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

Free World Vignettes
short the flow of Israeli weapons and advisers; Israeli military assistance
was estimated at $90 million by 1982, when the Ríos Montt regime
took power, offering thanks for the Israeli training which made this
possible. 86
Israel’s close relations with the Argentine neo-Nazis and others like
them in Latin America were also unaffected by their virulent anti-
Semitism. To cite one of numerous examples of regular cozy relations,
when Israel faced an international arms embargo after the 1967 war, it
approached Bolivia with a plan, which was implemented, to divert to
Israel Belgian and Swiss arms ostensibly destined for Bolivia, to be
transported by a company managed by Klaus Barbie, the Nazi war
criminal who was spirited to Latin America by US intelligence when it
was no longer possible to benefit from his services in postwar Europe. A
report in the Israeli press alleges that Barbie also had frequent dealings
with Israel concerning supplies of Israeli arms to Latin American
countries and “various underground organizations.” 87
Any possible moral qualms concerning arms sales to Guatemalan
Himmlers and other murderers and torturers may be put aside by the
familiar principles expressed by the director of Israeli State military
industry (Ta’as), Michael Shur: 88
The welfare of our people and the state supersedes all other
considerations. If the state has decided in favor of export, my
conscience is clear.
Some do feel a degree of discomfort. The revered moralist Elie
Wiesel, whose thoughts are featured in the media whenever it is deemed
appropriate to denounce someone else’s crimes, received a letter from a
Nobel Prize laureate containing documentation on Israel’s contributions
to atrocities in Guatemala with a suggestion that he might use his
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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