Make One, Two, Three, Many Guatemalas*

Sorry, but I can't rest on this subject. Even the Lowy Institute is giving the embassy shuffle the thumbs-down:

"Moving the Australian embassy when no other first world country is would dilute the unity of Western effort further and reward Israel without getting anything in return. No wonder Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was effusive in his praise of the proposal - he probably never thought he would get two Guatemalas in his time in office." (Jerusalem embassy move is down and out on three counts, Rodger Shanahan, The Australian, 22/11/18)

Two Guatemalas? And Australia is the second! Ay caramba! So let's check out the first:

"'We have had an excellent relationship with the people of Israel since the foundation of the State of Israel,' President Jimmy Morales told CBN on Wednesday. His Central American country, now the most heavily evangelical nation in Latin America, was an early supporter of Israel's independence in 1948 and the first to establish an embassy in Jerusalem in the late 1950s. (It was later one of 13 nations that withdrew their embassies from the disputed city due to a 1980 United Nations resolution.)... Citing prayer and prophesy as their motivation, Morales and Vice President Jafeth Cabrera officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital last year and pledged to return Guatemala's embassy there. 'People in Guatemala pray for the peace in this region, pray for Jerusalem, and they are excited,' said Sarah Angelina Solis, Guatemala's ambassador to Israel, in an interview with CBN. 'I feel this is a gift from God. I know that a lot of blessings will come after this decision. This is a promise in the Bible, in Genesis...'" (Blessed through Israel: how Guatemala's evangelicals inspired its embassy move, Kate Shellnutt, christianitytoday.com, 17/5/18)

This millenarian madness, of course, is continent-wide, but the rot appears deepest in Central America, particularly in Guatemala:

"As once Catholic-dominated nations in Central and South America see the rise of evangelicos, particularly from Pentecostal and charismatic traditions, they've also grown more supportive of Israel as a political state and a holy land, keen to the Lord's words to Abraham: 'I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.' (Gen. 12:3 NIV). Guatemala and Honduras - which have undergone the most dramatic declines in Catholic identity (down nearly 50% in 45 years, according to the Pew Research Center) - were among just a handful of countries to side with the US when the UN voted to condemn its decision to recognize Jerusalem again... Guatemala's third evangelical president, Morales has prioritized Israel since his election in 2015, making the country his first official visit outside of the Americas." (ibid)

But the Lord's 'blessings' now being showered on Jimmy Morales' Guatemala actually go back to the 70s and 80s:

"Even in the midst of the endless misery and cruelty of Central America, Guatemala stands out as a country where those in power have been fighting the powerless with an unusual degree of ruthlessness and bloodiness. Over the years, reports of the horrible realities of Guatemala have been numerous and the judgments harsh. What is unique is the extent to which those who carried out the deliberate policies of endless killings have proclaimed their indebtedness to Israel, as the source not only of their hardware, but of their inspiration. Israel became the main support of the Guatemalan military regimes, as attested to by both General Romeo Lucas Garcia and General Efrain Rios Montt in no uncertain terms. It was Rios Montt, born-again Christian and dictator of Guatemala in 1982-1983, who explained the ease with which he took over in March 1982 simply: 'Many of our soldiers were trained by Israelis' (Greve, 1984) [...] In Guatemala, Israeli advisers are not just instructors: 'Israeli advisers - some official, others private - helped Guatemalan internal security agents hunt underground rebel groups' (Cody, 1983, p 7). They have been directly engaged in counterinsurgency campaigns against the Indian communities." (Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms & Why, 1988, pp 79-81)

The genocidal Indian-fighter Rios Montt, it seems, is something of a role model for Morales:

"Rios Montt died in Guatemala City on April, 2018, of a heart attack at the age of 91. The government of Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales lamented his passing." (Efrain Rios Monttt - Wikipedia)

In fact, Guatemala's love affair with Israel goes back even further, as a young British officer, stationed in Mandate Palestine at the time the Irgun and Stern gangs were strutting their stuff, noted acidly in his memoir:

"This was the day, 16 June [1947], which heralded the arrival of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. This travelling circus, under its self-appointed ringmaster, Jorge Garcia-Granados, a Guatemalan whose country had little to learn about oppressing indigenous peoples, passed five weeks in the Holy Land, adding not a jot to its preconceived ideas. His personal conclusion was that Palestine was a police state, because, thanks to terrorism, it had been forced to spend $2,000,000 a month on security, or P7,010,000 per year. Necessity, the need to support a subjective viewpoint, in this case became the mother of invention." (Philip Brutton, A Captain's Mandate: Palestine 1946-1948, 1996, pp 99-100)

Garcia-Granados went on to pen his own memoir, which concludes thus:

"Yes, it was true, the birth of Israel had taken place in the agony of war. I was convinced that this war need not have been... Nonetheless, bloodshed had come, and we recognized the realities of the situation. Despite this unnecessary tragedy, we, who had considered  the needs and problems of Palestine and its peoples, knew that Israel would live. It must live! Its existence was the first step toward the achievement of security and peace and a new awakening in the lands of the Middle East. How far from Guatemala to Israel - and yet, how near! In a world of many peoples, the struggle was one." (Jorge Garcia-Granados, The Birth of Israel: The Drama as I Saw It, 1948,  pp 290-91)

Just how well that worked out we can see today in the smoking ruin that passes for the Middle East, and just how near Guatemala is to Israel today can hardly have been imagined by the deluded author of these words.

[*With apologies to Che. I have, of course, borrowed his memorable injunction, 'Make one, two, three, many Vietnams', to describe Netanyahu's attempt to circumvent apartheid Israel's pariah status.]