Palestinians in Paraguay
JVL Introduction
In a fascinating piece of detective work, Hadeel Assali uncovers one of the murkier episodes in Israel’s history of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, an attempt to ‘persuade’ Palestinians in Gaza to ’emigrate’ after the 1967 war.
Some Palestinians volunteered in the belief they were being sent for training programmes in Brazil. Others were simply arrested and deported. In fact, they were dumped in Asunción, Paraguay, a place they had never heard of, then under the military dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, with no money to fly home and no support.
For that the Stroessner’s regime was paid $33 from Tel Aviv per Palestinian received, and the Israeli travel agency Patra gleefully organised the clandestine flights.
Some 60,000 people were earmarked for ’emigration’ in this way but the project came to a sticky end well before the target was reached as Assali explains.
Can’t help being reminded about Rwanda…
RK
This article was originally published by London Review of Books on Thu 18 May 2023. Read the original here.
Palestinians in Paraguay
Loading article text…
Like many other episodes that reveal Israeli crimes, the embassy shooting has been sanitised by pro-Israel editors on Wikipedia to make it appear a purely terrorist attack.
The history of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians since 1948, has been shocking, what is more shocking is, the fact that crimes against the Palestinians over all those decades haven’t been punished by any World Authority, the UN have had resolution after resolution but because the US vetoes any resolution that would harm Israel, nothing happens.
I wonder if I’ll be alive to see BDS put in place against Israel and it actually forces Israel to return to the original borders before the 1967 war.
This is a spine chilling episode and a foretelling of what may happen to refugees here being sent to Rwanda. Did Israel also send refugees to Rwanda ? The more I learn the sadder I get about the human race.