Irony, please meet my friend the holocaust exhibit

Amisrael has been sponsoring a traveling holocaust exhibit in Guatemala which just arrived in Quetzaltenango two days ago. The exhibit begins with Hitler and a short analysis on Nazi propaganda and discourse, murderous images of the concentration camps, the unspeakable horrors of the genocide, and finally concludes with the creation and importance of the state of Israel...

...with no mention of the indigenous population said state is now attempting to eliminate.

But I suppose it makes perfect sense. Such talk might hit a little too close to home here in Guatemala, a state currently recovering from a 36-year genocidal war against an indigenous population the U.S.- and Israeli-backed government attempted to eliminate.

The holocaust exhibit's last panel states that such an exhibit needs to exist because,

"historical memory demands that we eliminate any type of intolerance in existence... so that atrocities like these are never repeated in human society, at any scale."

I suppose that as long as Palestinians are not considered to be humans of the human kind, and until Israel's atrocities toward, and intolerance of, Palestine's indigenous population is mentioned on this last panel, we can be certain that our friends Irony and Holocaust Exhibits shall never be introduced.

Amisrael's latest production comes only months after the Plaza Israel it erected last year in Quetzaltenango was vandalized one night. On the night of Valentines Day, animal organs were left near the plaza's imposing star, and the perpetrators tagged up the place with red spray paint, saying the following:

"Murderers, Occupiers, Child-killers"
"Infidels, Occupiers"
"Blood on your hands"

The next morning, the police received a phone call reporting the incident, apparently from the type of person whose first thought is always the conspiratory "blood libel" in situations like these. This Sherlock told the police that someone had left a fetus at the foot of the star. Turns out, it was animal's heart, a piece of lung and some trachea...

No Matzoh balls were reported at the scene.

This crime will never be solved. This is Guatemala. Still, I keep asking around for thoughts although no one really knows who did it. So far, mine is the best theory -- a strapping male successfully wooing a young anarchist's heart on Valentines Day...

:o) :o) :o)

I mean, they left a heart there and everything.

Other theories mostly linger around the default racism against Jews, per Amisrael's own explanation. When I point out to folks that maybe it was a political act against the Israeli government (it was Plaza Israel, after all and not Plaza Jew), I keep being met with blank stares that seem to ask, "Aren't they the same thing?"

"Nooooooo… Israel and Jews are not automatically the same thing and that's the problem with having nation-states in the first place, especially when they're based on race and ethnicity!!! Everything the government does gets blamed on innocent people of that race even if they have nothing to do with anything, y estos cabrones politicos solo se representan a ellos mismos y sus mendigos amigos, pero la gente es la que sufre and by the way, since when has the term "occupier" been a racial epithet? Has Israel really gotten Jewish people that far into this mess?"

I'll begin to explain this and once in a while hit them in a sensitive spot by outlining Israel's connections to the 36-year Civil War and how Israel was the genocidal Guatemalan government's #1 arms dealer after Carter stopped sending weapons over in the late 70s, and how Israelis were hired for counter-insurgency advice on how to kill their people.*

And then they're like, "Aw, hell nah... what?!"

And I'm like, "Yes, have a seat. Let's chat. Believe it or not, it's not just the gringos who suck ass."

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*FURTHER READING (although I know for some of you the length of this post was already too much reading):

Aruri, Naseer (Jan 23, 2007) "Israel's friends in high places" Morning Star, People's Press Printing Society Ltd

Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin "The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why"

Bahbah, Bishara and Linda Butler (1986) "Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection"

Cockburn, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn (1992)"Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship"

Fernández, Damian J. (1988) "Central America and the Middle East: The Internationalization of the Crises"

Howard, Esther (1983). "Israel: The Sorcerer's Apprentice" MERIP Reports, No. 112, The Arms Race in the Middle East. (Feb., 1983), pp. 16-25+30.

Hunter, Jane (1987) "Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America"

Jamail, Milton and Gutierrez, Margo (1986) "Israel in Central America: Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica" MERIP Middle East Report, No. 140, Terrorism and Intervention. (May - Jun., 1986), pp. 26-30+44-45+47.

Jamail, Milton and Margo Gutierrez "It's No Secret: Israel's Military Involvement in Central America"

Klieman, Aaron S. (1985) "Israel's Global Reach: Arms Sales as Diplomacy"

Lofving, Staffan (2004) "Paramilitaries of Empire: Guatemala, Colombia, and Israel" Social Analysis Vol 48 Issue 1.

Rubenberg, Cheryl A. (1986 and sounds like a self-hating Jew to me!!!). "Israel and Guatemala: Arms, Advice and Counterinsurgency" MERIP Middle East Report, No. 140, Terrorism and Intervention. (May - Jun., 1986), pp. 16-22+43-44

Sharif, Regina (1977) "Latin America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1. (Autumn, 1977), pp. 98-122.

Wirpsa, Leslie (April 7, 1995) "Murder and complicity in Guatemala; U.S., Israel allegedly continue furtive roles in military, politics" National Catholic Reporter

Woodward, Ralph Lee (2005) "A Short History of Guatemala" pp. 150.