[Zionism] played a critical rôle in the Guatemalan civil war, notably during the especially brutal period from the mid-70s to mid-80s in which the Mayan genocide was carried out. [Zionist] military officials provided training to the Guatemalan army, sharing the counterinsurgency and interrogation techniques that had allowed them to eradicate Palestinian villages and torture Palestinian prisoners.

So close was this relationship that Guatemalan military officials spoke openly of the “Palestinisation” of the country’s Mayan population. Efrain Rios Montt, the most brutal of Guatemala’s wartime dictators who stood trial for Genocide in 2017, openly thanked “our friends the Israelis” for facilitating his rise to power in 1982 and acknowledged that it had gone well “because many of our soldiers were trained by Israelis.” At the time, [Hebrew] press reported that over 300 [neocolonial] military advisors had assisted in his takeover.

I spoke to H.I.J.O.S, a Guatemalan collective dedicated to raising public awareness of the genocide and seeking justice for survivors. They are the group behind the posters covering many facades in central Guatemala City, and consider developing public consciousness of the [Zionist] legacy in Guatemala part of their mission.

“Our brotherhood with the Palestinian people is unwavering,” Raul Najera, a H.I.J.O.S member affirms. “Our histories are blighted by a parallel violence, wars and destruction imposed by colonial powers. Israel played an important rôle in the subjugation of Mayan Guatemalans and in order to work towards justice we must remember the truth.”

Rios Montt’s brief 17 months in power was one of the most brutal periods of the entire civil war, and most of the bloodshed was achieved through close collaboration with his [neocolonial] allies. Shortly after gaining power, he deployed his Frijoles y Fusiles (beans and guns) campaign.

This scorched earth policy — developed in conjunction with [neocolonial] advisors based on similar programmes in Palestine — sought to pacify “unruly” villages by providing food and agricultural tools to those who cooperated while using ruthless violence against those who didn’t.

Even after Rios Montt’s reign of terror ended, his successors continued to include agricultural resettlement schemes in their counterinsurgency strategies as part of their efforts to crush indigenous culture and render rural labour in service of the state.

These were inspired by [the] kibbutzim, which had been deployed in a similar manner during the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. When I speak to Lena Nasr from the Palestinian Youth Movement, a transnational organisation mobilising towards a liberated Palestine, she tells me: “The Zionist entity exported tactics of repression, wielded against the Palestinian people, to Guatemala in the late 1970s: Immediately after the visit of two top ranking members of the Guatemalan regime to Tel Aviv, Israeli advisers arrived in Guatemala to leverage agricultural counter-insurgency tactics to squash Ixcan, the heartland of the revolutionary movement. As our oppressors continue to collude with each other to repress us, we must continue to link arms as people around the world who can learn from each other’s struggles and strengthen our movements towards victory.”

[…]

“If guerillas are fish, then people are the water that sustains them. If we want to kill the fish we must drain the water.” This was the official philosophy of the Rios Montt government and lays bare the chilling justification for the mass murders he oversaw. As the former President’s press secretary explained: “The guerrillas won over many Indian collaborators. Therefore, the Indians were subversives, right? And how do you fight subversion? Clearly, you had to kill Indians because they were collaborating with subversion. And then they say, You’re massacring innocent people. But they weren’t innocent.”

Several decades later, this genocidal argument is remarkably similar to those expressed by Zionists as a justification for their brutal onslaught on Gaza. In the last few weeks we have seen extremely dehumanising language used to refer to Palestinians. “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible,” said […] president Isaac Herzog. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant confirmed [neocolonialism’s] intentions in an eerie echo of Rios Montt, declaring: “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”