El Salvador has about 100,000 Palestinians, in a country of six million people. Roughly 1.6% of the population. Yet, two of their recent presidents have been of Palestinian extraction.
Given the Palestinian tendency to success, that percentage should be big enough to influence the country’s foreign policy concerning the Mideast. Yet, it is not so.
Why?
Because in El Salvador, the Evangelical percentage (34%) of the population is closing in on the Catholic percentage (43%). Evangelicals in El Salvador take the faith more seriously, and that faith tends to lean to Christian Zionism.
On October 8 of last year, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele published a post on X outlining his position on Palestine. “As a Salvadoran of Palestinian ancestry, I’m sure the best thing that could happen to the Palestinian people is for Hamas to completely disappear. Those savage beasts do not represent the Palestinians,” he wrote. Drawing parallels between Hamas and gangs in El Salvador, Bukele continued: “It would be like if Salvadorans would have sided with MS13 terrorists, just because we share ancestors or nationality. The best thing that happened to us as a nation was to get rid of those rapists and murderers and let the good people thrive.” Bukele closed his post with a word of advice, drawing from his nearly 30-month long—and counting—assault against gangs. “Palestinians should do the same: get rid of those animals and let the good people thrive.”
The parallel drawn by Bukele between Hamas and MS13 derives from an evangelical Christian understanding of “terrorist” security threats as a spiritual contest between good and evil. Bukele uses biblical allegories, religious narratives, declarations of devotion, and visual propaganda leveraging sacred symbols to justify the country’s security policies, in addition to asserting the Salvadoran government’s unwavering support for Israel during its genocide of Palestinians.
As noted many times before, here in Latin Arabia, the biggest friend that Israel has in Latin America is Evangelical Christianity.
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, is of Palestinian extraction – his ancestors arrived in El Salvador about a century ago – but his administration is pro-Israel. His father converted from Christianity to Islam, and his mother was Catholic. While he is ambivalent about his Christian denonimational affiliations, he seems to have picked up a lot of Evangelical practices.
Posted on YouTube: November 27, 2024
The growing Evangelical presence in El Salvador is what is overruling any power of a potential for a Muslim or Palestinian lobby.
Posted on YouTube: June 5, 2024
By that logic, what is needed for Chile to break the power of its Palestinian-Chilean (Chilestino) lobbies is an Evangelical revival. However, the Evangelical percentage of the population in Chile is somewhat small (18%) compared to the El Salvador percentage (34%).
What is an emerging conclusion is that anti-Zionism and antisemitism seem to follow left wing political attitudes in Latin America. And especially regarding Zionism, faith seems to trump ethnicity as well as politics.
Okay, this video from Deutsche Welle (German Wave/public TV) is roughly six months old, but it is noteworthy.
Posted on YouTube: July 3, 2024
Video can be auto-translated
1) Click Settings Wheel and choose Subtitles/CC.
2) Click to turn on: Spanish (auto-generated) .
3) Click – for a second time – to turn on: Subtitles/CC(1) Spanish (auto-generated) .
4) Click auto-translate.
5) Choose English – THIS CAN BE TRICKY – I suggest using up and down arrows to chose English, and then press Enter.
This can be very touchy, and you may have to play with it, but it works. Once you get the hang of it, you can turn the option on in a few seconds.
While here in America, the issue of the Palestinian-Chileans is rarely metioned, it is noted by broadcasters outside the USA.
Again, this is not a minor issue. The Palestinian-Chileans (Chilestinos) are an elite and politically powerful group in Chile. They have hijacked Chile’s Mideast foreign policy so that it is against Israel.
Chile is otherwise a democratic, First-World, Western nation, but when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, it is an outlier from other Western countries, thanks to the Chilestinos.
The Palestinians in Guatemala are approximately 200,000 strong, making them the third largest Palestinian population in Latin America behind Chile and Honduras (with communities of 500,000 and 250,000 respectively).
While the number of Palestinians in Guatemala is 200,000, the number of Muslims in Guatemala is only around 1200: (Click Here – 2025). What this means, by inspection, is that almost all of the Palestinians in Guatemala come from Christian stocks – over 99% Christian, constituting a 200 to 1 advantage over Muslims in the group. These Palestinian-Guatemalans en toto constitute a little over 1% of Guatemala’s population.
Yet, unlike Chile, where the Palestinian-Chileans have incredible power – and hijacked the Chilean government’s position to be against Israel – in Guatemala the government is very pro-Israel.
Posted on YouTube: February 18, 2022
The friendly relationship of Guatemala and Israel dates to the history of aid given to the Guatemalan Government by the Israel government in the past.
When Guatemala stopped receiving arms from the U.S. in the late 1970s, its relationship with Israel strengthened. Israel stepped into the void as Guatemala’s biggest arms supplier and military advisor, with their weapons and training methods aiding the massacres that were perpetrated at this stage of the Guatemalan civil war (which lasted from 1960 to 1996). By the 1980s, roughly 300 Israeli military advisers were working in the country to bolster their ally’s army.
NOTE:One has to factor that Mondoweiss is an anti-Zionist source. So it can spin history. Still the background cited above is accurate.
What is amazing is that Palestinians in Guatemala – like the Palestinians in Chile – are so heavily Christian, yet identify with an Islamist cause in Palestine.
One has to remember that the bible speaks of nations, and Christians think in terms of nation-states. Islam speaks of a greater Islamic homeland, a caliphate. Muslims are not as comfortable with the concept of nationality, but rather think in terms of religion.
Think of the antiquated term: Christendom. Yet, in spite of a sense of general religious connection, Westerners prioritize national identification over a general religious affiliation. Protestant England still fought Protestant Germany.
The opposite can be true in the Arab mindset.
So Palestinian Christians may see the struggle with Israel as a national cause while the Muslims see the Palestinian struggle as a Holy War.
The Palestinian-Guatemalans’ support for the Palestinian cause may not be for the same reason that Muslims support Palestine. Palestinian-Guatemalan Christians may not realize that – were the Palestinians to win – the victorious Muslims would not treat Christians in Palestine as equals, but as dhimmis, even worse than they think Israel would treat Christians. This is a myopic miscalculation on the part of the Palestinians in Latin America.
Still, like the Palestinian-Chileans (Chilestinians/Chilestinos in Spanish) in Chile, the Palestinians of Guatemala also have risen to the status of elites, in spite of past prejudices.
Following an early period of hardship, Palestinian immigrants to Central America established prosperous businesses and, in a relatively short time span, joined the dominant class in the commercial structure of their host countries. In the late 1910s in San Pedro Sula [Honduras], for example, Arab merchants, 95% of them Palestinians, “controlled major sectors of the city’s elite structure, especially large commerce.”
Their commercial success led to some official discrimination against them for a while; and ironically, their rise in society was similar to that of the Jews in America.
With the growing economic power of the Palestinian communities in the 1920s and 1930s, it was probably inevitable that the local elites would come to see them as economic rivals and try to isolate them socially and politically. Because Palestinian success was most visible in Honduras, the situation was especially acute there.
However, today the Palestinians of Central America are fully integrated into society, and they are elites. However, their social cohesion has disappeared.
At present, descendants of early Palestinian immigrants are completely integrated into their host societies and are an important part of national life and social, political, and cultural institutions at all levels. Traditions such as intergroup marriages and concentrations of Palestinians in the same neighborhoods are few and far between. The price for Palestinians of full integration, however, has been the loss of their culture, especially the language and knowledge of their past. Today, the majority of Palestinian descendants marry non-Arabs; it is difficult to find Palestinian families without non-Palestinian members. Most Palestinian descendants do not speak Arabic, although they might use some Arabic words and phrases.
Yet, the Palestinians of Chile intermarried and maintained some cohesion.
Three reasons might explain the differences.
1) The Palestinians in Chile, at 2-1/2% of the population, are a larger demographic.
2) The army and the government of Guatemala feel in debt to Israel.
3) Guatemala has a slightly larger Evangelical (usually pro-Israel) population than Chile.
However, though some Palestinian-Guatemalans are upset with the government of Guatemala, they cannot hijack the government’s foreign policy regarding Israel and Palestine, like the Palestinian-Chileans (Chilestinians/Chilestinos in Spanish) have hijacked the Chilean government’s foreign policy in Chile.
Of course, there are other reasons, but the difference between Chile and Guatemala, which both have noticeable Palestinian demographics, is an interesting distinction.
Parroting classic antisemitic tropes, the Colombian president has accused Israel of controlling “international financial capital” and of silencing the global press
In a region characterized by turbulent politics, Colombia has long stood out as a Latin American country with a pragmatic approach to international relations. But the tenure of President Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerilla movement elected in 2022, has brought heightened scrutiny to Colombia’s foreign policy, particularly regarding Israel.
The problem is less born of religious hatred, but rather that left wing governments seem to have made a whipping boy of Israel.
Published on YouTube: May 1, 2024
There are around 120,000 Palestinians in Colombia, a nation of 52 million people. So they do not constitute much of a demographic footprint. Though there are roughly 3 million Colombians with some degree of Arab ancestry. However, the majority of those would be Christian and might not be quite as sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
The Evangelical presence is only around 14%, which is significant, but not that influential.
Chile on the other had is about 2-1/2% Palestinian, but they are very elite, and they pack a real political wallop.
On the videos, below, one can see Chilean President Boric attending a Palestinian Christmas event.
Posted on YouTube: December 17, 2024
But remember, Chile is a special case. The Palestinians in Chile are so elite that the politicians – both left and right – have to pay a sort of homage to the community – similar to how American politicians cozy up to AIPAC.
“The Palestinian community is to Chile what the Jewish community is to the US,” [The president of Chile’s Jewish community, Gabriel] Zaliasnik explained.
So while Palestinians are force to be reckoned with in Chile, most of Latin America’s antisemitism seems to stem from leftist governments, more than raw antisemitism.
