How Israel Facilitated the Guatemalan Genocide

[Judi Lynn]

14. More in this article in a section concerning Yair Klein:

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Yair Klein arrives in Colombia

For Colombians, a different Israeli is well-known for his role in the death squad rampages that have plagued the country since the 1980s. While Eitan was advising President Barco, an Israeli mercenary named Yair Klein arrived in Colombia and began training narco-paramilitaries in how to defeat the FARC insurgency.

A retired military officer, Klein started a mercenary firm called Hod Hahanit (Spearhead) in 1984, drawing from the pools of former Israeli police and special operations units.

According to the book All Is Clouded by Desire: Global Banking, Money Laundering, and International Organized Crime, the mercenary outfit struck its first deal amid the civil war in Lebanon, supplying the notoriously brutal Christian Phalangist militias – the same force that massacred between 800 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps under direct Israeli military supervision in September 1982.

In 1987, Klein landed in Colombia to meet with Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Yithzakh Shoshani and Arik Afek, both of whom had established themselves years before with lucrative deals selling military equipment in Colombia. Shoshani subsequently became the main conduit between Klein and his Colombian customers.

In 1990, Afek’s decomposing body was found with multiple gunshot wounds in the trunk of a car at Miami International Airport after a pedestrian noticed the odor. He was reportedly being investigated by the CIA and was wanted by Colombian authorities.

Klein told me in a telephone interview that he was working through the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the state-owned weapons manufacturer, Israel Military Industries (IMI), which had a contract with a Colombian data surveillance company obtained through Colombia’s Ministry of Defense. He said he was originally hired to provide security for the banana-growing operations in the region of Uraba, where the American fruit company Chiquita had paid millions of dollars to Colombian death squads.

Shoshani, he explained, worked for a company called AMKAN, which is a subsidiary of IMI. The Colombian Federation of Cattlemen, long known for its ties to paramilitaires, contacted Shoshani to have Eitan train a force to fight guerrillas.

With Shoshani guiding him, Klein returned to Israel in 1988 and met with top paramilitary and military figures as well as wealthy businessmen. All of this, Klein assured me, was done with the full knowledge of the Israeli government. “You can’t do anything without permission from the Ministry of Defense,” he said.

Klein’s statement upends the claim of then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Israeli Defense Ministry had denied Klein’s company a license and warned him to leave the country.

Death squad leader: ‘I learned an infinity of themes in Israel’
Klein held three training sessions, each for around 30 people. Assisting him were three trainers, all of whom were colonels in the Israeli army: Tzadaka Abraham, Teddy Melnik and Amatzia Shuali.

Klein trained brothers Carlos and Fidel Castaño, the squad leaders who would go on to form the notoriously violent United Self-Defense Forces, known in Spanish by its acronym, AUC. Under the patronage of wealthy landowners, drug lords, ranchers, politicians and the Colombian military, the AUC committed bloodcurdling massacres all over the country, even using chainsaws to murder and dismember peasants, all aimed at terrorizing communities into fleeing from their land. The United Nations estimated in 2016 that the AUC was responsible for 80% of the deaths in the conflict.

Carlos Castaño



Carlos and Vicente Castaño