With its new embassy in Jerusalem, Bibi will ignore Paraguay's Nazi past
|Published May 27, 2018
With its new embassy in Jerusalem, Bibi will ignore Paraguay's Nazi past
At the opening ceremony of Paraguay’s new embassy in Jerusalem, Netanyahu spoke about common values such as democracy, tolerance, and coexistence. He failed to mention the fact that Paraguay gave asylum to Nazi war criminals.
By Eitay Mack
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 embarrassing historical distortions.
During his speech, Cartes said that “our friendship is based on common principles such as democracy, tolerance and respect, a lack of discrimination, and peaceful coexistence.” One can only assume that in a worldwide poll asking people which countries symbolize democracy, tolerance and respect, a lack of discrimination, and peaceful coexistence, few would likely choose Israel or Paraguay.
After all, 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 successive military dictatorships. The country’s last dictator, General Alfredo Stroessner, ran the country as a police state for 35 years, 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.
. . .
Netanyahu purposefully omitted a number of uncontroversial 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 future dictator Stroessner supported the Axis Powers. With the end of the war, Paraguay became one of the few countries that served as an asylum for the Nazi top brass who fled justice following the war, including those who took an active role in its genocidal machine, including Dr. Josef Mengale, who carried out brutal human experiments on Jews and the Roma people in Auschwitz, and in 1959 was granted citizenship by the Paraguayan dictatorship; Eduard Roschmann, who was one of the commanders of the Riga Ghetto; and Hans-Ulrich Rudel, a Nazi pilot personally revered by Hitler. After the war, Rudel became an arms dealer, helped harbor Nazis across Latin America, and became one of Stroessner’s close personal friends.
More:
https://972mag.com/with-its-new-embassy-in-jerusalem-bibi-will-ignore-paraguays-nazi-past/135778/
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https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016207386
