Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity in the Americas
Writer: Michael K. Smith
Date: July 17, 2026
Source: CounterPunch
Deep Historic Roots:
The Zionist-Latin American military nexus began in 1939 with Nicaraguan arms shipments to the Haganah. By 1954, Israel was actively training the forces that overthrew Guatemalan democracy, later backing Cold War dictatorships across Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Mexico.
Central American Scorched Earth: Israel acted as the primary weapons pipeline for brutal regimes facing popular revolutions. It became the sole arms supplier to Nicaragua's Somoza dictatorship after U.S. aid cuts, later funding the Contras. In El Salvador, Israel supplied 83% of military imports (including napalm) used in civilian massacres like El Mozote.
Guatemalan Genocide: Tel Aviv provided critical intelligence, weapons, and counter-insurgency training to the Guatemalan military from the 1970s to the 1990s. These tactics directly enabled the scorched-earth campaigns against indigenous Mayans, leaving 200,000 dead and 1 million displaced.
The Modern Bukele Model: El Salvador's Nayib Bukele has revived this militaristic legacy, utilizing millions in Israeli hardware (such as Arad rifles) to enforce a brutal "state of exception." The resulting mass incarceration system features the CECOT mega-prison, which functions as a lucrative, lawless concentration camp where 36% of detainees have no prior criminal history.
Regional Authoritarian Proliferation: This model of institutionalized state violence and suspended constitutional rights is rapidly spreading across Latin America, openly emulated by leaders in Ecuador, Chile, Costa Rica, Paraguay, and Argentina.
Conclusion
The author asserts that Israel has long used Latin America to export state-terrorism tactics perfected in Palestine.
This legacy has evolved from crushing Cold War democratic peasant movements into modern, highly lucrative mass-incarceration regimes, leaving the region caught in a struggle between grassroots resistance and rising institutional fascism.