Middle East Eye
In January 2016, Israel’s Ynet news site reported that El Salvador was threatening to close its embassy in Tel Aviv and move it to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
The threatened relocation had nothing to do with solidarity with Palestine; according to Ynet, the Salvadorans were simply furious that Israel had decided to cut back on costs by closing its embassy in San Salvador and were seeking retaliation.
El Salvador denied the report, and the embassy stayed put in Tel Aviv - where, it bears mentioning, it had been moved from Jerusalem only a decade before. In fact, for a brief spell in 2006, El Salvador was the only country in the world with an embassy in Jerusalem. Call it pre-trumping Trump.
The Israelis were probably correct in calculating that they don’t actually require a diplomatic presence in El Salvador, since the country is pretty much “in the bag”. (Thankfully, the former embassy website is still active and boasts an educational video in Spanish about important Israeli achievements, such as a ban on the use of “underweight models”. Underweight Gazans, on the other hand, are apparently fine - as are regular Israeli military massacres of Palestinian civilians.)
I myself am currently in San Salvador, and can safely say that, when you start seeing Stars of David everywhere and even windshields of pharmacy vans emblazoned with slogans such as “Almighty One of Israel” - in a country with an estimated Jewish population of 150 individuals - you know you’re in a place with a serious Israel problem.
It’s particularly ironic given the sizeable Palestinian community in El Salvador, mostly immigrants from Bethlehem who began arriving in the late 19th century. Now, there are more Palestinians in El Salvador than in Bethlehem itself - including the country’s new president, Nayib Bukele, a distinctly nauseating character who thinks US President Donald Trump is “very nice and cool”, despite Trump’s classification of El Salvador as a “sh**-hole country”. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.
