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who <a href="https://www.jta.org/1989/08/31/archive/israeli-firm-was-denied-license-and-warned-to-get-out-of-colombia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> the <i>Jewish Telegraphic Agency</i> that the Israeli Defense Ministry had denied Klein’s company a license and warned him to leave the country.</p>
<p><strong>Death squad leader: ‘I learned an infinity of themes in Israel’</strong><br>
Klein held three training sessions, each for around 30 people. Assisting
him were three trainers, all of whom were colonels in the Israeli army:
Tzadaka Abraham, Teddy Melnik and Amatzia Shuali.</p>
<p>Klein trained brothers Carlos and Fidel Castaño, the squad leaders
who would go on to form the notoriously violent United Self-Defense
Forces, known in Spanish by its acronym, AUC. Under the patronage of
wealthy landowners, drug lords, ranchers, politicians and the Colombian
military, the AUC committed bloodcurdling massacres all over the
country, even using <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/04/21/colombian-massacre-large-brutal/0ea61a75-0e54-4c47-89a0-f1e139597f3f/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">chainsaws</a> to murder and dismember peasants, all aimed at terrorizing communities into fleeing from their land. The United Nations <a href="https://thebogotapost.com/its-a-matter-of-perception/15261/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimated</a> in 2016 that the AUC was responsible for 80% of the deaths in the conflict.</p>
<p>Eventually Carlos Castaño was killed, allegedly by his brother
Vicente, another powerful paramilitary leader. And, though the AUC
officially demobilized in 2007, the paramilitaries soon enough were
reconfigured under various banners and new formations, remaining closely
linked to the state and business interests.</p>
<img src="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AP646725908960_edited.jpg" alt="Colombia Paramilitaries Israel" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="480" height="328">Members of the Isaeli-trained AUC attend a 2005 demobilization ceremony in Cristales, Colombia. Luis Benavides | AP
</div>
<div>
<p>But Israel’s influence in Colombia’s death squads is not only through
Klein’s training. In his autobiography, AUC founder Carlos Castaño <a href="https://larrlasa.org/articles/10.25222/larr.111/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> that
he had studied from 1983-1984 in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and in
Israeli military schools. Castaño described the training in advanced
weaponry and tactics he received that would become the basis of
Colombian paramiltarism’s war against farmers:</p>
<p>I received instruction in urban strategies, how to protect oneself,
how to kill someone or what to do when someone is trying to kill you.
…We learned how to stop an armored car and use fragmentation grenades to
enter a target. We practiced with multiple grenade launchers, and
learned how to make accurate shots with RPG-7s, or shoot a cannon shell
through a window.”</p>
<p>Castaño also “received lectures on how the world arms business operates, and how to buy arms.”</p>
<p>In addition to the military training he received, Castaño credits his
time in Israel with revolutionizing his entire worldview. During that
period, the soon-to-be mass-murderer became an ardent admirer of Zionism
and became convinced it was possible to stamp out the insurgency at
home in Colombia:</p>
<p>I admire the Jews for their bravery in confronting anti-Semitism,
their strategy for survival in the diaspora, the surety of their
Zionism, their mysticism, their religion, and above all for their
nationalism… I learned an infinity of themes in Israel and [to] that
country I owe a part of my culture, my achievements both human and
military, and while I repeat myself, I did not learn only about military
training in Israel.</p>
<p>It was there that I became convinced that it was possible to defeat
the guerrillas in Colombia. I began to see how a people could defend
itself from the whole world. I understood how to get someone involved
who had something to lose in a war, by making such a person the enemy of
my enemies. In fact, the idea of “autodefensa” [self-defense] weapons I
copied from the Israelis; every citizen of that country is a potential
soldier.”</p>
<p>Klein also <a href="https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/yair-klein-cuenta-su-historia/255142-3/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trained</a> Jaime
Eduardo Rueda Rocha, who in 1989 assassinated Liberal Party
presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, the overwhelming favorite to
win the upcoming election. Not only had Klein trained the killer, but
the weapon Rueda used was part of a shipment Klein orchestrated of 500
Israeli-manufactured machine guns from Miami to the Medellin drug
cartel, according to a 1989 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=R_plAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=nbc+news+yair+klein&source=bl&ots=-wYIN3i54V&sig=ACfU3U0WdQp373757RMbJfZtIDX7hP0vLw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiVkv66paTvAhUIMlkFHRf9Dcs4ChDoATAOegQIDxAD#v=onepage&q=nbc%20news%20yair%20klein&f=false" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a>.
(In 2016, Miguel Alfredo Maza Márquez, head of Colombia’s then
Administrative Department of Security (DAS), was convincted of
participation in the plot to murder Galán and sentenced to 30 years in
prison. He has since <a href="https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/la-verdad-del-general-miguel-maza-marquez/643963/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">testified</a> that top-ranking members of the military plotted Galan’s assassiation.)</p>
<p>As the revelations that a military reserve officer had been training
death squads created an international scandal, the Israeli government
filed charges, convicting Klein of illegally exporting weapons and
military expertise.</p>
<p>In 2001, the Colombian government tried Klein in absentia, sentencing
him to eleven years in prison. In 2007, Klein was arrested in Moscow on
a warrant issued by Interpol, and spent three years in prison. Colombia
sought his extradition, but in November 2010 the European Court of
Human Rights ruled that Colombia could not guarantee his physical
safety. The Russian government complied with the ECHR’s ruling and
released Klein, allowing him to return to Israel. Colombia has since
requested his extradition, but the Israeli government has refused.</p>
<p><a href="https://orinocotribune.com/mobilizations-in-colombia-persevere-after-government-continues-militarization/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED CONTENT:Mobilizations in Colombia Persevere After Government Continues Militarization</a></p>
<p>Klein’s company, Hod Hahanit, remains <a href="https://441il.com/listco_res/%D7%97%D7%95%D7%93+%D7%94%D7%97%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%AA+%D7%91%D7%99%D7%98%D7%97%D7%95%D7%9F+%D7%91%D7%A2%22%D7%9E/HOD+HAHANIT+SECURITY+LTD/%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8+%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94+%D7%94%D7%94%D7%A1%D7%AA%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA+22+60200+/513030619.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">active</a> to this day.</p>
<p><strong>A joint effort?<br>
</strong>While Donadio’s groundbreaking investigation has created a
controversy in Colombia, it does not answer whether Rafi Eitan and Yair
Klein’s simultaneous and respective operations advising the government
and death squads were a joint effort or merely coincidental.</p>
<p>For his part, the lawyer Ernesto Villamizar <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/el-espia-rafi-eitan-habria-venido-a-proteger-al-presidente-virgilio-barco/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Donadio that Eitan and Klein had nothing to do with each other.</p>
<p>Klein corroborated his claim, saying that he was unaware of any of Eitan’s activities in Colombia.</p>
<p>However, an <i>AP </i>article references an Israeli media report that
Rafi Eitan (spelled Eytan in the article) was in Colombia at the same
time as Klein and left days before the gunman armed and trained by Klein
murdered presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán:</p>
<p>It [the media report] said Rafael Eytan, an Israeli counterterrorism
expert, denied suggestions that he was a consultant to Israeli companies
operating in Colombia and said he had cut all business ties to that
country.</p>
<p>According to the report, Eytan confirmed he flew to Colombia a week ago for private reasons.</p><p>Beyond the vague suggestion of that article, there is no evidence of a
connection between Eitan and Klein. In some ways, it is even more
remarkable that two Israelis advising Colombian government in
mass-murder of its political opponents were operating independent from
and unbeknownst to each other.</p>
<p><strong>Israel-Colombia relations cool</strong><br>
After the fallout of Israelis training Colombian paramilitaries, the
relationship between the two top U.S. allies cooled, according to U.S.
diplomatic <a href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09BOGOTA3483_a.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cables</a> released by WikiLeaks. But as Plan Colombia was implemented, Israel and Colombia once again ramped up collaboration.</p>
<p>In December 2006, Colombia’s Ministry of Defense hired another
private Israeli security company known as Global CST to “help the GOC
[Government of Colombia] conduct a strategic assessment of the internal
conflict.” Global CST is headed by <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/netanyahu-openly-boasts-israels-war-africans/19051" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Israel Ziv</a>,
a career officer who, like Yair Klein, leveraged his military
experience into a profitable career advising and training despots around
the world.</p>
<p>“General Ziv was a personal acquaintance of then-Minister of Defense
Juan Manuel Santos,” the cable notes. William Brownfield, then U.S.
ambassador to Colombia commented that “Ziv worked his way into the
confidence of former Defense Minister Santos by promising a cheaper
version of USG [United States government] assistance without our strings
attached.”</p>
<p>Under Santos, Colombia sought to purchase Israel’s Hermes-450, a
drone under development in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, and in wars against neighboring Lebanon.</p>
<p>However, according to the diplomatic cable, Tel Aviv-Bogota relations
again soured after it emerged that Global CST interpreter and
Argentine-born Israeli national Shai Killman “had made copies of
classified Colombian Defense Ministry documents in an unsuccessful
attempt to sell them to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.”
These documents contained “high value target (HVT) database information”
– a reference to the FARC leadership the CIA <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/world/americas/colombia-cocaine-human-rights.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">assisted</a> the Colombian government in assassinating. The resulting fallout, combined with <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/1.4999020" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pressure</a> from the U.S., compelled Colombia to cancel the contract to buy Israeli drones.</p>
<p>Despite the strains in the decades-old relationship, the two
countries have maintained strong ties. In 2016, then-Israeli Ambassador
to Colombia Marco Sermoneta <a href="https://caracol.com.co/radio/2016/09/09/internacional/1473437428_779249.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">boasted</a> that Colombia is the top recipient of Israeli aid.</p>
<p>The following year, as the extermination of social leaders and
ex-combatants began, Israeli military advisors visited Colombian
military bases to give training courses in “security.”</p>
<p><strong>Genocide redux</strong><br>
President Ivan Duque, the handpicked successor of far-right former
President Álvaro Uribe, has worked assiduously to shore up Colombia’s
ties with Israel. In March 2020, he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDoa-BDQ5yc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">appeared</a> at
the American Israel Political Action Conference, boasting about his
ties with Israel. Months later, Duque and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu <a href="https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/event_colombia100820" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> the launch of the Israel-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Duque has undermined and attacked the landmark 2016 peace
accord at every turn, while turning a blind eye to the mass-murder of
demobilized FARC guerrillas, trade unionists, human rights defenders,
environmental activists and social leaders – a scenario eerily
reminiscent of the political genocide of the Patriotic Union. Rather
than a veteran spy advising the Colombian government, Israel now has an
official presence. In January 2020, Israeli military Brigadier General
Dan Glodfus <a href="https://cgfm.mil.co/es/blog/ejercito-de-israel-destaca-entrenamiento-militar-colombiano" target="_blank" rel="noopener">visited</a> a Colombian military base to reinforce ties between the two countries. Amid a spate of massacres in September 2020, Israel <a href="https://www.cgfm.mil.co/en/blog/colombia-and-israel-strengthen-ties-training-and-military-cooperation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dispatched</a> 10 instructors to train Colombian Special Forces in “counter-terrorism.”</p>
<p>With the recent <a href="https://www.rcnradio.com/colombia/caribe/asesinan-en-santa-marta-uno-de-los-fundadores-de-la-union-patriotica" target="_blank" rel="noopener">assassination</a> of
Francisco Giacometto Gómez, an elder activist and founding member of
the Patriotic Union, it seems that the campaign against the UP and the
current slaughter are indistinguishable.</p></div><div id="gmail-mab-2565526070"><div>
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</p><h5>
<span>
Dan Cohen </span>
</h5>
<div>
<p>Dan Cohen is a journalist and co-producer of the award-winning
documentary, Killing Gaza. He has produced widely distributed video
reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine, Latin
America, the US-Mexico border and Washington DC. Follow him on Twitter
at @DanCohen3000.</p>
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