Guerrilla History - "Israel" and Its Role in Latin America w/ Alexander Aviña

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring back the official unofficial fourth member of the hosting panel, Alexander Aviña!  Here we discuss Alex's freshly released article at Foreign Exchanges titled A Future of Walls or Liberation, which examines some of the role and relationships between "Israel" and the countries and governments in Latin America.  This is a really interesting piece of the Zioimperialist story, and one which is frankly very under-discussed.  Tune in, learn something, and share with others who you think would also benefit from hearing this history! Alexander Aviña is associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University and author of Specters of Revolution: Peasant Guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside. Alex's website is available at alexanderavina.com, and he can be followed on twitter @Alexander_Avina Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory                               

You remember Dinn-Vin-Bin-Bin-Brew? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckiemacki, joined as usual by my two co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Henry. It's wonderful to be with you. Nice to see you as well. Also joined, as usual, by Brett O'Shea, who of course is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-hosts of the Red Menace podcast.

Hello, Brett. How are you doing? I'm doing very good. I'm very happy to have our de facto fourth host on. Alex is the quintessential gorilla historian, so we're happy to have him back. Yeah, he's very much the fourth musketeer of this operation. And so we are going to be looking forward to this conversation, as we always do when we have Alex. But before I introduce him, I just want to remind the listeners that you can help support the show

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individually by following guerrilla underscore pod on Twitter. Again, that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-Skore pod. So now to dive into the conversation with, as we said, the fourth musketeer Alex Avenia, returning guest historian and one of our best friends. Hello, Alex. It's nice to have you back on the show.

Thanks so much, guys. I'm just planning on moving in. So just get that four spot for me. So, but thank you. It's always a lot of fun to come back and chat with you guys. There's always space for you, you know, just clear the couch. And anyway, we're going to be talking about a forthcoming article that you've written, Alex, titled A Future of Walls or Liberation, which is looking at the intersection of Israel,

the so-called state of Israel, and Latin America. I think that this is a topic that people may stumble across once in a while, like sometimes we'll see some of the things that are going on in El Salvador and people will say, well, you know, it's not a surprise that these sorts of tactics are being carried out, considering that they've had interfaces with the Israeli security state or Guatemala comes up sometimes in this context, sometimes Pinochet is brought up in this context. But I feel like most listeners are not going to be intimately aware of those connections between Israel and Latin America. So before we start asking about specific points of this article,

can you just give like the overall sweep of what you're, the point of this article is talk a little bit about kind of those broad connections between Israel and Latin America broadly. And then we'll dive in individually, perhaps on some case by case bases within the article after that. Sure. So I think there's two overarching themes or top. that they got me into this topic to begin with. The first is when I was doing research for my

first book and current book project that we discussed earlier this year on the Dirty War in Mexico and me stumbling across how the Mexican Air Force and Mexican military used, Israeli-made airplanes in the 1970s to conduct these death flights, the dumping of suspected guerrillas or just political dissidents into the Pacific Ocean. off the coast of the southern states of Guerrero, in Oaxaca. So that really got me, that was my entry point to think about why the Mexican military had these Arava, Israeli-made airplanes during the 1970s. And that just led me into this whole world of Israeli arms and counter-insurgency techniques

that the Israeli state had commodified and started to sell, you know, especially in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. The second, I think, the main reason why I'm still fascinated by this topic, you know, obviously in addition to what's been going on, the horrific things that have been going on in Gaza's in the last 50 plus days,

is that I live in Arizona and, you know, not too far south from here. We have these fixed surveillance towers on the Arizona-Mexico border that are made by Elbit, which is the largest Israeli defense contracting

defense company, I think, right now. There's like 50 or so of these fixed surveillance towers at Elbit, one through a contract with the U.S. federal government in the early 2010s. And leading some journalists, particularly folks, really good folks who work on the Arizona and Mexico border like Todd Miller or Melissa Belboske, who run this really good outfit called The Border Chronicle, and other journalists who have talked about how the Arizona Mexico border is actually the Palestine, Mexico border because the technology and the wall technology that we're seeing, not just in Arizona, but throughout much of the southern

border with Mexico. A lot of that is coming from Israeli companies. And where are these Israeli companies getting that tech? Where are they getting the necessary information and experience with walls and surveillance? Well, they're getting it from Gaza and they're getting it from the West Bank, right? So even though we are, I am personally, you know, thousands of miles away from Palestine, it's actually a lot closer to us because the U.S.-Mexico border, it heavily depends on Israeli technology that has been developed through its brutal occupation, colonial occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. So that led me to think about how, okay, how I'm a historian of Latin America, like, how can I put like a short primer together that will explain

the broader history of the Israel using, quote-unquote, battle-tested, occupation, colonial tested military technologies, and then commodifying and packaging and selling that around the world, but particularly in Latin America during the 1970s, 1980s. And a couple years ago, I wrote a piece for Louis Alde and liberated text. I reviewed a book that treated this topic, and that just got me, you know, more and more interested in the topic. And what emerges is that during the 1970s and 1980s, Israel is doing a lot of the dirty work that the U.S. state could not do in Latin America, particularly in Central America. So in the 70s and 80s, these genocidal death squad regimes are committing

such horrible atrocities against their own people that it even moved the U.S. Congress to past limitations on whether the U.S. could provide military aid or other forms of aid to these countries. And in that, that opened a marketing, a commercial opportunity for the Israeli military industrial complex to step in and to do essentially the work of the U.S. as a sort of proxy state. Well, it's a bit more complicated in that, but essentially that's what they do. And they start arming these regimes in places like Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua before the Sandinista revolution and what we see in the 70s and 80s in Latin America

is that Israel is really the seen as like a leading or the leading counterinsurgent entity and provider of arms and technologies for these desquad regimes that are massacring their own people and in the case of Guatemala committed a genocide against more than 100,000 of its mine inhabitants. And this is something that's continued, right? We can talk about.

I highly recommend listeners check out Anthony Lowenstein's book called The Palestine Laboratory where the first chapter deals with a lot of the stuff that I write about in this article, but he takes it to the president. And he has this really striking line where he says that, quote, Israel's Palestine Laboratory thrives on global disruption and violence. Like the more global disruption, the more violence, the more dispossession and displacement that occurs around the world, the better it is for the Israeli military industrial complex. that now, as we see what was going on now, right?

Like what's going on now, what they're doing to Gaza, they're developing new technologies that then they will be able to sell to regimes around the world and they'll be able to pitch it as they have been for decades as quote unquote battle tested or field tested. So yeah, so I think,

so I highly recommend that book because he does an excellent job of kind of bringing it to the president and he has this quote from Benjamin Nesignahu where the quote is, they, the world, will become more like us, then we will become like them.

So in a moment where you see the rise of ethno-nationalism, where you see the rise of fascism around the world, like this is actually a great business opportunity for the Israeli military industrial complex. And it's all built upon what Loewenstein talks about as a Palestine laboratory, right? Palestinians and Palestine being used as a military and counterinsurgent laboratory so then they can turn around

on the global arms market and make a ton of profit. And per capita now, Israel is the world's largest provider of weapons throughout the world. That's a fantastic scope and sweep of the key sorts of points. One thing I did want to bring up, Alex, about this way in which the battle tested, you know, Israel's unique position gives it this marketing of weapons systems and surveillance, technologies, and techniques of repression, basically, for a global market. market. But I'm wondering also if you think that what happened on October 7th in some ways undermines perhaps, you're making the point that what they're doing now, they will try and

market. But in some ways, all they've really been able to demonstrate is the ability to kill a lot of civilians, which of course may be useful to certain parties. I mean, you know, But in terms of actual counterinsurgency, the quality of surveillance and control along a border fence, you know, the breakthrough on October 7th, in some ways, this is a point we've talked about in a couple of the different episodes that we've had since October 7th is that it might potentially affect, you know, this image of Israeli military invulnerability and the model that they've had since October 7th is that it might potentially affect, you know, this image of Israeli military invulnerability and the model that they have been trying to market of being able to wall off hostile populations, restive populations that are seen as problematic, took a big, you know, a blow in some ways that you couldn't just use technology to create a kind of island and a wasis of European, you know, consumer culture with no consequences and no costs. And so I'm wondering what you think about, about that dimension.

of it, even as they may, you know, be using this current moment to test out new technologies and so on that they hope to perhaps market in the future, is that there is also a kind of dialectic going on, you know, that's being waged. What thoughts do you have about that? Well, I think you're correct. And I think, I mean, if October 7 caused a loss of profits and influence in this military industrial complex. I mean, that'd be great. O'Hala, as they say in Spanish. So, I mean, but I think that's one way to under, I've been thinking about this, right? Like one of the, like how to understand how to conceptualize like what we've witnessed in the 50 plus days, right? Like waking up every morning and then just living up about, going up on my day,

just full like rage and indignation and just sadness. Like how do you explain this bloodshed, this extermination, this genocidal violence, right? And I think maybe can I to your point, I mean, one way we can read this is that this is an attempt to reestablish what existed before October 7. Yeah. So it's not just of, you know, using this

extermination campaign against Palestinians in Gaza as a way to develop new technologies to use and test new technologies. In the piece, I referenced a tweet by the doctor who was the director of the Shepa Hospital where he talked about these like sniper drones, right? These drones that were flying around outside

the hospital and they were sniping civilians who were trying to leave the hospital or trying to move for safety. But it's also, I think, an attempt to reassert. Yeah, some deterrence. Right. They're trying to reassert like their comparative advantages that they had within this, like, in this field, right? And their, the appearance of invincibility has to be reestablished.

They're the appearance of effectiveness of, of, of walls that work, quote unquote, has to be reestablished, and perhaps that's one of the drivers for this type of horrific violence that we're seeing. Because I do think it did take a hit. But then I look at it from the perspective of, let's say, Mexico, right? Mexico was the first, the Mexican military was the first military in the world to buy the Pegasus spyware. I don't think what's going on, I don't think what happened on October 7th is going to get them to think twice about, you know, being addicted to this type of spyware that they've been using for 10 years to spy on human rights activists, on feminists, on journalists, on people who have been investigating instances of

past and present instances of state terror and crime. But I think it did take a dent. And maybe perhaps that's one of the reasons why we're seeing such like overwhelming levels of horrific genocidal violence. Yes. And also, I mean, you know, one observation I had on it is perhaps it also helps explain why the Western political and corporate elites seem to have rallied so firmly, you know, as almost as a panic that this whole model, you know, was under question and needed to be, you know, reasserted and proved. But, you know, maybe we'll come back to some of these because those relate to the big themes and consequences in the present of this excellent historical analysis that you give in this forthcoming article. I did want to take

you back to the beginnings. I was surprised to learn. that Anastasio Samosa, you know, dictator of Nicaragua, was already in the 1930s and 40s, before even Israel existed as a recognized state, was supplying weapons to Zionist militias. And you point out that actually during this time, you know, the region voted overwhelmingly for the UN partition plan. And it's, you know, interesting to think about where this fits. in Latin American history. Right now we're, you know, pink tide or second pink tide. You know, we kind of think of all of the history of these radical resistance movements, but Latin America has a long history geopolitically and internationally from, as you're documenting, even the 30s and 40s

of playing this kind of malign role in, you know, helping, you know, Zionist militias establish the state of Israel through brutality and through violence, that the rest of your article documents starting to go the other way. So, you know, what was this kind of relationship and what more can you tell us about why, for example, these kinds of right-wing dictators saw something fruitful or useful in the Zionist project and wanted to support it? No, that's a great question. I don't think I have a clear and direct answer to it. I would just say that after, I think, so Latin America wasn't exceptional in this regard, right? Especially after World War II and once you start to see the development of the

partition plan, right, like even, you know, the United States and the Soviet Union both voted for the partition plan and for the establishment of the state of Israel, right? So in that regard, Latin America is not different. I think what really surprised me, in addition to the Samosa connection, right, that he was sending weapons to these, these Zionist militias like the Ergon, is that you also had two Latin American diplomats, one from Uruguay and one from Guatemala, who were actually like instrumental in the actual partition plan. And the Guatemalan diplomat, when he visited Palestine and when he visited some of the kibbutzas, like he was really like inspired by them. He saw that as an agricultural

and political and social model that he wanted to see in his native Guatemala. And as I note in the article, unfortunately, or ironically, tragically, for the people of Guatemala, it was the military dictatorship of the late 70s and 80s, who actually ended up implementing some of these Kabit-style model villages as a form of waging brutal counterinsurgency against the country's Mayan populations. So I and it's the accounts that I've read pretty much said that if it hadn't been for the particularly the intervention and the work of the Guatemalan diplomat whose name I cannot remember now, you know, the partition plan would have perhaps failed or wouldn't have been what it ended up being in the end, right? And he was a big promoter. He was to visiting Palestine had a massive impact. And what's interesting to me is that he made a connection between what he saw on these kibbutzs. with what was then Guatemala's ongoing revolutionary process that had begun in 1944.

Like he made these like revolutionary connections between what he saw in Palestine and what he saw in his native country, which I think is really interesting. And in, you know, the first vote that they had, I think in 47 for the partition plan, I think it was only Cuba that voted against it, which is really interesting. And Cuba obviously plays a really important role in kind of helping to globalize the Palestinian struggle in the late 60s, early 70s. once the July 26th movement to Fidel Castro are in power.

A lot of this, you had pretty stalwart Latin American support, at least at the governmental support for Israel, up until, I think when you start to see a change is after the 67 war and the taking of the territories that we now refer to as the occupied territories. And then especially after 1973, but what happens between 67 and 73

is just, you know, what like Lenin's quote about like sometimes what I forget I'm gonna totally butcher right but so much happened in those six years that um yeah you know Paul Thomas Chamberlain has that book about uh the PLO and it's in and how it's placed globally uh during that time period and uh he talks about the PLO waging this like global offensive diplomatic and political um and really highlighting like what 67 was about what the treatment the colonial treatment of Palestinian communities what it looked like as it was happening in real time. And that really started to change at least public perception in much of Latin America against Israel. A lot of the goodwill that it existed before

I think started to slowly dissipate. And you're going, you know, by the early 80s, a good number of Latin American countries are hosting, you know, PLO embassies or, you know, offices. Not without contention, but at the very least they were able to establish their offices in places like Mexico City and other parts of Latin. America. So I think that the key turning point is this 67 war. And then by the 70s, once Israel starts to arm an outfit clearly, like obviously clear outfit and arm some of the worst and most horrific genocidal regimes in the history of 20th century Latin America. I mean, that also does a great deal to expose what it was doing and what its function was. And people were able to make connections,

between the settler colonialism that occurred in Palestine with the type of violence that this Israeli military industrial complex was facilitating an army, right? It became very clear that they were fighting against indigenous movements, whether it was in Guatemala or whether it was back in Palestine. Yeah, earlier you were talking about the sniper drones used by Israel. I think that's something that people really have to start thinking very critically about. I mean, they're already doing automated border policing around the Gaza wall, using this high, you know, technological apparatus to sort of impose colonial rule as very dystopian, you know, this techno-colonialist sort of experiment project that Israel is undertaking in Palestine. You also mentioned Elbit

systems. So in your article, you discuss how they're behind in the creation of the surveillance towers monitoring the Mexico-U.S. border. And of course, they're also part and parcel of the Israeli assault on Gaza and on Palestinians more broadly. We just have an incident recently where three members of Palestine Action U.S. were arrested for basically trying to disrupt Elbit systems and in the process doing some property damage. And now, you know, people are talking about facing years or decades in prison for this disruptive act against, you know, a corporation making the weapons that slaughter human beings literally showing you that

like capitalist ruling class values the property of corporation brick and mortar you know sort of locations headquarters then they do you know human life. Israel can slaughter 15,000 you know innocent human beings civilians all day killed children

and everybody can look at it on our camera nobody faces any accountability somebody goes and sprays some paint on elbit or tries to you know lock the doors or do some property damage to disrupt what they're doing and they face years and decades in prison. So it's really, really disgusting. They even marched out the anti-Semitic accusation for the people who attacked Elbit, literally attacking a corporate weapons manufacturer now in the US, mind you, is now being labeled

as anti-Semitic. So in one way, it's disgusting. It's authoritarian. It's brutal. And another way, it's also revealing of themselves. It's sort of like as they try to, you know, squash, dissident voices and actions, their mask slips and they sort of reveal themselves in an interesting way. But that's just sort of some thoughts I had based on what you were talking about earlier, just making that connection with Elbit systems. But the question I have for you is I kind of want to get deeper into Israel's role in Latin America, Central America in the 70s and 80s. We can talk about different case studies, but I'm particularly interested in how the U.S. and Israel's interests in Central America sort of, you know, come together, how they sort of work together or even

in your, in your article you discuss sometimes the U.S. pulling back from doing a certain thing because it, you know, it looks really bad if Israel will go in and do it for them. Can you kind of talk about how they tag team, work with one another during, you know, this Cold War, 70s, 80s era in Latin America? Yeah, for sure. So it's a complicated relationship. It's not as, it's not as clear cut as to say, Israel does whatever the U.S. tells it to do as a proxy state, right? It's a bit more complicated, particularly because they have different interests, that sometimes those interests will be in competition within one another.

So particularly when it comes to selling weapons, right? So there's an actual competition there. And as we know, the U.S. military industrial complex is quite tied into the U.S. government, I mean, just like anywhere else, right? So it's not like a neat proxy relationship. But one of the things that I discovered doing the research for this article and then reading and some of the stuff that I read for when I wrote the article for Louis Alde was that just the centrality of these defense companies or the disarmes companies are for the broader Israeli economy, right? Yeah, at some point in the early 80s, there's estimates to something like 15 to 20% of the entire Israel's entire industrial workforce was working for. one of these defense companies, these defense companies, whether they're private or state-linked,

they're never, quote-unquote, private, right? It's like former IDF people who found them. It's quite a permeable boundary, right? But the folks who are writing about this centrality of the arms industry to the Israeli economy in the 70s and 80s, always talk about how it was like the one profitable economic sector that the country could rely on, right? So, that drove a lot of its quote unquote Uzi diplomacy in the words of one Guatemalan journalist as it went to Central America and Latin America in the 1970s and 80s. It had to go there. It had to find markets where it could sell its goods that could help keep afloat,

one of the world's most indebted economies by the early 1980s, which was the Israeli economy. So one of the things that really stands out to me is from a political economic perspective It's that the Israeli economy depends on these companies. They still depend on to this very day. What we've seen in the last 20 years is the emergence of like cyber, right? Like the supposedly the emergence of another type of Silicon Valley and Palestine. And this is one of the reasons why Israel is like one of the leading technological innovators and practitioners of cyber surveillance and spyware and all that kind of stuff.

But in the 70s and 80s, the moments when the interest, of Israel and the U.S. converge, were those moments when the U.S. could not, it wasn't comfortable or politically useful for the U.S. to ally themselves openly and clearly with some of these horrific regimes that begin to take power. I think the first big military dictatorships that takes power in Latin America in this period is a 1964, Brazilian military dictatorship. and actually Brazil and Israel are going to have a long relationship until the Israel gets pretty pissed that Brazil allows the setting up of a PLO office in like 1980, 1990,

but they had a long fruitful relationship before that. So in Latin America, you start to see this cycle. And we talked about our episode on Cold War Latin America, right? You start to see this episode, this counter-revolutionary episode in the 60s and 70s and early 80s, where military dictatorships and authoritarian governments start to take power.

That then radicalizes popular movements. it convinces some popular movements to adopt arms struggle as the only political option to escape this type of horrific dictatorships. And in that scenario, then, Israel steps in and provides counterinsurgency. I mean, counterinsurgency broadly defined to think about weapons, to think about technologies, to think about advisors, military advisors, to think about doctrine. And it becomes very clear that in those areas where the U.S. government, where the White House is prevented from openly providing military aid

because of congressional limitations or restrictions, Israel will step in and provide the things that these dictatorships require. And there's quotes that I include in the article where you have different Israeli officials saying, let us do the dirty work, let us do what you can do. And this goes beyond Latin America, right? Israel's working with some of, they're working with South Africa, like apartheid South Africa.

This is another story that most people may know about. They're working with Mobutu and Zaire. They're working with the Duvaliers in Haiti. I mean, it's like everywhere that you have a horrific, some sort of horrific regime that is also facing a certain type of popular struggle or popular resistance, you're going to find, at the very least, Galil rifles, Uzi rifles, Arova, airplanes that are very useful because they do short landing and takeoff, so they're perfect to land in areas where you don't have like a landing strip and you're waging counter insurgency in the mountains or in

jungles or in difficult terrain. It's quite clear that the role of the Israeli military industrial complex in its export sector is to help push back, defeat, exterminate popular resistance to dictatorships in Latin America. And they're able to do that in places where they're most effectively able to do that and to turn a nice profit in those areas where the U.S. beginning in the late 70s start to say, well, we can't help Somosa in 1978, 1979, because his National Guard executed an American journalist on air. So we got to step back. And who steps in? Israel. And they start arming

most of the National Guard. And they get overthrown by the San Anas in 1979, right? And Israel and in Sananisas will have a really interesting interesting quotation square quotes throughout the 1980s. There's an interesting campaign. I don't think I mentioned it in the article where organized Jewish groups in the United States

start to accuse the Sandinistas of anti-Semitism. Zionist groups. And it's primarily because the Sandinistas we're working with the PLO and they're working with, they have a a non-aligned independent foreign policy. And eventually, one organization goes to do like a fact-finding mission on the ground. They're like, actually, we found no instances of anti-Semitism.

Nicaragua's small Jewish community did not tell us that they were suffering anti-Semitism. This is all part of a concerted campaign to kind of undermine or represent the Sandinista regime in the 1980s in a certain way. when in the 19th, just a decade before, the Somoza's National Guard was using Israeli weapons to put down and to tamp down and to destroy and exterminate popular movements and resistance to a dictatorship that had been around since the 1930s.

So I think that's more or less the dynamic at play. In the article, I also mentioned, I focus on Guatemala because Guatemala is the country and the military dictatorship that takes power in the 70s and continues into the 80s. they're the ones who received the most extensive military aid, military advisors, computer technology, airplanes, all agricultural help from the Israelis. And as they're waging what is referred to as this quote unquote quiet genocide,

the killing of more than 100,000 Mayan peoples and the practice of more than 600 massacres. and the eradication of hundreds of indigenous villages in Guatemala. And in those endeavors, Israeli military advisors played an influential role. Israeli weapons played an influential role. Israeli computer technology was used to wipe out the urban guerrilla movement in Guatemala by tracking telephone, by surveilling telephones, and even by tracking water usage in certain apartment buildings. And if they noticed that there was a lot of water,

being used that would then lead to some sort of police or military raid because that gave him a hint that there was like a group of urban guerrillas there working. So on a broader level then it becomes pretty apparent that on the one hand, this type of industry is central to the broader Israeli economy. Like they have to do this in an economic logic. But the actual application and the consequences of these exports lead to brutal counterinsurgency in Latin America, especially in Central America in the 70s and 80s. I just want to follow up quick here. More of a clarification point for the listeners,

because you've mentioned Nicaragua a couple of times, and it's very interesting looking at what you mentioned throughout the article on Nicaragua, is that Anastasio Samosa, Sr., the father, was arming these Zionist militia groups prior to the foundation of the so-called state of Israel, whereas, as you mentioned then, Anastasio Samosa, the son, both of which listeners were dictators of Nicaragua at various times, just to remind everybody, what was it, 46 years essentially, that the Samosa family was ruling over Nicaragua in one form or another, whether that be as a quote-unquote elected president or as just an outright military dictator or the name that wasn't on the government's

title but the one who was pulling the strings behind the military junta in the early 70s. So this is like a familial thing. But it was interesting because the father is arming these Zionist militia groups. And then as you mentioned in your previous answer briefly, by the end, Israel was arming the regime, the Samosa regime in Nicaragua by the end. So just to clarify on that point a little bit, and maybe allow you if you want to talk about how that dynamic shifted. I know that you talk about 67 is kind of an inflection point, you know, both within Israel as well as within Latin America, perhaps.

That's also kind of the midpoint between these two periods of time as well. Yeah, and I think that's a good point, Henry. And I think trying to think when that. So the first, so most of the father was nicknamed Tachuo. And then there was another, the first son who took over, he didn't last very long. I think he died like of a massive heart attack. And I think the next son, Tachito Somosa, he may have taken over in 67 or 60. I can't remember the exact dates.

I'm probably wrong there. But, yeah, I mean, I think part of it, even before the U.S. cut aid to Samosa, the son, Tachito Samosa, even before that, they had already received massive amounts of Israeli military aid. And almost, you know, it seems like the, what happened in the 40s was that had not been. forgotten right um and for from the perspective of of israeli arms dealers who are working with companies and also there's like a network of private arms dealers that um that information is super hard to get to and there's some names that emerge particularly a couple guys who who lived in mexico um but they're also playing a really nefarious role but it's easier for them to do deals with a regime like somosa's nicaragua right and it's an authoritarian dictatorial regime and

it's very clear what type of services and arms that that that is can provide. And again, it's, they're always counterinsurgeon in nature. Um, so Tachito, yeah, I think by the time, by the time Tachito is facing the Sandinista revolution in 79 and the U.S. cuts eight. I mean, his last, you know, one of the last, uh, stalwart support that he was receiving came from, from, from Israel. And Tachito eventually, um, I think we talked about this in the colder episode. And I always make a point of, of mentioning this in my classes when I teach this. Tachito then escapes to Paraguay. It makes his way

to Paraguay. Where then under the control of Alfredo Strosner, who had been a dictator, was a dictator for like five decades, I think. And this like international group of guerrillas, bazooka, Tachito, to death. This Operation Reptile, I think, is what they called it.

So one of the few instances where some of these Latin American dictators suffer some form of justice, I guess. But yeah, I think So one of the things that I mentioned in the article then for the military dictatorships in the countries that were neighbors to Nicaragua, because Nicaragua was under the Revolutionary San Mistas after 79, and that especially after Israel invaded Lebanon in 82,

they started, the Salvadorian and Guatemalan military officers started to view Nicaragua as kind of like the Lebanon of Central America. So I quote a Salvadorian military officer who was quite enthusiastic of, about potentially even invading Nicaragua, right? He's basically saying, like, what Israel did in their invasion of Lebanon to knock out the PLO, you know, we could do the same thing because Nicaragua is supporting the FMLN guerrillas in Salvador who are trying to overthrow us.

So there's these really interesting transnational connections. And I think that's the same military officer who, when they asked them about whether it was U.S. military advisors or counterinsurgent experts who were providing them with the most help, his response was like, no, the Americans lost in Vietnam. know anything, but the Israelis, they know, right? And that was, again, that's the selling point. That's the selling point of this military complex that they offered to these dictatorships in Latin America. We know how to occupy. We know how to colonize. We know how to control. We know how to

surveil. We know how to kill. So turn to us. And in your old ally, the United States refuses to do so because of that pesky, limited, quite limited version of democracy where they were shamed into not like supporting the regime. So, you know, we do business us. And in Salvador and Guatemala, received quite extensive support in the 1980s. Yeah, I'd wanted to pick up on that, the comparative advantage kind of situation, you know, that Israel manages to market. And I was really struck by that statement from Salvadoran Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa Perez saying that, yeah, we're not really interested in the American model post-Vietnam they lost you know so you know who wants to follow what they're doing but the Israelis they're really successful so you know getting back to that

point about whether October 7th you know punctured this image it clearly has over time been important in kind of marketing their particular techniques and industries and know-how and partly also because it wasn't large set piece you know kind of military large scale It was, you know, about a domestic internal population, you know, under occupation, which was something a little bit different from, you know, what the U.S. was trying to manage in some of its, you know, Cold War era kind of overt military conflicts, you know, whether it was in Korea or Vietnam. So in a way, you could say that Israel was this nimble, more boutique kind of, you know, that served maybe the Latin American market better because they did assassination. they did, you know, surveillance of, you know, domestic groups, whether it's in the, you know, post-67, West Bank and Gaza, or even surveilling, you know, internally, you know, the Palestinian population within 1948 and so on. So that seems like great connection, you know, why they had a comparative advantage within this as a sub-imperial kind of actor, you know, and could in some ways out-compete the U.S. But one of the Another component I wanted to ask you about is you've pointed to some of the, in our discussion and in the article here, some of the domestic considerations that, you know, maybe limited the

United States ability, right? You know, they had to have an arm's length from some of the more brutal dictators and so on. But I wondered if there was some also some sense, because I noticed that in some of the quotes, the Israelis say, wow, yeah, we'll sell to anybody. But But then they point out, well, you know, not the Soviet Union or Soviet, you know, kind of allies. So it was definitely an anti-communist sort of front and market in which they're operating. And I wondered if maybe you could elaborate a little bit more on what you think the external kind of conditions of geopolitics during the Cold War may have, you know, created these opportunities for Israel, you know, to have that comparative advantage. that the U.S. couldn't for not just domestic reasons, but also because in the era of the non-aligned movement, to be supporters of the most brutal dictators suppressing kind of popular

movements didn't play well in a post-colonial and decolonizing sort of world in the late 60s, 70s, and 80s where the U.S. was competing with the Soviet Union in Africa, in parts of Asia, and so on. So I'm wondering how you might analyze the larger Cold War geopolitical conditions as they affected Israel's reception in Latin America. No, that's a great question. I mean, I think, I mean, we go back to the Bandun Conference and they are from there in what, 55, they identify Israel in a very particular way, right? That's right. They label it as kind of like a bridgehead for Western colonialism. Like, they very clearly,

this diverse groups of post-colonial governments, that ran this political spectrum. As a group, we're able to identify with what folks like historian Rashi Khalidi talk about, right? That Zionism has always been attached to other forms of empire, has been attached to a form of empire, one empire or another. So as early as 1955 in Bandung, that they knew that, they realized that. And I can't remember the exact quote, but it's like a bridgehead of Western colonialism or something like that. Um, but yeah, I think an unsinkable aircraft carrier. What, yeah, well, that was the, uh, Weinberger.

I can't remember that. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, one of the Reaganites, one of the horrific Reagan monsters came up with that one. Yeah, it's the unsink. Or maybe it was, uh, anyway, the general, Hague, I think it was Hague. Um, but yeah, I think there's a, there's a, a very interesting geopolitical, uh, logic going on, right? Like, if you just trace who this Israeli military and their military industry complex is able to work with or who they want to work with, it's the worst of the worst. At the very least, the United States has to hold the pretension of some sort of respect for human rights or democracy, particularly when it was in competition with the Soviet Union.

And the Global South was the prime battleground for this political, ideological, discursive battle. So whereas Israel wasn't really limited by that. And also, I think they knew how to play the geopolitical situation. Again, they went where the U.S. could not necessarily go, right? But there's also something else at play. And that is part of the reason why you even have the systematic development and funding of a Israeli military industrial conflict is what happened in the 67 war. So prior to the 67 war, the main military patron of the Israelis, was France. And as a consequence of the 67 war and the taking of territories, France cut them off.

And that then scared the Israelis into fast drive and creating a military industrial complex that would allow military self-sufficiency. So a certain that they could create the weaponry that they needed to defend themselves and to wage the occupation and to quote unquote defend themselves from their neighbors. By the 70s, though, they were so good. at this that they had a bit too much. And this is where they start to go to look into export, particularly the levels of debt that the Israel started to carry by the early 80s.

As I mentioned early, this is one way that they could get out of that contradiction. But they were never able to achieve that self-sufficiency, primarily because they still depended heavily on U.S. technology. So the U.S. would allow them to use some of that technology in their own Israeli, made weapons, but then when Israel wanted to sell to certain countries, the U.S. could come in and say, no, you cannot sell that jet to Ecuador because it has our technology, and we don't want Ecuador to start threatening his neighbors with advanced jets or advanced missile technology, because that's going to destabilize geopolitical situation in northern South America, things like that.

So one of the things that probably is going on is there are high-level conversations between Israeli and U.S. military officials, particularly in the late 70s and 80s during the Reagan administration, of where they could go and sell their weapons and why they were selling their weapons there and what weapons they could sell to who. So that self-sufficiency or that ability to wage like an independent political economic approach or even geopolitical approach always remain a fantasy. It's still, Israel still depended on U.S. aid and U.S. military technology for the development of some of their more important weapons that they then sold to around the world. I don't know if that answers to a question. I think this is a really good

question that I think we need to think through for the present because the consequences of that would be really important. That's right. And that's why I ask it because I do think it is significant. And what it reminds me of is, well, or makes me think that there is a particular value or role historically and contemporaneously going on in the future, perhaps, of having an exceptional state. I mean, the Israelis even said in a quote that you mentioned, hey, well, we're a pariah state. So like, yeah, so we don't have to worry about conforming to these conventions of international. We're already a pariah state. That gives us the freedom to act outside the bounds. And in some ways, it's what makes the system seem to work as the U.S. can kind of

pretend, have this pretense of, well, we wouldn't go that far. We have to abide by certain norms of, you know, international law and human rights and so on. But they can still have some part of the system that, you know, is a complicated relationship. As you're pointing out, they have to kind of curb it. They have to manage it. But it allows, you know, this kind of role for the system itself to work, you know, in an imperial, you know, hegemonic fashion. And it's it's why maybe Biden said when he said, you know, to bring it to the present, you know, a quote that he's had before is that if we didn't have Israel, we would have to invent it. Well, why would you have to invent it? What, how does that make any sense? Well, the system in order to function needs to

perhaps have some of these exceptional, you know, zones that, you know, can operate in some way to preserve the larger so-called rules-based, you know, if we want to be anachronistic about it or the human rights regime. So anyway, I do think that. I know that just to add on, I know that at least in one of those instances, because Biden does bring up that quote all the time that if Israel didn't exist that the U.S. would have to create it. In at least one of those instances, the follow-up statement was so that we could protect her interests. I think that might have been in the first one when he was in the Senate but my guess is that he probably has brought up that specific line more than once but yeah we would need to create an Israel in order to protect her interests

which you know what her interests are yeah yeah it's sort of a quote that sounds clever but actually reveals quite a lot so yeah well a lot of masks have fallen off I think in the last 50 plus days right so it is just this is just one more I think also on into your broader geopolitical question, the end of the Cold War was like was boom times for this, for this military industrial complex, right? Because then it opened up markets that were off limit before, right? Because of geopolitical rivalries during the Cold War, right? This idea that will, that quote that you cited, right, the Israeli officials say, we'll sell to anyone except enemies of Israel and the Soviet world. The end of the cold world, the end of the Cold War

and the fall of the Soviet Union ended that. Right. So if you look at who they sell to now they sell to almost anyone it doesn't matter and and it's again they're offering this is the reason why i titled this piece like a future of of walls of liberation right in our current context in a place where uh where we have one climate catastrophe after another that is generating you know mass the massive displacement around the world in addition to political factors and imperial factors that are contributing to mass displacement this is the this is the countries are going to Israel for the technical know-how and the technology to prevent that, right? The future that they offer is the future of walls, right?

There's a reason why the Frontex, the European Border Patrol, uses Israeli drones to monitor the Mediterranean Sea. They use an Elbit drone, and they use another drone that's a bigger drone that Lowenstein talks about in this book that could be outfitted to carry rafts. So if this Hermes drone identifies migrants in distress, Frontex could use this drone to launch rafts to help these people out, but they don't. What they're doing is that they're sending the coordinates to Frontex offices throughout the EU and Warsaw where they watch migrants drown to death. And they know where all these boats are and they don't intervene. At the same time, they've kicked out humanitarian groups who were using their own.

own boats who are waging their own campaign to save migrants from drowning, they've been kicked out of the Mediterranean. The wall technology we see in the U.S.-Mexico border, the wall technology that we see in Kashmir, you know, the close relationship that's developed that has developed between India and Israel. I mean, it's a wall of perpetual counter-distance. It's a future of perpetual counter-durgency walls population controls. And this is what they're offering now. And this is in the post-Cold War era. So if anything, the end of the Cold War was just a huge economic opportunity for Israel. And they've taken advantage of it in the world of arms and especially now cyber surveillance and cyber technology. Absolutely. You know, one of the

things that really emerges from this discussion, your article, and just an analysis of the world as it is, is the importance of Israel as this global link in the global capitalist imperialist chain. and you say in the article you quote you're quoting somebody talking about all of this stuff you know the role that israel plays globally the globalization of these means of oppression and the person you quote talks about Palestinian resistance as as having itself this this vital global dimension that you know the Palestinian resistance isn't merely it's also this but it's not merely a localized conflict of you know oppression and liberation but it has these global implications precisely because the system that is real so faithfully serves is global and the resistance to it must also be global. So I found that interesting. Another thing you quoted another person in that article talking about climate change as having the possibility of creating a global Nakhba, right, this global dispossession, particularly of impoverished people in the global south, pushing them into different places, hence the need for a world of walls

coming, you know, down the pike in the 21st century. So I think these things are really crucial for people to understand and to side with the Palestinian resistance and all of its manifestations because of these connections. A question I have, though, falls sort of outside the purview of here article, but is relevant and topical, which is just in the last week we saw the death of Henry Kissinger. And we're talking about Latin America in the 70s and 80s. This is a figure that is certainly involved playing a role in this history that we've been covering. I know this is outside of what you cover in the article, but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about Kissinger and Nixon in the 70s, what they did in places like Argentina and Chile, just to help

people understand that this rightfully hated figure, this sociopathic figure, is also a part of this broader story we're telling about imperialism, colonialism, U.S., Israel, connections, etc. So I know I'm kind of throwing something on you that's not in the article, but I'm hoping that you could talk a little bit about Kissinger and Latin America. I can always talk shit about Henry Kissinger. Oh, you can't. Well, you know, it's other than the Birmingham brawl moment, the only other time in the last year that I've had a good time on Twitter is when Kissinger died.

Just to see, you know, people's reactions. I mean, I even posted a picture of myself taking a shot of Escal because I was like, you know, go to hell motherfucker. But, um, but the tragedy is that he, he won. I mean, that's that shit that pisses me off, right? So this is what should anger all of us. And someone, I think it was Greg Brandon who made the point on Twitter was like, yeah, let's celebrate it now. But the next day, all the elites are going to come out with the wonderful characterizations and the eulogies and the, you know, trying to set the terms of how we should

remember this monster. So I guess one way we can connect the art, you know, what we've been discussing to Kissinger is, you know, one of the instances that surprised me the most was to learn that Israel was working with the Argentine military dictatorship in the late 70s and early 80s, right? So this horrific military dictatorship takes power in 1976. They'll remain in power until 1983. They disappeared something like 30,000 people. And I think we discussed this in the Cold War episode, right? But it also was a viciously anti-Semitic military dictatorship where They viewed their taking of power and their waging of war against their own people as an existential struggle to defend, quote-unquote, Western civilization. And there's a famous quote from a military officer, I think it's a military officer who said, you know, we're defending, the three people we're defending Western civilization are Karl Marx, Zygman Freud, and Albert Einstein, right?

I mean, so it's a viciously anti-Semitic regime. At the same time, you know, sectors, particularly the military industrial complex in Israel, is doing business with them. There's other members of the Israeli government who are trying to save Argentine Jews from extermination and to bring them to Israel, right? So there's a famous memoir of an Argentine Jewish journalist, Hakobo Timmerman, who talks about this, who talks about, you know, he gets tortured

by the Argentine military dictatorship, and he's the one who tells us that in the torture chambers, there's portraits of Adolf Hitler. There's Argentine military soldiers, and officers doing, you know, the Nazi salutes. And yet, the Israeli arms industry is doing business with them,

you know, selling, you know, sophisticated missile technology and other types of arms. And Kissinger was instrumental, right? Kissinger, one of his most horrific quotes is when he goes to meet the military, the dictator of Argentina in 76, 77,

General Videla. And he tells them, you know, you got to do this quick whatever you guys are going to do i'm paraphrasing you got to do this quick so i was giving them carte blanche right to do whatever the argentine military dictatorship wanted to do and that was disappear 30 000 people tortured thousands of people um send into exile thousands of people um just some of you know one of the worst top three i don't know one of the worst i don't even want to rank it because they're they're terrible right but one of the worst dictatorships in the history of post-colonial latin america

I mean, Kisinger was instrumental providing diplomatic cover, and it's really crazy, then, to think about how different parts of the Israeli state are engaging with the military dictatorship in contradictory ways. And again, because from a political economic logic, they need to sell weapons and they're going to sell to whoever they can, even a regime that was viciously anti-Semitic and was doing things like torturing people in front of a, you know, Adolf Hitler portrait. And then that, you know, obviously that feeds into the whole, I think most people, when you ask them, where do the Nazis go in Latin America? They'll say Argentina, right? And I think this year we've learned that, you know, Canada should probably be included in that discussion too.

But, you know, we can talk about that later. But I think that's one way to connect it. And Kissinger, you know, whenever he appears in, whether it's in Chile, in 73, 74, 75, or if it's Argentina in the late 70s. He goes back to Argentina for the 1978 World Cup. Remember we talked about that in our World Cup episode, right? And he's, because he's a huge football fan. And he's doing some nefarious things even during the World Cup.

You know, there's Argentine survivors of some of these secret prisons and torture centers where they talk about that they could hear the cheering from the football stadiums during the World Cup, which is just like horrific. But in terms of Kissinger, I'm glad he's gone, but he's gone. he won. And the task for people who are still alive is for us to undo that victory. It's essential. And to work against the legacy, the horrific legacy that this man left behind. I also think that it's also interesting to think about why he has, why he's become like the condensation or the embodiment of like the worst excesses of U.S. Empire where there's other people who might

even be worse. So it's also interesting to think about why he has. he's the one who attracts the most attention to the point where he's like a meme, right? Like there was a account on Twitter that was like asking has he died yet almost every single day, right? When, you know, in some way, I don't know how exceptional he was within the broader U.S. Imperial War machine that has killed, you know, millions of people. But I'm still, like I said, I still took a shot of Mascot and celebrated him hopefully going to a place that's extremely hot. For real. Yeah, and just a quick follow-up, I think maybe one of the reasons why that might be the case where Kissinger is sort of held up when there's plenty of ghouls and demons throughout American history and to this day is like it's the Nixon connection. It's the Watergate connection. It's the Vietnam War thing, which became huge issues in the U.S. in particular. And Kissinger and Nixon were sort of brought together. So you have this delegitimization of government after Watergate. You have these massive protests with regards to Vietnam. And those sort of internal American political events sort of, elevate into popular consciousness Nixon and Kissinger in particular. But you're absolutely right

that really when compared to other figures, he's just right down the line. Like, you know, with the figure still today, you know? Yeah. And I think he also, maybe it's also the impunity was so obvious with him, right? Like, okay, so the fact that he lived to be 100, that's, yeah, that, the impunity and that the U.S. political establishment continued to treat him as some sort of like sage, right? They, from both parties. would go and kiss the ring, whether it was Obama, W, Samantha Power, it doesn't matter. Like, this guy flaunted his impunity, right? And that's obviously most, if not all U.S. officials, but this guy did it in a particular way. Well, he was really ensconced in, like,

the political and academic elite in this country. And even asking him a direct challenging question would, like, produce these, like, accusations of, oh, you're being uncivil, right? So I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with that as well. But, yeah, I think, think it's, I'm glad he's gone. I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, definitely. His is a legacy. We have to really work to undo. It is galling that he lived to be a hundred and, you know, escaped all accountability. And that's the other component, I think, is that for the current war criminals, we have to be more serious and concerted about forcing them to be accountable for their crimes, you know, and not let them, you know, live with impunity, you know, as well.

But I think part of the other reason why was, as you say, that he himself, he was held up by the political elite and establishment as the paragon of, you know, U.S. foreign policy, kind of planning and that he was this intelligence sort of spangali of guise of global affairs, you know, even though there were people like Brzynski and others who are more, you know, perhaps the in-house, like if you're in this world of foreign affairs, you'd say, oh, Brzynski, he really mapped the, you know, chess board, you know, the great game in Central Asia, et cetera. But he was publicly held up as like this, you know, paragon. And so people like Hillary Clinton, you know, when they needed to burnish their credentials in foreign policy

because they were running as a, you know, as a presidential candidate. I mean, you know, having the blessing of Henry Kissinger meant that you were a serious person when it came to foreign affairs. So it's that disgusting legacy, yes, that we're dealing with. But I wanted to come back. I was going to ask you about Jacobo Timerman, actually. So I'm so glad that you brought him up. And it's not even, to my mind, just that there are competing wings of, you know, the arm sellers and those who are, you know, trying to save, you know, Jews who are being oppressed under this brutal, you know, brutal regime. But it's almost that that is sort of Israel's argument and why it kind of benefits from the anti-Semitism of fascist regimes.

globally is to be able to make the case and the argument that you're only safe really here in Israel. And there is a way in which anti-Semitism is at the kind of root of the rationale of the state of Israel because of its history coming out of as a solution that was proposed to the vicious vitriolic and genocidal anti-Semitism, you know, in European history. for a long time, but also, of course, culminating in late 19th and then into World War II. And so I think his case and his story is really quite, you know, interesting in that regard,

because here's a left-wing Jewish dissident who is tortured, imprisoned. But the Israeli state, because it does have this relationship, you know, of doing business and supplying. and supporting this right-wing fascist government, even though they're anti-Semitic, is able to actually negotiate for some exceptional treatment, you know, of some Jewish leftists who, in his case, he writes a book called The Longest War

that is a critique of the Israeli Lebanon invasion, and he becomes then persona non-grata in Israel, because, you know, they're like, you're totally ungrateful. We saved you. And now here you are offering this critique. And so I think it's a really interesting and instructive case. It's after that that he comes back to Argentina to participate in the, you know, kind of national, you know, commission on the disappearance of persons and in the, you know, kind of accounting for what happened during that dirty war and so on. So I'm wondering if you think, you know, is this sort of the counter history in a way, you know, of that relationship that you were documenting and talking about in the article?

Is it sort of, you know, the kind of international solidarity that can happen by those lines and connections, you know, that kind of troubles the, you know, business as usual kind of interconnection, people like that who. have a conscience, their leftists may have had a Zionist sort of blind spot, but then in actually living in Israel kind of saw the brutality of the regime critiques it and then, you know, as part of like, you know, solidarity work in Argentina. So, you know, maybe that's kind of the odd counter history to this terrible relationship between Israel and Latin America. I mean, people almost, you know, the people who go to Palestine with an open mind tend to come back changed all in a similar way, right? So Timmerman found out, right? Just like recently, you know, Tanei Coates gave that interview on Democracy Now or I've heard Robin Kelly talk about it. I've heard, you know,

all these like U.S. Americans or even people in Latin America who have traveled to Palestine. And when they see what the situation actually is on the ground, it radicalizes them. It's a very revealing process for them. And perhaps, you know, something similar happened to Timmerman, especially when he witnessed that horrific 1982 invasion of Lebanon, right, which caused so much human misery for Palestinians and for the people of Lebanon. But I think it could be, yeah, I mean, that's a cool way to think about in terms of being a counter-history.

But I think also the reason why, you know, Israel was able to, let me step back and think about this. the relationship between Israel and fascist Argentina, I think I include a quote from Dan Rather in this in this piece where one of the reasons why some, you know, an entity, a fascist regime like Argentina or a genocidal one like in Guatemala could do business with Israel's because again, this Dan Rather quote from a report that he did in 83 was that like the Israelis don't come down here with human rights lectures, with priests, with missionaries, they just go and they. they don't talk about that kind of stuff, they're going there to do some business. And that's one big difference with the U.S., right? And this is a common

inscription that authoritarian or non-authoritarian regimes will say about the U.S., right? Yes, they want to do business with us, but we have to listen to like a human rights lecture that we know is bullshit. You know, that Dan Rather quote really shows that the relationship between Guatemala and these Israeli defense companies was, it didn't have any of that. And it's not to say it wasn't ideological.

Obviously, it was ideological, right? They're talking about the Palestinianization of Guatemala's indigenous people. The ideology was a counterinsurgent one. The ideology was one about occupation and the colonial relationship between the Guatemalan military and its indigenous populations.

And this is something that continues beyond the Cold War, right? We have pretty good evidence that, and folks have written about how Israel helped train certain parts of the Mexican military as it waged its counter-surgency against the indigenous EZLN in the southern state of Chiaba after their uprising in 1994. So this is something that has continued even beyond the end of the Cold War. Yeah, and that actually leads into my question, which is turning things towards today.

In that last answer, you talked a little bit about Argentina. in the past. You talked about Mexico in the past. But I want to look at how the relations between some of these Latin American countries and Israel are today and how they will be in the near future. So Argentina recently had elections where the fascist clown was elected, Javier Milai, who of course has pledged that even though he's a fascist, he's one of those fascists that, again, is super pro Israel. Funny how that keeps happening. And also, We have some other governments across Latin America that have had very confusing statements on Israel, particularly in the current conflict, that you perhaps wouldn't expect to.

And Mexico is one of them. There has been some very strange, in some cases contradictory, and other cases just outright disappointing or depressing statements that have been coming out from the Mexican government in recent days, recent weeks really, regarding Israel, Palestine, the conflict in Gaza. So I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit, Alex, about the contemporary context of Israeli-Latin American relations. Those two examples are ones that I feel are kind of going to be the most stark in terms of one is a nominatively progressive government

that has very strange statements about Israel and, of course, a country that you do a lot of work on. and therefore I'm assuming you have a lot to say about. And the other case is one where, again, we have a fascist coming in in Argentina that's very pro-Israel. So a contemporary parallel to some of the things that we've been talking about historically throughout the conversation there. Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that with this, the resurgence of a more, let's say, revanchist right, like embodied by people like Bolsonaro and Brazil or Millet in Argentina that at their rally, valleys, there's always a heavy presence of Israeli flags. It's a really interesting relationship

then between this particular, you know, hard right movement in South America and why they view and why they deploy the symbol of the Israeli flag at their protests, right? And then Bolsonato was also very close to Israel while he was in power until he lost the election. Just to add in on that point, Alex, very quickly, one of the things that we were looking at talking about on the program, was how the Israel lobby has become increasingly powerful within Brazil. This is something that our listener and friend Natalia Urban has been researching and writing about in her various platforms as well. But that is another very stark example, which slipped my mind at the moment. But really, if you look at the relations within Brazil in terms of the Israel lobby, institutions within Brazil,

the evangelical institutions within Brazil particularly, which we have an episode that covers that pretty heavily as well, listeners. That's a very interesting example as well, just as an aside. I mean, it's also like clarifying, right? So thanks, Revanche's right wing for letting us know where you stand, right? The idea, there's a reason why they're deploying that as a symbol. And whereas Palestine is a cause or a, a cause or an idea that has been taken up by the Latin American left, I mean, goes back to

the 60s and there's obviously there's a history of direct, you know, material and military links between different Latin American guerrilla groups and different armed resistance groups in Palestine. There's a whole history that we could get into that. But for today, the Mexican case, I really don't, I'll say this about the Mexican case. The Mexican military has had relationship relationships with the Israeli military and its arms companies since at least in 1970s, right? So this is a long one that has been more or less continuous. So as the Mexican government waged a dirty war in the 1970s, against these guerrilla movements, against peasant communities, they're using Israeli-made airplanes, right? Something similar happens in the 1990s in a moment

where the Mexican military and government are in need of counterinsurgent technology and assistance and expertise, and they turn to Israel again to help put down and wage a low-intensity war against the sapatistas and the easier line in Chiapas. What I'll say is that Amlo, there was speculation that perhaps some of the hostages were Mexican and that Amlo didn't want to say anything to disrupt potentially being able to free them. Amlo also, his strong suit is not international relations or international geopolitics. So I think, but he's been, yeah, I don't know how to explain it. He's been so steadfast about to say like, no, I'm not going to say anything.

Whereas I think the streets are with Palestine, it's obvious. I mean, the streets throughout Latin America are with Palestine. So, yeah, I don't, other than, you know, I don't know, I'm not privy to any, like, I wish I was some sort of inside information as to why Amlo has taken this posture. Particularly when you have someone like the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who's taken, like, a radically different approach, right? And he recently gave the speech at the COP28 climate change conference where he linked a lot of things that we've talked about, right? the massive population displacements in migrations that are being generated by climate change. And then he links that to this idea that Brett, you mentioned, the global NACPA, right, that this is an idea that I cite in the article from Dr. Mazin Kumsili, who was, Todd Miller

has a great article about his recent visit to Southern Arizona. And he's the one who talks about climate change being a global knockpa. Gustavo Petro connected that global NACPA to what's happening in Gaza. And he said basically Gaza is like the preview for the future. It's a rehearsal for the future. And this is one of the reasons why we have to resist it. And that's a big deal. I mean, it's a powerful statement to make.

It's at such an international conference. But it's also a big deal because for a long time, Colombia was Israel's most stalwart ally in Latin America. A former president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, even joke that, like, he liked being called Israel of Latin America. because the Colombian military worked with the Israeli military and Israeli arms companies all the way back in the early 1980s. They also worked together in a paramilitary capacity. So I cite in the article, the head of Colombia's most bloody, most notorious right-wing,

fascistic paramilitary, the AUC, Carlos Castano, he bragged that in his memoirs, he's dead now, but he bragged in his memoirs that he went to Israel to receive training in the 80s and early 90s, and he said the quote that I include in the article is something like, you know, I learned about, I learned the paramilitary concept from the Israelis. And the paramilitary, you know, this guy was like the son of rant, like viciously anti-communist

ranchers who eventually created this huge constellation of different paramilitary groups housed under the AUC, Autodefances Unitas of Colombia. And they, like, some of the shit they did was some of the horrific things you can read about in Colombia in the 90s and 2000s, as it also became like a major drug trafficking organization, which is also interesting. something interesting to think about. So I think Gustavo Petro's been the most interesting in terms of challenging what Israel's been doing in Gaza, but then also offering this really interesting political and intellectual framework with which we can understand what's going

on on a global context. And the fact that it's coming from a country that used to be Israel's most star-wall ally in the region, I think is also significant. To this day, the Colombian military and the Colombian national police exclusively use Israeli rifles. They use different rifles. I can't remember which ones. They have Israeli weapons factories set up

in Colombia. I described in the article how Guatemala I think was one of the first and not the first Latin American country. They got its own factory to make parts for the Israeli-Galil rifle that the Guatemala military used. So Colombia, so the fact that

that Petro is saying this from considering the long historic relationship between Colombia and Israel is really significant. You know, we've seen the rest of the region, it's expected. I mean, I don't see any other unexpected takes on this conflict. The more left-leaning governments

have made comments in support or solidarity with Palestine. Lula is another interesting one. I mean, it's really difficult to read him on some of his geopolitical situations since he's come back into office. I'm glad he's in office, though, because Bolsonaro was an absolute monster,

and I can't imagine the things that he'd be saying right now if he had won that presidential election. Obviously, Cuba has had a diplomatic relationship with the Palestinian Liberation Organization since, like, I don't know, 1969, 1970. They ruptured diplomatic relationships with Israel in, like, 70 or 71, if I remember correctly. So some of the other countries, Bolivia, right?

So like the left-leaning or left governments of Latin America are taking the expected stance. And well, now you see this madman in Argentina, Javier Milet, who also recently announced that he's converting to Judaism. He's, you know, he's going to take the more Bolsonaro approach to this take. And Millet is interesting. Like we have to, there's, you know, Federico Finkelstein, is a very prominent Argentine. historian of Argentine fascism. And he's very, he has a alarmist. Like he says, this guy's a fascist. We need to be worried about what he's going to do. We have to take him seriously in terms of what he says. Quince Lobodian, another historian recently had a piece in a, I think it was

financial times where he's like, actually, Javier Milet, a lot of his ideas are just kind of like rehashed libertarian, anarcho-libertarian ideas from like the 1990s. And, you know, some of the people he's picking to be in his cabinet or the traditional conservative of Argentine rights. So maybe he's not going to be like this, this, uh, fascist figure. I, you know, obviously it remains to be seen. I'm actually more afraid of his vice president. Um, she's, she's quite, I think she's really scary. Um, if you guys want to, the listeners want to look her up and, and, and see what she

thinks about the 30,000, you know, negating that 30,000 people were disappeared by, by the Argentine military. Um, it's pretty scary. Malay is, uh, I think has meant, I don't know, during the election. Like, people question his mental status, his sanity. There was one interview he gave where he kept telling people behind the stage to be quiet. And the interviewer was like, there's no one, there's no one there. There's a remarkable video of that because you can see the camera pan and there's nobody in the audience.

It's really awkward and just cringed to what. I was like, man, you were watching this guy have like a nervous breakdown or mental breakdown on TV. So, I don't know. He's just, he's scary. But personally, I'm more scared of his vice president. Her name slipped my mind right now, but like she, her take on the dictatorship and kind of negating a lot of the political and cultural work that people have done to say never again, nunca mas. I mean, she's questioned the whole premise of it. So I think she's really dangerous.

Well, another great conversation with our friend and comrade, Alexander Ravina. again. Alex, I have one kind of closing, just very short question, which is, how are you holding up with going through all of the material that you're going through? Because I know that you're really consuming everything that you can, like we all are, regarding the current conflict in Gaza, as well as looking at this kind of more historical side of things to make sense of what's going on in the present as well. It weighs heavily on all of us. And I just want to, you know, see how you're doing with, you know, trying to keep up. with all of that. You can imagine, you know, I'm like with you guys. I mean, part of it is not even wanting to talk about it, right? Because it's like, I don't want to even compare it to what the people on Gaza and the West Bank are experiencing, right? So, but yeah, it's just perpetual state of rage.

I have two kids and the suffering of Palestinian children, like, you know, I've broken down, you know, multiple times after watching some of these videos and, And then my partner's like, all right, you got to like get off Twitter, which is like that privilege we have, right, living in the entrails of the belly of the imperial beast. But yeah, I think the killing of Rafat is like also just, I don't know how to deal with it. I don't know. I think a lot of people who have commented on how this has impacted them is probably the reason why it's impacted me.

I didn't know him. I don't have a personal connection to him. but following him online and reading his stuff. And then reading earlier this morning that, you know, potentially the evidence is coming out that this was a targeted assassination. Like, it's just, yeah, man, it's, you know, no different from what you guys are going through. And, you know, I'm trying to write a book and I'm like, oh, I should be writing about 1960s bandits. And I'm like, what the fuck?

Like, what? That doesn't matter right now, right? There's, like, you know, more important things going on. So I think that's one of the reasons why I decided to write this article, which is just, I think, leaving it really clear what's at stake for us, like here in the United, you know, well, I know you're in a different type of place, Henry, in a different country. But I think this is, again, to go back to what Brett said, right, this is, there's a global component to all of this. And I truly do believe that the component or the stakes in this is what type of future we want.

October 7th and what's happened since then has completely changed the course of history. Nothing is going to go back to how it was before that day. So what are we going to do about it? And we have models to follow. Do we want a future of liberation? No one's free until Palestine's free? Or do we want a future of walls of harassing, you know, killing, murdering, dispossessed people's, migrants, refugees.

Yeah. Well, since you mentioned Raphat, I'll just share this briefly. I wasn't planning on it. And I haven't put anything about it online because, of course, it's not about us. But, you know, you mentioned that people have been touched by his, you know, the martyering of Raphat. And I have talked with him a few times just online and a very kind person. And like I said, I haven't mentioned this anywhere before, but we had actually confirmed,

I had confirmed with him that we would interview him on the show. And this was about a day or two before the power first went out and then his family had to flee their house. So that interview never materialized. And, you know, we knew that the situation was obviously quite dire. I didn't push him, you know, on anything like that because, of course, the main thing is that he and his family were staying safe. and every time that we would see an update from him, it would be like, okay, well, there we go. And we would hope that after the conflict ended

and that we would be able to have the opportunity to speak with him. But, of course, now with the news that, you know, he had been martyred by the Zionist occupation forces, you know, knowing that we're not going to even have that opportunity to get to actually get to sit down face to face, so to speak, and talk with him. it's very hard because he was a very i mean i'm not going to say i was friends with him but you know we did have a few conversations back and forth and he always was a super kind a super thoughtful and

very passionate about Palestinian liberation guy so um you know it is hard and uh you know i'm not going to tweet about it because it's not about us and not being able to interview him his loss is devastating as is the loss of all Palestinians in gaza yeah If you go to his Twitter account, right? His pin tweet, I think, is his own version of Claude McKay's If I Die Poem, which is, like, if you haven't read it, I highly suggest you read it. He's also very funny, like following him, like, in the worst of circumstance, like unimaginable circumstances. Like, he still had a sense of humor. He still had a horizon of hope, right?

and liberation in the worst of times, which is a lesson to us. Like I'm like, what the fuck am I complaining about? If this guy has still had, was fighting for hope and for liberation, why can't we? Right.

And then his final tweet, blaming this genocide squarely on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. I mean, that is like, that's his final tweet. So as we mentioned before, man,

a lot of ideological and political masks have fallen off. And this is why, at least in the U.S., context, particularly in settings like universities, we're going to go through some challenging difficult times and it's only incumbent upon us to continue to not be held back, to not be afraid, to not be coward by these bullshit accusations of anti-Semitism because now apparently everything is. So, but yeah, let's go go check out Rafat's poem and final tweet. And I think

that's what's really sticking with me. Yeah, absolutely. Again, listeners are guests was Alexander Avina, historian at Arizona State, and author of Spectres of Revolution. Alex, how can the listeners find you in more of your work? Well, thank you guys so much. I love, you guys know, I love coming back and chatting with you all. I'm on Twitter or X, Alexander, Alexander underscore Avena. I have a website, alexanderavina.com. And yeah, I write for different things.

So just check me out on Twitter and I always share anything. that you guys write or do and stuff that I do as well. So that's how you can find me. And likewise, when this article comes out, listeners, which will probably be close to the time that this episode comes out, we'll of course share it on our Twitter page as well. So you'll be able to read the article alongside this episode by following either of us and looking on our pages to find that link.

All right. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other podcast? Well, you can find me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N, and check out the Mudgellis. It's been long on hiatus, but I'm going to be interviewing a new guest about a much happier topic than the one we've been talking about today, and that is the incredible history of the most gorgeous musical instrument, the Oud. and you can find the mudgeless on all the usual platforms, M-A-J-L-I-S. I see listeners, Adnan had first said, let's talk about the Oud on Gorilla History, and I said, no, we only talk about sad topics on this show.

So take it to your other show. Of course, I'm joking, but it does seem like the preponderance of our episodes are, you know, leaving me quite sad after we're done talking. But it is cathartic to speak with all of you. Brett, how can those sinners find you and your other excellent podcasts? Yeah, first, just thanks so much, Alex, for coming on again. A fascinating article, fascinating knowledge. We really appreciate it.

Just to reiterate your point about Rafat's final tweet, you know, the Democratic Party and Biden are responsible for the Gaza genocide perpetuated by Israel, and we will never, ever, ever let the Biden administration and the Democratic Party and the liberals who support them, forget that. Rest and power to him. As for me, you can find everything I do at Revolutionary Left Radio. dot com. Absolutely, highly recommend, of course, checking out that tweet as well as checking out all of the work that Brett is putting together. As for me, listeners, you can follow me on

Twitter at Huck 1995. Stay tuned on my Twitter. I have another book project that will be announced very soon. You can help support guerrilla history. Allow us to keep making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's right. G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can follow the show on Twitter by looking for at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-N underscore pod. Adnan, are you raising your hand? I am because I don't want you to close on the normal way we close because in honor of Dr. Mazen-Kom-Sia, who's quoted in this article, he says, I don't like the word solidarity.

I'm not in solidarity with native. Americans, their struggle is my struggle. And I thought that might be a fitting way to say goodbye to the listeners. We usually say solidarity, but he's reminding us our struggles are the same. And that's what I think this article was showing is how connected these struggles are. So just wanted to stop you from just ending on solidarity. Oh, Adnan, say it one more time and we'll cut the recording. I don't like the word solidarity, says Dr. Mazenkomsia. I'm not in solidarity with Native Americans. Their struggle is my struggle.

Thank you.