Israel's Role in Worldwide Repression
Snippits and Snappits, 19 January 2013
ED
Noor: The following pamphlet was
researched, written, and edited by members of
the International Jewish Anti-Zionist
Network.
I have never
heard of The International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network but the information
provided is damning for Israel and the fact that
it comes from the Jewish populace gives it awee
bit more clout than if it came from some
"gentile anti-semite.". Needless to say, I take
any Jewish organization with a very large grain
of Dead Sea rabbi-cursed kosher salt but the
information presented here is solid.
This report covers events from over 25 years
ago. - Before the creation of PNAC - Before 911.
with its involvement of Israeli security firms
in the planning of that criminal operation;
Before
the "war on terror"
Before
Kosovo and Sarajevo
Before
the explosion of the surveillance society
Before
the wars against Iran, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Libya, Syria, et al
Before all those Free Trade Acts that are
decimating nations
Before
the militarization of our local police
forces, their corruption into Israeli
para-military operations (Ask yourself
why
it is that the NYC Police force has an
office in Tel Aviv
Before
the world realized that Palestine was (and
continues to be) a testing ground for new
weapons as was seen
during Operation Cast
Lead.
Special
thanks to Jimmy Johnson for his extensive
research. This publication relies heavily on
The Israel Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why
by Benjamin
Beit-Hallahmi (Pantheon City: 1987).
Despite being
25 years old, this book continues to play a
crucial part in documenting Israel’s role in
repression worldwide. Worldwide repression, and
Israel’s role in it, has expanded enormously
since then; yet even now this information
remains largely unknown.
What follows
is a modest attempt to compile information from
this and various other sources, in order to pull
this thread of history forward.
INTRODUCTION
This pamphlet
focuses on the role of Israel's government, its
military, and related corporations and
organizations in a global industry of violence
and repression.
The states
most involved with this industry profit from
perpetual war and occupation across the globe
while maintaining vastly unequal societies of
their own. Israel exports weapons, technologies,
training, and techniques of violence for use by
governments and corporations against populations
around the world.
The
expertise on which it relies has been
developed through its occupation of
Palestine and parts of Lebanon, Syria and
Egypt as well as its repression of and
military aggression against the people
living there.
The
colonization of Palestine was once part of the
British and French assault on the movement for
Arab unity and independence that threatened
European control of the region’s resources. The
state of Israel is now a junior partner in the
U.S.-allied1
strategy for the same control of the region’s
resources.2
For Israel,
this partnership has enabled the imposition and
maintenance of a settler colonial state3
in Palestine. For its Western partners Israel
has ensured control of what F.D.R.’s
administration once described as "the greatest
prize in human history" - Arab oil.4
The
importance of Israel to the U.S. is a reflection
of the growing significance of both oil and the
arms trade to the world economy. The United
States, the main arbiter of power worldwide, is
Israel’s largest funder. The majority of U.S.
aid to Israel is in the form of military
assistance. The U.S. government gives Israel
approximately 3 billion U.S. dollars per year in
financial aid and several billion more per year
in military assistance and contracts.5
The U.S.
provides 18% or nearly a fifth of Israel’s
military budget.6
From 1949
until 2011, the estimated cumulative total in
U.S. direct aid to Israel is between 115 and 123
billion U.S. dollars.7
In 2009
Israel’s military spending accounted for an
additional 15.1% of the country’s overall
budget. It was the biggest defense spender as a
percentage of GDP. It also spent the greatest
amount of its overall budget on the military out
of all developed countries.8
Israel uses
U.S. aid to fund its ongoing occupation of
Palestine and Syria and its military campaigns,
which in turn serve as an laboratory to develop
weapons, surveillance technology, and tactics of
population control that are then marketed across
the globe.
ISRAEL’S WORLDWIDE
ROLE
Israel’s
unique skills in crowd control, forced
displacement, surveillance and military
occupation have resulted in placing it at the
forefront of a global industry of repression: it
develops, manufactures, and markets technologies
that are used by armies and police around the
world for purposes of repression.
.
Israel's role
in this industry began with the Israeli
military, which first used its weapons of war
against Palestinian people in historic
Palestine, and against neighboring countries. In
recent years, as interest in surveillance and
policing technologies and techniques has grown
among governments around the world, an Israeli
“homeland security” private service industry
built on these field-tested instruments has
emerged to exploit and export this interest.
This
industry includes government agencies, the
Israeli military, and a network of private
corporations that grossed over 2.7 billion U.S.
dollars in 2008.9
This
industry accounts for approximately 7% of the
Israeli economy.
The Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and
Labor says on its website:
Israel has more than 300 Homeland Security
(HLS) companies exporting a range of
products, systems and services… These
solutions have been born by the necessity of
Israel’s survival and matured by the reality
of the continual terrorist threat to
the country…
No other
country has such a large pool of experienced
former security, military and police
personnel and no other country has been able
to field test its systems and solutions in
real-time situations.
In addition
to the Israeli government, military, and
corporations, a network of Zionist organizations
provides political and economic support to the
state of Israel. For example, in the U.S., these
organizations participate in surveillance and
facilitate exchanges between the Israeli
military and U.S. police forces, federal agents,
and armed forces.10
Zionism is an ideology of Jewish nationalism
that resulted in the political project of
building a state for and by Jews in
Palestine that was acquired through colonial
settlement and ethnic cleansing.
Zionists/Zionist organizations are those who
support the maintenance of a Jewish settler
state in historic Palestine based on
destroying or undermining the safety,
well-being, dignity and equity of
Palestinians and others of the colonized
area (i.e. Bedouin, Druze, Syrians in the
Golan Heights), and the region more broadly. |
This network
of state bodies, corporations and non-profits
shares intelligence information, coordinates
strategies for surveillance and repression, and
collaborates for profit. The precise function of
each varies according to their role.11
Israel has
provided arms, trained militia and military and
civilian police, developed and provided
surveillance technology and repression
strategies, and supplied the means for a broad
array of other control techniques from
”non-lethal” weapons to border technology.
Israel has played a role in arming and training
the apartheid regimes of South Africa and
Rhodesia, colonial regimes in the Middle East
and North Africa (otherwise known as Southwest
Asia and North Africa, or SWANA), and dictators
in Central and South America and Asia.
The Israeli
government has assumed a major, worldwide role
in enforcing limitations on the freedom of
movement, policing of communities, and
undermining peoples' struggles for justice.
Though well
documented, this fact is rarely if ever
mentioned or discussed, and even more rarely
challenged.
Our movements
- those in solidarity with the Palestinian
people, against war, poverty, and an unjust
globalized economy - need to take into account
the very real ways the state of Israel
contributes to violence and repression around
the world.
Israel sells
its weapons, technologies, training, and
techniques of violence to those it considers
allies and even to those whom it considers
enemies. Israel sells or has sold to Islamist,
communist, capitalist, dictatorial, and social
democratic states. The driving force behind
Israeli arms exports, in addition to the profit
motive, is the need for a close and strong
alliance with major imperialist powers that
provide it with continuous military and
diplomatic support, economic markets and access
to power. Therefore, Israel has prioritized
selling weapons to the allies and agents of
these powers.
Israel
Shahak’s 1982 book,
Israel’s
Global Role: Weapons for Repression,
documents that “from Rhodesia to apartheid South
Africa to the Gulf monarchies, Israel ties its
interests not with the masses fighting for
freedom, but with their jailers.”12
Despite
competition and other conflicts between
governments and regimes that rely on repression,
those same governments and regimes have no
trouble cooperating with one another against
peoples' movements.
ORIGINS: THE COLONIZATION OF PALESTINE & THE
REGION
Israel
is a settler colonial state in Palestine founded
and sustained by over a century of steady Jewish
immigration. Israel was established in 1948,
with support from the United Nations. Starting
in 1947, Zionist militia forces brutally
expelled three quarters of a million
Palestinians in order to take their land and
create a Jewish majority. One result of this was
the creation of a large Palestinian diaspora.
Those
Palestinians who remained in Israel formed a
national minority that is now subject to
systematic discrimination and repression
In 1967,
Israel expanded its colonial territory to the
remaining land of historic Palestine as well as
to Egyptian and Syrian territory.
Israel
perpetrated large-scale ethnic cleansing in the
course of establishing its occupation of the
Golan Heights, the West Bank including East
Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Desert
(which was returned to Egypt in full by 1982).
Today,
part of Syria is still occupied, and millions of
Palestinians remain under a ruthless regime of
Israeli military occupation.
Today,
the colonization of Palestine continues.
~
Palestinian refugees are refused the right
to return to their country of origin ~ a
right officially protected by international
law.
~
Palestinians living inside of the state of
Israel face over 20 apartheid laws.13
~
Palestinians living in the West Bank and
East Jerusalem are subjected to a military
occupation, home demolitions, ongoing and
repeated forced displacement, theft of land,
and lack of access to water for the farming
population, severe restrictions on freedom
of movement, and deadly violence, all of
which is enforced officially by the Israeli
military and informally by Jewish settlers.
~
Palestinians living in Gaza are trying to
survive what the United Nations recognizes
as a manufactured humanitarian crisis. Their
lives are daily threatened by a lack of
access to water, food, trade, electricity
and medical needs, ongoing military attacks
from Israel, and an international blockade
enforced by Israel.
~
Attempts to dislocate and destroy Bedouin
communities in the “unrecognized villages”
of the Naqab (Negev) desert have recently
intensified dramatically.14
~
Meanwhile, immigrant and refugee communities
in Israel, particularly those from Africa,
are increasingly criminalized, and subjected
to both state and vigilante violence and
deportation.
The sections
that follow give evidence of Israel’s role in
supporting and facilitating the repression done
by other aggressors around the world. In the
Middle East, Israel
is
the
primary aggressor. Locally, Israel does not sell
to its own neighbors but uses its own weapons
and technology against them. While Israel
exports its instruments and strategies of mass
murder, repression and incarceration outside of
the region, within the region it perpetrates all
three.
Israel
exports what it uses to repress and dominate
Palestinians and perpetrate aggression against
its neighbors. The following are some of these
tools, technologies, methods and weapons:
• Training of
police, military and militia.
• Systems
of surveillance used to criminalize
populations considered potential threats to
the legitimacy or security of repressive
states and regimes. This information is used
for mass incarceration, deportation,
assassination, torture and forced removal to
secure land or resources.
• Methods
of isolating populations through forced
migration and destruction of land into
concentrated areas whose air space,
borders/parameters and telecommunications
are controlled.
• Militarized borders and border technology
used to prevent freedom of movement.
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA15
Israel has
sold its signature firearms, the Uzi submachine
gun and the Galil rifle, in countries throughout
the region, arming Guatemalan death squads,
Nicaraguan Contras16,
Pinochet’s Chile, and the military junta in
Argentina against the population and their
movements.
~ In
Nicaragua,
Israel provided 98% of the arms Somoza used
in the last year of his dictatorship to kill
50,000 Nicaraguans.17
~ Israel also sold missiles, fighter jets and
armored vehicles and provided
counterinsurgency experts to the repressive
forces listed above as well as the
dictatorships in
Honduras18
and
El Salvador.19
~ In
Costa Rica,
as early as 1981, in addition to selling
arms to the police to repress the
population, Israel provided passports,
aliases and arms to Contras operating out of
Costa Rica against aliases and arms to
Contras operating out of Costa Rica against
the people of
Nicaragua.20
~ In
El Salvador,
the Histadrut, Israel's national “labor
federation” (see text box on page 14),
cooperated with the United States AFL-CIO
and the CIA to undermine rural cooperatives.21
~ In
El Salvador
Israel was involved in training the
military, police, and death squads of the
dictatorship beginning in 1972. It developed
a youth military program sponsored by the
Israeli Defense Force and supported
counterinsurgency training for secret police
including the military commander Sigifredo
Ochoa, who was responsible for civilian
massacres in 1981.22
~ As early as the 1950s, Israel sold small
arms to
Dominican Republic
dictator Rafael Trujillo who subjected the
Dominican people to a 31-year reign of
terror.23
~ In
El Salvador
and
Guatemala,
to assist the government’s tracking of
suspected opposition, Israel introduced
computerized equipment to monitor telephones
and to interfere with radio transmissions.
The information gained was then used by
rightwing death squads to assassinate
opposition figures.24
~ Borrowing from its long-standing tactic of
displacing Palestinians, Israel helped plan
and implement “scorched earth” policies in
El Salvador
and
Guatemala.
In
Guatemala
these policies were combined with
“development poles” ~ concentrated villages
of displaced populations that allowed for
greater government control over the popular
movement and the repression of any
grassroots organizing.25
~ Israel provided small arms and military
training to Colombian paramilitaries and
drug traffickers in the 1980s, and since
that time, has provided counterinsurgency
training, aircraft, missiles and small arms
to the brutal Colombian government.26
~ The Pinochet dictatorship of 1973-1990,
that murdered, raped and tortured opposition
in
Chile,
including trade unionists and socialists,
bought Israel’s weaponry for crowd control ~
including vehicles fitted with
water-cannons.27
Through the 1980’s, Israel also provided
surveillance to the Pinochet regime.28
~ In the 1970s, Israel armed the brutal
military regime of the
Argentinian Junta
that imposed seven years of state terror
terrorism on the population, including the
torture and disappearance” of an estimated
22,000-30,000 left-wing activists, trade
unionists, students, journalists, and other
alleged anti-regime civilians.
~
The Argentinian regime and its supporters
also targeted its Jewish civilians and
espoused anti-semitic rhetoric. Although
just 2% of Argentina’s population was
Jewish, between 10-15% of the people who
were arrested, tortured and disappeared
during the Junta were Jewish.29
~ Rather than condemn the Junta, Israel
worked with the Argentinian government to
establish a program called “the Option,”
allowing Jews to flee to Israel. It used,
rather than confronted, the regime’s
anti-Semitism to facilitate Jewish
emigration to Israel.30
"…while Jewish newspaper publisher [and human
rights advocate] Jacobo Timerman was being
tortured by the Argentine military in cells
painted with swastikas, three Israeli generals,
including the former armed forces chief of
staff, were visiting Buenos Aires on a 'friendly
mission' to sell arms."
--
Penny Lernoux - paraphrasing Timerman’s
autobiography. |
~ Today in Argentina,
the government has a contract worth 40
million U.S. dollars with the Israel
Military Industries (IMI) to set up a
prison.31
~ The Israeli government and corporations
play a significant role in
Brazil’s
domestic policing, crowd control,
surveillance systems, military arms, prisons
and militarized borders.32
The police training and arming is part of
Brazil’s anti-favela33
campaign and other domestic repression.34
~
Brazil
has contracted with Israel to provide an
advanced surveillance system in its state
prison system.35
AFRICA
~
Israel armed
Portugal against national liberation movements
in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau.36
~ Israel funded and trained the military
repression of anti-colonial uprisings and/or
dictatorship in the
Ivory Coast, Central African Republic,
Benin, Cameroon, Senegal, Togo, Uganda,
Nigeria, and Somalia.37
~ In the neo-colonial civil wars, former
colonial powers and current imperial powers
fuel, arm, and even instigate these wars to
divide and re-conquer Africa. Israel has
armed many or all sides. A prime example is
Israel’s arming of the three sides of
Angola’s
civil war at different times over four
decades.38
~ During the brutal Mobutu regime in
Zaire
(now
Democratic Republic of Congo),
Israel sold Mobutu arms and trained
paratroopers, the presidential security
force and the military, thus building the
power of this pro-Western dictator.39
~ In
Malawi,
from the 1960s to 1980s, Israel provided
training to tyrant Dr. Banda’s army of boys
used for murdering political opponents,
terrorizing workers by flogging, and
torturing opposition.40
~ Starting in 1992, Israel sold arms
and later provided training to
Rwandan
military and Hutu militia that in 1994
perpetrated genocide against the Tutsis.
Israel continued to send millions of USD in
arms even after the genocide was attracting
international attention.41
~ Currently, Israel maintains strong ties
with the
Equatorial Guinean
government ruled by President Obiang who
seized power in 1979. Obiang is believed to
have ordered the deaths of thousands of
Guineans during his period in power, and to
have headed one of the most tyrannical
regimes on the continent.
Equatorial Guinea, with a population of
800,000 - and now flooded with petrol
dollars - has purchased from Israeli
companies tens of millions of dollars in
naval and aircraft.42
WHITE RHODESIA - PRESENT DAY ZIMBABWE
~
Israel remained an ally of the white colonial
apartheid state of Rhodesia until its defeat by
the anti-colonial movement in 1979.
~
After UN-imposed sanctions against Rhodesia in
1967, and through the late 1970s, Israel
continued to maintain trade with the apartheid
regime and provide it with arms, including Uzis
and helicopters, in addition to helping Rhodesia
manufacture its own submachine gun models called
“Ruzis.”
Israel helped Rhodesia fortify its borders by
installing a land-mine belt that was 500 miles
long.43
APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA44
~ Israel was a staunch ally of apartheid South
Africa. Arms sales to South Africa included
Uzis, missile boats, Gabriel missiles,
communications and radar technology, ammunition,
and drones.
Not only did Israel arm the South African
government, it also provided arms and security
training to some of the puppet Bantustan
governments.45
Israel also helped fortify South Africa’s border
by setting up microwave detection systems, radar
systems, minefields, and electric fences.46
~ The Histadrut had a “near monopoly” over
Israeli trade with apartheid South Africa, and
eagerly collaborated with its Bantustan
policies.47
Iskoor, a joint South African-Histadrut company,
produced steel and tank armor.48
Companies wholly or partly owned by the
Histadrut helped build an electronic fence to
prevent anti-apartheid guerillas from entering
South Africa.49
~ In 1960 the Histadrut formed the Afro-Asian
Institute for Labor Studies and Cooperation,
funded by the CIA through the AFLCIO.
The Institute was designed to train Asian and
African students to assume positions of
leadership in their native labor movements.50
The incentive for both U.S. and Israeli state
labor organizations was to forestall the
formation of independent workers’ organizations
in favor of labor organizing that served the
building of neo-colonial states in former
colonies.51
From its inception in 1920 the Histadrut has
been misrepresented as, and mistaken for, a
trade union and as an inheritor of part of
the socialist tradition. It claimed to fight
not for all labor, but for Jewish labor. The
Histadut was led by Ben Gurion’s Labor
Party, which later governed Israel. The
Histadrut, whatever its claim to represent
workers, acted as a government in training.
As such it often acted as both employer, in
charge of various collective industries that
served the project of colonization, and in
the interest of employers, in order to quash
worker organizing. After the establishment
of the state, the Histadrut continued to
function in this dual role, prioritizing the
interest of state and industry while
claiming to represent workers.
Until the 1990’s it was Israel’s second
largest employer. As a result, the Histadrut
is referred to in this document as both
trade union and employer.
The trade union components of the Histadrut and
the AFL-CIO help facilitate relationships
between labor and the Israeli and U.S. State
respectively so that state economic interests
are protected. Both unions, and the states with
which they collaborate, therefore have a shared
dislike of self-organized labor as it threatens
the ability of each to control organized labor.
Furthermore, self-organized labor is a strong
basis of power for popular movements.
Therefore the collaboration of the CIA, AFL-CIO
and Histadrut in undermining self-organized
labor in El Salvador and Southern Africa is a
reflection of the common interests that they
shared with the repressive regime in El Salvador
and apartheid regime in South Africa.
(www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Middle_East/Israel_ElSalvador.html)
|
~ In the late 1970s, Israel
was credited with providing the information,
techniques and materials for the building of
nuclear weapons by South Africa.52
~ Several Israeli kibbutzim53
profited from the repression of the Black South
Africans.
Alongside the Israeli state-owned
factories turning out materiel for South Africa
was Kibbutz Beit Alfa, which developed a
profitable industry selling anti-riot vehicles
for use against protesters in the Black
townships.54
Mishmar-Haemek produced helmets for the
apartheid army and police, and Lohamei Hagetaot,
known for its Holocaust museum, operated a
chemical plant in the KwaZulu Bantustan.55
SOUTHWEST ASIA, SOUTH ASIA, AND THE PACIFIC
“From the
point of view of our existence and security,
the friendship of one European country is
more valuable than the views of all the
people of Asia.”
- David
Ben Gurion, 1957
~ In
Iran
during the rule of the
Shah, Israel served to protect this brutal U.S.
puppet regime. In turn, the Shah was one of the
first leaders in the region to recognize Israel
as a state.56
During the
Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah,
Israel sold over 150 million U.S.dollars in arms
to the regime.57
~ From 1954 on,
the Shah’s secret police received training from
the CIA and Israel.58
~ Israel participated with the U.S. in the
Iran-Contra scandal,59
and also sold arms to Iran separately.60
~ During civil wars in
Yemen
and
Oman,
Israel supported Arab dictatorships by
providing war material and training to them.
Israeli involvement was coordinated with the
United States.61
~ The Israeli government and Israeli
corporations have provided tens of millions
of dollars worth of naval and aircraft
(including drones), intelligence training,
electronic warfare technology, and
ship-to-ship missiles to the Sri Lankan
government in their efforts to destroy Tamil
groups demanding an independent homeland in
the northern part of the country (Tamils are
17% of
Sri Lanka's
16 million people).62
~ In 1978, Israel sold U.S. jets and attack
helicopters to
Indonesia
as the military carried out genocide against
peoplein East Timor. From 1978-1999, the
Indonesian military killed more than 200,000
Timorese. Israel's arms trade with the
Suharto dictatorship continued until his
resignation in 1998.63
Israel gave support to the U.S.-backed
Marcos dictatorship in the
Philippines.
It supplied bodyguards for Marcos and
provided covert training courses through
private companies.64
~
India
purchases more Israeli arms than does the
Israeli army. Israel is the second largest
supplier of arms to India. India uses these
arms not only to threaten Pakistan but to
repress its own population, including the
Jammu, Kashmir, forest tribes and Naxalite
resistance groups amongst them.65
~ In 2009, Israel sent instructors to train
police in
India
in a strand of “counter-terrorism” that
specifically targeted Muslim leaders.66
~ Israel has recently been helping
India
to modernize its military forces, including
Falcon planes with Israeli-made warning
systems, aerostat radars installed on the
India-Pakistan border, and enhanced Barak
missiles for use against aircraft,
helicopters, and cruise missiles.67
THE UNITED STATES
Israel
and the United States share a form of
settler colonialism in which the indigenous
people - rather than being exploited
primarily as workers - are ethnically
cleansed, and those remaining are segregated
and isolated into shrinking areas.
Like so many countries, the U.S. purchases
Israeli weapons of war to use against others
outside its borders, and Israeli
technologies, surveillance and policing
strategies to use in repression internal to
its borders. Zionist organizations within
the U.S., through programs funded by the
Department of Homeland Security, have
partnered with the U.S. government to target
Palestinian and other Arab, Iranian and
Muslim communities and organizations.68
Related propaganda has made way for and
fueled growing vigilante violence against
those communities. The influence of these
government-funded organizations on national
security policy is integral to other
policies that have significant and
far-reaching effects for all living in the
U.S. Most impacted by policing, political
repression, surveillance, and immigration
policy are communities of color and
immigrant communities. Also targeted are
those who express and otherwise engage in
dissent.
~ Since
1949 the estimated cumulative total in
U.S. direct aid to Israel ranges between
115 billion and 123 billion U.S.
dollars. The U.S. gives Israel
approximately 3 billion per year upfront
in economic and military aid. This aid
takes away from the ability to meet
domestic needs including education and
healthcare.
~ In the past two decades, the
Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish
Zionist organization founded to
combat anti-Semitism, has
participated in the surveillance
of over 1,000 social justice and
human rights organizations
including opponents of South
African apartheid, the United
Farm Workers Union, the Vanguard
Public Foundation, Labor
Council/AFL-CIO, NAACP, MADRE,
Greenpeace, and the Center for
Constitutional Rights.69
~
Elbit, the Israeli company that built
the Apartheid Wall in Palestine,
participated in the design and provided
surveillance technology for the
U.S.-Mexico border wall - commonly known
as the Wall of Death.
~
Made possible by U.S. government
“anti-terrorist” funding, the Israeli
government and corporations, as well as
U.S.-based Zionist organizations, have
collaborated with and trained local
police, the National Guard, and the
Department of Homeland Security in
repressive tactics, including
surveillance and crowd control. For
example:
~
Since 2003, the Anti-Defamation League
(ADL) has trained almost 700 senior
level law enforcement personnel
representing over 220 different agencies
on "Extremist and Terrorist Threats.” In
2010 alone, the ADL trained over 10,500
law enforcement officers.70
~
Following Hurricane Katrina, a 25-member delegation from the National
Guard went to Israel. The purpose was to
train them in maintaining order after
natural disasters and terrorist
attacks.71
~
Since 2005, the Department of Homeland
Security has provided “antiterrorist”
funding to U.S.-based nonprofit
organizations to involve them in
identifying and preventing “terrorist”
activity. Of funds given to
nongovernmental organizations
specifically for this purpose, 73-80% is
received by Jewish Zionist
organizations. In 2008, this meant that
19 million out of 25 million U.S.
dollars went to these organizations; in
2011, it was 15 million out of 19
million U.S. dollars.72
CONCLUSION
From
South America to South Africa and from the
Mobutu to the Trujillo dictatorships,
Israel, often acting in concert with the
United States, has been a key player in
undermining popular struggles by supplying
repressive regimes with the tools for
massive state violence.
The facts
and figures given here do not support the
many fanciful theories that circulate about
the role of Israeli - or Jewish - “control
of the world.” On the contrary, anti-semitic
conspiracy theories that misinterpret these
or similar facts serve to bolster Israeli
propaganda, helping Israel portray itself as
victim, even justifying its repression
industry as a necessity against such
anti-semitism.
Furthermore, it allows Israel's allies and
clients to camouflage their own interests in
repressing peoples' movements for freedom.
Such conspiracies are thus a disservice to
the movements for liberation everywhere,
including the Palestinian struggle.
A major
war profiteer and a settler-colonial state,
Israel can use its profits to further
repress and displace Palestinians,
developing still more deadly weapons in the
process. Given how unfamiliar most people
are with the extent of the Israeli arms
industry and the industrial scale of its
function in suppressing movements, we have
collected here some of the most atrocious
aspects of Israel’s repression worldwide.
Israel’s
racism is rooted in centuries of European
colonialism.
ED Noor: More truthfully,
Israel’s racism is rooted in the Babylonian
Talmud.
It is
integral to global imperialism from which it
derives investment, support, and cover.
Israel has worked hand-in-glove with
repressive regimes in every corner of the
earth in ways that facilitate the
suppression, murder, assassination, rape,
torture, disappearance, kidnapping, and
imprisonment of those struggling for freedom
and justice. Its arms and repression
industries continue today through Israeli
state institutions and via private
corporations and a worldwide network of
Zionist organizations. Repressive regimes
find a willing and able ally in Israel.
Though
well documented, the information we offer is
not widely available in the media or at
universities. The states and corporations
that engage in war, the arms trade,
occupation, incarceration, surveillance, and
repression benefit from this information not
being publicized. Tracking the trail of
Israel’s function in global repression is an
opportunity to expose the players in this
vast industry. There is a need to continue
to expose Israel’s role in worldwide
repression and to support the organizing to
end it.
REFERENCES:
1.
The U.S. continues to have a major influence
on the international political economy
despite its diminishing financial standing.
Its allies are those countries which share
an interest in the concentration of wealth
through a combination of economic agreements
and trade, military dominance, diplomatic
pressure and various forms of economic and
military aid. Traditionally, these allies
have been Europe, Canada and Australia, but
increasingly include countries in the region
and the global South which, to greater or
lesser degrees, are unified around their
shared interests in control of wealth and
natural resources.
2.
Machover, Moshé. Israelis
and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution.
Chicago, IL: Haymarket, 2012. Print.
3.
Settler colonialism is a specific colonial
formation in which foreign populations
establish themselves permanently on the
territory they are colonizing. Whereas
natural (e.g. gold, cotton, oil) and human
(e.g. labor, existing trade networks
convertible souls) resources are the main
motivation behind other forms of
colonialism, land is the key resource in
settler colonies.
4. Haddad, Toufic. “Iraq, Palestine, and U.S.
Imperialism,” International Socialist Review.
36 (2004) Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
5.
Pincus, Walter. “United States needs to
reevaluate its assistance to Israel.”
The
Washington Post.
17 Oct. 2011. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
6.
Adam, Weinstein. “US Pays 18 Percent of
Israel's Military Budget.” Mother
Jones.18
Oct. 2011. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
7.
McArthur, Shiri. “A Conservative Estimate of
Total U.S. Aid To Israel: More Than $123
Billion.” The
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
30.8
(2011): 22-23. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
Sharp M.,
Jeremy. “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel.”
Congressional Research Service.Federation
of American Scientist, 12. Mar. 2012. Web.
10 Nov. 2012.
8.
Bassok, Moti. “Defense budget to grow,
education spending to shrink.” Haaretz.
30 Sept. 2009. Web. 10 November 2012.
9. Guttman, Nathan, Eileen Reynolds, and Maia
Efrem. "How an Anti-Terror Program Became a Jewish Earmark: Grants Favor
the Orthodox and the Organized." Jewish
Daily Forward.
16 Sep. 2011. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
10.
“Terrorism and the Jewish Community.” Secure
Community Network, Web. 10 Nov.2012.
11.
For example, Zionist non-profits provide
economic and political support to Israel and
in some cases can represent the state of
Israel in international negotiations (i.e.
the Jewish National Fund (JNF) can represent
the Israeli Land Administration in UN
proceedings because it holds 49% of the
seats of the government office despite being
a “non-governmental organization”. In
addition, each year the JNF raises, on
average, 50 million U.S. dollars to support
activities in collaboration with the state
of Israel.). Other “non-profits” raise funds
to support the Israeli military ~ providing
comforts and resources for Israeli soldiers.
Zionist corporations outside of Israel also
“sell” the expertise of the Israeli
government and military, acting as
intermediaries to arrange contracts with
U.S. corporations and the U.S. government.
The Israeli military and government is then
deployed to provide training of police,
militia and militaries.
12.
Shahak, Israel. “Israel's Global Role:
Weapons for Repression,” Studies
in Geophysical Optics and Remote Sensing.
Association of Arab-American University
Graduates, 4.4 (1982): Print; Selfa, Lance.
“Israel: The U. S. Watchdog.” International Socialist Review.
4 (1998) Web. 10. Nov. 2012.
13.
"Discriminatory Laws in the State of
Israel." It's Apartheid. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
14.
"The Prawer Plan." Adalah: The Legal Center
for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Web.10
Nov. 2012.
15.
For information about Central and South
America see Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin.
The Israel Connection: Whom Israel Arms and
Why.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.76-107.
Print.
16.
United States. Dept. of Defense. Office of
the Secretary of Defense. “Memorandumfor the
Secretary of the Navy.” Crypotome. Dept. of
Defense, Mar. 30, 1983. Web. 10 Nov.
2012.
17. Shahak
15-16.
18.
America Clips Wings of Israel's Arms
Industry." The
Telegraph.
14 Mar. 1997,Nashua ed., p.17. Print.
19. Hooglund,
Eric J. “Israel's Arms Exports: Proxy
Merchant for the U.S.” American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Research Institute, 8. (1983): 11.
Print.
20.
Beit-Hallahmi 92.
21.
Hunter, Jane. Israeli
Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central
America. Boston:South End Press, 1987. 95-136. Print.
22.
Bahbah, Bishara with Linda Butler.
Israel
and Latin America: The Military Connection.
New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1986. 78. Print.
23.
Johnson, Jimmy.” Israeli Arms Sales to
Rwandan Genocidaires Should Not Be Surprising.”
Jadaliya.
28 June 2012. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
24. Beit-Hallahmi
13.
25.
Ibid. 80-81; Debusmann, Bernard. “Spotlight
on Israeli role in Latin America.”
Glasgow Herald.
24 April 1984. 5. Print.; Hooglund 13.
Israel is still implementing such strategies
itself. In September 2011, the Israeli
government approved the Prawer Plan for mass
expulsion of the Arab Bedouin community in
the Naqab (Negev) desert. If fully
implemented, this plan will result in the
forced displacement of up to seventy
thousand Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel and
the destruction of thirty-five
“unrecognized” villages. People would be
relocated in government-planned Bedouin
townships. See
26.
Johnson
27.
"Israeli
success at Chilean military exhibition."
Israel
Business Today.
Highbeam. 15 April 1994. Web. 9 Jan. 2010.
28.
Beit-Hallahmi 100.
29.
Tarnopolsky, Noga. "Disappeared: A Flawed
Film on Argentina’s Past Blames Wrong
Party." The
Jewish Daily Forward.
16 May 2003. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
"Argentina’s ‘disappeared’ are remembered in
moving documentary."
The J
Weekly.17
Sep. 2009. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
.
30.
Sznajder, Mario and Luis Roniger. “From
Argentina to Israel: Escape, Evacuation and
Exile.” Journal
of Latin American Studies. Cambridge
Journals Online, 37.2 (2005): 351-377. Web.
10 Nov. 2012.
31.
Marom, Dror (5 October 2000). "IMI to Set Up
USD40 Mln Prison in Argentina" Globes.
Retrieved 22 January 2005: Marom, Dror. "IMI
to Set Up $40 Mln Prison in Argentina."
Globes. 5 Jan. 2000. Web. 22 Jan. 2005.
32.
Brazil’s military relations with Israel.”
The Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid
Wall Campaign. March 2011. Web. 10 Nov.
2012.
33.
Campaigns to increase surveillance, police
control and repression of populations living
in Brazil’s favelas (slums or shanty town),
most often within urban areas.
34.
Verint Systems. City of
Rio De Janeiro Expands Deployment of Verint
Nextiva.
Verint Systems. N.p., 24 Apr. 2008. Web.
Melman,
Yossi. "Brazil to buy USD350m worth of
drones from Israel"
Haaretz.
13 Nov. 2009. Web. 20 November 2009.
Scheer,
Steven "Israel-Brazil trade seen surging on
Latam trade deal."
Reuters.
15 March 2010. Web. 24 March 2010.
Cohn,
Ora, "Brazilian police buying drones from
IAI"
Haaretz.
17 June 2010. Web. 17 June 2010.
"Brazil
patrols Paraguay border with UAV to control
drugs and arms contraband."
MercoPress.
23 July 2010. Web. 1 Aug. 2010.
Torres,
Fernando. “Polícia do Rio de Janeiro terá
armas do exército de Israel.”
Globo.
15 April 2009. Web. 16 Nov. 2009.
.
35.
Source Security. “Brazilian prison leverages
Nextiva IP video portfolio for enhanced
security”. Web.
36.
Beit-Hallahmi 43-45, 64.Johnson, J.
37.
Beit-Hallahmi 50-53.
38.
Johnson, J Cooper, Tom, Pedro Alvin, and
Troung. "Angola since 1961." Angola
since 1961.
N.p.,2 Sept. 2003. Web. 13 Nov. 2006.
Beit-Hallahmi 65.
39.
Beit-Hallahmi 60. Abel, Jacob (1971).
Israel's Military Aid to Africa, 1960–66.
The Journal of Modern African Studies, 9, pp
171-2 doi:10.1017/S0022278X00024885 "Zaire:
Foreign Military Relations." US
Library of Congress Countries Studies.
N.p., n.d. Web.
Beit-Hallahmi 55, 56;
40.
Shahak 25.
41. Colmáin,
Gearóid Ó. "Spanish High Court Investigates
Rwandan Genocide & War Crimes." Pacific
Free Press.
N.p., n.d. Web.
Rwanda: Arming the Perpetrators of the
Genocide.
Rep. Amnesty International, 14 Feb. 1995.
Web.
"The Arms
Fixers: Controlling the Brokers and Shipping
Agents."
Norwegian
Initiative on Small Arms Transferes.
N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Aug. 2010.
Melman,
Yossi. "Sources: Israeli Businesswoman
Brokering E. Guinea Arms Sales."
Haaretz.com.
N.p., 12 Nov. 2009. Web. 20 July 2010.
"Israel
Preparing to Deliver Two OPV to Equato
Guinea Navy."
DefenceWeb.
N.p., 17 Jan. 2011. Web. 23 Jan. 2011.
43.
Beit-Hallahmi 63.
44.
Beit-Hallahmi 114-145.
45.
"Mercernaries, a Quietly Thriving Export
Business from Israel." Bangor
Daily News 27 Aug. 1985: 20. Print.
Beit-Hallahmi 145.
Hunter,
Jane. "Israel and the Bantustans."
Journal of Palestine Studies
15.3
(1986):60. Print.
46. Johnson,
J.
47.
Beit-Hallahmi 138. Hunter ”South Africa and
Central America” 77.
48.
Hunter
”South Africa and Central America” 61-62.
49.
Davis, Uri. Israel,
Utopia Incorporated. London:
Zed Pr., 1977. 97. Print. Greenstein, Tony.
"Histadrut: Israel's Racist "trade Union""
The
Electronic Intifada.
N.p., 9 Mar. 2009. Web.
50.
Reich, Bernard. "Israel's Policy in Africa."
Middle
East Journal 18.1
(1964): 14-26. Print.
Lester,
Robert, and Blair Hydrick.
Confidential U.S. State Department Central
Files. Internal Affairs (decimal Numbers
784, 784A, 884, 884A, 984, and 984A) and
Foreign Affairs (decimal Numbers 611.84,
611.84A, 684, and 684A).
Bethesda, MD: UPA Collection from
LexisNexis, 2003. Print.
52.
Masiza, Zondi. "A Chronology of South
Africa's Nuclear Program." The
Nonproliferation Review Fall
(1993): 37. Print.
53.
Kibbutzim ~ agricultural collectives founded
by Zionist colonists and later developed by
the state of Israel.
54.
McGreal, Chris. "Brothers in Arms - Israel's
Secret Pact with Pretoria." The
Guardian.
Guardian News and Media, 6 Feb. 2006. Web.
55.
Beit-Hallahmi 73-75.
56 Segev,
Samuel. The
Iranian Triangle: The Untold Story of
Israel's Role in the Iran- Contra Affair.
New York: Free, 1988. Print.
57.
Beit-Hallahmi 11.
58.
Reiser, Stewart. The
Israeli Arms Industry: Foreign Policy, Arms
Transfers, and Military Doctrine of a Small
State.
New York: Holmes & Meier, 1989. 68. Print;
Beit- Hallahmi 11.
59.
In 1985 when U.S. citizens were held hostage
in Iran, a member of the Reagan
administration arranged for Israel to ship
weapons to Iran, and then the U.S. would
resupply Israel and receive the Israeli
payment. The Iranian recipients promised to
do everything in their power to achieve the
release of the U.S. hostages. The plan
deteriorated into an arms-for-hostages
scheme, in which members of the executive
branch of the U.S. government sold weapons
to Iran in exchange for the release of the
American hostages. Large modifications to
the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel
Oliver North of the National Security
Council in late 1985, in which a portion of
the proceeds from the weapon sales was
diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and
anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in
Nicaragua.
"The
Tower Commission Report the Full Text of the
President's Special Review Board John Tower,
Chairman ; Edmund Muskie and Brent
Scowcroft, Members ; Introduction by R.W.
Apple, Jr."
The Tower
Commission Report (Open Library).
N.p., n.d. Web. 6 July 2008.
"Reagan's
Mixed White House Legacy."
BBC News.
BBC, 06 June 2004. Web.
Parry,
Robert. "NYT's Apologies Miss the Point."
Consortiumnews.com.
N.p., 2 June 2004. Web.
60. Segev.
61.
Beit-Hallahmi 17.
62.
"Trade Registers." Trade
Registers.
N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2010.
Wilson,
A. Jeyaratnam.
The
Break-up of Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil
Conflict.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1988. 177.
Print.
"Israelis, British Reported Training Sri
Lanka Forces."
Toledo
Blade
11 Aug.
1984: 2. Print.
63.
"Background on East Timor." Center
for Justice and Accountability.
N.p., n.d. Web.
Selfa,
Lance. "Israel: The U. S. Watchdog."
International Socialist Review
4 (1998):
n. pag. Print.
64.
Beit-Hallahmi 29-31.
65.
Johnson, Jimmy. "India Employing Israeli
Oppression Tactics in Kashmir." The
Electronic Intifada.
N.p., 19 Aug. 2010. Web.
66
Gates, Robert. "Israel And India: Dance With
The Devil." Sikh
Archives.
N.p., 23 Oct. 2011. Web.
67.
Shapir, Yiftah S. "Israel's Arms Sales to
India." Strategic
Assessment 12.3
(2009): n. pag. Print.
68.
"Terrorism and the Jewish Community."
Secure
Community Network.
N.p., n.d. Web.
69.
Jabara, Abdeen. "The Anti-Defamation League:
Civil Rights and Wrongs." Covert
Action Quarterly 45
(1993): 28-33. Print.
Schuster,
Joshua. "ADL Ready to Settle 1993
Class-action Suit on Spying."
JWeekly.
N.p., 14 May 1999. Web.
70.
"ADL/LEARN: Law Enforcement Training News."
Anti-Defamation League.
N.p., n.d. Web.
71. "National
Guard Begins Training Exchange with Israeli
Forces." Military.com.
N.p., 29 Nov. 2005. Web.
.
This is
the official blurb from this organization.
The International Jewish Anti-Zionist
Network is committed to exposing and
helping to end the role that Israel and
Zionism play in violence and repression
against fellow human beings and our
movements for justice.
This begins with Zionism’s impact on the
people of Palestine and the broader region
and extends to the role that Israel and
Zionism play across the globe.
Israel also dishonors the persecution and
genocide of European Jews by using their
memory to justify its crimes. It is
responsible for the extensive displacement
of Jews of African, Arab and Asian descent
from their countries of origin.
As such, Zionism implicates us in the
oppression of the Palestinian people, others
in the region and people and movements
across the globe. It also is responsible for
the debasement of our own heritages, the
undermining of struggles for justice and
threatening our alliances with our fellow
human beings.
The original PDF-document:
Israel's Role in Worldwide Repression