APPENDIX ONE

Israel, Third-World Fascism, and Gladio

This book has examined the connections first of radical Zionism, and second, of the form in which it penetrated the state, with the Nazis and other groups of fascist tendencylinks that will surely surprise most readers. We've also stressed the important links between certain radical circles in the Israeli administration and post-war fascists. During the Cold War, dictators and juntas all over the globe gladly established close, yet often highly confidential, working relationships with certain circles in the Israeli administration.

That these circles influential in the Israeli administration support fascist regimes and organizations worldwide is established in detail by Israeli writer Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. According to his book The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms and Why, Israel has insured the "stability" by supporting oppressive regimes all over the world.

Israel's allies in Africa have included fascist organizations, and such cruel, repressive, and even cannibal dictators as Idi Amin, Edine Ahmed Bokassa, and Mobutu Sese Seko. As Hallahmi points out, Israel began to focus on Africa in the 1950s and from then on, has supported and armed all fascist African regimes. Israeli military consultants have trained their security services. The right-wing UNITA and FNLA guerrillas in Angola; the bodyguards of Idi Amin and Bokassa; the French OAS commandos who rebelled against the French decision to grant independence to Algeria; the Portuguese colonial troops in Mozambique; the army of the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie; and most important of all, the bloody-handed "security forces" of South Africa's racist white regime: All were trained and armed by Israeli military experts.149

Central and South American fascists have also been important allies of the Israeli radical circles, who for many years have been the biggest supplier of aid to Latin America's fascist regimes and parties, its military juntas and drug cartels. According to Beit-Hallahmi, Israel has played three main roles in the region: supplying arms to the fascist powers; training their troops (which training included guerrilla and counter-guerrilla tactics, methods of interrogation and torture, and techniques of social control); and serving as a source of inspiration to these regimes. Hallahmi writes:

The Latin American military admires Israel for its machismo, for its toughness, ruthlessness, and efficiency.150

Some radical sections of the Israeli administration have long been the chief source of weapons for the fascist junta that has governed Guatemala for many years. They have also assisted the regime in maintaining social control. The Guatemalan secret police, whose name alone terrified the populace, were trained by some Israeli experts. "Reportedly, 80 percent of the Guatemalan population are covered with their names and other details stored in the computer's memory."151 Persons "dangerous" to the government have been abducted and killed by death squads trained by the Israelis. About forty Israelis worked in the Guatemalan intelligence services, who taught the Guatemalans "terrible interrogation methods," as Hallahmi puts it.152 An attempt in the U.S. Congress to condemn the Guatemalan regime's violations of human rights, including its many murders, was thwarted by the efforts of the Israel lobby.153 Of the Guatemalan regime's gratitude to Israel, Noam Chomsky explains that Guatemala's bloody Lucas Garcia regime, responsible for terrible slaughters, thanked Israeli advisers for the military aid they were providing, openly expressing that Israel was a model and an example to them.154

The situation in El Salvador has not differed too much from that of its northern neighbor Guatemala. The Salvadoran state's murderous terror was captured by Oliver Stone in his noted film Salvador. Chomsky writes that the terror in that country resulted in millions starving, innumerable women raped, and innumerable people tortured, and 150,000 dead.

As the standing allies of fascists, a number of Israeli radicals were once again behind this state-sanctioned terror. "… [I]n the early 1980s, it became widely known that El Salvador had secret agreements with Israel for anti-guerrilla security assistance. Arnold Ramos, the representative of the Salvadoran Democratic Revolutionary Front, claimed that Israel had fifty military advisers in El Salvador; other reports put the number at a hundred."155 According to Hallahmi, Israeli military instructors were partly responsible for changing the tactics of the Salvadoran army into a more aggressive and repressive war against guerrillas. Inspired by some of his Israeli mentors, Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa earned a reputation as an aggressive tactician. The Israelis also trained counterinsurgency teams—less formally known as death squads—mainly responsible for the state terror in the country.156 In an interview he gave in 1979, Undersecretary of the Interior Rene Francisco Guerra y Guerra told that Israeli agents had established a station in Salvador to train the infamous death squads, known as ANSESAL. Roberto D'Aubuisson, trained there by the Israelis, later founded the extreme right-wing ARENA party. D'Aubuisson continued to organize the state terror as well as killings that went unsolved.157 

Similar relations existed between Israel and many other fascist groups in Latin America. A group gathered in the Israeli inner establishment armed and trained fascist guerillas in Honduras,158 the bloody military junta in Argentina,159 Chile's Pinochet dictatorship, known for torture,160 and the terror teams of the Colombian drug cartels.161 

In The Israeli Connection, Beit-Hallahmi calls Central and South America Israeli inner establishment's "distant shadow" and continues:

Israel has gained not only friends but real admirers in Latin America. General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte of Chile, General Romeo Lucas Garcia of Guatemala, Roberta D'Aubuisson of El Salvador, and General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay are all admirers. So was the late Anastasio Somoza Debayle of Nicaragua …

Central American generals often say they admire Israel because they view the Israelis they know as practical, efficient, and tough, and because they see Israel, in their words, as unencumbered by issues of human rights.

"The Israelis do not let this human rights thing stand in the way of business," a prominent right-wing Guatemalan politician said in a recent interview: "You pay, they deliver. No questions asked, unlike the gringos."162

Among Israel's most notorious allies in Latin America were the Contras, guerrillas who opposed the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The CIA organized the Contras against the Sandinistas, who had come to power in 1979 after overthrowing Somoza's dictatorship with the support of the people and the Catholic Church. The Contras received arms and military training from those of power and influence in Israel as well.163

Close relationships between certain factions in Israel's inner establishment and European fascists and neo-Nazis have remained, however—a little-known but undoubted fact. Livia Rokach presents important evidence of this in Israel's Sacred Terrorism, based on the diary of Moshe Sharett, one of Israel's first prime ministers. According to Rokach, Israel established intimate contacts with extreme right-wing organizations and counter-guerilla organizations in Europe, and also aided them in different ways. The collaboration of some groups within the Israeli state with neo-Nazis through the mediation of Reinhard Gehlen, an ex-Nazi general and chief of BND, the West German secret service, is one example of these contacts.

In their book Every Spy a Prince, Israeli writers Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman report that Gehlen established a very close relationship between his organization and the Mossad during his tenure as chief of BND. Those of power and influence in Israel established close relations with German neo-Nazis using Gehlen as an intermediary.164 How the counter-guerilla movement in Germany came to be named the "Gehlen Operation" is yet another interesting point. On the Israeli front, the architect of this bond between Gehlen and the neo-Nazis was a well-known figure: Shimon Peres.

Among Israel's links to the European fascists have been the Italian P2 (Propaganda Due) Freemasonic lodge and the Gladio, a counter-guerilla organization with which the lodge had close relations. Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad spy, reveals Mossad-P2-Gladio secrets in his book The Other Side of Deception, published in 1994 after his outstanding earlier work, By Way of Deception. Ostrovsky writes that Licio Gelli, the notorious master of the P2 Freemasonic lodge, was the Mossad's "ally" in Italy, as was the P2 lodge he directed, as well as the Gladio organization, with which he had close connections. During the 1980s, the Mossad traded arms via Italy, using the Gelli-P2-Gladio connection.165

The Mossad-Gladio connection is significant and gives us an important clue that applies to other countries. The Gladio is only the Italian branch of a large network of counter-guerilla originally formed during the Cold War to eliminate regime-opponents in NATO countries. Because the international network's Italian section was the Mossad's ally and participated in joint operations with the Israeli secret service, we may assume that similar versions of this alliance existed in other countries. Indeed, the relations between the German counter-guerilla Gehlen and Mossad mentioned earlier is another example of this.

Ostrovsky's The Other Side of Deception also offers strong corroboration for this assumption.166 The former Mossad agent describes how the Belgian counterpart of the Gladio and its civilian wing, Westland New Post (WNP), a fascist party, were closely linked to the Mossad. In the mid-1980s, according to Ostrovsky, WNP and Gladio's extensions in the Belgian intelligence service carried out a series of assassinations and bombings—with the backing of the Mossad—to "destabilize" the Belgian government and push it to the right by blaming the left for the outrages; so that public support for the left would be weakened. These acts included the assassination of the Belgian Prime Minister and bombings of many supermarkets. Ostrovsky relates that of the ring that the Belgian Gladio established to this end, three members were forced to flee Belgium in 1985, escaped to Israel and were given new identities by Mossad, as part of a prior secret agreement between the Mossad and the Belgium's extremist right wing. The Other Side of Deception also touches on the co-operation between Mossad and the fascist groups in France.167

It is evident that Israeli radical circles in the inner establishment maintain covert yet influential relations with fascist organizations and regimes throughout the world. As the Israeli professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi stresses, these circles export "the logic of the oppressor" around the world.168

Our book New World Order: New Masonic Order provides a detailed analysis of Israel's close relations with Third World fascism.