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.
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.
Arabic numerals were neither invented by nor used by the Arabs. They were developed in India by the Hindus c. 600 A.D. These numbers were written backwards, thus one hundred twenty three was written 321.
Around 750 AD, this system of decimal arithmetic was brought to Persia when several important Hindu works were translated into Arabic. In the cultural diffusion of the numeral system to Europe, the method of writing numbers became reversed to the present method.
Now, Arabs are rather smart; but in this case, our Western numeral system was invented by Hindus. The Arabs were between Europe and India, so the knowledge of the numeral system was diffused through the Arab world. Hence, it was misnamed the Arabic Numeral System.
The name “algebra” does come from Arabic. However, it may have been invented by Babylonians, Greeks, and Persians (the Persians were Muslim by that time).
Remember that the Pope (born: Jorge Mario Bergoglio) is an Argentine, born in Buenos Aires. Hence this does bear on the subjects of Arabs and Latin America.
Pope Francis has called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s attacks in Gaza constitute genocide, according to excerpts released Sunday from an upcoming new book ahead of the pontiff’s jubilee year.
It’s the first time that Francis has openly urged an investigation of genocide allegations over Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. In September, he said Israel’s attacks in Gaza and Lebanon had been “immoral” and disproportionate, and that its military had gone beyond the rules of war.
The book, by Hernán Reyes Alcaide and based on interviews with the pope, is entitled “Hope Never Disappoints: Pilgrims Towards a Better World.” It will be released on Tuesday ahead of the pope’s 2025 jubilee, a yearlong celebration that’s expected to bring more than 30 million pilgrims to Rome.
Needless to say: pro-Jewish, pro-Israel advocates are furious, as seen from these other sources.
(Click Here) for a rebuke opinion piece at the Times of Israel.
Also see the Comments section at another Times of Israel (Click Here) article, where one commenter (see picture below) calls the accusation of genocide to be a new blood libel against the Jews.
