Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

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countries. Israel, therefore, could legitimately argue that it was
doing America’s dirty work—and making a nice profit in the
process.
The profits are not insignificant. The Israeli press reports that “Latin
America has become the leading market for Israeli arms exports,”
estimated at $1.2 billion for 1982, and that the market should grow in
the light of the effectiveness of Israeli arms in the Lebanon war. The US
is secretly helping Israel to establish military relations with various
states, according to US sources, and is encouraging Israel to use
American aid to assist US clients, so that they can “in effect obtain
Israeli arms with US funding.” Former Knesset Member Michael Kleiner
states that the sale of arms to Honduras and to El Salvador, arms which
indirectly find their way to the war against Nicaragua, “are made in
accordance with the explicit request of the United States.” 85
Not surprisingly, Israeli arms sales to Latin America rapidly increased
when the congressional human rights restrictions took effect. Shortly
after Israel agreed to provide military aid to Guatemala, the Guatemalan
army’s Staff College review “published a prominent feature article by a
Guatemalan officer in praise of Adolf Hilter, National Socialism, and the
‘Final Solution’,” in which the author, a Guatemalan military officer,
quoted extensively from Mein Kampf and traced Hitler’s anti-Semitism
to his “discovery” that Communism was part of a “Jewish conspiracy” so
that Germany’s fight against the Jews was “in self defense” as part of its
struggle against Russia, which was “dominated by the strength of a
Marxist-Jewish nucleus.” Despite his admiration for Hitler, he added
that Nazism is not “a political panacea,” and urged that Guatemala find
its own variant of National Socialism, similar to the fascist Spanish
Falange, “which is eminently nationalist and Catholic.” Neither such
sentiments nor the genocidal uses to which the military aid was put cut
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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