0:00

Dude you remember Den Van

0:02

Booy? No,

0:07

the same thing happened in

0:10

Algeria. In

0:14

Africa, they didn't have anything but a ranker.

0:17

The Prince had all these highly mechanized

0:19

instruments of warfare that they put some

0:24

Gorilla action on. Hello

0:28

and welcome to Gorilla History, the podcast

0:30

that acts as a reconnaissance report of

0:32

global proletarian history and aims to use

0:34

the lessons of history to analyze the

0:36

present. I'm one of

0:38

your co-hosts, Henry Huchimaki, joined as

0:41

usual by my two co-hosts, Professor

0:43

Adnan Husain, historian director of the

0:45

School of Religion at Queen's University

0:47

in Ontario, Canada. Hello Adnan, how

0:49

are you doing today? I'm doing great Henry,

0:51

it's wonderful to be with you. Nice

0:53

to see you as well, also joined as

0:55

usual by Brett O'Shea, who of course is

0:57

host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of

0:59

the Red Menace Podcast. Hello Brett, how are

1:01

you doing? I'm doing very good, I'm

1:03

very happy to have our de facto fourth host on.

1:07

Alex is the quintessential Gorilla historian so we're happy

1:09

to have him back. Yeah,

1:11

he's very much the fourth musketeer

1:13

of this operation and so we

1:16

are going to be looking forward to this conversation as

1:18

we always do when we have Alex. But before I

1:21

introduce him, I just

1:23

want to remind the listeners that you

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2:00

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2:04

r r i l l a

2:07

underscore pod. So

2:10

now to dive into the conversation

2:12

with as we said the fourth

2:14

musketeer Alex Savina returning

2:17

guest historian and

2:19

one of our best friends. Hello Alex, it's nice to

2:21

have you back on the show. Thanks

2:24

so much guys. I'm just planning on moving

2:26

in. So just get that that for a

2:28

spot for me. So but thank you. It's

2:31

always it's always a lot of fun to come back and

2:33

chat with you guys. There's always space for

2:35

you, you know, clear the couch.

2:37

And anyway, we're going to be

2:40

talking about a forthcoming article that you've

2:42

written Alex titled a future of walls

2:45

or liberation, which is looking at the

2:48

intersection of Israel,

2:50

the so called state of Israel, and

2:53

Latin America. I think that this is a

2:55

topic that people may stumble across once in

2:57

a while, like sometimes we'll see some of

2:59

the things that are going on in El

3:01

Salvador. And people will say, well, you know,

3:04

it's not a surprise that these sorts of

3:06

tactics are being carried out considering that they've

3:08

had interfaces with the Israeli

3:10

security state, or Guatemala comes up

3:13

sometimes in this context, sometimes Pinochet

3:15

is brought up in this context.

3:17

But I feel like most

3:20

listeners are not going to be intimately

3:22

aware of those connections between Israel

3:24

and Latin America. So before we start

3:27

asking about specific points of this article,

3:29

can you just give like the overall

3:32

sweep of what your the point of

3:34

this article is, talk a little bit

3:36

about kind of those broad

3:38

connections between Israel and Latin

3:40

America broadly, and then we'll dive

3:43

in individually, perhaps on on some

3:45

case by case basis within the

3:47

article after that. Sure.

3:49

So I think there's two overarching

3:53

themes or topics

3:56

that that got me into this topic

3:58

to begin with. The first This is

4:00

when I was doing research for my first book and

4:03

current book project that

4:06

we discussed earlier this year on the dirty war

4:08

in Mexico and me stumbling across how

4:11

the Mexican Air Force and Mexican military

4:13

used Israeli-made airplanes in the 1970s to

4:16

conduct these death flights, the

4:19

dumping of suspected guerrillas or

4:22

just political dissidents into

4:24

the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the

4:27

southern states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. So

4:31

that really got me, that was

4:33

my entry point to think about

4:35

why the Mexican military had these

4:37

Arab-Israeli-made airplanes during

4:40

the 1970s and that

4:42

just led me into this whole

4:44

world of Israeli arms and counterinsurgency

4:47

techniques that the Israeli state had

4:49

commodified and started to sell, especially

4:54

in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. The

4:57

second main

5:00

reason why I'm still fascinated

5:02

by this topic, obviously in addition

5:04

to what's been going on, the horrific things that have

5:07

been going on in the last 50 plus days, is

5:10

that I live in Arizona and

5:13

not too far south from here, we

5:16

have these fixed surveillance towers on the

5:18

Arizona-Mexico border that are made by Elbit,

5:21

which is the largest Israeli defense

5:23

company I think right now. There's

5:29

like 50 or so of these fixed surveillance towers at

5:31

Elbit, one through a contract

5:33

with the US federal government in the

5:35

early 2010s and leading

5:39

some journalists, really good folks

5:42

who work on the Arizona-Mexico

5:44

border like Todd Miller, Melissa

5:46

Hrabowski, who run this

5:48

really good outfit called the Border Chronicle, and

5:51

other journalists who have talked

5:53

about how the Arizona-Mexico border

5:55

is actually the Palestine-Mexico border

5:57

because the technology, the surveillance and the

5:59

wall. technology that we're seeing not just

6:01

in Arizona but throughout much of the southern

6:04

border with Mexico. A lot of that is

6:06

coming from Israeli companies and where are these

6:09

Israeli companies getting that tech? Where

6:11

are they getting the necessary information

6:13

and experience with walls

6:16

and surveillance? Well

6:18

they're getting it from Gaza and they're getting it from the West

6:20

Bank. So even though we

6:22

are, I am personally thousands

6:24

of miles away from from Palestine,

6:28

it's actually a lot closer to us because

6:31

the US-Mexico border it

6:34

heavily depends on Israeli technology that

6:36

has been developed through its brutal

6:38

occupation, colonial occupation of

6:41

Gaza and the West Bank. So

6:43

that led me to think about how

6:45

I'm a historian of Latin America, like

6:48

how can I put like a short

6:50

primer together that will explain the broader

6:52

history of the Israel

6:55

using quote-unquote battle tested, occupation

6:58

colonial tested military

7:01

technologies and commodifying

7:04

and packaging and selling that around the world but

7:06

particularly in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s.

7:08

And that

7:10

a couple years ago I wrote a piece for

7:13

Louis Alday and Liberated Texts. I reviewed a book

7:15

that treated this topic and that just got me

7:17

you know more and more interested in the topic.

7:19

And what emerges is that

7:21

during the 1970s and 1980s Israel

7:23

is doing a lot of the dirty work that the US

7:26

they could not do in Latin America,

7:28

particularly in Central America. So in the 70s

7:30

and 80s these genocidal death

7:33

squad regimes are committing such horrible atrocities

7:35

against their own people that

7:37

it even moved the US Congress to

7:40

pass limitations on whether the

7:42

US could provide military aid or other forms

7:44

of aid to these countries. And

7:46

in that that opened a marketing

7:50

a commercial opportunity for the

7:52

Israeli military industrial complex to step in and to

7:54

do it to do essentially the work of the

7:56

US as a sort of proxy state. Well it's

7:58

a bit more complicated than that but Essentially, that's what

8:00

they do. They start arming these

8:03

regimes in places like Guatemala, El

8:05

Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua before

8:09

the Sandinista revolution. What

8:12

we see in the 70s and 80s in Latin America

8:14

is that Israel is really the, is seen

8:17

as like a leading or the leading

8:19

counterinsurgent entity and provider

8:21

of arms and technologies for these despot

8:23

regimes that are massacring their own

8:26

people. And the case of Guatemala committed a genocide

8:28

against more than 100,000 of its mine inhabitants. And

8:33

this is something that's continued, right? We can

8:35

talk about it. I would, I highly recommend

8:37

listeners check out Anthony Lowenstein's book called the

8:39

Palestine Laboratory where the

8:41

first chapter deals with a lot of the stuff that

8:43

I write about in this article, but he takes it

8:46

to the president and he has this really striking line

8:48

where he says that quote,

8:50

Israel's Palestine laboratory thrives on global

8:52

disruption and violence. Like the more

8:54

global disruption, the more violence, the

8:57

more dispossession

8:59

and displacement that occurs around the

9:01

world, the better it is for

9:03

the Israeli military industrial complex that

9:06

now as we see what was going on now,

9:08

right? Like what's going on now, what they're doing

9:10

to Gaza, they're developing new technologies that

9:12

then they will be able to sell to

9:15

regimes around the world and they'll be able to

9:17

pitch it as they have been for decades as

9:19

quote unquote battle tested or field tested. So

9:23

yeah, so I think, so I highly recommend that book

9:25

because he does an excellent job of kind of bringing

9:27

it to the president. And he has

9:29

this quote from Benjamin Netanyahu where

9:32

the quote is, they, the

9:34

world will become more like us than we

9:36

will become like them. So in a moment

9:38

where you see the rise of ethno-nationalism, we

9:40

see the rise of fascism around the world,

9:43

like this is actually a great business

9:45

opportunity for

9:47

the Israeli military industrial complex. And it's

9:50

all built upon what

9:52

Loewenstein talks about as a Palestine laboratory,

9:54

right? The Palestinians and Palestine being used

9:56

as a military and counter insurgent laboratory.

10:00

So then they can turn around on the global arms market

10:03

and make a ton of profit. And per capita now,

10:05

Israel is the world's largest provider of weapons

10:07

throughout the world. That's

10:10

a fantastic scope and sweep of the

10:12

key sorts of points. One thing I

10:14

did want to bring up, Alex, about

10:18

this way in which the

10:20

battle tested. You know, Israel's

10:23

unique position gives it this

10:25

marketing of weapon systems and

10:28

surveillance technologies and techniques

10:30

of repression, basically, for

10:33

a global market. But

10:36

I'm wondering also if you think that

10:40

what happened on October 7th in

10:42

some ways, you

10:45

know, undermines, perhaps you're

10:47

making the point that what they're doing now,

10:49

they will try and market. But in some

10:51

ways, all

10:53

they've really been able to demonstrate is the

10:55

ability to kill a lot of civilians, which,

10:57

of course, may be useful to certain parties.

10:59

I mean, you know, but

11:02

in terms of actual counterinsurgency,

11:05

the quality of surveillance and control

11:07

along a border fence, you

11:10

know, the breakthrough on October

11:13

7th, in some ways,

11:15

is the point we've talked about in a

11:17

couple of the different episodes that we've had

11:19

since October 7th, is

11:21

that it

11:24

might potentially affect, you know, this

11:26

image of Israeli military invulnerability and

11:28

the model that they have been

11:31

trying to market of being able

11:33

to wall off hostile

11:35

populations, restive populations that

11:37

are seen as problematic

11:40

to look a big, you

11:42

know, a blow in some ways

11:44

that they you couldn't just use

11:46

technology to create a kind

11:49

of island and oasis of European,

11:52

you know, consumer culture with

11:54

no consequences and no costs. And

11:56

so I'm wondering what you think

11:58

about about that. dimension

12:01

of it, even as they may be using

12:05

this current moment to

12:07

test out new technologies and so

12:09

on that they hope to perhaps

12:11

market in the future, is that

12:14

there is also a kind of dialectic going

12:16

on that's being waged. What

12:19

thoughts do you have about that? I

12:21

think you're correct. And I think

12:24

if October 7

12:26

caused a

12:28

loss of profits and influence in this

12:30

military industrial complex, I mean, that'd be

12:33

great. Ojala. No, I'm not gonna say

12:35

in Spanish. So I think that's one

12:37

way to under... I've been thinking about this. How

12:40

to understand, how to conceptualize what we've

12:42

witnessed in the 50 plus days, waking

12:44

up every morning and then just living

12:47

about... Going about my day just

12:50

full range and indignation and just

12:52

sadness. How do you explain this

12:55

bloodshed, this extermination, this genocidal violence?

12:57

I think maybe connected

12:59

to your point, one way

13:01

we can read this is that this is an

13:03

attempt to reestablish what existed before October 7. So

13:07

it's not just of

13:10

using this extermination campaign against Palestinians in

13:12

Gaza as a way to develop new

13:15

technologies to use and test new technologies.

13:18

In the piece, I referenced a tweet by

13:20

the doctor who was the director of the

13:22

Shippah Hospital where he talked about these sniper

13:25

drones, right? These drones that were flying around

13:27

outside the hospital and they were sniping civilians

13:29

who were trying to leave the hospital, trying

13:31

to move for safety. But

13:35

it's also, I think, an attempt to reassert... Yeah,

13:38

some deterrents. Right. They're trying

13:40

to reassert their comparative advantage that they have

13:42

within this field, right?

13:49

The appearance of invincibility

13:51

has to be reestablished. The

13:54

appearance of effectiveness of

13:57

walls that work, quote unquote, has

14:00

to be reestablished and perhaps that's one of the drivers for

14:02

this type of horrific violence that we're seeing because

14:05

I did I Do think it did take a hit But

14:08

then I look at it from the perspective of

14:10

let's say Mexico, right? Mexico was the first the

14:12

Mexican military was the first military in the world

14:14

to buy the Pegasus spyware I

14:16

don't think what's going on. I don't think what happened

14:18

on October 7th is going to Get

14:21

them to think twice about you know being

14:24

addicted to the sepa spyware that they've been

14:26

using for 10 years to spy on Human

14:28

rights activists on feminists on on journalists on

14:31

people who have been investigating instances of past and

14:33

present instances of state terror and crime So

14:37

but I think it did take a dent and

14:39

maybe perhaps that's one of the reasons why we're

14:41

seeing such like overwhelming levels of horrific

14:43

genocidal violence Yes, and also,

14:45

I mean, you know one observation

14:48

I had on it is perhaps it

14:50

also helps explain why the Western

14:53

political and corporate elite seem

14:55

to have Rallied

14:57

so firmly, you know as and

15:00

almost as a panic that this

15:02

whole model You know

15:04

was was under question and needed to

15:06

be, you know reasserted and improved But

15:10

you know maybe we'll come back to some

15:12

of these because those relate to the big

15:14

themes and consequences in the present of

15:16

this Excellent historical analysis that

15:19

you give in this forthcoming article. I

15:21

did want to take you back to

15:24

the beginnings I was surprised to learn

15:27

That Anastasio Somoza, you know dictator of

15:30

Nicaragua was already in the 1930s and

15:32

40s before even Israel Existed

15:37

as a recognized state Was

15:41

supplying weapons to Zionist militias

15:43

and you point out that

15:45

actually during this time You

15:48

know the region voted

15:50

overwhelmingly for the UN partition

15:52

plan And it's you

15:54

know interesting to think about where this fits

15:57

in Latin American history right now. We're you

15:59

know, pink tie or second pink

16:01

tide. You know, we kind

16:03

of think of all of the history

16:05

of these radical resistance movements, but Latin

16:09

America has a long history, geopolitically

16:12

and internationally, from

16:14

as you're documenting that even the 30s and

16:16

40s of playing

16:19

this kind of malign role in, you

16:23

know, helping, you know, Zionist militias

16:25

established the state of Israel through

16:28

brutality and through violence, that

16:30

the rest of your article documents starting to

16:32

go the other way. So, you know,

16:37

what was this kind of relationship and what more

16:40

can you tell us about why, for

16:42

example, these kinds

16:45

of right-wing dictators saw

16:48

something fruitful or useful in the Zionist project

16:50

and wanted to support it? No,

16:53

that's a great question. I don't think I have a clear

16:55

and direct answer to it. I would just say that after,

16:59

I think, Latin America wasn't exceptional

17:01

in this regard, right, especially after World War II and

17:03

once you start to see the

17:06

development of the partition plan, right? Like

17:08

even, you know, the United States and

17:10

the Soviet Union both voted for the

17:12

partition plan and for the establishment of the

17:14

state of Israel, right? So in that regard,

17:17

Latin America is not different. I think what

17:19

really surprised me, in addition to the Somoza

17:22

connection, right, that he was sending weapons to

17:24

these Zionist militias like the Ergon, is

17:27

that you also had two Latin

17:29

American diplomats, one from Uruguay and

17:31

one from Guatemala, who were actually

17:33

instrumental in the actual partition plan.

17:37

And the Guatemalan diplomat, when

17:39

he visited Palestine and when he visited

17:41

some of the kibbutzas, like he was

17:44

really like inspired by them. He

17:47

saw that as an agricultural and

17:49

political and social model that he

17:51

wanted to see in his native

17:53

Guatemala. And as I

17:55

note in the article, unfortunately, or

17:58

ironically, tragically, for the people of Guatemala, it

18:00

was the the military dictatorship of the late

18:02

70s and 80s, well actually ended up implementing

18:05

some of these kibbutz kibbutz style Model

18:08

villages as a form of waging brutal

18:11

counterinsurgency against the the country's Mayan

18:13

populations So

18:16

I in this the accounts

18:18

that I've read pretty much say that if it hadn't

18:20

been for the particularly the intervention in the war work

18:22

of the Guatemalan Diplomat whose

18:24

name I cannot remember now You

18:27

know the partition plan would have perhaps failed or

18:29

wouldn't have been what it ended up being in

18:31

the end, right and He

18:34

was a big promoter as he was

18:36

to visiting Palestine had a massive impact

18:38

And what's interesting to me is that

18:40

he made a connection between what he

18:42

saw on these kibbutz is with What

18:45

was then what the Mahler's? Ongoing revolutionary

18:47

process that had begun in 1944

18:49

like he made these like revolutionary

18:52

Connections between what he saw in Palestine and what he

18:54

saw in his native country, which

18:56

I think is really interesting And

18:59

and in you know, the first vote that they had

19:01

I think in 47 for the partition plan I think

19:03

it was only cool by that voted against it, which

19:05

is really interesting and cool by obviously

19:08

plays a really influent Important

19:10

role in kind of helping a globalize the Palestinian struggle

19:12

in the late 60s early 70s once

19:15

the the July 26th when the Fidel Castro

19:17

are in power a Lot

19:20

of this you you have pretty stalwart

19:22

Latin American support government at least at the

19:24

governmental support for Israel up until I think

19:26

When you start to see a change is

19:28

after the 67 war and

19:31

and the taking of of the territories that we

19:33

now refer to the Occupied territories

19:36

and then especially after 1973, but what happens between 67

19:39

and 73 is just you know What

19:42

it like Lenin's quote about like sometimes what

19:44

I forget I'm gonna totally butcher right but

19:46

so much happened in those six years that

19:50

Yeah, you know Paul Thomas Chamberlain

19:52

has that book about the PLO and

19:54

it's in its place globally during

19:57

that time period and He

19:59

talks about the people PLO waging this global

20:01

offensive, diplomatic and political, and

20:05

really highlighting what 67

20:07

was about, what the colonial treatment

20:09

of Palestinian communities, what it looked

20:11

like as it was happening

20:13

in real time. And that really started to change at

20:16

least public perception and much of Latin America

20:18

against Israel. A lot of the goodwill that

20:21

existed before, I think, started to slowly dissipate.

20:24

By the early 80s, a good number

20:27

of Latin American countries are hosting PLO

20:29

embassies or offices.

20:33

Not without contention, but at the very least, they were able

20:35

to establish their offices

20:37

in places like Mexico City and

20:40

other parts of Latin America. So I think that the

20:42

key turning point is the 67 war. And

20:45

then by the 70s, once

20:48

Israel starts to arm an

20:50

outfit clearly, like obviously clear outfit

20:52

and arm, some of the worst and

20:55

most horrific genocidal regimes in the history of 20th

20:57

century Latin America. I mean, that also does

20:59

a great deal to expose

21:02

what it was doing and what its function

21:04

was. And

21:06

people were able to make connections between

21:08

the settler colonialism that occurred in Palestine

21:11

with the type of

21:14

violence that this Israeli military

21:16

industrial complex was facilitating and

21:18

arming. It became very clear

21:20

that they were fighting against indigenous movements,

21:24

whether it was in Guatemala or whether it was back

21:26

in Palestine. Yeah. Earlier,

21:28

you were talking about the sniper drones

21:31

used by Israel. I think that's something that

21:33

people really have to start thinking very critically

21:35

about. I mean, they're already doing automated border

21:37

policing around the Gaza wall using

21:39

this high technological apparatus

21:42

to sort of impose

21:44

colonial rule as

21:46

very dystopian. This

21:49

techno-colonialist sort of experiment

21:51

project that Israel is undertaking in

21:54

Palestine. You also mentioned Elbit systems. So in

21:56

your article, you discuss how they're behind in

21:58

the creation of these surveillance surveillance towers,

22:00

monitoring the Mexico-U.S. border. And

22:02

of course, they're also part

22:05

and parcel of the Israeli

22:07

assault on Gaza and on

22:09

Palestinians more broadly. We just

22:11

have an incident recently where three members of

22:13

Palestine Action U.S. were arrested

22:17

for basically trying

22:19

to disrupt Elbit systems and in

22:21

the process doing some property damage.

22:23

And now, you know, people are

22:25

talking about facing years or decades in prison

22:28

for this disruptive act against, you

22:30

know, a corporation

22:32

making the weapons that slaughter human

22:34

beings, literally showing you that

22:37

like capitalist ruling class

22:39

values the property of corporation

22:41

brick and mortar, you know,

22:43

sort of locations, headquarters, then

22:45

they do, you know, human

22:47

life. Israel can slaughter 15,000,

22:50

you know, innocent human beings, civilians all

22:52

day, killed children, and everybody can look

22:54

at it on our camera. Nobody faces

22:57

any accountability. Nobody goes and

22:59

sprays some paint on Elbit or tries to,

23:01

you know, lock the doors or do some

23:03

property damage to disrupt what they're doing. And

23:05

they face years and decades in prison. So

23:07

it's really, really disgusting.

23:10

They even marched out the anti-Semitic accusation

23:12

for the people who attacked Elbit, literally

23:15

attacking a corporate weapons manufacturer now

23:17

in the U.S., mind you, is

23:19

now being labeled as anti-Semitic. So

23:22

in one way, it's disgusting. It's

23:24

authoritarian. It's brutal. And

23:26

another way, it's also revealing of

23:28

themselves. It's sort of like as they try

23:30

to, you know, squash,

23:32

you know, dissident voices and

23:35

actions, their mask slips and

23:37

they sort of reveal themselves

23:39

in an interesting way. But that's

23:41

just sort of some thoughts I had based on

23:43

what you were talking about earlier, just making that

23:45

connection with Elbit systems. But the

23:47

question I have for you is I kind of want to get deeper

23:49

into, you know, Israel's

23:52

role in Latin America, Central America in the

23:54

70s and 80s. We can

23:56

talk about different case studies, but I'm particularly

23:58

interested in how the U.S. and

24:00

Israel's interests in Central America sort

24:02

of you know come together how

24:05

they sort of work together or even

24:07

in your in your article

24:10

you discuss sometimes the US pulling back from doing a

24:12

certain thing because it you know it looks really bad

24:14

if Israel will go in and do it for him.

24:16

Can you kind of talk about how they tag

24:19

team work with one another during you know

24:21

this Cold War 70s 80s era in Latin

24:23

America? Yeah for sure

24:25

so it's a complicated relationship it's

24:28

not as it's not as clear-cut

24:30

as to say Israel does whatever

24:32

the US tells it to do as a proxy state

24:34

right it's it's a lip it's a bit more complicated

24:36

particularly because they have they

24:40

have different interests that sometimes those interests will

24:42

be in competition within one another so particularly

24:44

when it comes to selling weapons right so

24:46

if there's an

24:49

actual competition there and as we know the US

24:52

military industrial complex is quite tied into the US

24:54

government I mean just like anywhere else right so

24:57

so it's not like a neat proxy

25:00

relationship but one of the

25:02

things that that I discovered doing the research for for

25:04

this article and then reading and some of the stuff

25:06

that I read when

25:08

I wrote the article for for Lui all day was

25:11

that just the centrality of

25:14

the these these defense companies

25:16

or the these arms companies

25:18

are for the broader Israeli

25:20

economy right yeah at

25:22

some point in the early 80s there's estimates

25:25

to something like 15 to 20 percent of the

25:27

entire Israel's entire industrial

25:29

workforce was working for one of

25:31

these defense companies these defense companies whether

25:33

they're private or state-length they're never a

25:35

quote-unquote private right it's like former IDF

25:37

people who found them it's it's there there's

25:41

it's a quite a permeable boundary

25:43

right but the

25:46

folks who were writing about this this this

25:48

entrality of the of the arms industry to the

25:50

Israeli economy in the 70s and 80s always talk

25:52

about how it was like the

25:55

one profitable economic

25:58

sector that the country could rely on So

26:00

that drove a lot of its quote unquote,

26:03

oozy diplomacy in the words of one Guatemalan

26:05

journalist as it went to Central

26:07

America and Latin America in the 1970s and 80s.

26:09

It had to go there had to find markets

26:12

The where it could sell its goods that

26:15

could help keep afloat one of

26:17

the world's most indebted economies by the early 1980s Which

26:21

was the Israeli economy so one

26:24

of the things that really stands out to me is

26:26

is from a political economic perspective is that The

26:29

Israeli economy depends on these companies. They still

26:31

depend on to this very day what

26:33

we've seen in the last 20 years is the emergence of

26:35

like cyber rather like the Supposedly

26:38

the emergence of another type of Silicon

26:40

Valley and in in in Palestine

26:43

and this is one of the reasons why Israel's like one of the leading technological

26:47

innovators and practitioners of cyber surveillance and

26:49

spyware and all that kind of stuff

26:52

but in the 70s and 80s The

26:56

moments when the interests of Israel

26:58

in the US converge What

27:00

were those moments when the

27:03

US could not it

27:05

wasn't comfortable or politically? Useful

27:07

for the US to a lie

27:09

themselves openly and clearly with some

27:12

of these horrific regimes that

27:14

begin to take power I think the

27:16

first big military dictatorship that takes power in Latin

27:19

America in this period is in 1964 a

27:23

Brazilian military dictatorship and actually Brazil and Israel gonna

27:25

have a long relationship until the

27:28

Israel gets pretty pissed that Brazil allows the setting up of a

27:31

PLO office in like 1980 1991 But

27:33

they had a long fruitful relationship before that So

27:36

in Latin America, you start to see this cycle and

27:39

we talked about our episode on Cold War Latin America

27:41

But you start to see this episode this counter revolutionary

27:43

episode in the 60s and 70s and early

27:46

80s where military dictatorships and

27:48

authoritarian Governments start to take

27:50

power That

27:52

then radicalizes popular movements It convinces

27:54

some popular movements to adopt armed

27:57

struggle as the only political option

27:59

to escape this type of horrific

28:01

dictatorships. And in

28:04

that scenario, then, Israel steps

28:06

in, it provides

28:08

counterinsurgency. I mean, broadly counterinsurgency is

28:10

broadly defined to think about weapons,

28:13

to think about technologies, to think

28:15

about advisors, military advisors, to think

28:17

about doctrine. And

28:20

it becomes very clear that in those

28:22

areas where the US government, where

28:24

the White House is prevented from

28:27

openly providing military aid because of

28:29

congressional limitations or restrictions, Israel

28:31

will step in and

28:34

provide the things that these dictatorships

28:37

require. And there's quotes that I include in the article

28:39

where you have different Israeli officials saying, let us do

28:41

the dirty work. Let us do what you can

28:43

do. And this goes beyond Latin

28:45

America. Israel is

28:47

working with South Africa, apartheid South

28:49

Africa. This is another story that

28:52

most people may know about. They're

28:54

working with Mobutu and Zaire. They're working with

28:56

the Duvaliers in Haiti. I

28:58

mean, it's like everywhere that you

29:01

have a horrific, some sort

29:04

of horrific regime that is also facing

29:06

a certain type of popular struggle or

29:08

popular resistance, you're going to find at

29:10

the very least, Galil rifles,

29:13

Uzi rifles, Arava airplanes that are

29:15

very useful because they do short

29:17

landing and take off, so they're

29:19

perfect to land in areas

29:23

where you don't have a landing strip and you're

29:25

waging counter-insurgency in the mountains or in jungles

29:27

or in difficult terrain. It's

29:31

quite clear that the role

29:33

of the Israeli military-industrial

29:36

complex in its export sector

29:38

is to help push back,

29:40

defeat, exterminate popular resistance to

29:43

dictatorships in Latin America. And

29:46

they're able to do that in

29:48

places where they're most effectively

29:50

able to do that and to

29:53

turn a nice profit in those areas where the US, beginning

29:56

in the late 70s, start to say, well, we

29:58

can't help Somoza. in

30:00

1978, 1979, because his

30:02

National Guard executed an American journalist on

30:05

air. So we got to step back. And

30:07

who steps in? Israel, Israel

30:10

and they start arming, you

30:12

know, most of the National Guard, and

30:16

they get overthrown by the Sun and he

30:18

says in 1979, right and Israel and

30:20

his son, he says, we'll have a

30:22

really interesting, interesting quotation square quote, scare

30:24

quotes throughout the 1980s. There's an interesting campaign,

30:26

I don't think I mentioned it in the article, where

30:30

the Jewish organized

30:33

Jewish groups in the United States start

30:35

to accuse the Sandinistas of anti-Semitism Zionist

30:40

groups, and the

30:43

Sandinistas because and it's primarily because

30:45

the Sandinistas were working with the

30:47

PLO and they're working with they

30:49

have a non-aligned independent foreign policy.

30:53

And eventually, one

30:56

organization goes through like a fact finding mission

30:59

on the ground, they're like, actually, we found

31:01

no instances of anti-Semitism. Nicaragua's small Jewish

31:03

community did not tell us that we that

31:05

they were suffering anti-Semitism, this is all part

31:07

of a concerted campaign to kind of undermine

31:10

or represent the Sandinista regime in

31:12

the 1980s in a certain way.

31:16

When in the 19 just a decade

31:18

before that the Somosos National Guard was

31:21

using Israeli weapons to put down to

31:23

tamp down and to destroy and exterminate

31:25

popular movements and resistance to a

31:27

dictatorship that had been around since the 1930s. So

31:29

I think that's more or less

31:31

the dynamic at play. In

31:35

the article, I also mentioned, I focus

31:37

on Guatemala because Guatemala is the

31:39

country in the military dictatorship that

31:41

takes power in the 70s and continues into the 80s. They're

31:45

the ones who received the most

31:47

extensive military

31:49

aid, military advisors,

31:51

computer technology, airplanes,

31:54

also agricultural help from

31:58

the Israelis. And as they're waging

32:01

what is referred to as

32:03

this quote unquote quiet genocide, the killing of

32:05

more than 100,000 Mayan

32:08

peoples and the practice

32:10

of more than 600 massacres

32:13

and the eradication of hundreds of indigenous

32:15

villages in Guatemala. And

32:18

in those endeavors, Israeli

32:20

military advisors played an

32:22

influential role, Israeli weapons

32:24

played an influential role, Israeli

32:27

computer technology was used to wipe

32:29

out the urban guerrilla movement in

32:32

Guatemala by

32:34

tracking telephone, by surveilling

32:37

telephones and even by tracking

32:39

water usage in certain apartment buildings. And

32:42

if they noticed that there was a lot of water being used,

32:44

that would then lead to some sort of police or military raid

32:47

because I gave them a hint that there was like a group

32:49

of urban guerrillas there working. So

32:52

on a broader level, then it becomes pretty apparent that

32:55

on the one hand, this type of industry

32:59

is central to the broader Israeli economy, like they

33:01

have to do this in

33:04

an economic logic. But the

33:06

actual application and the consequences

33:08

of this of these exports

33:11

lead to brutal counterinsurgency in Latin America,

33:13

especially in Central America in the 70s

33:15

and 80s. I

33:18

just want to follow up quick here, more

33:20

as a clarification point for the listeners,

33:22

because you've mentioned Nicaragua a couple of

33:24

times. And it's very interesting looking at

33:26

what you mentioned throughout the article on

33:28

Nicaragua is that Anastasio-Somos,

33:32

senior, the father, was arming

33:35

these Zionist militia groups

33:38

prior to the foundation of the so-called

33:40

state of Israel. Whereas,

33:42

as you mentioned, then Anastasio-Somos,

33:45

the son, both of

33:47

which listeners were dictators of

33:49

Nicaragua at various times. Just

33:52

to remind everybody what was it,

33:54

46 years essentially that the Somos

33:56

family was ruling over Nicaragua in

33:58

one form or another. whether that

34:00

be as a quote-unquote

34:02

elected president or as

34:04

just an outright military dictator or the

34:07

you know name that wasn't on the

34:09

the government's title but the one who

34:12

was pulling the strings behind the military

34:14

junta in the early 70s so this

34:16

is like a familial thing but

34:18

it was interesting because the

34:21

father is arming these Zionist militia

34:23

groups and then as you mentioned

34:25

in your previous answer briefly by

34:28

the end Israel was arming the

34:31

the regime the

34:33

samosa regime in Nicaragua by

34:36

the end so just to clarify on that

34:38

point a little bit and maybe allow you

34:40

if you want to talk about how that

34:42

dynamic shifted I know that you talk about

34:45

67 is kind of an inflection point you

34:47

know both within Israel as well as within

34:49

Latin America perhaps that's also kind of the

34:51

midpoint between these two periods of time as

34:53

well yeah

34:56

and I think that's a good point Henry and I think trying

34:59

to think when that so the

35:01

first the samosa the father was

35:03

nicknamed tacho and then

35:05

there was another the first son who took

35:07

over he didn't last very long I think he

35:09

died like a massive heart attack and I think the

35:11

next son that Chito samosa he may have

35:13

taken over in 67 or 60

35:16

I can't remember the exact dates I'm probably wrong

35:18

there but yeah

35:21

I mean I think part of it even before the

35:23

U.S. cut aid to samosa

35:25

the son Tachito samosa even before that

35:28

they had already received massive amounts of Israeli

35:30

military aid and almost

35:32

you know it seems like the

35:38

what happened in the 40s was that had not

35:40

been forgotten right and for

35:43

from the perspective of of Israeli arms

35:45

dealers who were working with companies and

35:47

also there's like a network of private

35:49

arms dealers that that

35:52

information is super hard to get to and

35:54

there's some names that emerge particularly a couple

35:56

guys who lived in Mexico but

35:58

they're also playing a really nefarious role But

36:00

it's easier for them to do deals

36:03

with a regime like Somoza's Nicaragua, right?

36:05

And it's an authoritarian ticotoro regime. And

36:07

it's very clear what type of services

36:09

and arms that Israel can provide. And

36:11

again, they're always counter insurgent in nature.

36:15

So Tachito, yeah, I think by the time by

36:17

the time Tachito is facing

36:19

the Sandinista Revolution in

36:22

79 and the US cuts eight, I mean, his last,

36:25

you know, one of the last stalwart

36:27

support that he was receiving came

36:30

from from from Israel. And

36:32

Tachito eventually, I think

36:35

we talked about this in the Cold War episode, and I always make a point

36:37

of mentioning this in my classes

36:39

when I teach this. Tachito

36:41

then escapes to Paraguay and makes his

36:43

way to Paraguay, where

36:46

then under the control of Alfredo Strozner, who

36:48

had been a dictator for like five decades,

36:50

I think, and

36:52

this like international group of guerrillas, bazooka,

36:55

Tachito, the death. Operation

36:57

Reptile, I think is what they called it.

36:59

So one of the few instances where some

37:02

of these Latin American dictators

37:05

suffer some form of justice, I

37:07

guess. But yeah, I

37:09

think so. One

37:11

of the things that I mentioned in the

37:13

article, then for the military dictatorships and in

37:15

the countries that were neighbors to

37:18

Nicaragua, because Nicaragua was under the revolution

37:20

in Sandinista after 79. And

37:24

that especially after Israel invaded Lebanon in 82,

37:27

they started the Salvadorian and Guatemalan

37:29

military officers started to view Nicaragua

37:31

as kind of like the Lebanon

37:33

of Central America. So

37:35

I quote a Salvadoran military officer who was

37:38

quite enthusiastic about potentially even

37:40

invading Nicaragua. He's

37:42

basically saying like what Israel did in

37:45

their invasion of Lebanon to knock out the PLO, we

37:48

could do the same thing because Nicaragua supporting the

37:50

FMLN guerrillas in Salvador were

37:52

trying to overthrow us. So

37:55

there's these really interesting transnational connections. And I

37:57

think that's the same military officer who When

38:00

they asked him about whether it

38:02

was US military advisors or counter insurgent experts who

38:04

were providing them with the most help, his response

38:06

was like, no, the Americans lost in Vietnam, they

38:09

don't know anything. But the Israelis, they know.

38:13

And that was, again, that's the selling point.

38:15

That's the selling point of this

38:17

military industrial complex that they offered to these

38:19

dictatorships in Latin America. We know

38:22

how to occupy, we know how to colonize, we know

38:24

how to control, we know how to surveil, we know

38:26

how to kill. So turn

38:28

to us. In your old

38:30

ally, the United States refuses to do so

38:32

because of that pesky limited,

38:34

quite limited version of democracy

38:36

where they were shamed into not

38:38

supporting the Israelian. So we do

38:41

business to us. And

38:43

Israel and Guatemala received quite extensive support in

38:45

the 1980s. Yeah, I'd

38:48

wanted to pick up on that,

38:50

the comparative advantage kind of situation

38:52

that Israel manages to

38:55

market. And I was really

38:57

struck by that statement from

39:01

Salvadoran Colonel Sigifredo

39:03

Ochoa Perez saying

39:06

that, yeah, we're not really interested

39:08

in the American model post Vietnam,

39:10

they lost, you know, so, you

39:12

know, who wants to follow what

39:14

they're doing, but the Israelis, they're

39:16

really successful. So, you know, getting

39:18

back to that point about whether October 7th,

39:20

you know, punctured this image,

39:22

it clearly has over time

39:24

been important in kind of

39:26

marketing their particular techniques

39:28

and industries and know how. And

39:32

partly also because it wasn't large set

39:34

piece, you know, kind of military large

39:37

scale, it was, you

39:39

know, about a domestic internal population, you

39:41

know, under occupation, which was something a

39:43

little bit different from, you know, what

39:45

the US was trying to manage in

39:48

some of its, you know, Cold

39:50

War era kind of overt military

39:52

conflicts, you know, whether it was

39:54

in Korea or Vietnam. So in

39:56

a way, you could say that

39:58

Israel was this nimble, more boutique

40:00

kind of, you know, that served

40:03

maybe the Latin American market better

40:05

because they did assassination, they

40:07

did, you know, surveillance of, you

40:09

know, domestic groups, whether it's in

40:11

the, you know, post 67 West

40:13

Bank in Gaza, or even surveilling,

40:15

you know, internally, you

40:18

know, the Palestinian population within

40:20

1948, and so

40:22

on. So that seems like

40:24

great connection, you know, why they

40:26

had a comparative advantage within this

40:29

as a sub imperial kind of actor,

40:32

you know, and could in some ways out

40:34

compete the US. But one

40:36

other component I wanted to ask you about

40:38

is you've pointed to some of the in

40:41

our discussion and in the article

40:43

here, some of the domestic considerations

40:45

that, you know, maybe limited the

40:47

United States ability, right, you know,

40:49

they had to have an arm's

40:51

length from some of the more

40:53

brutal dictators, and

40:55

so on. But I wondered if there

40:57

was some also some sense, because I noticed

40:59

that in some of the quotes,

41:03

the Israelis say, Wow, yeah, we'll sell

41:05

to anybody, but then they point out, well,

41:07

you know, not the Soviet Union or Soviet,

41:10

you know, kind of allies. So

41:12

it was definitely an anti communist

41:14

sort of front and market in

41:17

which they're operating. And I wondered,

41:20

if maybe you could elaborate a little

41:22

bit more on what you think the

41:24

external kind of conditions of geopolitics during

41:26

the Cold War may have, you

41:29

know, created these opportunities for Israel,

41:31

you know, to have

41:34

that comparative advantage that the US

41:36

could, and for not just domestic

41:38

reasons, but also because in the

41:40

era of the Non-Aligned Movement to

41:43

be a supporters of the most

41:45

brutal dictators, suppressing

41:48

kind of popular movements didn't

41:50

play well in a post colonial and

41:52

decolonizing sort of world in the late

41:54

60s, 70s and 80s, where the US

41:56

was competing with the Soviet Union. Union

42:00

in Africa, in parts of Asia, and

42:03

so on. So I'm wondering how

42:05

you might analyze the

42:07

larger Cold War geopolitical conditions

42:10

as they affected Israel's reception

42:12

in Latin America. That's

42:15

a great question. I mean I think, I

42:18

mean we go back to the Bandung Conference

42:20

and they are from there in what 55

42:22

they identify Israel in a very particular way,

42:24

right? They label it as kind of like

42:26

a bridgehead for Western colonialism. Like they very

42:28

clearly, this diverse groups

42:31

of govern post-colonial governments that

42:33

ran this political spectrum, as

42:35

a group we're able to identify with what folks

42:38

like historian Rashid Halidi talk about, right? That

42:40

the Zionism has always been attached to other

42:42

forms of empire, has been attached to a

42:44

form of empire, one empire or another. So

42:47

as early as 1955 in Bandung, they knew that, they realized

42:51

that and I can't remember the exact quote, but

42:53

it's like a bridgehead of

42:55

Western colonialism or something like

42:57

that. But yeah,

43:00

I think an unthinkable aircraft carrier.

43:02

What, yeah, well that was the Weinberger,

43:04

I can't remember that. Yeah, one of the

43:06

Reaganites, one of the the horrific Reagan monsters

43:09

came up with that one. Yeah, it's the

43:11

Unsink, well maybe it was a, anyway, the

43:14

general, Hague, I think it was Hague. But

43:19

yeah, I think there's a there's a very

43:21

interesting geopolitical logic

43:23

going on, right? Like if you just trace who

43:27

this Israeli military and their military-industrial complex

43:29

is able to work with or who they

43:31

want to work with, it's the

43:34

worst of the worst. At

43:36

the very least, the United States has

43:38

to hold the pretension of some sort

43:40

of respect for human rights

43:43

or democracy, particularly when it was in

43:45

competition with the Soviet Union. And

43:48

the global south was the

43:50

prime battleground for this

43:52

political ideological discursive battle.

43:56

So whereas Israel wasn't really limited by

43:58

that. And also,

44:00

I think they knew how to

44:02

play the geopolitical situation. Again, they went where

44:05

the US could not necessarily go. But

44:08

there's also something else at play. And

44:11

that is part of the reason

44:13

why you even have the systematic development

44:15

and funding of a Israeli

44:17

military industrial complex is what happened in the 67

44:19

war. So prior to the 67 war,

44:21

the main military, a patron of the

44:24

Israelis was France. And

44:26

as a consequence of the 67 war, the taking of

44:28

territories, France cut them

44:30

off. And that then

44:32

scared the Israelis into fast

44:36

driving creating a military industrial complex

44:38

that would allow military self-sufficiency. So

44:42

a certain that they could create the weaponry

44:44

that they needed to defend themselves and to

44:46

wage the occupation and to

44:48

quote unquote defend themselves from their neighbors.

44:52

By the 70s, though, they were so good at this that

44:55

they had a bit too much. And this is where they

44:57

start to go to look into

44:59

export, particularly the levels of debt that

45:01

the Israel started to carry by the early 80s. Like

45:05

this, as I mentioned earlier, this is one way that they

45:07

could get out of that

45:10

contradiction. But

45:12

they were never able to achieve that

45:14

self-sufficiency, primarily because they still depended heavily

45:17

on US technology. So

45:19

the US would allow them to use

45:22

some of that technology in their own

45:24

Israeli made weapons. But then

45:26

when Israel wanted to sell to certain countries, the

45:28

US could come in and say, no, you cannot

45:30

sell that jet to Ecuador because it has our

45:32

technology. And we don't

45:34

want Ecuador to start threatening his neighbors with

45:38

advanced jets or advanced missile

45:41

technology because that's going to

45:44

destabilize geopolitical situation in Northern South America,

45:46

things like that. So

45:49

one of the things that probably is going on is

45:52

there are high level conversations between Israeli and

45:54

US military officials, particularly in the late 70s

45:56

and 80s during the Reagan administration, of where

45:58

they were going to be. they could where they

46:00

could go and sell their weapons and why they were selling

46:02

their weapons there and what weapons they could sell to who.

46:06

So that that self sufficiency

46:08

or that ability to,

46:11

to wage like an independent

46:13

political economic approach, even geopolitical

46:16

approach always remain a fantasy.

46:18

It's still Israel still

46:20

dependent on US aid

46:23

and US military technology for the development

46:25

of some of their more important weapons

46:27

that they then sold to around

46:29

the world. I don't know if that answers the question. I

46:31

think it, this is

46:33

a really good question that, that, that, um, I think

46:35

we need to think through for the, for

46:37

the present, um, because the consequences

46:39

of that are, would really, really important. That's

46:43

right. And that's why I ask it because

46:45

I do think it is significant. Um, and

46:48

it, what it reminds me of is

46:50

well, or it makes me think that

46:52

there is a particular value or role,

46:55

uh, historically and contemporarily anything going on

46:57

in the future perhaps of

46:59

having an exceptional state. I mean,

47:01

the Israelis even said in a quote that

47:04

you, you mentioned, Hey, well we're a pariah

47:06

state. So like, yeah, so we don't have

47:08

to worry about conforming to

47:10

these conventions of international, we're already a

47:12

pariah state. That gives us the freedom

47:14

to act outside of the binds balance.

47:16

And in some ways it's what makes

47:19

the system seem to work as the

47:21

U S can kind of pretend, have

47:23

this pretense of, well, we wouldn't go

47:25

that far. We have to abide by

47:28

certain norms of, you know, you know,

47:31

international law and human rights and so

47:33

on, but they can still have some

47:35

part of the system that, you know,

47:37

is a complicated relationship. As you're pointing

47:39

out, they have to kind of curb

47:41

it. They have to manage it, but

47:43

it allows, you know, this, um, kind

47:45

of role for the system itself to

47:47

work, you know, in an Imperial,

47:50

you know, hegemonic fashion. And it's why

47:52

maybe Biden said, when he said, you

47:54

know, to bring it to the present,

47:57

uh, uh, uh, you know, a quote that he's had.

48:00

before is that if we didn't have Israel

48:02

we would have to invent it. Well,

48:04

why would you have to invent it? How

48:07

does that make any sense? Well, the system

48:09

in order to function needs to perhaps have

48:11

some of these exceptional

48:14

zones that can operate in

48:16

some way to preserve the larger so-called

48:22

rules-based, if we want to be

48:24

anachronistic about it, or

48:27

the human rights regime. So anyway, I

48:29

know that just to add on, I

48:31

know that at least in one of

48:33

those instances, because Biden does bring up

48:35

that quote all the time that if

48:37

Israel didn't exist that the US would

48:39

have to create it, in at least

48:41

one of those instances the follow-up statement

48:44

was so that we could protect her

48:46

interests. I

48:49

think that might have been in the first one when

48:51

he was in the Senate, but my guess is that

48:53

he probably has brought up that specific line more than

48:55

once. But yeah, we would need to create an Israel

48:57

in order to protect her

48:59

interests, which you know what her

49:02

interests are. Yeah, yeah,

49:04

yeah, it's sort of a

49:06

quote that sounds clever

49:08

but actually reveals quite a lot. So

49:10

yeah. Well, a lot of masks have

49:13

fallen off, I think, in the last

49:15

50-plus days, right? So this is just

49:18

one more. I think also, onto to

49:20

your broader geopolitical question, the

49:22

end of the Cold War was like boom

49:25

times for this military

49:27

industrial complex, right? Because then it opened

49:30

up markets that were off-limit before, right?

49:32

Because of geopolitical rivalries during the Cold

49:35

War, right? This idea that quote that

49:37

you cited, right? The Israeli officials say,

49:39

we'll sell to anyone except enemies

49:42

of Israel and the Soviet world. The

49:45

end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union ended

49:48

that, right? So if you look at

49:51

who they sell to now, they sell to almost

49:53

anyone. It doesn't matter. And it's again, they're

49:55

offering, this is the reason why

49:57

I titled this piece, like a future of walls or

49:59

liberation. In our current context, in

50:02

a place where we have one

50:04

climate catastrophe after another, that

50:07

is generating massive

50:09

displacement around the world, in addition

50:11

to political factors and imperial factors

50:13

that are contributing to mass displacement.

50:18

Countries are going to Israel for

50:20

the technical know-how and the

50:23

technology to prevent that. The

50:26

future that they offer is the future of

50:28

walls. There's a reason why

50:30

the Frontex, the European border

50:32

patrol, uses Israeli drones

50:34

to monitor the Mediterranean Sea.

50:38

They use an Elbit drone and they use another drone

50:41

that's a bigger drone that Lewinstein talks about in his

50:43

book that could be outfitted

50:46

to carry rafts. So

50:48

if this Hermes drone

50:50

identifies migrants in distress,

50:54

Frontex could use this drone to launch

50:57

rafts to help these people out, but they don't.

51:00

What they're doing is that they're

51:02

sending the coordinates to Frontex offices

51:04

throughout the EU and Warsaw where

51:07

they watch migrants drown to death.

51:10

And they know where all these boats are and

51:12

they don't intervene. At the same time,

51:14

they've kicked out humanitarian groups who were

51:16

using their own boats, who were waging

51:18

their own campaign to save migrants from

51:20

drowning. They've been kicked out of the

51:22

Mediterranean. The

51:25

wall technology we see in the US-Mexico border,

51:27

the wall technology that we see in Kashmir,

51:31

the close relationship that has

51:33

developed between India and

51:35

Israel. It's

51:39

a wall of perpetual

51:41

counter-disurgency walls population controls.

51:46

This is what they're offering now. This is in

51:48

the post-Cold War era. So if

51:50

anything, the end of the Cold War was just a

51:53

huge economic opportunity for Israel and they've taken

51:55

advantage of it in the world of arms,

51:58

especially now cyber surveillance and cyber technology. of

54:00

this broader story we're telling

54:02

about imperialism, colonialism, US, Israel,

54:05

connections, et cetera. So I know I'm kind of throwing

54:07

something on you that's not in the article, but I

54:09

was hoping that you could talk a little bit about

54:12

Kissinger. I can always talk shit about Henry Kissinger. Oh,

54:14

you can't. Well,

54:16

you know, it's, other

54:19

than the Birmingham brawl moment, the only other

54:21

time in the last year that I've had

54:23

a good time on Twitter is when Kissinger

54:25

died. Just to see, you know, people's reactions. I

54:28

mean, I even posted a picture of myself taking

54:30

a shot of me Scott because I was like,

54:32

you know, go to hell motherfucker. But the

54:35

tragedy is that he won. I

54:38

mean, not to say shit that pisses me off, right? So it is

54:41

what should anger all of us. And someone,

54:43

I think it was Greg Grandin who made

54:45

the point on Twitter was like, yeah, let's

54:47

celebrate it now. But the next day, all

54:49

the elites are going to come out with

54:51

the wonderful characterizations

54:54

and the eulogies and

54:56

the, you know, trying to set the terms

54:58

of how we should remember this, this monster.

55:02

So one, I guess one way we can connect the

55:05

art, you know, what we've been discussing to Kissinger is,

55:07

you know, one of the instances that

55:09

surprised me the most was to learn

55:11

that Israel

55:14

was working with the Argentine military dictatorship

55:16

in the late seventies and early eighties,

55:18

right? So this horrific

55:20

military dictatorship takes power in 1976. They'll

55:23

be remaining power until 1983. They

55:25

disappeared something

55:27

like 30,000 people. And I think

55:29

we discussed this in the Cold War episode, right? But

55:31

it also was a viciously

55:34

anti-Semitic military dictatorship where they

55:36

viewed their taking of

55:38

power and their waging of war against

55:40

their own people as an existential struggle

55:42

to defend, quote unquote, Western civilization. And

55:45

there's a famous quote from a military officer, I

55:47

think it's a military officer who said, you know,

55:49

we're defending, the

55:52

three people were defending Western civilization are

55:54

Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein,

55:56

right? I mean, so it's a viciously

55:59

anti-Semitic, anti-Semitic regime

56:02

at the same time, you know, sectors, particularly

56:04

the military industrial complex in Israel is doing

56:06

business with them. There's other

56:08

members of the Israeli government who are trying to save

56:11

Argentine Jews from extermination

56:14

and to bring them to Israel, right?

56:16

So what there's a famous memoir of

56:18

a Argentine Jewish journalist,

56:21

Hakowat Dima who talks about

56:23

this, who talks about, you know, he gets tortured

56:25

by the Argentine military dictatorship. And he's the one

56:27

who tells us that in the

56:29

torture chambers, there's portraits

56:32

of Adolf Hitler. There's

56:35

Argentine military soldiers and officers doing,

56:37

you know, Nazi salutes.

56:41

And yet the Israeli arms

56:43

industry is doing business with them,

56:45

you know, selling, you know, sophisticated

56:47

missile technology and other types of

56:49

arms. And

56:51

Kissinger was instrumental, right? Kissinger, one

56:53

of his most horrific quotes is

56:55

when he goes to meet the

56:58

dictator of Argentina in

57:00

1976, 77, General Vidal,

57:03

and he tells them, you know, you

57:06

got to do this quick, whatever you guys are going to

57:08

do, I'm paraphrasing, you got to do this quick. So

57:11

giving them carte blanche, right, to do whatever

57:14

the Argentine military dictatorship wanted to do. And

57:16

that was disappear 30,000 people, torture thousands

57:19

of people, send

57:21

into exile thousands of people, just some of,

57:23

you know, one of the worst top

57:26

three, I don't know, one of the worst, I don't

57:28

even want to rank it because they're terrible, right? But one

57:30

of the worst dictatorships in the

57:32

history of post colonial Latin America.

57:35

I mean, Kissinger was instrumental providing

57:37

diplomatic cover. And

57:41

it's not it's really crazy then to think

57:43

about how different parts of the Israeli state

57:46

are worth are engaging with the military dictatorship

57:48

in contradictory ways. And

57:51

again, because from economic

57:53

political economic logic, they

57:55

need to sell weapons and they're going to sell to whoever

57:57

they can, even a regime

57:59

that was viciously anti-Semitic and was doing

58:02

things like torturing people in front of

58:04

a Adolf Hitler portrait.

58:07

And then that, you know, obviously that feeds into

58:10

the whole, I think most people when you ask

58:12

them, where did the Nazis go in Latin America,

58:14

they'll say Argentina, right? And the last, I think

58:16

this year we've learned that, you know, Canada should

58:18

probably be included in that discussion too. But,

58:20

you know, we can talk about that later. But

58:23

I think that's one way to connect

58:26

it. And Kissinger, you know,

58:28

whenever he appears in, whether

58:30

she's in Chile in 73, 74, 75, or if it's Argentina in the late 70s,

58:32

he goes back to Argentina

58:37

for the 1978 World Cup. And we talked about

58:39

that in our World Cup episode,

58:41

right? And he's a huge football fan. And

58:44

he's doing some nefarious things even during the World

58:46

Cup. You know, there's Argentine

58:49

survivors of some of these secret prisons

58:51

and torture centers where they talk about

58:53

that they could hear the cheering from

58:55

the football stadiums during the World Cup,

58:57

which is just like horrific. But

59:01

in terms of Kissinger, I'm glad he's

59:03

gone, but he won. And the task

59:05

for people who are still alive

59:08

is for us to undo that victory. It's

59:11

essential. And

59:13

to work against the

59:16

legacy, the horrific legacy that this man left

59:18

behind. I think I also think that it's

59:21

also interesting to think about why he has why

59:24

he's become like the condensation or the

59:26

embodiment of like the worst excesses of

59:28

US Empire, where there's other people who

59:30

might even be worse. So it's also interesting

59:33

to think about why he's the one who attracts the

59:35

most attention to the point where he's like a meme,

59:37

right? Like, there was an account

59:39

on Twitter, it was like asking, has he

59:41

died yet almost every single day, right? When

59:45

you know, in some way, I don't know

59:47

how exceptional he was within

59:49

the broader US Imperial War machine that

59:52

has killed, you know, millions of people.

59:55

But I'm still like I said, I

59:57

still took a shot at Miss got in celebrated. I'm

1:00:00

hopefully going to a place that's extremely

1:00:02

hot. For real. Yeah,

1:00:04

and just a quick follow-up, I think maybe one of

1:00:06

the reasons why that might be the case where Kissinger

1:00:09

is sort of held up when there's plenty of ghouls

1:00:11

and demons throughout American history until this day is

1:00:13

like it's the Nixon connection, it's the

1:00:15

Watergate connection, it's the Vietnam War thing,

1:00:17

which became huge issues in the US

1:00:19

in particular. And Kissinger and

1:00:21

Nixon were sort of brought together. So

1:00:23

you have this delegitimization of government after

1:00:26

Watergate, you have these massive protests with

1:00:28

regards to Vietnam, and those sort of

1:00:30

internal American political events

1:00:33

sort of elevate into popular

1:00:35

consciousness, Nixon and Kissinger in particular. But

1:00:37

you're absolutely right that really when compared

1:00:39

to other figures, he's just right down

1:00:41

the line, like, you know, still with

1:00:43

the figures still today, you know? Yeah,

1:00:46

and I think he also maybe it's also the

1:00:48

impunity was so obvious with him, right? Like, okay,

1:00:50

so the fact that he lived to be 100,

1:00:52

that's yeah,

1:00:54

that the impunity, and,

1:00:57

and that the US political establishment continue

1:00:59

to treat him as some sort of like

1:01:01

sage, right? They from both parties,

1:01:03

they would go and kiss the ring, whether

1:01:06

it was Obama, W, Samantha Power,

1:01:09

it doesn't matter. Like this

1:01:11

guy flaunted his impunity, right? And

1:01:13

that's obviously most if not all US officials,

1:01:15

but this guy did it in a particular

1:01:17

way where he was really ensconced in

1:01:20

like the political and academic elite in this country.

1:01:22

And even asking him a direct

1:01:24

challenging question would like produce

1:01:27

these like accusations of all you're being uncivil, right? So

1:01:29

I don't know, maybe it has something to do with

1:01:31

that as well. But

1:01:33

yeah, I think it's I'm

1:01:35

glad he's gone. I'll just leave it at that. Yeah,

1:01:38

definitely. His is

1:01:40

a legacy we have to really work to

1:01:43

undo it is calling that he lived to be 100

1:01:46

and, you know, escaped all accountability. And

1:01:48

that's the other component, I think is

1:01:51

that for the current war criminals, we

1:01:53

have to be more serious and

1:01:56

concerted about forcing them to be

1:01:58

accountable for their crimes. and

1:02:00

not let them

1:02:03

live with impunity as well. But

1:02:07

I think part of the other reason why was,

1:02:09

as you say, that he was

1:02:12

held up by the political elite

1:02:14

and establishment as the paragon of

1:02:16

US foreign policy kind

1:02:23

of planning and that he

1:02:26

was this intelligence sort of

1:02:28

Spangali of global affairs, even

1:02:31

though there were people like Brzezinski and others who

1:02:33

are more perhaps the in-house,

1:02:35

like if you're in this world

1:02:37

of foreign affairs, you'd say, oh,

1:02:40

Brzezinski, he really mapped the chessboard,

1:02:42

the great game in Central Asia,

1:02:44

et cetera. But he was publicly

1:02:46

held up as like this paragon.

1:02:48

And so people like Hillary Clinton,

1:02:50

when they needed to burnish

1:02:53

their credentials in foreign policy because they

1:02:55

were running as a presidential

1:02:58

candidate, I

1:03:02

mean, having the blessing

1:03:04

of Henry Kissinger meant

1:03:08

that you were a serious person

1:03:10

when it came to foreign affairs.

1:03:12

So it's that disgusting legacy,

1:03:14

yes, that we're dealing with. But I wanted

1:03:16

to come back, I was gonna ask you

1:03:19

about Jacobo Timmerman actually. So I'm so glad

1:03:21

that you brought him up. And

1:03:24

it's not even to my mind,

1:03:26

just that there are competing wings

1:03:28

of the arms sellers and

1:03:30

those who are trying

1:03:33

to save Jews who

1:03:38

are being oppressed under this brutal regime.

1:03:42

But it's almost that that

1:03:45

is sort of Israel's argument and

1:03:47

why it kind of benefits from

1:03:49

the antisemitism of fascist regimes globally

1:03:51

is to be able to make

1:03:53

the case and the argument that

1:03:56

you're only safe really here, in

1:03:59

Israel. and there is

1:04:01

a way in which anti-Semitism is

1:04:03

at the kind of root

1:04:06

of the rationale of the state

1:04:09

of Israel because of its history

1:04:11

coming out of as a solution

1:04:14

that was proposed to the vicious,

1:04:16

vitriolic, and genocidal anti-Semitism

1:04:21

in European history for a long time,

1:04:23

but also, of course, culminating in late

1:04:26

19th and then into World War II.

1:04:28

And so I think his

1:04:31

case and his story is

1:04:33

really quite interesting in that

1:04:36

regard because here's a left-wing

1:04:38

Jewish dissident who is tortured,

1:04:42

imprisoned, but the

1:04:46

Israeli state, because it does have this

1:04:49

relationship of

1:04:51

doing business and supplying and supporting

1:04:53

this right-wing fascist government,

1:04:55

even though they're anti-Semitic,

1:04:57

is able to actually

1:04:59

negotiate for some

1:05:01

exceptional treatment of some

1:05:06

Jewish leftist who, in his case,

1:05:09

he writes a book called

1:05:11

The Longest War that is

1:05:13

a critique of the Israeli-Lebanon

1:05:17

invasion, and he becomes then

1:05:19

persona non grata in Israel

1:05:21

because they're like,

1:05:23

you're totally ungrateful, we saved you, and

1:05:26

now here you are offering this critique.

1:05:28

And so I think it's a really

1:05:30

interesting and instructive case. It's after that

1:05:34

that he comes back to Argentina to

1:05:36

participate in the kind

1:05:38

of national commission

1:05:40

on the disappearance of

1:05:44

persons and in the kind

1:05:46

of accounting for what happened during that dirty

1:05:49

war and so on. So

1:05:51

I'm wondering if you think, is this

1:05:55

sort of the counter-history in a way of

1:05:57

that relationship? that

1:06:00

you were documenting and talking about in

1:06:03

the article? Is it sort of the

1:06:05

kind of international solidarity that can happen

1:06:07

by those lines and

1:06:09

connections that kind

1:06:12

of troubles the business

1:06:14

as usual kind

1:06:17

of interconnection? People

1:06:19

like that who have a

1:06:21

conscience, their leftists may have had a

1:06:24

Zionist sort of blind spot, but then

1:06:26

in actually living in Israel kind

1:06:28

of saw the brutality of the

1:06:31

regime critiques it and then as

1:06:33

part of like solidarity work

1:06:35

in Argentina. So

1:06:38

maybe that's kind of the odd

1:06:40

counter history too, this terrible

1:06:43

relationship between Israel and Latin

1:06:45

America. I mean, the

1:06:48

people who go to Palestine with an open

1:06:50

mind tend

1:06:54

to come back changed all in

1:06:57

a similar way, right? So Timmerman

1:06:59

found out, right? Just like recently,

1:07:01

Tanaisi Coates gave that interview on

1:07:04

Democracy Now or I've heard Robin

1:07:06

Kelly talk about it. I've heard all these

1:07:09

like US Americans

1:07:11

or even people in Latin America who have traveled

1:07:13

to Palestine and when they see what the situation

1:07:15

actually is on the ground, it radicalizes them. It's

1:07:19

a very revealing process for them

1:07:21

and perhaps something similar

1:07:23

happened to Timmerman, especially when he witnessed that

1:07:25

horrific 1982 invasion of

1:07:27

Lebanon, right? Which caused so much human

1:07:30

misery for

1:07:32

Palestinians and for the people of Lebanon. But

1:07:36

I think it could be a, yeah, I

1:07:38

mean, that's a cool way to think about it in terms of being a

1:07:40

counter history, but I think also the reason why

1:07:42

Israel was able to,

1:07:46

let me step back and think about this, the

1:07:48

relationship between Israel and fascist Argentina. I think I

1:07:52

include a quote from Dan Rather

1:07:54

in this piece where one

1:07:57

of the reasons why an entity a

1:08:00

fascist regime like Argentina or a

1:08:03

genocidal one like in Guatemala could

1:08:05

do business with Israel because again,

1:08:07

this done rather quote from a report that he did in 83

1:08:10

was that like the Israelis don't

1:08:12

come down here with with human rights

1:08:14

lectures with priests with missionary, they just

1:08:16

go and they they don't talk about

1:08:18

that kind of stuff. They're going

1:08:20

there to do some business. And

1:08:23

that's one big

1:08:25

difference with the US, right? And this

1:08:28

is when this is a common inscription

1:08:32

that authoritarian or non

1:08:34

authoritarian regimes will say about the US, right? Yes, they want

1:08:36

to do business with us, but we have to listen to

1:08:38

like a human rights lecture that we know is bullshit. You

1:08:41

know, that Dan Rather quote really shows that

1:08:43

the relationship between Guatemala and these

1:08:46

Israeli defense companies was what it didn't

1:08:48

have any of that. And

1:08:50

it's not to say it wasn't ideological, obviously

1:08:52

was ideological, right? They're talking about the

1:08:55

Palestinian ization of Guatemala's indigenous

1:08:57

people. The

1:09:00

ideology was a counter insurgent one,

1:09:02

the the art, the ideology was

1:09:04

one about occupation, and the colonial

1:09:06

relationship between the Guatemalan military

1:09:09

and its indigenous populations.

1:09:11

And this is something that continues as beyond

1:09:14

the Cold War, right? We have pretty

1:09:16

good evidence that and folks

1:09:18

have written about how Israel helped train

1:09:20

certain parts of the Mexican military as

1:09:23

it waged its counter insurgency against the

1:09:25

indigenous easy LN in the southern state

1:09:27

of Chiava after their uprising in 1994.

1:09:31

So this is this is something

1:09:33

that has continued, even

1:09:35

beyond the the end of the Cold War. Yeah,

1:09:38

and that actually leads into my my

1:09:40

question, which is turning things towards today.

1:09:42

In that last answer,

1:09:45

you talked a little bit about Argentina in

1:09:47

the past, you talked about Mexico in the

1:09:49

past. But I want to I want to

1:09:51

look at how the relations between some

1:09:53

of these Latin American countries in Israel are

1:09:55

today and how they will be in the

1:09:57

near future. So Argentina recently had a lecture.

1:10:00

where the fascist clown

1:10:02

was elected, Javier Milay, who

1:10:06

of course has pledged that

1:10:08

even though he's a fascist, he's one of

1:10:10

those fascists that again is super pro-Israel. Funny

1:10:13

how that keeps happening. And

1:10:16

also we have some other governments across

1:10:18

Latin America that have

1:10:21

had very confusing statements

1:10:23

on Israel, particularly

1:10:25

in the current conflict that

1:10:27

you perhaps wouldn't expect to. And Mexico is

1:10:29

one of them. There

1:10:32

has been some very strange,

1:10:34

in some cases contradictory, in

1:10:36

other cases just outright disappointing

1:10:38

or depressing statements that have

1:10:40

been coming out from the Mexican government in recent

1:10:42

days, recent weeks really,

1:10:45

regarding Israel, Palestine, the conflict

1:10:48

in Gaza. So

1:10:50

I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit,

1:10:52

Alex, about the

1:10:54

contemporary context of Israeli-Latin American

1:10:57

relations. Those two examples

1:10:59

are ones that I feel are kind of

1:11:01

gonna be the most stark in terms of,

1:11:04

one is a nominatively

1:11:06

progressive government that has

1:11:08

very strange statements about Israel and of course

1:11:10

the country that you do a lot of

1:11:13

work on. And therefore, I'm assuming you have

1:11:15

a lot to say about. And the other

1:11:17

case is one where again, we have a

1:11:19

fascist coming in in Argentina that's very pro-Israel.

1:11:21

So a contemporary parallel to some

1:11:24

of the things that we've been

1:11:26

talking about historically throughout the conversation

1:11:28

there. Yeah,

1:11:30

I mean, I think it's interesting that with

1:11:34

this, the resurgence of a more,

1:11:36

let's say, revanchous right, like embodied

1:11:38

by people like Bolsonaro in Brazil

1:11:40

or Mille in Argentina, that at

1:11:42

their rallies, there's always a

1:11:45

heavy presence of Israeli flags. It's

1:11:48

a really interesting relationship then between this

1:11:50

particular hard right movement in South America

1:11:53

and why they view, and

1:11:57

why they deploy the symbol of the Israeli

1:11:59

flag. their protests, right? And then Bolsonaro was

1:12:01

also very close to Israel while he was

1:12:04

in power until he lost the election. Just

1:12:06

to add in on that point, Alex, very

1:12:08

quickly, one of the things that we were

1:12:10

looking at talking about on the program was

1:12:13

how the Israel

1:12:16

lobby has become increasingly powerful

1:12:18

within Brazil. This is something

1:12:20

that our listener

1:12:22

and friend Natalia Urbán has been

1:12:26

researching and writing about in her various

1:12:28

platforms as well. But that is another

1:12:30

very spark example, which slipped my mind

1:12:32

at the moment. But really, if you

1:12:35

look at the relations within Brazil in

1:12:38

terms of the Israel lobby, institutions

1:12:40

within Brazil, the evangelical institutions within

1:12:43

Brazil, particularly which we have in

1:12:45

the dinosaur that covers that pretty

1:12:47

heavily as well, listeners. That's

1:12:50

a very interesting example as well, just as an aside.

1:12:54

It's also like clarifying, right? So

1:12:56

thanks, Ravanch's right wing for letting

1:12:59

us know where you

1:13:01

stand, right? The idea, there's a reason why they're

1:13:03

deploying that as a symbol. Whereas

1:13:07

Palestine is

1:13:11

a cause or an idea that has been taken up by

1:13:13

the Latin American left, I mean, goes

1:13:15

back to the 60s and there's obviously a history of

1:13:18

direct material and military

1:13:20

links between different Latin American guerrilla

1:13:22

groups and different armed resistance groups

1:13:24

in Palestine. There's a whole history

1:13:27

that we could get into that. But

1:13:31

for today, the Mexican case,

1:13:33

I really don't, I'll

1:13:35

say this about the Mexican case. The

1:13:39

Mexican military has had relationships with the

1:13:41

Israeli military and its arms company since

1:13:44

at least the 1970s, right? So this

1:13:46

is a long one that has been

1:13:48

more or less continuous. So

1:13:50

as the Mexican government waged a dirty war

1:13:53

in the 1970s against these guerrilla movements against

1:13:55

peasant communities, they're using Israeli made airplanes,

1:13:57

right? Something similar happens in

1:14:00

a in the 1990s in a moment where

1:14:02

the Mexican military and government are in need

1:14:04

of counter insurgent technology and assistance and expertise

1:14:06

and they turned to Israel again to help

1:14:09

put down and wage a low intensity

1:14:11

war against the Zapatistas and the Ixialan

1:14:13

and Chiapas. What

1:14:16

I'll say is that Amlo, there

1:14:18

was speculation that perhaps some of the

1:14:21

hostages were Mexican and that

1:14:23

Amlo didn't want to say anything to

1:14:25

disrupt potentially being able to free them.

1:14:27

But Amlo also, his strong suit

1:14:29

is not international relations or international

1:14:31

geopolitics. So

1:14:34

I think, but he's, yeah, I don't

1:14:36

know how to explain it. He's been so steadfast about

1:14:38

saying like, no, I'm not going to say anything. Whereas

1:14:40

I think the streets are with

1:14:42

Palestine. It's obvious. I mean, the streets throughout

1:14:45

Latin America are with Palestine. So

1:14:47

yeah, I don't, other than, you know,

1:14:49

I don't, I'm not privy to any like, I

1:14:51

wish I was some sort of inside information as

1:14:54

to why Amlo has taken this posture. Especially

1:14:56

when you have someone like the president of

1:14:58

Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who's taken like a radically

1:15:01

different approach, right? And he recently gave

1:15:03

this speech at the COP 28 climate

1:15:05

change conference where he linked a

1:15:08

lot of things that we've talked about, right? The

1:15:10

massive display, population displacement and migrations that

1:15:12

are being generated by climate change. And

1:15:15

then he links that to this

1:15:18

idea that Brett, you mentioned the

1:15:20

global NACPA, right? That this is

1:15:22

an idea that I cite in

1:15:24

the article from Dr. Mazin Kumsiye,

1:15:26

who was, Todd Miller has

1:15:28

a great article about his recent visit to Southern Arizona. And

1:15:30

he's the one who talks about climate

1:15:33

change being a global, a global NACPA.

1:15:36

Gustavo Petro connected that global NACPA to what's

1:15:38

happening in Gaza. And he said, basically, Gaza

1:15:40

is like the preview for the future. It's

1:15:42

a rehearsal for the future. And

1:15:45

this is one of the reasons why we have to resist it.

1:15:47

And that's, that's a big deal. I

1:15:50

mean, it's a powerful statement to make it at

1:15:52

such an international conference, but it's also a big

1:15:54

deal because for a long time,

1:15:56

Colombia was Israel's most stalwart ally in

1:15:58

Latin America. A former

1:16:01

president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos even

1:16:03

joked that like he liked being called

1:16:05

the Israel Latin America Because the

1:16:07

Colombian military worked with the Israeli military and Israeli

1:16:09

arms companies all the way back in the early

1:16:11

1980s They also worked

1:16:13

together in a paramilitary capacity. So I cite in

1:16:15

the article This the head

1:16:17

of Columbia's most bloody

1:16:20

most notorious right wing fascistic paramilitary

1:16:22

the AUC Carlos

1:16:24

Castaño he bragged that in his memoir He's dead

1:16:26

now but he bragged in his memoir that he

1:16:28

went to Israel to receive training in the 80s

1:16:30

and early 90s and he Set it the

1:16:33

quote that I include in the article is

1:16:35

something like, you know, I learned about I

1:16:37

learned the paramilitary concept from the Israelis And

1:16:40

and the paramilitary, you know, this guy was

1:16:42

like the son of rant like viciously anti-communist

1:16:45

ranchers who eventually created

1:16:47

this huge constellation

1:16:49

of different pellet paramilitary groups housed

1:16:51

under the AUC out

1:16:53

of the fences of need as a Columbia and they Some

1:16:56

of the shit they did was some of the horrific things you can

1:16:58

read about in Colombia in the 90s and 2000s as it also Became

1:17:02

like a major drug trafficking organization,

1:17:04

which it's also interesting something interesting to

1:17:06

think about So I think

1:17:08

Gustavo Petros has been the most interesting in

1:17:10

terms of this Rizzio challenging

1:17:14

what Israel's been doing in Gaza But then

1:17:16

also offering this really interesting political and into

1:17:18

the actual intellectual framework with which we

1:17:20

can understand what's going on on a global Context and

1:17:22

the fact that it's coming from a country

1:17:25

that used to be Israel's most star wall

1:17:27

ally in the region I think is also significant

1:17:29

to this day the Colombian

1:17:31

military and the Colombian national

1:17:34

police exclusively use Israeli rifles

1:17:37

They have they use different rifles. I can't remember which ones

1:17:39

they have Israeli weapons

1:17:43

Factory set up in Colombia. I

1:17:45

described in the article how Guatemala I think was one

1:17:47

of the first and not the first Latin American country.

1:17:49

They got its own factory to make

1:17:52

parts for the Israeli Galil rifle that

1:17:54

the the Guatemala military used So

1:17:58

Colombia so the fact that that

1:18:00

Petru is saying this from considering the

1:18:03

long historic relationship between Colombia and Israel

1:18:05

is really significant. We've

1:18:09

seen the rest of the

1:18:11

region, it's

1:18:13

expected. I don't see

1:18:15

any other unexpected takes on this conflict.

1:18:18

The more left-leaning governments

1:18:21

have made comments in support or

1:18:24

solidarity with Palestine. I

1:18:27

think it's a very interesting one. It's

1:18:29

really difficult to read him on some of his geopolitical

1:18:32

situations since he's come back into office.

1:18:34

I'm glad he's in office though because

1:18:37

Bolsonaro was an absolute monster and I can't

1:18:39

imagine the things that he'd be saying right

1:18:41

now if he had won that

1:18:43

presidential election. Obviously

1:18:45

Cuba has had a diplomatic relationship

1:18:48

with the Palestinian Liberation

1:18:50

Organization since 1969, 1970. They

1:18:55

ruptured diplomatic relationships with Israel in like 70 or

1:18:57

71 if I remember correctly. Some

1:19:01

of the other countries, Bolivia, the

1:19:04

left-leaning or left-governments of Latin America are

1:19:06

taking the expected stance. Now

1:19:10

you see this madman in Argentina, Javier Mille,

1:19:14

who also recently announced that he's converting

1:19:16

to Judaism. He's

1:19:18

going to take the more

1:19:21

Bolsonaro approach to this

1:19:23

take. Mille is interesting. Federico

1:19:27

Finkelstein is a very prominent Argentine

1:19:29

historian of Argentine fascism. He

1:19:32

has an alarmist like he says,

1:19:34

this guy's a fascist. We need to be worried about

1:19:37

what he's going to do. We have to

1:19:39

take him seriously in terms of what he says. Quintz

1:19:42

Lebodian, another historian, recently had a piece in

1:19:44

a financial Times where

1:19:46

he's like, actually, Javier Mille, a

1:19:48

lot of his ideas are just kind

1:19:50

of like rehashed libertarian, anarcho-libertarian ideas from

1:19:52

like the 1990s. Some

1:19:57

of the people he's picking to be in his

1:19:59

cabinet are the traditional people. conservative Argentine right so

1:20:01

maybe he's not going to be like this this

1:20:04

fascist figure out you know obviously it remains

1:20:07

to be seen I'm actually more afraid

1:20:09

of his vice president she's she's quite I think

1:20:11

she's really scary if you guys want to the

1:20:13

listeners want to look her up and see what

1:20:15

she thinks about the 30,000

1:20:17

you know negating that 30,000 people were disappeared

1:20:19

by it by the Argentine military it's pretty

1:20:21

scary. Mélée is Mélée

1:20:23

is I think

1:20:26

his men I don't know during the election

1:20:28

like people question his his mental status is

1:20:30

sanity there was one interview he gave where

1:20:32

he kept telling the people behind

1:20:34

the stage to be quiet and the interviewer was

1:20:36

like there's no one there's no

1:20:38

one there. There's a remarkable video

1:20:40

of that because it's really camera

1:20:43

and there's nobody in the audience

1:20:45

it's really awkward and just cringed to wall

1:20:47

like I was like man you were watching this

1:20:50

guy have like a nervous breakdown or mental

1:20:52

breakdown on TV so

1:20:54

I don't know he's just he's

1:20:57

scary but personally I'm more scared

1:20:59

of his vice president

1:21:01

I her name slipped my mind

1:21:04

right now but like she her take

1:21:06

on on the dictatorship

1:21:09

and kind of negating a lot of the the

1:21:12

the political and cultural work that people have done

1:21:15

to to say never again noum

1:21:17

kamas I mean she's questioned the whole premise of

1:21:19

it so I think she's really dangerous. Well

1:21:22

another great conversation with our friend

1:21:25

and Tom rat Alexander Avina again

1:21:28

Alex I have one kind of closing just

1:21:30

very short question which is how are you

1:21:32

holding up with going through all of the

1:21:35

material that you're going through because I know

1:21:37

that you're really consuming everything that

1:21:39

you can't like we all are regarding

1:21:42

the current conflict in Gaza as

1:21:44

well as looking at this kind of more historical

1:21:46

side of things to make sense of what's going

1:21:49

on in the present as well you know it

1:21:51

weighs heavily on all of us and I just

1:21:53

want to you know see how you're doing with

1:21:55

you know trying to keep up with all of

1:21:57

that. I'm

1:22:00

like with you guys. Part

1:22:04

of it is not even wanting to talk

1:22:06

about it, right? Because I don't want

1:22:08

to even compare it to what the people

1:22:10

in Gaza and the West Bank are experiencing,

1:22:12

right? But yeah, it's just a perpetual

1:22:14

state of rage. I have

1:22:17

two kids and the suffering

1:22:19

of Palestinian children, I've

1:22:22

broken down multiple

1:22:24

times after watching some of these videos.

1:22:27

And then my partner's like, all right, you got

1:22:29

to like get off Twitter, which is

1:22:31

like that privilege we have, right? Living in the

1:22:33

in trails of the belly of the imperial beast.

1:22:37

But yeah, I think the

1:22:41

killing of Rafat is like also just I

1:22:43

don't know how to deal with it. I

1:22:45

don't know. I think

1:22:48

a lot of people have commented on how

1:22:50

this has impacted them is probably the reason

1:22:52

why it's impacted me. I

1:22:54

didn't know him. I don't have a personal connection

1:22:56

to him. But following him

1:22:59

online and reading his

1:23:01

stuff and then reading

1:23:04

earlier this morning that potentially

1:23:06

the evidence is coming out that this

1:23:09

was a targeted assassination. Like it's just,

1:23:13

you know, no different from what you guys are going

1:23:15

through. And I'm trying to write a book and I'm

1:23:17

like, oh, I should be writing about 1960s bandits. And

1:23:19

I'm like, what the fuck? Like, what? That

1:23:22

doesn't matter right now, right? There's like,

1:23:24

you know, more important things going on. So

1:23:27

I think that's one

1:23:29

of the reasons why I decided to write this article. Just

1:23:32

just I think

1:23:34

leaving it really clear what's at stake for

1:23:38

us, like here in the United, you know,

1:23:40

well, not and I know you're in a

1:23:42

different type of place, Henry, different country. But

1:23:45

I think this is again to go back to what Brett

1:23:47

said, right? This is there's a global component to all of

1:23:49

this. And I truly

1:23:51

do believe that the component or the stakes in

1:23:54

this is what type of future we want. October

1:23:57

7th and what's happened since then

1:24:00

has come. completely changed the course

1:24:02

of history, and nothing's going to go back to

1:24:05

how it was before that day. So

1:24:07

what are we gonna do about it? And

1:24:10

we have models to follow. Do we want

1:24:12

a future of liberation? No

1:24:14

one's free until Palestine's free? Or

1:24:16

do we want a future of walls, of

1:24:19

harassing, killing, murdering,

1:24:21

dispossessed peoples, migrants, refugees?

1:24:25

Yeah, well, since you mentioned Dreyfoss, I'll just

1:24:27

share this briefly. I wasn't planning on it, and

1:24:30

I haven't put anything about it online because

1:24:32

of course it's not about us. But

1:24:35

you mentioned that people have been touched

1:24:39

by the martyring of Dreyfoss, and I

1:24:41

have talked with him a few times

1:24:43

just online, and very kind person. And

1:24:46

like I said, I haven't mentioned this

1:24:48

anywhere before, but I had confirmed with

1:24:50

him that we would interview

1:24:52

him on the show. And

1:24:55

this was about a day or two

1:24:57

before the power first went out, and

1:24:59

then his family had to flee their

1:25:01

house. So that interview never materialized. And

1:25:05

we knew that the situation was obviously

1:25:07

dire. I

1:25:10

didn't push him on anything like that because

1:25:12

of course the main thing is that he

1:25:15

and his family were staying safe. And

1:25:18

every time that we would see an update

1:25:20

from him, it would be like, okay,

1:25:22

well, there we go. And we would hope that after

1:25:25

the conflict ended, that

1:25:27

we would be able to have the opportunity to speak

1:25:29

with him. But of course now with the news that

1:25:33

he had been martyred by

1:25:35

the Zionist occupation forces, knowing

1:25:38

that we're not gonna even have that opportunity to get

1:25:40

to actually get to sit down face to face, so

1:25:43

to speak, and talk with him. It's

1:25:46

very hard because he was a very, I mean,

1:25:48

I'm not gonna say I was friends with him,

1:25:50

but we did have a few conversations back and

1:25:52

forth, and he always was a super kind, super

1:25:55

thoughtful, and very passionate about

1:25:57

Palestinian liberation guys. You

1:26:01

know, it is hard and, you

1:26:03

know, I'm not going to tweet about

1:26:06

it because it's not about us and not being

1:26:08

able to interview him. His loss is devastating as

1:26:10

is the loss of all Palestinians

1:26:12

in Gaza. Yeah,

1:26:15

if you go to his Twitter account,

1:26:17

right, his pin tweet, I think

1:26:21

is his own version of Claude McKay's

1:26:23

If I Die poem, which is like,

1:26:26

if you haven't read it, I highly suggest you read it. He's

1:26:30

also very funny, like following

1:26:32

him like it in the

1:26:34

worst of circumstances, like unimaginable

1:26:36

circumstances, like he still had a sense

1:26:38

of humor. He still had

1:26:40

a horizon of hope, right? And then mission in the worst

1:26:43

of times, which is a lesson to us. Like I'm like,

1:26:45

what, what the fuck am I complaining about? If

1:26:47

this guy has still had, was fighting for hope

1:26:50

and for liberation, why can't we? Right?

1:26:53

His final tweet, blaming

1:26:56

this genocide squarely on Joe Biden and

1:26:58

the Democratic Party. I mean, that is

1:27:01

like, that's his final tweet.

1:27:05

So as we mentioned before, man, a

1:27:07

lot of ideological and political masks have

1:27:09

fallen off. And this is why, at

1:27:11

least in the US context, particularly in

1:27:13

settings like universities, we're

1:27:16

going to go through some challenging, difficult times.

1:27:18

And it's only incumbent upon us to continue

1:27:20

to not be held back, to not be afraid, to

1:27:22

not be cowered by

1:27:24

these bullshit accusations of antisemitism,

1:27:27

because now apparently everything

1:27:29

is. So, but

1:27:32

yeah, go check out

1:27:34

Rafat's poem and final tweet. And I think

1:27:36

that's what's really sticking with me. Yeah,

1:27:39

absolutely. Again, listeners, our

1:27:41

guest was Alexander Vina, historian at

1:27:43

Arizona State and author of Specters

1:27:45

of Revolution. Alex, how can

1:27:47

the listeners find you in more of your work? Well,

1:27:51

thank you guys so much. I love you guys know, I

1:27:53

love coming back and chatting with you all. I'm

1:27:56

on Twitter or ex

1:27:58

Alexander. Alexander underscore

1:28:00

Vina. I have a website Alexander Vina calm

1:28:05

and yeah Right for different

1:28:07

things. So just check me out

1:28:09

on Twitter And I always share

1:28:11

anything that that you guys write or

1:28:13

do and and stuff that I do as well So

1:28:15

that's how you can find me. Yeah,

1:28:17

and likewise when this article comes

1:28:19

out listeners Which

1:28:22

will probably be close to the time

1:28:24

that this episode comes out. Yeah, we'll

1:28:26

of course share it on our Twitter

1:28:29

page as well So you'll be able to

1:28:31

read the article alongside this episode by

1:28:33

following either of us and looking on our pages

1:28:36

to find that link Alright,

1:28:38

Adnan. How can the listeners find you in your

1:28:40

other podcast? Well, you can find

1:28:43

me on Twitter at Adnan a Hussein

1:28:45

Husa in and Check

1:28:48

out the mudge list. It's been long

1:28:51

on hiatus, but I'm

1:28:53

going to be interviewing a new guest about

1:28:56

a much happier topic than the one

1:28:58

we've been talking about today And that is

1:29:01

the incredible history of the most

1:29:03

gorgeous musical

1:29:05

instrument the Oud and

1:29:09

You can find the mud list on all

1:29:11

the usual platforms m-a-j-l-i-s

1:29:14

I see listeners Adnan had first said let's let's

1:29:16

talk about the Oud on gorilla history and I

1:29:18

said no We only talk about sad topics on

1:29:21

this show. So take it to your

1:29:23

other show And of course, I'm

1:29:25

joking but it does seem like the

1:29:27

preponderance of our episodes are You

1:29:29

know leaving me quite sad after we're done

1:29:32

talking, but it is cathartic to speak with

1:29:34

with all of you Brett How can those

1:29:36

finish find you and your other excellent podcast?

1:29:39

Yeah, first just thanks so much Alex for

1:29:42

coming on again fascinating article fascinating knowledge We

1:29:44

really appreciate it just to reiterate your point

1:29:46

about Rafat's final tweet You know the Democratic

1:29:48

Party and Biden are responsible for the Gaza

1:29:50

genocide Perpetuated by Israel and

1:29:53

we will never ever ever let the

1:29:55

Biden administration and the Democratic Party and

1:29:57

the liberals who support them Forget that

1:30:00

Rest in power to him. As for

1:30:02

me, you can find everything I do

1:30:04

at revolutionaryleftradio.com. Absolutely. Highly

1:30:07

recommend, of course, checking out that tweet,

1:30:09

as well as checking out all of the work that Brett

1:30:11

is putting together. As for me, listeners,

1:30:13

you can follow me on Twitter at huck1995. Stay

1:30:18

tuned on my Twitter. I have

1:30:20

another book project that will be

1:30:22

announced very soon. You

1:30:24

can help support Gorilla History. Allow us

1:30:26

to keep making episodes like this by

1:30:30

going to patreon.com/gorilla

1:30:34

history. Gorilla History,

1:30:36

that's right. G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A history.

1:30:38

And you can follow the show

1:30:41

on Twitter by looking for at

1:30:43

gorilla underscore pod. G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A underscore pod.

1:30:45

Adnan, are you raising your hand?

1:30:48

I am, because I don't want

1:30:50

you to close on the normal way

1:30:53

we close, because in honor of

1:30:55

Dr. Mazin Komsia, who's quoted

1:30:57

in this article, he says,

1:30:59

I don't like the word

1:31:02

solidarity. I'm not in

1:31:04

solidarity with Native Americans. Their

1:31:06

struggle is my struggle. And I

1:31:08

thought that might be a fitting way to

1:31:11

say goodbye to the listeners. We

1:31:14

usually say solidarity, but he's

1:31:17

reminding us our struggles

1:31:19

are the same. And

1:31:21

that's what I think this article was showing, is

1:31:24

how connected these struggles are. So

1:31:27

just wanted to stop you from just ending

1:31:29

on solidarity. Oh, Adnan, say it

1:31:31

one more time and we'll cut the recording. I

1:31:34

don't like the word solidarity, says Dr.

1:31:36

Mazin Komsia. I'm not

1:31:38

in solidarity with Native Americans. Their struggle is my

1:31:40

struggle. And that's why I think this article is

1:31:43

so important. A

1:32:04

a a

1:32:12

a a

1:32:22

a a a