What do Israel and Chiquita have in common? Terror

Both Israel and Chiquita Brands International stand accused, in recent stories, of aiding the Colombian terror group AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group drenched in blood.

The Israeli connection comes to us by way of the BBC:

Yair Klein, Melnik Ferry and Tzedaka Abraham are accused of giving military training in the 1990s to landowners' and drug-traffickers' private armies.

Prosecutors say those trained went on to carry out some of the country's most notorious political assassinations.

Some of the fighters went on to form a right-wing paramilitary group, the AUC.

Prosecutors have also accused the three men of working for the then powerful Medellin drugs cartel to create a personal army for its leader, Pablo Escobar.

The BBC account does not clarify why Israel took such a keen interest in Colombia and the Medellin cocaine cartel.

The Chiquita connection is better-known. The company has had to pay massive fines after it was revealed that they had delivered $1.7 million to AUC. Here's a detail you may have missed:

Colombia might also seek the extradition of eight Chiquita officials on charges that the company used one of its own ships to smuggle weapons to the same paramilitary group.

According to documents made available to the National Security Archives, the payments were made through the Colombian government.

Back to the Israeli connection: Carlos Castaño, head of the AUC, has been quoted as saying "I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis." He was not speaking metaphorically.

Colombian intelligence agents arrested Yar Klein, a former Israeli Army Colonel, in 2000, when he tried to deliver a massive number of guns to the terrorists. He was convicted of similar charges by an Israeli court in 1991, and had to pay a nearly inconsequential fine.

The history of the partnership goes back to the early 1980s:

The AUC paramilitaries are a fighting force that originally grew out of killers hired to protect drug-running operations and large landowners. They were organised into a cohesive force by Castao in 1997. It exists outside the law but often coordinates its actions with the Colombian military, in a way similar to the relationship of the Lebanese Phalange to the Israeli army throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

According to a 1989 Colombian Secret Police intelligence report, apart from training Carlos Castao in 1983, Israeli trainers arrived in Colombia in 1987 to train him and other paramilitaries who would later make up the AUC.

Fifty of the paramilitaries' "best" students were then sent on scholarships to Israel for further training according to a Colombian police intelligence report, and the AUC became the most prominent paramilitary force in the hemisphere, with some 10,000-12,000 men in arms.

The Colombian AUC paramilitaries are always in need of arms, and it should come as no surprise that some of their major suppliers are Israeli. Israeli arms dealers have long had a presence in next-door Panama and especially in Guatemala.

In May of last year, GIRSA, an Israeli company associated with the Israeli Defence Forces and based in Guatemala was able to buy 3000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and 2.5 million rounds of ammunition that were then handed over to AUC paramilitaries in Colombia.

This long-established pattern of interaction forces us to conclude that, despite his 1991 conviction in Israel, Yar Klein operated at the behest of the Israeli power structure. Throughout the 1980s,Israel worked with right-wing elements -- and even with outright Nazis -- in many parts of Latin America.

What interests me is the dichotomous treatment the two stories have received. Chiquita says that AUC demanded "protection" payments in order to operate in Colombia -- an argument which may have some merit. (Incidentally, AUC also murdered employee organizers for Coca Cola, although the company strongly denies that it knew of or encouraged the murders.) Yet the Chiquita scandal has received fairly wide coverage. As for the Israeli connection to AUC...

Admit it: Is this post the first time you've heard about it?