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On February 14, 1896, one of the most consequential pamphlets in modern history was published. It is a pamphlet that is not well known across Latin America, but has impacted the region in tremendous ways.
Theodor Herzl, a 35-year-old journalist living in France, published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). In his magnum opus, he spoke out against the rampant antisemitism that existed in Europe at the time. Across the continent, Jewish people were regularly discriminated against and killed.
Herzl, who was born into a secular Jewish family in Hungary, called for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. He argued that Jewish people living in Europe should pack their bags and settle in the area, which was ruled by the Ottoman Empire at the time. In the conclusion of Der Judenstaat, Herzl wrote: “We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.” A year later, in 1897, Herzl co-founded the World Zionist Organization, which would transform his vision of a “Jewish State” into reality.
“Zion” is used as a synonym in the Hebrew Bible for Palestine, which it refers to as “The Land of Israel.” Palestinians, who are referred to as “Philistines” in the religious text, have lived in the area since the 12th century BC. However, a group of settlers referred to as “Israelites” (who were said to be descendants of Jacob, a Hebrew Biblical figure) took over the region and established the “Kingdom of Israel.” The Kingdom lasted from 1047 BC to 930 BC, eventually splitting in two and being annexed by the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires.
Thus, Zionism calls for the re-occupation of Indigenous Palestinian lands to establish a new “Jewish State.”
Despite passing away in 1904, Herzl’s ideology of Zionism gained traction across Europe. Amid rising anti-semitic violence during both world wars, Jewish people fled Europe in droves, with many resettling in Palestine. After World War I, the Ottomans lost control of the region and the British took over. After World War II, following the fascist atrocities of the Holocaust, the zionists lobbied for Britain to grant them control over Palestinian lands.
Although the Soviet Union helped liberate thousands of Jewish people enslaved by the Nazis and welcomed them with open arms, the zionists rejected their offer. Not only were many leading zionists against socialism and communism. They were also intent on gaining control over the Middle East, a region of growing geopolitical importance.
In March of 1908, British geologist George Bernard Reynolds discovered huge amounts of oil in the area, at a time when it became widely used for transportation and heating.
By May 14, 1948 — just 52 years after Herzl published Der Judenstaat — David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel. Herzl’s dream of a “Jewish State” became a reality, and Zionism became its ruling ideology.Since then, the State of Israel has weaponized Herzl’s zionist ideology against the Indigenous Palestinian people. Claiming to have rightful ownership over Palestine, the State of Israel regularly exploits, displaces and kills them, constructing settlements over their lands.
Today, many Israelis believe they are living as “free men on our own soil,” as Herzl put it. However, they fail to recognize that their so-called “Jewish State” replicates the same discrimination and violence used against Jewish people in Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Neturei Karta, an organization that represents Haredi Jews, correctly points out that Zionism and the State of Israel do not represent Jewish people as a whole. There is a clear difference between Judaism and Zionism, and any attempt to equate the two is intellectually dishonest. Furthermore, many leading supporters of Zionism are not even Jewish. In fact, most of them are right-wing evangelical Christians based in the United States.
Gaza & West Bank – Open-air prisons
Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, much has been publicized about zionist crimes against the Palestinian people. Not only are the native peoples of Palestine being kicked out of their own lands. They are also forced to live under horrible conditions in the West Bank and Gaza, which have essentially become open-air prisons. In Gaza, the most densely-populated Palestinian territory, 53 percent of people live in poverty, according to the World Bank.
Meanwhile, 54 percent of Gazans are food insecure, over 75 percent are entirely dependent on foreign aid and over 90 percent of water in the area is undrinkable, according to the United Nations. To top it off, because the State of Israel has imposed sea, air and border blockades on Gaza, the Palestinian people living there are not free to leave their own lands. This is made worse by the fact that the Israeli Defense Forces, IDF, regularly shoot and kill Palestinian protesters while branding them as “terrorists.”
Israel and genocide against Indigenous peoples of Guatemala
However, not much has been publicized about zionist crimes against other Indigenous peoples around the world. In the conclusion of Der Judenstaat, the foundational text of Zionism, Herzl also wrote: “The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, and magnified by our greatness.”
The expansionist and chauvinist implications of this excerpt have also become a reality following the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Zionists sought to expand the State of Israel’s power overseas, including a distant region thousands of miles away: Latin America.’
Within Latin America, the State of Israel established its first stronghold in Guatemala, a majority-Indigenous country that was once home to the great Maya civilization. Zionism has a little-known but bloody history of genocide against the Indigenous peoples of Guatemala.
The State of Israel has also committed crimes against humanity in other countries of the region, including Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Chile, among others. However, some of its earliest and most despicable crimes were carried out in Guatemala. Many of these crimes were committed under the guise of bringing “liberty,” “wealth” and “greatness” to Indigenous peoples they viewed as inferior and dangerous, just like the Palestinians.
Reforms of government of Jacobo Arbez
In 1951, Jacobo Árbenz was elected President of Guatemala amid a democratic uprising against a U.S.-backed military dictatorship. Árbenz, a former military officer who participated in the uprising, instituted a number of progressive reforms. Among these reforms was Decree 900, a nationwide program that redistributed unused lands to poor and predominantly Indigenous campesinos. Close to half of a million people benefited from the decree, granting them over 1.4 million acres of arable land. The progressive president also provided technical and financial assistance to Indigenous farmers, allowing them to grow and sell coffee and bananas independently. The land reform program was so groundbreaking that it even caught the attention of Argentine communist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who moved to Guatemala in 1953 to witness the process.
1954 US-backed military coup
However, in 1954, Árbenz was overthrown in a military coup orchestrated by the U.S. Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency. The United Fruit Company staunchly opposed his land reform program because it hurt their corporate profits. Thus, the company pushed Washington to oust Árbenz, replacing him with Carlos Castillo Armas, another U.S.-backed military dictator.
Between 1954 and 1960, all of Árbenz’s progressive reforms were rolled back and more military coups took place, plunging Guatemala further into poverty and violence.
In 1956, two years after the right-wing coup, Guatemala became the first country to open an embassy in occupied Al Quds (Jerusalem). The State of Israel established a strong relationship with the Guatemalan Right that exists to this day.
By 1960, the Movimiento Revolucionario 13 Noviembre (November 13th Revolutionary Movement) and the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces) launched a people’s war against the military dictatorship. Both were Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movements that included workers, campesinos, Indigenous peoples and military defectors among their ranks. During the 1970s, the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (Guerrilla Army of the Poor), the Organización del Pueblo en Armas (Organization of People in Arms) and the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (Guatemalan Party of Labor) also joined the revolutionary alliance. Together, the five revolutionary organizations formed the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity), which fought against the U.S.-backed military dictatorship in a united front.
In 1977, the United States temporarily cut off military aid to Guatemala’s dictatorship after the human rights violations it was committing came to the public eye. The imperialists in Washington, under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, realized that their support for the dictatorship was unpopular and unfruitful. The U.S. had already suffered a humiliating defeat in Vietnam against another communist insurgency and was not looking for another loss.
Meanwhile, Guatemala’s Indigenous communist movement was getting stronger by the day, building solidarity with other revolutionary movements abroad.
Israel: U.S. ally in “Cold War against communism”
As a result, Guatemala’s government turned to the State of Israel — a key U.S. ally in the Cold War against communism — for military aid.
That same year, in 1977, Menachem Begin was elected Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Begin was a member of Likud, a far-right zionist party that despises socialism and promotes Israeli supremacy. Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a member of Likud. Begin was also a leader of Irgun, a zionist paramilitary organization that is responsible for killing thousands of Arab people during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Moshe Dayan, Begin’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, immediately began setting up huge arms deals with the Guatemalan military dictatorship.
By the 1980s, the State of Israel became the largest supplier of weapons, military training and surveillance technology to Guatemala, according to historian Rosa De Ferrari. Between January and November of that year, over 3,000 people described by the dictatorship as “subversives” were murdered, according to Amnesty International.
These so-called “subversives,” most of whom were Indigenous campesinos and leftist activists, were killed with Israeli weapons.
A year later, in 1981, Israeli Economic Coordination Minister Ya’aeov Merider told a gathering of Israeli businessmen: “Israel coveted the job of top Washington proxy in Central America,” according to NACLA. That same year, Ronald Reagan, a right-wing zionist Christian, was elected President of the United States.
By 1982, the Zionist war on Guatemala’s leftists and Indigenous peoples went into high gear. On February 13, Guatemala’s dictatorship murdered at least 200 civilians in the village of Chisis, which they claimed was harboring leftist guerrillas. They were also killed with Israeli weapons.
On March 23, General Efraín Ríos Montt came to power in another military coup, immediately establishing martial law and suspending the constitution. Montt was a member of the Gospel Outreach Church, a far-right evangelical sect that fanatically supported Zionism and the State of Israel. He was also close friends with U.S. evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson, both of whom also supported Zionism and the State of Israel.
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