Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to El Salvador
El Salvador: its small Jewish community, Israeli arms and advisers for the military in the civil war, the Jerusalem embassy of the 1980s to 2006, and Pegasus spyware used against journalists
El Salvador has a Jewish community of about 100.[1] In the 1970s "Israel" was the military's main arms supplier, and during the civil war it supplied weapons, advisers and intelligence technology.[2] El Salvador kept its embassy in Jerusalem from the early 1980s until August 2006, and was the last country to leave.[3] Between 2020 and 2021 NSO Group's Pegasus spyware was used against 35 Salvadoran journalists and members of civil society.[4]
Jewish community and religious life
History
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) dates the first Jewish presence to Alsatian Jews in San Salvador in the late 19th century; Sephardic Jews came via France in the early 20th century, and in 1909 Alfredo Widawer conducted the first High Holy Day services. President Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, a fascist sympathiser, refused entry on 30 July 1939 to 50 Jewish refugees on the ship Portland, declaring their visas fraudulent and sending them back to Germany. During the Holocaust George Mantello, first secretary of the Salvadoran consulate in Geneva, issued Salvadoran protective papers to Jews, mainly in Hungary, with the support of the consul general, Colonel José Arturo Castellanos. During the civil war the kidnapping and murder of Ernesto Liebes, the community leader and honorary Israeli consul, led many Jews to leave for the United States, "Israel" and Guatemala; some returned after the peace agreements.[1]
Organisations
- Comunidad Israelita de El Salvador: the communal body and the WJC's affiliate, with a community centre and the country's only synagogue (Conservative) in San Benito, San Salvador. Its Tikkun Olam Committee runs social assistance, and it is associated with the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America.[1]
- How far is it Zionist? Unclear. The WJC describes no Zionist bodies, though the community is a WJC affiliate.
Sergio DellaPergola estimated 100 to 300 Jews in 1993, almost all in San Salvador.[1]
How far is it Zionist? No Zionist organisations are recorded by the WJC.
Chabad
- Main article: Chabad-Lubavitch movement
Powerbase does not yet have a page on Chabad in El Salvador. The WJC does not mention Chabad in El Salvador.
Israeli state and commercial ties
Diplomacy and the Jerusalem embassy
- The Israeli foreign ministry's 2011 list dates El Salvador's recognition to January 1950.[5] Milton Jamail and Margo Gutierrez wrote in Middle East Report that with the first arms agreement, in 1973, "the Israelis gained a Salvadoran embassy", and that a 1983 agreement provided for moving the embassy to Jerusalem and discussed further Israeli military aid.[2]
- On 25 August 2006, a week after Costa Rica, the foreign minister, Francisco Laínez, announced that the embassy would move to Tel Aviv. The government said it was "Teniendo en cuenta la actual situación en el Medio Oriente" ("taking into account the current situation in the Middle East") and reiterated its recognition of the right to a Palestinian state; President Antonio Saca is of Palestinian descent.[6][3] The Israeli ambassador, Jonathan Peled, said: "We have expressed our regret for the decision taken."[3] El Salvador told the UN that the decision followed the international resolutions on Jerusalem, "in particular Security Council resolution 478 (1980)".[7]
- The WJC says the Israeli diplomatic presence in El Salvador was interrupted in 2016, and consular matters are handled by the embassy in Guatemala.[1]
- In February 2018 Nayib Bukele, then mayor of San Salvador, visited "Israel" at the invitation of the Israeli government for an international mayors' conference, meeting the mayors of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Ron Huldai and Nir Barkat, and Tzipi Hotovely of the foreign ministry; he also met the mayor of Bethlehem.[8] Middle East Eye reported that he prayed at the Western Wall (the Buraq Wall), and quoted the Palestinian ambassador, Marwan Jebril Burini, saying the visit "was not well received by the Palestinian community in El Salvador". It also reported that shortly after taking office as president in 2019 Bukele made a medical deal with the Israeli nonprofit Jerusalem Foundation under which El Salvador received $3m for its military and police.[9]
- After the Hamas attack of October 2023, Bukele, who is of Palestinian descent, wrote on X that the best thing that could happen to the Palestinian people "es que Hamás desaparezca por completo. Esas bestias salvajes no representan a los palestinos" ("is for Hamas to disappear completely. Those savage beasts do not represent the Palestinians"), and compared supporting them with siding with the MS-13 gang.[10]
Arms, military and police
- Jamail and Gutierrez cited SIPRI figures showing that 83 per cent of El Salvador's arms imports in 1975–79 came from "Israel", including 25 Arava aircraft, six Fouga Magister trainers, 18 Dassault Ouragan fighters, rocket launchers and Uzi submachine guns. In 1981 "Israel" transferred $21 million in arms credits to El Salvador at Washington's request, allowing the Reagan administration to bypass Congress. The former deputy interior minister Francisco Guerra y Guerra said Israeli technicians had installed a computer system for the military and police to track government opponents, and that Israeli advisers had worked with the secret police in the late 1970s. In 1984 the air force commander, Rafael Bustillo, admitted buying napalm from "Israel", used until 1981. Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa Pérez credited his training by Israelis in the mid-1970s and said in 1985 that the new civil defence units "will be like the armed patrols on the Israel kibbutzim". In April 1984 an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman denied that "Israel had any military relationship with El Salvador".[2]
- SIPRI's current register records Israeli deliveries of 18 second-hand modernised Ouragan fighters and four Arava transports ordered in 1973, five Magister trainers (1974–75), three second-hand Arava aircraft (2008), two M-68 155mm guns ordered in 2013 and delivered in 2018, and five SandCat armoured personnel carriers (2022), built on a Mexican production line.[11]
Surveillance technology
- In January 2022 Citizen Lab and Access Now reported that the phones of 35 journalists and members of civil society, including staff of the newspaper El Faro, had been infected with NSO Group's Pegasus between July 2020 and November 2021, while they were reporting on the Bukele government, including its negotiations with gangs. Citizen Lab identified an operator it called TOROGOZ working almost exclusively in El Salvador; it did not conclusively attribute the hacking but said circumstantial evidence pointed to "a strong El Salvador government nexus".[4] Amnesty International's Security Lab independently confirmed the infections.[12]
Trade
The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics lists El Salvador separately. In 2025 "Israel" imported goods worth $0.1 million from El Salvador (2024: $0.2 million) and exported goods worth $9.7 million to it (2024: $5.0 million).[13]
Migration and aliyah
The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics includes El Salvador in a combined group with Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala and Puerto Rico, and does not list it separately.[14]
Political interference
UN voting
El Salvador voted for the General Assembly's endorsement of the New York Declaration on a two-state solution in September 2025.[15]
Jeffrey Epstein
- In November 2016 Deepak Chopra, replying to Epstein's invitation to meet that weekend, wrote: "I'm in El Salvador".[16]
- In June 2019, as federal prosecutors in New York planned the Epstein case, the FBI agent they asked to meet replied that he was in El Salvador.[17]
See also
- Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Guatemala
- Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Honduras
- Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Costa Rica
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 World Jewish Congress, Community in El Salvador worldjewishcongress.org, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Milton Jamail and Margo Gutierrez, Israel in Central America Middle East Report (MERIP), May 1986.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Last embassy to leave Jerusalem Al Jazeera, 26 August 2006.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 John Scott-Railton, Bill Marczak, Paolo Nigro Herrero, Bahr Abdul Razzak, Noura Aljizawi, Salvatore Solimano and Ron Deibert, Project Torogoz: Extensive Hacking of Media & Civil Society in El Salvador with Pegasus Spyware Citizen Lab, 12 January 2022.
- ↑ Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Missions Abroad: Status of relations mfa.gov.il, archived 5 August 2011.
- ↑ El Salvador traslada embajada a Tel Aviv La Nación, 26 August 2006.
- ↑ Government of El Salvador, Letter dated 25 August 2006 from the Deputy Permanent Representative of El Salvador to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General UNISPAL, 25 August 2006.
- ↑ Principal periódico Israelí destaca figura de Nayib Bukele Diario La Huella, 14 February 2018.
- ↑ El Salvador: A pro-Israel president of Palestinian descent deepens divide among diaspora Middle East Eye, 10 June 2021.
- ↑ Ataque de Hamás: reacciones mixtas en América Latina Deutsche Welle, 9 October 2023.
- ↑ Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Arms Transfers Database SIPRI, trade register for Israel as supplier, 1950–2025, data generated 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Amnesty International, El Salvador: Amnesty International verifies use of Pegasus spyware for surveillance of journalists amnesty.org, 13 January 2022.
- ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Foreign Trade Statistics Monthly, Table D1: Trade Countries – Imports and Exports CBS, December 2025 issue (library copy).
- ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Statistical Abstract of Israel 2024, Table 2.55: Immigrants, by period of immigration, country of birth and last country of residence CBS, 2024.
- ↑ United Nations General Assembly, Recorded vote on A/80/L.1/Rev.1: Endorsement of the New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, 12 September 2025 (copy hosted by Al-Quds Al-Arabi).
- ↑ Email from Deepak Chopra to Jeffrey Epstein, 8 November 2016, EFTA01062742, US Department of Justice, Epstein Files release, Data Set 9, justice.gov, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Email thread "Re: Epstein matter", 11–13 June 2019, EFTA00101151, US Department of Justice, Epstein Files release, Data Set 9, justice.gov, accessed 21 October 2026.