With its new embassy in Jerusalem, Bibi will ignore Paraguay's Nazi past
Taking a cue from the Trump administration, Paraguay was the third country to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last week.
Both Prime Minister Netanyahu and outgoing Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes spoke at the ceremony to inaugurate the new embassy, in which they both delivered speeches rife with historical distortions.
Israel has a record of 51 years of occupying the Palestinian territories, as well as discrimination against and oppressing its Palestinian citizens - while Paraguay has a record of dictatorships.
The country’s last dictator, General Alfredo Stroessner, ran the country as a police state for 35 years until 1989, and was responsible for the torture of tens of thousands of citizens, and disappeared hundreds of others. Women and girls who were arrested were sexually tortured and raped.
Just as Netanyahu and his associates have been subpoenaed over corruption allegations, Cartes is also suspected of corruption, fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and even drug trafficking.
Like Netanyahu, who used his elections campaign to incite against Arab citizens, Cartes, who is supported by the extreme right in Paraguay, incited against the LGBTQ community during his campaign, labeling them monkeys.
And Netanyahu purposefully omitted a number of incontrovertible facts.
In 1927, the first Nazi party outside of Germany was established in Paraguay. During World War II, much of the country’s elite, including Stroessner supported the Axis Powers.
With the end of the war, Paraguay became one of a few countries that served as an asylum for the Nazi top brass - including those who took an active role in its genocides. These include Dr. Josef Mengele, who in 1959 was granted citizenship by Paraguay; Eduard Roschmann, who oversaw the Riga Ghetto; and Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Hitler's favorite pilot. After the war, Rudel became an arms dealer, helped harbor Nazis across Latin America, and became one of Stroessner’s close personal friends.
Israel and Paraguay do not have a history of close relations. Only when Paraguay took a temporary seat at the UN Security Council in 1968, did Israel open an embassy in Asunción. The main role of the Israeli ambassador, Benjamin Varon, was to convince Stroessner to refrain from or oppose voting against Israel and its occupation of Syrian, Egyptian, and Palestinian territories.
In turn, Varon had to turn a blind eye and refrain from criticizing Paraguay for accepting Nazis.
In his autobiography, Varon describes how the Israeli Foreign Ministry completely ignored the reports he was sending about information he had on Mengele; and how he would respond to those who offered intelligence on Nazis in Paraguay that this was the responsibility of the German government, not Israel’s.
Israel’s relationship to Paraguay, and the respective crimes committed by both countries over the past 70 years, are no reason for celebration. As long as Netanyahu remains in power, the chances for soul-searching and change are small.
At: https://972mag.com/with-its-new-embassy-in-jerusalem-bibi-will-ignore-paraguays-nazi-past/135778/
A marriage of convenience, Cartes and Netanyahoo entertain the press at the opening of Paraguay's new embassy in Jerusalem last week.
